Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	effect_n	necessary_a	voluntary_a	1,389	5	11.0339	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26976	Of the immortality of mans soul, and the nature of it and other spirits. Two discourses, one in a letter to an unknown doubter, the other in a reply to Dr. Henry Moore's Animadversions on a private letter to him, which he published in his second edition of Mr. Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus triumphatus, or, History of apparitions by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1682 (1682)	Wing B1331; Wing B1333; ESTC R5878	76,803	192

If a man believe all the Articles of the Creed only because men tell him that they are true it is but a human Faith as resting only on mans Authority but the true Members of the Church believe all the same things because God revealeth and attesteth them and this is a Divine Faith And so must you If you love light more than darkness and deceit distinguish 1. Believing men for Authority 2. Believing men for their Honesty 3. Believing men for the natural impossibility of their deceiving And the foundation of this difference is here Mans Soul hath two sorts of acts Necessary and Contingent or mutably free To love our selves to be unwilling to be miserable and willing to be happy to love God as good if known c. are acts of the Soul as necessary as for fire to burn combustible contiguous matter or for a Bruit to eat so that all the Testimonies which is produced by these necessary acts by knowing men hath a Physical certainty the contrary being impossible And this is infallible historical knowledg of matter of fact Thus we know there is such a City as Rome Paris Venice c. and that there was such a man as K. James Ed. 6. Hen. 8. William the Conqueror c. And that the Statutes now ascribed to Ed. 3. and other Kings and their Parliaments are genuine For Judges judge by them Lawyers plead them Kings own them all men hold their Estates and Lives by them Contrary mens Interest by Lawyers are daily pleaded by them against each other and if any one would deny forge or corrupt a Statute Interest would engage the rest against him to detect his fraud 1. The certain effect of natural necessary Causes hath natural necessary evidence of Truth But when all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg a thing true this is the effect of nataral necessary Causes Ergo it hath natural necessary evidence of Truth 2. It is impossible there should be an Effect without a sufficient Cause But that a thing should be false which all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg to be true would be an Effect without a Cause for there is no Cause in nature to effect it It is impossible in nature that all men in England should agree to say There was a King James K. Edward Q. Mary or that these Statutes were made by them if it were false This is infallible Historical Testimony It were not so strong if it were only by one Party and not by Enemies also or men of contrary Minds and Interests And thus we know the History of the Gospel and this Tradition is naturally infallible II. But all the Testimony which dependeth on humane Acts not necessary but free have but an uncertain moral humane Credibility For so all men are Lyars i.e. fallible and not fully to be trusted And I. Those Testimonies which depend on mens Honesty are no farther credible than we know the Honesty of the men which in some is great in some is 〈◊〉 in most is mixt and lubricous and doubtful Alas what abundance of false History is in the world Who can trust the Honesty of such men as multitudes of Popes Prelates and Priests have been Will they stick at a Lye that stick not at Blood or any wickedness Besides the ignorance which invalidates their Testimony II. And to pretend Authority to rule our Faith is the most unsatisfactory way of all For before you can believe that Jesus is the Christ and his Word true how many impossibilities have you to believe 1. You must believe that Christ hath a Church 2. And hath authorized them to determine what is to be believed before you believe that he is Christ 3. You must know who they be whom you must believe whether all or some or a major vote Whether out of all the world or a party 4. And how far their Authority extendeth Whether to judg whether there be a God or no God a Christ or no Christ a Heaven or none a Gospel or none or what 5. And how their determinations out of all the world may come with certainty to us and where to find them 6. And when Countreys and Councils contradict and condemn each other which is to be believed Many such impossibilities in the Roman way must be believed before a m●n can believe that Jesus is the Christ In a word you must not puzzle your head to know what a man is or whether he have an immortal soul but you must 1. believe the Church of Believers before you are a Believer in Christ 2. And you must believe that Christ was God and Man and came to save man before you believe that there is such a creature as man or what he is and whether he have a