HAving with much delight satisfaction and content perused this Treatise entituled The Philosophicall Touch-stone I allow it to be printed and published and commend it to the learned and judicious Reader as a work sound and solid and eminently acute and accurate Iohn Downame THE PHILOSOPHICALL TOUCH-STONE OR OBSERVATIONS UPON Sir Kenelm Digbie's Discourses of the nature of BODIES and of the reasonable SOULE In which his erroneous Paradoxes are refuted the Truth and Aristotelian Philosophy vindicated the immortality of mans Soule briefly but sufficiently proved And the weak Fortifications of a late Amsterdam Ingeneer patronizing The Soules mortality briefly slighted By ALEXANDER ROSS Pers. Sat. 5. Non equidem hoc studeo bullatis ut mihi nugis Pagina turgescat dare pondus idonea fumo LONDON Printed for Iames Young and are to be sold by Charles Green at the signe of the Gun in Ivie-lane 1645. TO THE Right honourable IOHN Earle of RUTLAND Lord Ross c. My Lord WIth the same boldnesse that I have adventured to lap up in the folds of a few paper sheets the rich Jewells of Philosophicall truths with the same have I presumed to present them to your Lordships view not that you can receive from them any addition of honour but that they from your Name and Protection may partake a farther degree of irradiation and lustre Here you may see what odds there are between naturall gems and counterfeit stones between solid wholsome meats and a dish of Frogs or Mushroms though made savoury with French sauce to which that ingenious rather then in this Discourse judicious Knight doth invite us who breathing now in a hotter climate cannot digest the solid meats of Peripatetick verities which hitherto have been the proper and wholsome food of our Universities and therefore entertaines us with a French dinner of his owne dressing or with an airie feast of Philosophicall quelque choses a banquet fitter for Grashoppers and Camelions who feed on dew and aire then for men who rise from his Table as little satisfied as when they sate downe We that have eat plentifully of the sound and wholsome viands which are dressed in Aristotle's kitchin are loth now to be fed as the Indian gods are with the steem or smoak of meats or as those Umbrae tenues simulachraque luce carentum those pale ghosts in Proserpine's Court to champ Leeks and Mallowes My Lord in this Dedication I onely aime at an expression of my gratefulness and observance which I owe to your goodnesse and of those reall sentiments I have of your favours and opinion which your self and your truly noble and religious Countesse have been pleased to conceive of mee I heartily pray for an accumulation of all happinesse on you both as likewise on the fruit of your bodies especially the tender plant and hopefull pledge of your mutuall loves my Lord Ross which is the wish of Your Honours humble servant ALEXANDER ROSS The CONTENTS of the first part containing 68. Sections WOrds expresse things as they are in their owne nature sect 1. Divisibility the effect of extension this is not the essence of quantity sect 2. Rarity the effect not the cause of heat rarified bodies not the hottest sec. 3. The essence of locall motion consisteth not in divisibility sec. 4. Place is not a body but the superficies of a body sec. 5. Not density but gravity is the cause of activity and frigidity cause of both sec. 6. Pressure and penetration not parts but effects of frigidity heat is more piercing sec. 7. Though accidents be reall entities yet they exist not by themselves sec. 8. Heat is not the substance of the fire sec. 9. Light no body but a quality proved by twelve reasons Nor can it be fire sec. 10. Of the qualities of light and how it heats and how it perisheth sec. 11 12. The dilatatioâ— and motion of the light and how seen by us sec. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20. The greatest bodies have not the greatest vertue sec. 21. How naturall bodies move themselves sec. 22. How the Sun causeth motion sec. 23. If the light beares up the atomes and if it be a part of them sec. 24. There is in nature positive gravity and levity by which she works sec. 25. Light descends thorow dense bodies sec. 26. Atomes doe not presse sec. 27. Egyptian earth why heavie upon change of weather How a vessell with snow and salt in it freezeth by the fire The vanity of atomes sec. 28. Water is not actually heavie in its owne sphere The sea moves naturally to the centre Water can divide water sec. 29 Heavie bodies tend naturally to the centre Gravity is not the cause of violent motion The effect sometimes exceeds the cause Inanimate things without understanding affect and dis-affect what 's good or bad for them sec. 30. The true cause of the motion of projection and its properties sec. 31. The heavens void of generation corruption alteration they are naturall bodies sec. 32. Atomes are not the causes of heat nor ofre-action sec. 33. How elementary formes remaine in mixed bodies sec. 34. There are in nature foure simple bodies sec. 35. Wind is not the motion of atomes but an exhalation sec. 36. Naturall Mathematicall and Diabolicall magick sec. 37. The weapon-salve a meere imposture sec. 38. The true causes of the temperament under the line sec. 39. The load-stone is not begot of atomes drawne from the North-Pole sec. 40. Without qualities no operation in nature sec. 41. Atomes pierce not the earth Odors decay by time Salt how it growes heavie sec. 42. Naturall agents at the same time work diversly sec. 43. The heat of the marrow is not the cause of the hardnesse of the bones but the heat of the bones themselves sec. 44. God is not dishonoured by calling him the Creatour of the meanest things sec. 45. The formative power of generation in the seed sec. 46. Whether the heart or the liver first generated sec. 47. Thin bodies as well as thick the objects of touch Rarity and density what kind of entities sec. 48. Objects work not materially but intentionally on the sense sec. 49. Sound is not motion proved How perceived by deafe men It shakes not houses sec. 50. Colours are not quantities nor substances but qualities s. 51. How living creatures can move themselves Of nature and properties Of life And how the life of God differs from the life of the creature sec. 52. Of sense and sensation How the sense worketh and suffereth sec. 53. Vision is not caused by materiall atomes Seven things required in sensation sec. 54. Words are not motion nor are they the chiefe object of memory sec. 55. The organ of the memory How the intellect and memory differ sec. 56. Purging consisteth not in liquefaction but in attracting and expelling sec. 57. Pleasure is not the motion of a fume about the heart but the apprehension of a convenient object sec. 58. Paine and pleasure move not the heart Of systole
owne bodies doe though wee were never so close shut up in a roome When the aire is inclined to raine bodies grow heavie and in a close room we see the water in weather-glasses ascend and descend as the aire changeth abroad although the water in the glasse hath no commerce with the aire abroad and so wee feele aches upon change of weather in our bodies and heavinesse of our heads after sun-set by reason of the heavinesse or gloomy heat of the aire caused not by your atomes but by vapors mists or fumes in the aire which we are continually sucking in by the lungs by which the two principall parts of our bodies are affected to wit the head and the heart and by them the rest of the bodie And as for spirits or atomes of snow and Pag. 87. salt-peter which you say passe thorow a glasse-vessell I know no such thing 'T is true that the outside of a glasse or pot being made wet will freeze to the boord though neere the fire if you put snow and salt-peter in the pot because the cold snow by antiperistasis becometh much colder in having the hot salt joyned with it and so shunning its enemy the salt fortifies it selfe which causeth the wet bottome to freeze So in great frosts the fire is most hot and scalding wells and deep cellars in summer are most cold without any penetration of atomes at all which were heretofore bodies and parts of light now by you are called spirits And as there is no concourse of atomes to presse downe the falling bullet in the aire neither is there of water to presse down the stone Pag. 88. falling in it as you say because both the aire and the water meet onely to fill up the place which the bullet and stone had that there may be no vacuity for lighter bodies presse not downward the heavier but support the lighter But it troubles mee to waste so much time and paper in refelling your Paradoxes of atomes which are as void of soliditie as the atomes themselves Hence wee see how easie it is to deviate from the truth and to lose our selves in the winding labyrinths and intricate Meanders of errour when we fall off from these knowne and generally received principles which have had the approbation of wise men for so many generations Is it not a shorter way and more consonant to reason to say that cork sinks not and iron doth because the one is porous and full of aire the other dense and more earthy because the one and the other are moved diversly according to their divers formes and the properties from them to wit gravity and levity then to devise phantomes of atomes which involve within them so many absurdities The elements doe weigh in their owne spheres for a ballone Sect. 29. Pag. 95 c. 11. stuffed hard with aire is heavier then an empty one Secondly more water would not be heavier then lesse Thirdly if a hole were digged in the bottome of the sea the water would not run into it I answer a stuffed ballone is heavier because the aire which is in it is separated from its own sphere in which it doth not weigh according to our principles Secondly more water is not in its owne sphere actually heavier then lesse for a man in the bottome of the sea feels no more weight then if hee were but halfe a yard from the superficies but potentially it is gravida est sed non gravitat Thirdly the sea would run downe and fill up the hole because it moves naturally as it is heavie towards the centre which weight appeares not actually in its sphere till it remove towards the centre Nature in her actions is not to be seen in all places and at all times There is life in seeds and fruit in trees though not alwaies actually seen So there is gravitie in water though not alwaies felt as you seeme afterward to confesse when you say that water in a Pag. 97. cap. 11. pale because it is thereby hindred from spreading abroad hath the effect of gravity predominating in it So one part of water in its own sphere doth not divide the other Shall we then say there is no power in water to divide water Yes there is for water powred out of an 〈◊〉 into a bason wherein is water will divide the water in the bason Your reason to prove that there is no inclination in Sect. 30. Pag. 98. cap. 11. heavie bodies to tend to the centre because the centre is as often changed as any dust lighteth unequally upon any one side of it is a weak one for let the centre change never so often every houre if you will yet a centre there must be still and to that centre in what place of the earth soever it be the heavie bodie hath its inclination And no lesse weaknesse is it to confound vis impressa or a violent motion with the naturall motion of gravitie as you do for gravitie is neither the mediate nor immediate cause of a violent but of a naturall motion Neither Pag. 99. is it impossible for any cause as you say to produce an effect greater then it selfe for the flame may produce a greater heat in iron then is in it selfe May not a little man beget a tall man Oftentimes the effect exceedeth the cause both in quantity and vertue A blind man begets a son with eyes the heat of an Egyptian oven hatcheth chickens and the Suns heat begets many sensitive creatures of putrefied matter Neither must you inferre That Pag. 99. gravity is no naturall quality of earthy bodies because a bullet can ascend out of the bottome of the barrell of a gun being suck't up by ones breath for this infers the bullet to be naturally heavie in that it doth not naturally ascend but is forced by the violent motion of traction which traction were needlesse if the bullet were not naturally heavie Neither doth this motion shew That gravity is an intellective entity as you say for though the naturall properties of things have not understanding yet they have that appetite given to them by the God of nature to preserve their owne unitie and the unitie of the universe and to shun their owne destruction and this is no determining of the qualitie by it selfe which is the act of an intelligent creature to wit to determine it selfe but it is a power given by the God of nature to every thing to preserve it selfe and to shun its owne hurt So the stomack which hath no understanding receives and concocts wholsome food the meseraick veines suck the purest part thereof prepare and fit it for the second concoction and send away the excrementitious and superfluous parts to the guts and the same stomack vomits out that which is hurtfull to it and all this is nature not understanding What understanding will you give to a load-stone when it drawes iron or to those senslesse creatures which by their sympathies and antipathies
soule as you call it in saying that her being in a body is her being one thing with the body she is said to be in for if she be one thing with the body she hath the same essence and essentiall properties of a body which I beleeve you wil not subscribe to Sect 22. Pag. 441. c 1 1. Should a soule by the course of nature obtaine her first being without a body and be perfect in knowledge she must be a compleat substance not a soule whose nature is to acquire perfection by the service of the senses 1. You suppose what is not to be supposed for no soul can obtain her first being by the course of nature 2. If she did yet it were not repugnant to her nature to be perfect in knowledge 3. Perfection in knowledge will not make her a complete substance 4. Though the soule naturally acquires perfection by the service of the senses yet that hinders not her bringing in of knowledge with her Adams soul had perfect knowledge as it was fit being all the works of God were created in their perfection and Adam was to be the Doctor and instructor of his posterity and because he was created both in the state and place of happinesse which could not subsist without knowledge yet Adams soule ceased not therefore to be a soule or the forme of his materiall body nor did her knowledge make her a complete substance for in her substance she was no more complete then our soules are in our nativity Neither did that knowledge which Adam brought with him hinder his soule from acquiring by the service of his senses a fuller measure of understanding for hee neither had the knowledge of future contingencies nor of the secrets of mens hearts nor of every particular individuum of every species nor of every stone or sand in the world which belonged nothing to his perfection and happinesse If you 'l say that Adams soule obtained not her first being by the course of nature I grant it nor was it possible she should but by what course soever you imagine the soule to have her being shee may bring perfect knowledge with her and yet not cease to be a soule But when you say That no false judgements can remaine in a Pag. 442. miserable soule after her departure you make the damned soules in hell in farre better condition then wee are here upon earth who are subject to false judgements and erroneous opinions even the best of us but I am not of your mind for doubtlesse false judgements are a part of that punishment which the wicked soules suffer in hell But if there be no falshood or errour of judgement in them they must be in this point as happy as Adam was in Paradise If nothing be wanting but the effect and yet the effect Sect. 23. doth not immediately follow it must needs be that it cannot follow at all This inference will not follow at all for wee see many effects doe not immediately follow upon the working of the efficient and yet follow at last The fire melts not the metall presently nor the Carpenter builds the house nor the Sun produces corne grasse and fruits immediately nor doth the Physician presently cure diseases and yet all these are efficient causes and actually work the effects follow at leasure and at last though not immediately You should doe well to distinguish between 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the working or operation and the work it selfe When the efficient is not only in its act of entity but of causality too there followes immediately operation but not opus the working not the work the effect in fieri not in esse Againe you must discriminate between voluntary and naturall agents the one operate freely the other of necessity The soule is doubtlesse a voluntary not a naturall agent so that the effect may follow though not immediately And if in naturall causes the effect followes still immediately it is where the effect is an essentiall property of the subject flowing immediately from the forme as heat from the fire which notwithstanding produceth not heat immediately in water or other subjects Lastly if your argument be good they are not to blame who held the eternity of the world for they reasoned as you doe that the cause being eternall the effect must immediately or eternally follow or else not follow at all But they should have knowne that God was no naturall but a voluntary agent and though from eternity hee did actually exist yet he did not from eternitie actually create The act of entity in him was eternall but not the act of causality In the conclusion of your discourse you make nature Sect 24. play the Smith for you say If the dull percussion which by natures institution hammereth out a spirituall soule from grosse flesh and bloud can atchieve so wondrous an effect by such blunt instruments as are used in the contriving of a man fifty or an hundred yeares time must forge out in such a soule an excellency above the forme of an abortive embryon You may with your Rhetorick as soon perswade me that Minerva was hammered out of Iupiters braine by the percussion of Vulcans hatchet as that the spirituall soule can by natures institution or any dull percussion of hers be hammered out from grosse flesh and bloud It is not nature but the God of nature that is the efficient cause of the soule It 's not natures dull percussion but Gods active inspiration that is the instrument It is not flesh and bloud out of which it is educed but into which the immateriall soule is introduced The soule is not framed either in or of the bodie by the work of nature but is inspired by the breath of the Almighty who in the beginning breathed into Adam the breath of life and so became a living soule Nature cannot hammer out such a piece as the soule is though shee had the help of Vulcans Cyclopes Brontesque Steropesque nudus membra Pyracmon She is of too pure a quintessence and of too sublimated an alloy to be extracted out of such grosse materialls as flesh and bloud are After the bodie is articulated the new created soule is infused accompanied with her perfections which she receives not from but communicates to the bodie and so that rude masse of flesh in the matrix becomes a man And the same soule which makes him a man makes him lord over all the workes of Gods hands by this he subdues the wilde beasts commands the earth masters the ocean measures the heaven searcheth into the nature of herbs trees metalls mineralls stones c. fore-tells celestiall changes inventeth arts and sciences and becomes the lively character and expresse image of the Almighty Can nature then hammer such a divine essence out of grosse flesh and bloud It is questioned whether God himselfe can doe it without implying a contradiction which is so repugnant to him Nature
whether it be of essence or existence and complete in her knowledge too for wee know but in part here and in aenigmate The souls of beasts have their completion from those bodies whence they have their originall without which bodies they have no subsistence but mans soule gives subsistence to the compositum whereof the bodie is a part so that the soule receives no more completion in or by the bodie then an exquisite Musician hath in or by his Lute The soule being separated ceaseth to informe the bodie but doth not therefore cease to be complete no more then a Lutenist ceaseth to be a Musician when he layes aside his Lute You will have us to supply what is wanting before wee Sect. 28. Pag. 456. Conclus are called to our dreadfull account which is soon done if we be what our nature dictateth us to be if we follow but reason and knowledge our wants are supplied our accounts are made up Wee shall make but a sorry account if wee follow such guides as our owne nature reason and knowledge These are blind guides which will lead us into the ditch The Scripture tells us that the naturall man comprehendeth not the things of Gods Spirit neither can he That our 1 Cor. 2. 14. naturall wisdome is enmity against God for it cannot be Rom. 8. 7. subject to the Law of God Of our selves wee cannot 2 Cor. 3. 5. thinke a good thought as of our selves Our foolish Rom. 1. 21. hearts are darkned Our understanding is darkned Wee Ephes. 4. 18. were sometimes darknesse The light shined in darknesse Ephes. 5. 8. but the darknesse comprehended it not There is none John 1. 5. Rom. 3. 11. that understandeth none that seeketh after God Wee are Act. 7. 52. stiffe-necked and of uncircumcised hearts and have alwaies resisted the holy Ghost Evill trees cannot bring Mat. 7. 15. forth good fruit Our hearts are perverse and deceitfull Jer. 17. 9. above all things The imaginations of the thoughts of Gen. 6. 5. mans heart are onely evill continually Wee are by nature Ephes. 2. 1. dead in our sins and trespasses What guides were reason nature and knowledge to the Iewes when Christ would have gathered them as the hen gathers her chickens Mat. 23. 37. under her wings and they would not What fruit can wilde olives or withered vine-branches bring out if Rom. 11. the one be not inserted into the true and naturall olive the other into the true Vine Doe men gather grapes of John 15. Mat. 7. Act. 16. thistles or figs of thornes If God had not opened the heart of Lydia her owne reason and nature had never opened it God must give us a heart to understand and Deut. 29. eyes to see and eares to heare Hee must take away our stony hearts and give us hearts of flesh that wee may walk Ezek. 11. 19. in his statutes and keep his judgements He must give us his Law and write it in our hearts And indeed he must Jer. 30. 33. give us ipsum velle even Will it selfe for as by nature our understandings are darkned so our wills are perverted our affections inclinations thoughts and desires are all depraved If nature and reason had been good guides man who was made upright had not found out to himselfe so many inventions as Solomon complaines Cain's posteritie had not fallen from the true Church nor had the posteritie of Noah by Cham and Iaphet nay by Sem too fallen into idolatry Why did God communicate his will by tradition before and by writ after the Law nay oftentimes by miraculous and extraordinary waies if mans reason and naturall knowledge had been good guides And how can these be but deceitfull guides in supernaturall things which faile us even in the causes of things meerly naturall Therefore that saying Naturam ducem sequi optimum is not true in supernaturall things nor altogether sure as I said in naturall The ship of mans soule will split against the rocks of errour if shee have no better helme to steere by then the helme of reason Reason is not the Starre that will bring us to Bethlehem nor the cloud and firie-pillar that will conduct us to Canaan We must deny our selves if we follow Christ. And what is that but to abandon nature and naturall reason in the things that concerne Christ Peter had reason and nature when he bid Christ speaking of his death have a care of himselfe but how Christ took him up for it you know There was as much nature reason and knowledge in the great Rabbies as in the poore ignorant Fisher-men yet these followed Christ and forsook all so did not the others The young Lawyer had too much nature and reason which hindered him from not furthered him to Christ. And truly the Gentile Philosophers acknowledged that reason was oftentimes clouded and enslaved to fear anger love and other passions even so in us all what was straight is become crooked and what was alive is dead Wee are dead saith the Apostle in sinne what reason can be expected from a dead man I know this is but a similitude yet it sufficiently proves that untill Christ hath spiritually quickned us our reason and nature will little availe us Our hearts are by nature barren as the mountains of Gilboa fruitlesse as the fig-tree in the Gospel untame as the wilde colt or the wilde asse that scornes the voice of the hunter and all this is naturall to us If Lycurgus his dogge had not had more then nature when he forsook the flesh-pot to run after the Hare hee would have staid at home with his fellow which had nothing but nature And even the Schoole-men acknowledge that nature is wounded in us to wit our understanding with ignorance our wills with wickednesse our irascible faculty with weaknesse our concupiscible with lust You had done well then not to have named these guides which like ignis fatuus will bring us out of the way You should have named him who is the onely John 14. way the truth and the life without whom wee can doe nothing as he saith himselfe and without whom there John 6. is no coming to the Father 'T is hee who first opened heaven to all beleevers who is the doore by whom wee enter and the key of David too who openeth and no man shuts shutteth and no man openeth The bright morning-starre the Sun of righteousnesse the ladder of Iacob upon the steps or degrees of whose merits and graces wee may climb up to heaven The true brasen Serpent by looking on whom we are cured of our spirituall wounds If then by nature you had meant God who is Natura naturans If by reason you had meant Christ who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the reason or word of the Father whose service John 1. is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a reasonable service If by knowledge you had meant that