soul capable of salvation But I have oft elsewhere opened these Absurdities and Contradictions where you may see them confuted if you are willing § 36. Your question about the souls nature existence and Individuation may be resolved by a surer and easier way as followeth I. By your own certain experience 1. You perceive that you see feel understand will and execute 2. You may know as is oft said that therefore you have an active power to do these 3. You may thence know that it is a substance which hath that power Nothing can do nothing 4. You may perceive that it is not the terrene substance but an invisible substance actuating the body 5. You may know that there is no probability that so noble a substance should be annihilated 6. Or that a pure and simple substance should be dissolved by the separation of parts or if that were every part would be a spirit still 7. You have no cause to suspect that this substance should lose those powers or faculties which are its essential form and be turned into some other species or thing 8. And you have as little cause to suspect that an essential vital intellective power will not be active when active inclination is its Essence 9. You have no cause to suspect that it will want Objects to action in a World of such variety of Objects 10. And you have as little cause to suspect that it will be unactive for want of Organs when God hath made its Essence active and either can make new Organs or that which can act on matter can act without or on other matter He that can play on a Lute can do somewhat as good if that be broken 11. And experience might satisfie you that several men have several souls by the several and contrary Operations 12. And you have no reason to suspect that God will turn many from being many into one or that unity should be any of their loss All this Reason tells you beginning at your own experience as I have and elsewhere more fully opened § 37. II. And you have at hand sensible proof of the individuation of spirits by Witches Contracts and Apparitions of which the world has

Body which properties are as immediate to her as impenetrability and separability of parts to the matter and we are not to demand the cause of the one any more than of the other So here we have the true Form as sufficient notice And if voluntary Motion be proper to a Spirit I think meer Fire Solar or Aethereal is no Spirit But if all self-moving Power be proper to a Spirit Fire is a Spirit And from the Form will I denominate while you oft tell us that the Essence of Substance is unknown By Essence meaning somwhat else than that which I can fully prove to be the Form To conclude there are these different Opinions before us I. That the whole Entity or Conceptus realis of a Spirit is Virtus vitalis and is mera sorma or rather simplex actus Entitativus and that substantia is added not as a partial real Conceptus but as respective to notifie that this Virtus vitalis is no Accident but a thing that may subsist of itself Some hold this true only of God and some of all Spirits If this be true your notions of Penetrability and Indivisibility are most easily defended II. That Spirits have two inadequate real Conceptus and that Substantia is the fundamental as truly as materia is in meer Bodies and an incomprehensible purity of Substance or that it is Immaterial not having partes extra partes with the trine dimension is Substantiae dispositio yet that this hath degrees as the Forms have all Spirits not being of equal Purity And that Virtus vitalis is the partial Conceptus viz. Formalis And this I encline to as to created Spirits III. That the Conceptus formalis of Spirit is this Virtus vitalis vel motiva perceptiva appetitiva but that all Matter is essentially informed by that Vitality and so Matter and Vitality are the inadequate Conceptus of every Substance and that not by Composition but as of one simple thing And this is Dr. Glisson's and some others IV. That a Spirit is both a real Substance as the fundamental Conceptus and informed both by Immateriality Penetrability and Indiscerpibility and also by a vital and moving Power But that it existeth only in Bodies or Matter and so always makes up a Compound of two Substances saving that God is infinite beyond all Matter And that all such Spirits were at first made together indivisible Individuals both that of the least Creature and of the greatest but changed from Body to Body and so are parts of Animals This I suppose is your Opinion Our chief difference is that I profess to be ignorant of the Consistency and Incorporation which you talk of and must be so Though I am assured of the Substantiality and Form which satisfieth me for Christ knoweth all the rest for me FINIS OF THE IMMORTALITY OF Mans Soul And the Nature of it and other Spirits Two Discourses One in a Letter to an unknown Doubter The other in a Reply to Dr Henry Moore 's Animadversions on a private Letter to him which he published in his Second Edition of Mr Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus or History of Apparitions