and diastole sec. 59. Paine is not compression but the effect of it All hard things breed not paine nor soft things pleasure The heart is more active then passive because hot Feare sorrow and stupidity how they differ Passion is not the motion of the bloud and spirits but of the sensible appetite Every passion is not motion The division of passions Why birds more musicall then other creatures sec. 60. There are sympathies and antipathies in nature of which we can give no reason which is the punishment of Adams pride sec. 61. Of impressions made in the embryo and of the formative power sec. 62. Substances could not be knowne were it not for qualities No action passion and motion without qualities Alterations from them sec. 63. All bodies are not meerly passive Rare and dense not the primary division of bodies sec. 64. Aristotle not the author of atomes but Democritus sec. 65. The necessity of metaphysicall knowledge Privations and negations conceived as positive entities by Aristotelians how sec. 66. Qualities are not dispositions of parts Beauty is neither composition nor proportion Health is not temper Agility is not proportion nor strength Science is not ordered phantasmes sec. 67. Sir Kenelme modestly reproved for mocking at Aristotelians sec. 68. How and why accidents are in their subjects Accidents are entities Aristotelians vindicated from tautologies Nature aimes at unity why Of similitudes and the ground thereof How man is like to God not God to man sec. 69. The CONTENTS of the second part containing 28. Sections ARistotelians make not heat and cold indivisible qualities Not they but the Masse-Priests turne bodies into spirits sec. 1. Not the nature but the similitude of the thing apprehended is in the man apprehending and therefore the understanding is not the same with the thing understood proved by ten reasons sec. 2. All relations are not notions but reall entities proved by ten reasons sec. 3. Existence is not the property of man but of entity or rather its formality in God onely it is one with essence sec. 4. The soule is more then an active force She sleepeth not in the grave c. sec. 5. Being hath no great affinity with the soule it is neither the end nor the Idea of the soule sec. 6. Things are understood rather by way of similitude then of respect or relation sec. 7. Mans knowledge how finite and infinite God onely absolutely infinite How he is knowne by us here and hereafter How infinity can be knowne sec. 8. Things lose not their being by reason of quantity but by the privation of the forme sec. 9. Mathematicians consider not the natures of things but bare accidents abstracted from sensible matter sec. 10. All life consisteth not in motion Life is not an action but the act How motions come from without how not sec. 11. How the soule is perfect In her no privative but negative imperfections There are accidents in the soule sec. 12. Place is not a body it is neither forme nor matter Whatsoever hath existence hath ubiety even Angels and soules How soules are in their bodies They are not no-where nor are they every-where sec. 13. How time is the measure of motion Time and motion different things When the heavenly motions shall cease there will be time how understood Things below would move though the heavens stood still sec. 14. What things are in time chiefly and primarily How spirits are not in time and how in time Tempus aevum eternitie God onely exempted from time Discrete time sec. 15. The soule is no accident She knoweth not all things There is no exteriour and interiour soule Phantasmes are not bodies All soules have not the same amplitude of knowledge Life is not motion Neither the soule nor the life becomes to be a spirit sec. 16. Both Angels and soules stand in need of externall and internall helps of knowledge Memory remaines in separated soules How the species depend from the phantasie Divers habits left in the soule separated The soules in their understanding differ from the Angels What things they know not God is not understood by species sec. 17. The phantasie worketh not upon the soule but the active intellect upon the passive How the phantasie helps the understanding The phantasie workes in sleep How the soule worketh upon her selfe by meanes of her divers faculties sec. 18. In Angels and departed soules there are actions and perfective passions The want of action argues death rather then life Some actions cease after death not all All actions not corruptive Sir Kenelm contradicts himselfe sec. 19. The soule the subject of memory recordation reminiscence and of oblivion too What habits are left actually and potentially in the soule 'T is a happinesse to be forgetfull of some things sec. 20. Rhetoricall flourishes uselesse and hurtfull in Philosophicall disputes sec. 21. Perfection of knowledge makes not the substance of the soule more perfect The soule ceaseth not to be a soule though shee brings knowledge with her False judgements and erroneous opinions are a part of the punishment of damned soules in hell sec. 22. All effects doe not immediately follow upon the working of the efficient Opus and Operatio The act of entity and of causality are to be distinguished The effect which is the property of the cause followeth immediately God an eternall entity not an eternall cause sec. 23. That the soule is not a materiall but a spirituall substance infused not traduced proved by twenty arguments Of the operations knowledge and liberty of the soule in willing Of her excellency above the senses and corporeall substances this is proved by Scripture In what sense the soule is called corporeall by some Fathers She is no part of the divine essence as some hereticks thought sec. 24. The specificall perfection or excellency of soules is alike in all There may be some difference in accidentall perfections in respect of the organs and phantasie sec. 25. The neerer the Intelligences are to God the more they know The superiour have a greater similitude with God then the inferiour and stand in need of fewer intelligible species All behold Gods essence but not in the same measure Neither is their knowledge equall nor infinitely unequall sec. 26. The soule is not made complete in or by the body but rather incomplete because she is then a part of the whole sec. 27. Nature reason and knowledge are but blind guides to heaven without Christ proved by Scripture and reason What we are by nature How Christ may be called nature reason and knowledge sec. 28. The CONTENTS of the Conclusion containing 17. Sections THe immortality of the soule proved by Scripture sec. 1. The same proved by six reasons grounded on the Scripture sec. 2. That the soule is immortall of her owne nature proved by foure reasons and how this phrase is to be understood sec. 3. The soules immortality proved by thirteen naturall and morall reasons The Gentiles by natures light were not ignorant of this truth
of its essence for no accident can constitute the essence of a substance You speak not like a Philosopher when you speak Sect. 5. Pag. 34 cap 5. of uniting a body moved to that other body which is called its place For place is defined to be the superficies of the ambient bodie but the bodie quantitative is a different species from the superficies the substantiall bodie is in another predicament therefore place cannot be a body for if it were it could not be equall to the thing contained for every bodie that containes is bigger then the bodie contained as the dish is bigger then the water The aire then is not the place of our bodies but the superficies or terminus of the aire which is the accident of that subject In regard dense bodies you say are dividers the earth Sect. 6. Pag. 36. cap. 5. in that respect must be the most active element since it is the most dense The earth is active in dividing not because it is most dense but because most heavy and indeed the cause both of density and gravity is frigidity and therefore this is the active quality not density Againe elements are called active in respect of the two active qualities heat and cold and of these two heat is the more active and consequently the element of fire is simply and absolutely most active The action of cold is composed of two parts to wit pressing Sect. 7. Pag. 36. c. 5. and penetration Pressure and penetration are not the parts but the effects of frigefaction Pressure but a remote effect for it is immediately caused by gravity and this by cold And for penetration it is rather the effect of heat then of cold for hot liquors pierce sooner then cold and it is rather by reason of the rarity of its substance then of the coldnesse thereof that it pierceth for this cause aire is more penetrating then water and fire then aire A reall entity necessarily hath an existence of its owne and Sect. 8. Pag. 39. c. 6. so becomes a substance By this you inferre that qualities must needs be substances seeing they are reall entities distinct from the bodies they accompany But this consequence is irrationall for accidents are reall entities because they are not bare notions and conceptions of the mind but things existent and distinct from their bodies yet their entity is weake compared with that of substances so that sometimes they are called non-entities by Philosophers but if all reall entities must needs be substances then in vaine is it to make above one predicament or to divide entity into substance and accidents Then qualities cannot be contrary one to another as heat to cold nor can they admit of magis and minus but are subjects susceptible of contrariety without alteration of themselves which are the properties of substance but although accidents be reall entities yet they have no existence in or by themselves but in or by their substances for Accidentis esse est inesse and therefore ens is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as respecting principally substance but accidents secundariò as they inhere in their substance which as they cannot subsist so they cannot be defined without their substance The Papists themselves will not yeeld that accidents in the Eucharist can subsist without their proper subject except by miracle or Divine power and Scotus is so far from yeelding In 1. Phys. quaest 7. any subsistence to accidents without their substance that he will rather beleeve that the accidents in the bread are turned by miracle into a substance to which opinion it seems you encline Thomas tels us that whitenesse 1. ◠q. 90. Art 2. and other accidents have no entity but as they are in their subjects And Aristotle that accidents are entis 7 Metaphys rather then entia You must first prove that accidents have any entity without their subjects and then that to have reall entity and to subsist by it selfe or that essence and self existence is all one when this is proved we will be of your opinion Heat is nothing else in the fire but the very substance of Sect. 9. Pag. 41. c. 6. it If heat be the substance of the fire then it is either the matter or the forme of it not the matter for heat is active the matter passive not the forme for the forme is the essence and therefore incommunicable but heat is communicated by the fire to the water Heat is not in the element the principle of motion but the forme thereof is One forme is not contrary to another but heat is contrary to cold Heat admits degrees so doth not the substantiall forme Heat and cold cannot be contraries Contraria sunt sub eodem genere seeing heat is a substance say you and cold a quality It cannot be imagined that light is any thing else but fire Sect. 10. Pag. 43. c. 6. If it be so then where-ever fire is there is light but we reade of a fire without light 2. Then where-ever light is there is fire but there is light in the Stars in Cats eyes in Glow-wormes in Fish scales yet no fire 3. The nature of fire is to ascend onely the nature of the light is to descend also 4. Water is opposite to fire but to light darknesse 5. Fire heats by degrees and successively light illuminates suddenly and in an instant 6. Fire containes it selfe in a narrow place as the chimney light dilates it selfe over all the roome 7. If light be fire then it must be heat for heat you say is fire but if light be heat then it will follow that light is tangible and heat visible but ask a blind man if he can discerne light by touching and ask him that hath eyes if by them he can see heat which he must needs do if heat and light be the same thing 8. There is heat in a dark Oven that bakes your bread when there is no light at all and there is light in Saturne but no heat at all 9. When the fire warmes the water it makes a change in the water by expelling a positive quality but when the Sun illuminates the aire there is no change made in the aire because no positive quality is expelled darknesse being a meere privation 10. The light of the Sun in the aire and in the Sun is the same light but if it be fire in the aire much more must it be fire in the Sun No wonder then if Icarus his waxen wings melted flying so neere the Sun But the snowie mountaines have the Suns light more then the valleys yet have they not thereby the more heat Snow enlightneth the aire in the night but warmes it not The aire is not warmer at the full Moone then at the change 11. Iflight be fire then it must be a body but a body it cannot be for then when light is in the aire two bodies must be at once in one place 2.
his being sometime present sometime absent You spend much paper in shewing that the Sun is the cause of the motion of inferiour bodies which wee deny not but wee are not satisfied with this cause for the Sun as all other celestiall bodies is but an universall and remote cause of inferiour bodies and their motions but such a cause begets no scientificall knowledge the cause by which we must know scientifically is particular and immediate to wit the formes of bodies by their properties gravity and levity these are the causes of motion by which we know The Sun is too remote a cause and I doubt whether hee be a cause at all why the fire burnes and of other such like effects And though the Sun being present is the cause of sublunary effects yet being absent he cannot be a cause properly but accidentally or causa deficiens not efficiens The light carrieth up an atome with it and shortly after Sect. 24. Pag. 80. cap. 10. you tell us that light is a part of the atome Is not the aire strong enough to beare atomes except you adde this new carrier or porter light What becomes of these atomes when the light is gone Are they not too heavie a burthen for the aire to support without its fellow-helper Hercule supposito sidera fulcit Atlas This is much like their conceipt who feared that Atlas was not strong enough to beare up the heavens if Hercules shoulder had not helped him but how comes the light to be a part of its owne burthen an atome then I see is no atome but may be cut in parts and anatomized and these parts are light But is light an integrall or an essentiall part Are there any atomes in candle-light if there be how shall we know if there be not then is the light no part of atomes And if atomes be opake bodies how can light be a part of such is one opposite a part of another I think your atomes sustained by the light are like the dreames in Virgil supported by an elme or like the shadowes in the Elysian fields flying about the green medowes tenues sine corpore vitae Cernuntur volitare cava sub imagine formae You have been too much conversant in the schoole of Democritus who held the world to be made of atomes And to say that the first and most generall operation of the Pag. 76. Sun is to raise and make atomes is to give the Sun a very poore unworthy and fruitlesse imployment Caligula and his souldiers were better imployed when they gathered shells and pebble-stones and so was Dioclesian in catching of flies There is no such thing among bodies as positive gravity Sect. 25. Pag. 81. cap. 10. and levity but that their course upwards or downwards happen to them by the order of nature It seems you understand here by nature the universall nature which is nothing else but the dependencie of all inferiour causes orderly from the supreme cause If this be your meaning as it must needs be you commit a contradiction for you deny the secondary causes which you suppose to depend from the supreme If then I should aske you why a stone descends you will answer Not because of any positive gravity in it but because it so happens by the order of nature But why hath nature ordered a stone to fall downward not to move upward seeing there is no positive gravitie in it You answer me Because it meets with the aire or water bodies lighter thinner then the stone Then you here acknowledge a comparative gravitie in the stone for if the aire be lighter then the stone the stone must be heavier then the aire and so comparatively it is heavie but every comparative includes a positive for if you be wiser then another then you are wise but indeed universall nature works not without the particular neither doth God or the heaven move the stone downward but by the stones gravity therefore gravitie is the immediate cause of its motion which if you deny you may as well deny the fire to be hot and if you say the fire burnes only because it happeneth so by the order of nature you were as good say nothing Any body will descend if it light among others more Sect. 26. Pag 81. c. 10. rare then it selfe and will ascend if it light among bodies more dense then it What say you then to your light bodie of light which you say is nothing else but fire dilated surely meeting with aire a bodie heavier and denser it should never descend to us who live here on the earth but ascend rather how comes it that so light a bodie should descend so many miles from its fountaine the Sun to us seeing the aire is much more dense then it Nay it descends thorow a denser bodie the water for divers find light in the bottome of the sea Againe what say you to a thick plank of timber which meeting with the water a rarer bodie notwithstanding descends not to the bottome but swims above This is contrary to your doctrine You told us afore that light hath no bignesse or densitie Sect. 27. that the more dense the bodie is the more active it is that the light carries up atomes and now you say that these atomes the subtilest divisions of light doe presse Pag. 86. c. 11. downe a leaden bullet and penetrates or runs thorow it as light thorow a glasse water thorow a spunge and sand thorow a sieve The light then carries up these atomes which presse downe a leaden bullet and yet the light hath not densitie These are riddles which Oedipus cannot unfold for how a qualitie should be a body how that bodie should want dimensions how it should want density and yet beare up that which presseth downe with its weight a leaden bullet how there should be so much weight in atomes as to presse down such a bullet how these atomes should pierce so dense a bodie as lead whereas light cannot doe it yea run thorow lead as water thorow a spunge or sand thorow a sieve are I thinke some of these second notions which Chimaera did eat But how doe the atomes presse downe the lead doe they remain in their expansion dispersed then they cannot more presse the lead then the sea-water presseth him downe that dives in it elementum in suo loco non gravitat Or doe the atomes meet together in a bodie to help the lead downwards if all the atomes in the light were in one bodie how big would that bodie be The clod of earth which in Egypt is shut up in a close Sect. 28. Pag. 87. c. 11. roome and doth shew the change of weather by the increase of its weight receiveth not this weight from the atomes of salt-peter piercing the walls as you say but from the aire it selfe of which it is made up as other mixed bodies are which therefore sympathise with the aire and its changings as our
must be done by natural heat and a vegetative soule and what is this but to make salt a plant As for the weight of it which you say encreaseth I doubt of it but if it were so as you say yet that weight is not encreased by turning the aire into its substance but rather by the losse and evaporation of the aire by its long lying So paper-books grow much heavier by beating the aire out of the paper But whereas you say That the nature of the Load-stone proceeds from the Suns operation Pag. 200. c. 22. on the torrid Zone which operation is contrary to the Load-stone as being of a fiery nature and therefore the torrid lands are not so magneticall as the polar is a riddle for how can the nature of the Load-stone be contrary to that which begets it and how can the Sun beget magnetick vertue by that heat which by reason of its fiery nature hinders or destroyes it Sect. 43. Pag 215. c. 23. You say 'T is as impossible for diversity of worke in the seed to proceed at one time and in the same occasions from one agent as it is for multiplicity to proceed immediatly from unity I will not now tell with what arguments Physicians prove that the seed is the epitome of the whole body and extracted from every part thereof and containeth potentially all the parts of the body which the plastick or formative power of the seed educeth unto act by degrees but this I must tell you that naturall agents can at the same time produce diversity of works for doth not the Sun at the same time produce multitudes of divers effects according to the multitudes of bodies it works upon doth not the fire at the same time rarifie condense soften harden doth not the same liver at the same time by its heat produce blood choler melancholy and phlegme even so may the same formative power of the seed at the same time fabricate and distinguish all the parts of the body The marrow being very hot drieth the bones and yet with Sect. 44. Pag. 226. c. 24. its moisture humecteth How the same naturall agent can at the same time on the same object worke contrary effects I know not Can the fire at the same time both harden and soften the wax 2. The braine comparatively is colder then any other of the soft parts of the body and consequently the marrow which groweth from thence 3. If heat be the cause of the bones drinesse then the heart which is the hottest part of the body should have the hardest bone about it 4. What the bones are in sensitive creatures that the stones are in vegetables but the hottest fruits have not the hardest stones for the stone of a cold Peach is harder then the kernels or stones of the hot Grapes 5. If marrow were the cause of drinesse or hardnesse it would follow that where there is most marrow there should be the hardest and driest bones but Philosophers tell us that those creatures whose bones are most solid and drie have least marrow 6. That drinesse then and hardnesse of the bones proceeds not from the heat of the marrow which is held to be lesse hot then the braine but from the innate heat of the bones themselves wasting the aeriall and oylie substance thereof which heat is not fiery but temperate as the naturall heat should be yet it causeth this hardnesse and drinesse because the matter on which it works is grosse and terrestriall and because of the heats continuall working on the bones You will not have us too irreverently ingage the Almighties Sect. 45. Pag. 227. c. 25. immediate handy-worke in every particular effect of nature We offer no irreverence to the Almighty if we call him the Creator even of the meanest creatures being no lesse admirable in Creatione vermiculorum quà m Angelorum in the creation of wormes then of Angels saies S. Austine and therefore Basil thinks it no irreverence Homil. 7. in Gen. to say That God in the beginning did not only create Fishes in the sea but Frogs also in the pooles nay Gnats and vermine Whose immediate handy-work were the Lice that were procreated of the Egyptian dust at the stretching out of Aarons and Moses his Rod Did not the Sorcerers acknowledge that the finger of God was there If it be no disparagement to the Almighty that the excrementitious haires of our head are the objects of his providence neither can it be any dishonour to him if we say the meanest creatures are the effects of his omnipotence The worke of generation you say is not effected by the Sect. 46. Pag. 231. c. 25. formative power except we meane by it the chaine of all the causes that concurre to produce this effect When wee speak of the proximate or immediate cause of things we exclude not the remote causes for Causa causae est causa causati He that saies that Isaac was begot of Abrahams seed denies not that Abrahams seed is begot of his blood and he that saies a man is a reasonable creature saies also that he is a sensitive vegetative corporeall substance but what ever the remote causes be the formative facultie in the spirits of the seed effects the work of generation which spirits are derived from all parts of the body otherwise how could they frame all the distinct parts and members in the seed but the grosse or materiall part of the seed is onely from the vessels You hold the heart to be first generated This is probable Sect. 47. Pag. 225. c. 24. but it may be doubted because whatsoever liveth must be nourished but nourishment is from the blood and blood from the liver therefore Galens opinion was that the liver is first generated which he also proveth by the umbelicall veine But indeed Hippocrates his opinion is most likely to be true that all the parts are formed at the same time by the spirits in the seed However it be this is certaine that fearfully and wonderfully are we made The touch converseth with none but with the most materiall Sect. 48. Pag. 244. c. 27. and massie bodies What think you of the aire the winde the flame are these masfie bodies and yet they are the objects of our touch the instrument of which is not only in the hands and fingers but diffused also through all the skin and if the flame touch your skin you shall as soone feele it though it be no massie body as you shall a stone But whereas you call heat and cold wet and drinesse affections of quantity you confound entities and the predicaments as you use to doe If by affections you meane properties then heat and cold are not the properties of quantities but of elementary bodies which are substances If by affections you meane effects much lesse can these be the affections of quantity for quantity is not operative Neither are rarity and density out of the degrees of which you will
is the motion of the sensitive appetite which is moved by the object and from it receives its specification as from its forme how then can it be solely the motion of the spirits and bloud I grant that in every passion there is some alteration of the naturall motion of the heart that is the systole and diastole is more or lesse but this alteration is caused by the passion which is as I say the motion of the sensitive appetite not of the bloud and spirits but secondarily and accidentally Fourthly every passion in us is either morally good or evill but the motion of the spirits and bloud about the heart is meerly naturall and therefore cannot be good or bad morally Fifthly every passion is not a motion for joy which is one of the six passions of the concupiscible appetite is a rest or acquiescence in the fruition of that good which we desired but now possesse The other five indeed consist in motion to wit love and hatred desire and flight and sorrow and so doe the other five which are in the irascible appetite to wit hope and despaire feare and audacity and anger but these are the motions of the sensitive appetite not of the spirits and bloud as is said Birds are more musicall then other creatures because they are Pag. 318. c. 36. of a hotter complexion If this were true then Ostriches Eagles and Hawkes should be more musicall then Larks and Nightingales for they are farre hotter And birds are hotter in the dog-dayes then in the spring and yet in the dog-dayes they are mute and vocall in the spring neither do they sing as you say because they require more aire to coole them for their singing being a strong motion as some birds by too much and too eagerly singing have killed themselves should rather heat then coole them it is not therefore heat but emulation which is stirred up in them by some sharp and sympathising sound or else the delight and pleasure which they take in the weather or aire in which they are most conversant and by it the spirits are cheered The agreement and disagreement of the creatures you Sect. 61. Pag. 332. ca. 38. will not have to be caused by instincts antipathies and sympathies but by downe-right materiall qualities This is petere principium for if I ask you What it is that makes these materiall qualities affect or disaffect one another you must be forced to flye to secret instincts and occult principles Are they materiall and manifest qualities that in the Torpedo stupefie the fishers hand and in the Load-stone draw the iron whereas other stones and fishes have the same manifest qualities that the Loadstone and Torpedo have Why do not other stones and fishes produce the same effects If by these materiall qualities you understand your Atomes you must be forced to flye to occult qualities for what cause can you give of the emanation of these Atomes from the Loadstone to the iron more then to any other thing but the sympathie it or they have with the iron Would you have me tell you the causes of sympathies and antipathies I will tell you when you can tell me the cause of the contrarieties that are betweene manifest qualities Tell me why heat is contrary to cold 'T is modesty and ingenuity to confesse our ignorance in those secrets which God hath purposely concealed from us to teach us humility for the pride of our first Parents in affecting the forbidden fruit of knowledge and that we should account all knowledge here but ignorance in respect of the excellent knowledge of Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdome and knowledge This we know there are divers contrary and also sympathising principles in nature which are the causes not only of occult but likewise of manifest qualities but to demand the reason of these is to search into those secrets of God the knowledge of which is reserved for us in a happier life then this we now enjoy And to flye upon every occasion to Democritus his Atomes is a poore asylum Why cannot qualities produce the same effects which your Atomes do Do not you see how the sound of Musick or the words of an eloquent Orator which are but qualities worke forcibly upon the affections You say the impression which the mothers imagination Sect 62. Pag. 330. c. 38. makes upon the child is by meanes of the spirits conveyed from the head unto the seed If you will assigne us the prime cause you must ascend higher to wit to the soule it self which is both the mover the forme and finall cause of the body which soule sendeth not only the spirits from the head of the parent but from all parts of the body as it doth the seed for therefore the seed containes potentially all the parts of the body that shall be because it is derived from all parts of the parents body actually in being and as the soule conveyes the spirits unto the seed so doth it likewise the formative power by which the impression is made not in the seed which is not capable of such impressions whilst it is seed but afterwards in the Embrio which formative power doth not all its worke at one time but successively first transforming the seed then distinguishing and articulating the parts and members and then making the impression on the childe being now capable to receive it In the conclusion of your first Treatise You call qualities Sect. 63. Pag 342. Conclus unknowne entities and you will have us prove if in nature there be such If qualities be unknowne then tell me what it is we know for substances we know not but as they are cloathed with their accidents or qualities Take away heat colour light levity and other qualities from the fire in your kitchen and how shall you know there is fire there and what will your Cooke say if you bid him dresse your supper with fire wanting these qualities We have no knowledge but by the senses to which neither the forme nor the matter of things are obvious but by their qualities therefore if substances be known to us by their qualities much more known must the qualities be according to the old rule Propter quod unumquodque est tale c. 2. To bid us prove qualities is to bid us prove that fire is hot and water cold or to prove that you are a learned Gentleman a good Philosopher a wise States-man and I pray you are not learning wisedome goodnesse qualities from whence proceed all alterations in the world do they not from qualities the substance is still the same When water which before was cold is now hot hath lost neither its matter nor forme it is the same water still onely altered in its quality Are not you sometimes angry sometimes pleased sometimes fearefull sometimes bold sometimes sick sometimes healthie you are not still glad but sometimes sad what is it in you that is thus altered not your
body nor your soule which are still the same subjects of all these passions the alterations then are in the passions or qualities themselves I beleeve these entities are not unknowne to you as you are a man Homo es humani à te nihil alienum puto Lastly if qualities must be proved then I must prove that there is motion action and passion in the world but you 'l say these need no proofe so say I and consequently neither need we prove that there are qualities for if there were not heat in the fire there could be no calefaction in the water The perfection of substances consisteth in their operations but take away qualities you take away all operation and by consequence the perfection of substance nay you must deny all generation and corruption in nature if you deny qualities for by their service the matter is prepared to receive the form or lose it and they are inseparable hand-maids waiting on the formes as their mistresses and ready to performe their commands The body is a meere passive thing What think you of Sect 64. Pag. 342. Conclus the celestiall bodies are they meerly passive if they be what is it that works upon this inferiour globe Are the Sun and Moone meere passive bodies by which all things here have light life motion and vegetation But perhaps you meane not celestiall bodies Then come lower Are not the animall and vitall spirits bodies and yet they are active not meerely passive and if they were not active they could not unite the soule with the body as they do but unire est agere nay what say you to your little Pages the Atomes they are bodies you confesse and yet not meerly passive for in this Treatise of yours they have done you Knights-service Neither am I of your opinon when you say that rare and dense is the Pag. 342. primary and adequat division of bodies For there is in bodies a division more prime then of dense and rare to wit of hot and cold for rarity is but the effect of heat and density of cold now the effect is not the prime but posterior to its cause Though we have not sworne to defend Aristotle in all Sect. 65. Conclus his Dictats yet till we know better we will adhere to his If you can informe us of principles more consonant to truth wee will follow you and leave him for neither Plato nor Aristotle but Truth is it we fight for But indeed wee doe not find your Philosophy answerable to your paines or our expectations I will not dispraise your endeavours nor will I promise to follow them I honour your worth I admire your paines but I dislike your tenets Your good parts deserve my love but your principles convince not my judgement therefore afford me the same libertie in dissenting from you which you assume to your selfe in deviating from Aristotle whom notwithstanding you thinke you have exactly followed in your opinion of Atomes But if my judgement faile me not in this you are mistaken for though hee denies not minima naturalia or atomes in bodies which are parts of the whole yet hee never affirmed that all actions passions motions mutations are performed by them much lesse was he of your opinion that light heat cold and other qualities were atomes or corporieties but through all his workes when hee hath occasion to speak of them he makes them distinct entities and placeth them in distinct predicaments Therefore father not these your Atomes upon Aristotle but set the right saddle on the right horse and let Democritus enjoy his owne conceipts to whom by right these atomes belong and not to Aristotle Though Metaphysicall principles be of a higher straine Sect. 66. Pag. 344. conclus then Physicall yet we must not set them apart and make no use of them in the compositions resolutions and motions of things as you would have us for both the subject of Physick is subordinate to Metaphysick and the principles of that demonstrable by the principles of this How can you know exactly a naturall bodie and its affections and principles if you know not what is entity essence existence act possibility c The thing defined cannot be knowne but by the definition nor this without the genus and difference If you know not what is animal you know not what is man How shall wee know without Metaphysick what your active atomes are whether they be bodies or spirits corruptible or incorruptible substances or accidents perfect or imperfect c By the touch-stone of Metaphysick we must try the goodnesse of your new coined opinions but you wrong the learned Pag. 344. Aristotelians when you say that they imagine positive entities to the negatives of things as to the names of points lines instants for they never called names and negatives positive entities nor are the names of points lines instants negatives with them and though they did imagine such to be positive entities yet they doe not hold them to be so indeed for you may imagine or conceive darknesse or blindnesse under the notion of positive entities though you know them to be privations And indeed wee cannot imagine privations and negations without some reflexion on their habits and affirmations because entities are only the objects of the intellect You shall do well to name the Aristotelians who are guilty of this your accusation You would make Aristotle a weak Logician if hee Sect. 67. Pag. 345 should meane by qualities nothing else but a disposition of parts as you say But he is of another mind for qualities are with him in one predicament the disposition of parts in another to wit in the Category of Site therefore your definitions are lame for want of Logick and Metaphysick for you define beauty a composition of parts and colours in due proportion whereas beauty is a qualitie composition an action and proportion in the predicament of relation So when you define health a due temper of the humours health is not the temper of humours but is the effect of this temper For as sicknesse is an affection hurting and hindering our naturall vitall and animall actions so health is an affection preserving and maintaining these actions in safetie but affections are qualities Neither is agility a due proportion of spirits and strength of sinewes as you define it for proportion is a relation but agilitie a qualitie Besides there is in Elephants a due proportion of spirits and more strength of sinews then in a Mouse or Weasle and yet no waies that agilitie And as bad is your definition of Science which you say is nothing else but ordered phantasmes whereas I have ordered phantasmes of contingencies corruptible and individuall things and yet of these there is no science Though I have ordered phantasmes of the effect yet for want of the knowledge of the cause I have not the science of it for scire est per causas cognoscere And if you take phantasmes
for the objects of knowledge as they are in the phantasie sure science cannot be phantasmes no more then the eye can be the colour which it sees Knowledge or Science and the thing knowne are relatives but these are opposites therefore not the same Lastly science is a habit phantasmes are patible qualities if you speak of the objects in the phantasie but these are different species of qualitie You conclude your first part pleasantly making your Sect 68. Pag. 345. Conclus selfe merry in these sad times but with your owne shadow and conceipts playing with these as a Cat doth with her owne taile You make the Aristotelians speak absurdities of your owne invention and of which they never dreamed and then you laugh at them comparing them to a boy that by adding Bus turned all English words into Latine Thus Turnus-like in the Poet you fight not against Aenaeas but his Image or rather your owne imaginations and you play upon these Sampsons who can easily pull down with the strength of their arguments this temple of your large discourse which you have been so many yeares in building If you were not a Gentleman whom for your good parts I honour I could say that the boy was not so much to blame for Bus as you are for being too busie in jeering at such eminent men and at those Maximes which have been so unanimously received by all Universities and for so many hundred yeares constantly maintained but your worth and my modestie enjoyne mee silence and restraine my pen from recrimination But let us see what it is that you so play upon them Sect. 69. for Because when you aske how a wall is white they answer There is an entity whose essence is whitenesse in the wall If you aske againe how whitenesse sticks to the wall they reply By meanes of the entity called union If againe you aske how one white is like another they answer 'T is done by another entity whose nature is likenesse Thus you make them very simple and ridiculous and indeed no wiser then the boy with his Bus or rather Bussards then Philosophers These men whom you mock say that praedicare sequitur esse the wall is called white because it is white and it is white in concreto because the Painter would have it so by introducing whitenesse the abstract into it But I will tell you why whitenesse is in the wall other accidents in their subjects because they cannot subsist without them and they cannot subsist without them because their essence is to inhere If you aske a reason of this their essence I must leave you and send you to the Author of nature If you dislike the terme of entitie to be given to whitenesse and union and likenesse then they must be non-entities for the one or the other they must needs be seeing there is no medium between entity and non-entity But Philosophers are not so childish as you make them when you will have them say that whitenesse sticks to the wall by meanes of union this is to tautologise not to satisfie they say not then that union unites whitenesse to the wall but that accidents are united to their subjects as heat to the fire because without them the substance whose ultimate perfection consists in operation cannot work nor the accidents whose essence is inherence without their subjects cannot subsist So wee say that in mixture the substances are united not by meanes of union but of humiditie which is the glue and cement in naturall compositions as drinesse dissolves the union Againe one whitenesse is not like another because of likenesse that 's childish but because nature aimes at unitie and in similitude there is a kind of unitie The reason why shee aimes at unitie is because there is most entity where is most unity multiplicity enclines to non-entity from which nature flies as farre as shee can and because she aimes at perfection which consisteth in unitie therefore she aimes at unitie And because where there is division there are parts now parts being of the whole which is the same either generically or specifically with the parts they resemble the whole and each other in some sort Or if you aske mee the reason why two eggs are like each other I answer Because they have the same qualitie So then the identity of the qualitie is the cause or ground of similitude and so saith Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are like that have the same 5. Metaph. cap. 15. qualitie yet not qualities only but other entities also are the ground of similitude The thing generated and the generator have the same similitude because they have the same essentiall forme All things that are united in a specificall forme have a specificall similitude and they have a genericall similitude that have the same genus and so equivocall effects are like their causes So there is the similitude of actions passions quantities relations site c. And as the forme whether essentiall or accidentall is the ground of that similitude which is called of participation so entitie it selfe is the ground of that which is called the similitude of proportion Thus man is like unto God because hee is an entitie as God is but by participation therefore like to him onely by analogie and proportion And because the entities of God and of man are not of the same order therefore God is not like man no more then you are like your picture though perhaps your picture may be like you Lastly you will not admit qualities except we can shew you out of Aristotle a medium between naturall and logicall entities Then belike you suppose that wee make qualities neither naturall nor logicall entities but some middle between both but if you were versed in Philosophy you will find that Aristotelians make qualities naturall or reall entities and therefore place them directly in the predicament which is the receptacle of reall entities onely You would take it ill if any should tell you that the habits of wisedome learning c. the naturall faculties of seeing hearing c. which are in you as likewise your passions and patible qualities with your forme and figure were not naturall and reall entities But this shall suffice briefly to have pointed at some of your deviations which I have done hastily not having time to make a full survay of your Treatise Let us now pass to your second Discourse and see whether your in-sight in the nature of the Soule be as good as that which you have made shew of in your Treatise of the nature of Bodies ANIMADVERSIONS upon Sir Kenelme Digbie's Treatise of the nature of the SOULE IN your Preface you traduce Philosophers Sect. 1. Pag. 352. for turning all bodies into spirits because they make heat and cold to be of it selfe indivisible a thing by it selfe This is a great mistake for neither do they make heat and cold in themselves indivisible but divisible rather to wit
in its owne kind so that there is no imperfect bodie in the world but how one soule is more imperfect then another you must tell us if you will have us be your disciples The essence of every thing is indivisible but the soule is the essence of the living creature and the essence of the thing is the perfection of it A negative imperfection there is in the creature compared to the Creator so in mens soules compared to Angels because they have not these perfections nor are they capable of them in that estate they are now in except their species be altered and yet the soules are perfect in their owne kind for perfectum est cui nihil deest Thus a Diamond is a perfect stone though it hath not the perfections of man But a privative imperfection is not in any soule because there is nothing wanting that ought to be in the soule I speak here of naturall faculties not of supernaturall grace if there be some failing or defect in the organs by which the soule worketh that imperfection to no more to be imputed to the soule then want of skill to an expert Musician because his Lute is out of tune Secondly when you call the soule a knowledge an art a rule you make the soule an accident or a collection of accidents and so you are more injurious to the soule then Hippocrates and Galen who beleeved it to be nothing else but a celestiall heat Thirdly what you meane by an imperfect soule which you say is the participation of an Idea I know not Fourthly neither can I tell how some part of our thoughts are corporeall and some spirituall seeing they are actions and accidents of the soule Fifthly if there be no accidents in the soule then there be no habits nor actions nor intelligible species in her for these are meere accidents but such are in every soule or else you must deny that there is either knowledge or wisdome goodnesse or evill in the soule 'T is true there are not materiall accidents in her because she is free from materiality yet in that she is not a pure act as God is there is in her a potentiality whence arise these spirituall and immateriall accidents which be in her To be in a place is nothing else but to be in a circumstant Sect. 13. Pag. 424. c. 10. body It is absurd to say it is therefore it is somewhere it is an eminent property of a separated soule to be no where and yet she is every where Place is not a bodie for then two bodies must be in one place which nature abhors Neither is place any part of a bodie not the matter because the matter doth not containe as the place doth but is contained nor is it the forme for the bodie may be separated from the place containing without any hurt to the bodie contained so cannot a bodie be separated from its forme without its destruction And if place were either matter or forme there would be no motion to a place for bodies move to their place because they are not in it they move to enjoy that they want but bodies having and enjoying already their matter and form cannot move to have or enjoy them therefore place is not a bodie but the superficies of an ambient bodie or rather the concavity of that superficies Secondly it is no absurditie from the existence of a thing to prove the ubiety of it for whatsoever is must necessarily be somewhere except God whose centre is every-where his circumference no-where And though spirits are not in a place by way of circumscription as bodies are whose extremities fill the vacuity of the containing superficies yet they are in their ubi by way of definition or designation that is whilst they are here they are not there whilst the Angel Gabriel is with the Virgin in her chamber hee is not the same time in heaven and whilst our soules are here present in their bodies they are absent from the Lord saith the Apostle And though Angels and our soules are in bodies as in their ubi yet they are not there as in a place for neither is there any dilatation nor condensation of the bodies upon their entering in no more then there is of the aire in your chamber upon the shining of the Sun beams in it Or if they be in a place they are not there by any quantitative but by a virtuall contact Thirdly you make it the eminent property of a soule to be no-where and yet every-where But if the soule be no-where it is nothing and if every-where it is God whose property it is indeed to be every-where by his essence power and providence but how the soule can be every-where and yet no-where is one of your riddles I think you have read that passage in Seneca Nusquam est qui ubique est But indeed neither are the soules nowhere nor are they every-where not no-where for ubietie is so necessary to created entities that like Hippoer ates twins they live and die together Tolle spatia corporibus nusquam erunt qui a nusquam erant omnino non erant What S. Austin speaks there of bodies must be also understood Epist. 57. of spirits for no reason can be given why spirits should have more priviledge to exist without their Ubi then bodies have to exist without their place And how can wee imagine that a spirit can work or produce any effect except the cause and the effect the work and the worker have a locall co-existence Therefore Plato In Timaeâ— part 3. said well that what is not contained within the compasse of heaven and earth cannot be at all And so saith Aristotle that which is no-where is not If Sphinx be 4. Phys. t. 1. no-where there is no such creature And to say that soules are every-where is to oppose both Divinity and Philosophy for the one teacheth us that ubiquity is Gods property the other that Intelligences which are of a more eminent essence or nature then our soules are not in every part of their orbe but in that onely which moveth most swiftly As their essence is finite so is their existence and so is their Ubi As they cannot work every-where so they cannot be every-where The soules departed then are in their Ubi which excludes ubiquitie You say you have explicated how time is the motion of Sect. 14. Pag. 424. c. 10. the heavens You had need explicate this well for how the measure can be the same thing with that which it measureth I know not Now time is the measure of motion but not of celestiall motion for time being the affection of that motion must needs be after it but a measure is naturally before the thing measured and the cause is the measure rather of the effect then the effect can be of the cause saith Scaliger Therefore as the Exerc. 352. 2. first bodie is the measure of other bodies so is the
and goe with the bodie Is not the understanding of a separated soule as capable to lodge and entertaine such guests as before Or are these little bodies made of dust that to dust they must returne Seventhly have all separated soules the same amplitude of knowledge then the soule of Iudas in hell hath as much knowledge as Abraham's soule in heaven but I see no reason for it Eighthly if life be a motion it is an imperfect thing consisting not in esse but in fieri and so the life of man both here and hereafter cannot be perfect no not in heaven And in a separated soule tell mee which is the mover the motion and the mobile Ninthly tell us what this Shee is that becomes an absolute spirit Is it the soule or is it life If the soule then she was before she was a spirit If life then motion may become a spirit I see it is not without cause you complaine of engulfing your selfe into the sea of contradiction Help your selfe out againe if you can But you plunge your selfe over head and eares when Sect. 17. Pag. 430. c. 10. you tell us That separated soules doe enjoy their knowledge without the help of externall objects phantasmes instruments or any other helps having all things requisite in themselves This is to deifie soules and to elevate them above the pitch of created entities For the Angels themselves have not such an eminent knowledge in that they stand in need of helps both externall to wit that supreme light and cleere looking-glasse of the Trinity in which they see all things as also of the innate species or idea both of universalities and of singularities without which they can have no knowledge therefore à fortiori if Angels stand in need of such helps much more must departed soules Secondly memorie remaines in departed soules but memory or recordation is by help of the species laid up in the mind to the understanding of which when the mind applies it selfe this is called recordation Thirdly though the intelligible species depend from the senses and phantasie in their fieri or being yet they have no dependence from them in their conservation For the sensible species in sleepe serve the phantasie though the common sense and all the outward are bound up and as it were dead Fourthly in Angels and departed soules there are divers habits both of love and knowledge and vertue yea of tongues also in respect of entitie though there be no use nor exercise but after a spirituall way of speaking now habits are the causes of action and in vaine should they be left in the soule if she by them did not worke and actually understand neither can the effect to wit actuall understanding subsist without its cause which is the habit for this is such an effect as depends in its conservation from the cause Fiftly understanding and the manner of understanding accompany the nature of the soule but the nature of the soule is the same here and hereafter therefore the manner of understanding must be the same to wit by the species Sixtly Whereas the soules departed do specifically differ from the Angels they must have a different manner of understanding to wit by discourse but this way needs help not of the phantasme or senses being all commerce with the body is taken away but of the species Hence then it is apparent that departed soules stand in need of helps and of objects of their understanding and that they have not all things requisite in themselves which objects are externall in respect of their essence though the species be inherent or adherent to the soules much more externall are these objects which they see in God although God himselfe is not intelligible by any species by reason of his immensity neither doth the soule understand it selfe by any species nor doth she know except by revelation what is done or doing here on earth which she must needs know if she had all things requisite for knowledge in her selfe but indeed Abraham is ignorant of us and Israel knows us not Nesciunt mortui quid hic agatur De cura pro mortuis nisi dum hic agitur saith S. Austin Our looking upon the phantasmes in our braine is not our Sect. 18. Pag. 430. c. 10. soules action upon them but it is our letting them beat at our common sense that is our letting them work upon our soule The phantasie being a corporeall sense cannot work upon the soul which is a spirit it is not then the phantasie that works upon the soule but the agent intellect refines purifies and makes more spirituall those phantasmes or species which are represented by the phantasie and so impresseth them in the passive intellect and this is called understanding The agent intellect is the force or quality of the soule mediating betweene the phantasie and passive intellect framing the intelligible species which the passive intellect receiveth and so by the one power the soule acteth and by the other suffereth but not at all by the phantasie whose hand cannot reach so high as to knock at the gates of the soule It must then be a spirituall power that must worke upon a spirit the passive intellect is rasa tabula like cleane paper having no innate species or images of objects in it selfe but what it receiveth from the active intellect so that the phantasie helps the understanding onely dispositivè not efficienter being rather the materiall then efficient cause of understanding furnishing those species which the active intellect refineth and impresseth in the passive If you should ask whether our understanding is an action or a passion I answer that it consists in both for not only doth it receive the intelligible species but also operats upon them And this is that action of the soule which you deny and what do you talke of letting our phantasmes beat at our common sense The phantasmes will beat whether you will or no. If you will not beleeve me beleeve your owne dreames in sleep I suppose your phantasmes then beat when you could be content they would spare their labour and be quieter But so long as the spirits do make their intercourse betweene the phantasie and the common sense there will be an agitation and beating of the phantasmes But it seemes you take the soule and common sense for the same thing when you say that to let the phantasmes beat upon the common sense is to let them work upon the soule They may beat upon the one and not work upon the other for the soul suffers not but by it selfe and her suffering is perfective not destructive as that of the matter is But she doth not worke upon or deduce her selfe out of possibility into act considered as the same thing but in respect of her divers faculties whereof the one is the efficient the other the patient and resembles the matter and if it were not so we should never actually understand for what should excite the
passive intellect to receive the species being purified and cleered from materiality and those accidents which neither conduce to the essence nor to the intellection if there were not an active power altogether impatible immateriall immortall using neither corporeall organs nor being mixed with corporeall senses which we call the active intellect and which irradiats illuminats intelligible things making them actually intelligible which before were potentially only as the light makes these colours actually aspectable which in the dark were invisible Sect. 19. Pag. 432. c. 10. In the state of a soule exempted from the body there is neither action nor passion which being so the soule cannot die for all corruption comes from the action of another thing This is but a weake argument to prove the soules immortality for actions and passions do neither hinder nor further it In departed soules there remaine loco-motive actions for they move from the body to their ubi where they remaine till the resurrection and then they shall move again to their bodies so the actions of understanding and will remaine in them Shall any then conclude that the soules are mortall because they are the subjects of action and of passion but their passion as I said is perfective The same actions are in Angels both in moving and removing Were the Angels that carried Lazarus his soule into Abrahams bosome mortall or that Angell that carried Habakkuk because of this action Are there not also in Angels the actions of intellect and will Nay action and passion do rather prove immortality and the cessation of these corruption For whilst the body is the soules patient it lives but when it ceaseth from suffering and the soule from acting in it and by it followes immediatly its corruption What think you of the first matter which is the first subject of passion and yet it is eternall à parte post And if you take away all action and passion from departed soules you must abridge them of the joyes they have in the fruition of Gods presence and of their duty in praising him so you rob God of his honour and them of their happinesse Againe we have shewed that habits remaine in departed soules but to what end if there be no action for Habitus est propter actionem and indeed actions are more excellent then habits Againe if there be neither action nor passion in the departed soules they are in the state of death rather then life for life consisteth in action though it selfe be no action and the soule is an act therefore cannot be without action but death is a cessation and rest from all action If you had said that some actions cease in the soule after her departure as generation nutrition and such as are the actions of the whole compound you had said somewhat but to exempt her from all action is to make her a dead body not a living soule and though corruption as you say is the effect of action or indeed rather of passion yet it will not follow that all action is the cause of corruption for there are actions of creation generation conservation c. Lastly you contradict your selfe for here you deny actions in separated souls but in the next Chapter cap. 11. p. 439. you say that the body hinders the soules operations and that her actions will be far greater and more efficacious when she shall be free from the burthen of her body To put forgetfulnesse in a pure spirit so palpable an effect Sect. 20. Pag. 433. c. 11. of corporiety and so great a corruption is an unsufferable errour I do not think oblivion to be an effect of corporietie for as the soul is the subject of memory which is one of her faculties of recordation which is the work of the intellect viewing over the species of reminiscence which is a disquisition or unfolding of the same species if they be clouded or confused so likewise is the same soule the subject of oblivion as the same eye is of sight and blindnesse the same aire of light and darknesse there being the same subject of habit and privation Now there are habits in the soule departed as I have said some actually there as the habit of knowledge some potentially as in their roote and originall such are the sensitive habits where the habit is actually there is the privation potentially but where the habit is potentially there the privation is actually as the habits of seeing hearing c. in the separated soule make it cleere And what we have said of the habits we may say of memory which is a power and faculty in the soule by which she retaines the species why then may there not be in her a deletion losse or abolition of such species the memory whereof will make her rather miserable then happy therefore the blessed soules in heaven remember not the vanities nor infirmities of their former life if they did they could not be truly happy and joyfull and so the oblivion of such things is not in them a corruption as you say but a perfection rather Therefore Albertus Magnus before his death prayed that he might obtaine the oblivion of all former vaine knowledge which might hinder his happinesse in the knowledge of Christ. Sect. 21. Your Rhetoricall descriptions which are both uselesse in and destructive of Philosophy make the soule sometimes equall with God sometimes no better then a corruptible body for to a separated soule you give those attributes proper to God as freedome of essence and subsisting in it selfe a comprehension of place and time that is of Pag. 439 440 441. c. 11. all permanent and successive quantity and the concurrence of infinite knowledge to every action of hers So you give to the soule independency ubiquity infinity which three are Gods due If you lay the fault of this upon your Rhetoricall expressions I must answer you that Rhetorick in such a subject may be well spared use your Rhetorick when you will work upon the affections but not when you will informe the understanding for in this regard you do but cloud not cleere the intellect Rhetorick is like fire and water a good servant but a bad master therefore ought not to be used but with great discretion especially in abstruse questions For this cause Logick was invented to curb and restraine the exorbitancy of Rhetorick If you will dispute like a Philosopher you must lay aside Rhetorick and use Philosophicall termes otherwise you 'l do as the fish Sepia to wit you 'l so thicken the waters of your discourse with that liquor that cometh out of your mouth that you will make your selfe invisible and delude the Reader which is the fashion of those who dare not confide in the strength of their arguments whereas naked truth cares not for such dressings nor seeks she after such corners And indeed you are too much in extremes for you do not more extol a separated then you do abase an incorporated
indeed extracts the grosse soules of the beasts out of their grosse bodies which as they came of them so they dye with them but the reasonable soule being 1. the act of the bodie and principle of all vitall operations 2. being shee is a spirit not capable of physicall matter and quantitie for she is all in all and all in every part of the bodie 3. being shee is not onely the first act of the organicall bodie but also the very agent or efficient of the bodies organisation therefore shee cannot be materiall nor hammered out of the matter 4. If shee were corporeall either in her being or in her extraction the world could not be perfect or complete for as it is made up of creatures some meerly spirituall some meerly corporeall so for the complement and perfection of it there should be some creatures partly spirituall partly corporeall and these are onely men 5. The effect cannot exceed the cause in perfection and eminencie but the soule farre exceeds the bodie 6. Man had not been fit to rule over the corporeall creatures if hee had not a spirituall soule which onely is capable of reason and dominion and not the bodily substance 7. One species cannot beget another but the soule is a species of spirits far different from bodily species 8. There can be no connexion between the superiour and inferiour creatures but by certaine media by which nature passeth from one extreme to another therefore it was fit that the spirituall and corporeall creatures which are the extremes should be united in that creature which is partly spirituall partly corporeall and this is onely man 9. If the soule be not meerly spirituall she cannot enjoy the vision of nor friendship and familiarity with God who is a spirit nor can she be capable of any spirituall gifts The Spirit of God cannot dwell but in a spirit nor can that which is meerly corporeall be like unto God or see him as he is 10. If the soules be materiall they must be mortall for we have no other reason to induce us to beleeve the soules of beasts to be mortall but because they are materiall and educed out of the possibility of the matter 11. As Christ proved the truth of his body by feeding upon bodily substances so we prove the spirituality of the soule by her food and delights which are not corporeall but spirituall things for knowledge wisdome truth vertue honesty which are incorporeall things are the soules chiefe delights next to God in whom only she rests and with whom onely she is satisfied Fecisti August nos Domine à te inquietum est cor nostrum nisi requiescat in te 12. If the soule be of the parents seed or conveyed with it the seed must needs be man and so a reasonable creature and consequently capable as being man of eternall joy or paine 13. The operations of the soule are spirituall such as be the actions of understanding and will The principall then of these operations which is the soule cannot be corporeall for no operation can in dignity of entity exceed the substance whence it ariseth or the power and facultie of the soule by which she worketh and which differs from the soule as the property doth from the subject for as the potentia or facultie receiveth its specification from the act so the act hath all its dignity from the faculty now if the faculty be spirituall the soule which is its subject cannot be corporeall for no indivisible quality can be inherent in a divisible subject And as the faculty receives its specification from the act so doth the act from the object and therefore the act by which we understand spirits must be spirituall And though in the act of conception we may fancie spirits to be like bodies yet in the act of judgement we know them to be immateriall substances and of a far other nature or essence then bodies and this act is elevated above the senses and abstracts the spirituall object from all sensible conditions 14. The soule knows all bodies celestiall terrestriall simple mixed c. which she doth by receiving these intelligible objects but she could not receive them being corporeall if she were not free from corporiety her selfe for Intus existens prohibet contrarium and she doth not receive them as the senses doe to wit superficially onely but she pierceth into their inmost natures searcheth out their causes properties and effects and yet higher she riseth above the senses by substracting bodies from individuation and all sensible accidents which the senses cannot do and so she considereth them in their universalities which is a kind of spirituality but this she could not do if she were not spirituall her selfe 15. As the dissolution or corruption of the body dissolveth not the soule neither doth the constitution or generation of the body give being to the soul for if she hath her being from the body she must decay with the body 16. Liberty of will proves also the immateriality of the soule for all materiat agents worke either by necessity as the insensitive or are led by instinct as the animat except man who is master of his owne actions and can promote or stay suspend and incline them which way he likes best and in this he comes neere to the Angelicall nature for onely Men and Angels have this prerogative of free-will inferiour creatures want it because of their materiality which determinats them to one kind of operation and so to a necessary working that way as for the fire to heat for a stone to fall downward But such is the independency and spirituality of mans soule that no creature neither Heavens Stars nor Angels have any power to command or force mans will whereas all materiall entities are subject to mutation by the influence and working of the superiour agents to wit the Angels and the Heavens 17. If the intellect or the soule were corporeall she should be hurt and weakned by a vehement object as the senses are to wit the eye with too much light the eare with too violent sounds but no intelligible object be it never so strong and powerfull hurts the intellect at all but perfects it rather 18. If the soule were corporeall it would grow weak and feeble and by degrees decay as the body doth by old age but we see the contrary for the soule even when the body is weakest is most active and by old age rather perfected then weakned 19. If the soule were corporeall entity in its latitude could not be the adequat object of the intellect for the materiall and organicall faculties are determinated by the matter to some particular objects onely mans understanding as likewise that of the Angels have entity as entity for their object that is both uncreated and created spirituall and corporeall substantiall and accidentall entities which could not be if the intellect were not spirituall 20. That this hath been the doctrine of the Church of