By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for B. Simons at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls 1682. The PREFACE § 1. THE Author of the Letter which I answer being wholly unknown to me and making me no return of his sense of my Answer I suppose it can be no wrong to him that I publish it I have formerly thought that it is safer to keep such Objections and false reasonings from mens notice than publickly to confute them But now in London they are so commonly known and published in open Discourse and Writing that whether silencing them be desirable or not it is become impossible And tho I have said so much more especially in two Books The Reasons of the Christian Religion and the Unreasonableness of Infidelity as may make this needless to them that read those yet most Infidels and Sadduces being so self conceited and fastidious as to disdain or cast by all that will cost them long reading and consideration it may be this short Letter may so far prevail against their sloth as to invite them to read more I would true Christianity were as common as the profession of it There would then be fewer that need such Discourses But alas how numerous are th●se Christians that are no Christians no more than a Carcass or a Picture is a man yea worse Christians who hate Christianity whose Godfathers and Godmothers not Parents but Neighbours did promise and vow three things in their Names 1. That they should renounce the Devil and all his Works the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World and all the sinful lusts of the flesh 2. That they should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith 3. That they should keep Gods holy Will and Commandments and walk in the same all the days of their lives Yea before they could speak the mouth of these Godfathers speaking for them did not only promise that they should believe but profess in the Infants name That even then they did stedfastly believe the Articles of the Christian Faith The Infant is said to make both the Promise and Profession by these Godfathers who also undertake to provide that they shall learn all things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his Souls health and shall be virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life Whether these Godfathers ever intend to perform this or the Parents use to expect it of them I need not tell you But how little most of the baptized perform of it is too notorious And what wonder is it if we have Christians that in Satans Image fight against Christ even PERJURED MALIGNANT PERSECUTING Christians haters of those that seriously practice the baptismal Vow when they are PERJURED and Perfidious Violaters of it themselves as to the prevalent bent of heart and life These Hypocrite nominal Ceremony Christians become the great hinderance of the cure of Infidelity in the world It is the SPIRIT by its supernatural Works which is the great Witness of Christ and the infallible proof of supernatural Revelation These witnessing works of the Spirit are these five 1. His Antecedent Prophecies 2. His inherent Divine impress on the Person Works and Gospel of Christ 3. His concomitant Testimony in Christs uncontrolled numerous Miracles Resurrection and Ascension 4. His subsequent Testimony in the numerous uncontrolled Miracles of the Apostles and supernatural gifts to the Christians of that Age. But tho the History of these be as infallibly delivered to us as any in the world 〈◊〉 the distance hindereth the belief of some who have not this history well opened to them 5. Therefore God hath continued to the end of the world a more excellent Testimony than miracles thought not so apt to work on sense even the special regenerating sanctifying work of the Spirit of Christ on the

be no Contradiction yet it will never be because he useth every thing according to its nature till he cometh to miracles Therefore their dissilution of parts is no more to be feared than their annihilation 3. But if you take Souls to be partible and unible then you must suppose every part to have still its own existence in the whole And do you think that this doth not more advance Souls than abase them Yea you seem to Deifie them while you make them all to return into God as drops into the Sea And if you feign God to be partible is it not more honour and joy to be a part of God who is joy it self than to be a created Soul If a thousand Candles were put out and their light turned into one Luminary as great as they all every part would have its share in the enlightning of the place about it Is it any loss to a single Soldier to become part of a victorious Army 4. But indeed this is too high a Glory for the Soul of man to desire or hope for It is enough to have a blessed union with Christ and the holy Society consistent with our Individuation Like will to like and yet be it self Rivers go to the Sea and not to the Earth Earth turns to Earth and not to the Sun or Fire And the holy and blessed go to the holy and blessed And I believe that their union will be nearer than we can now well conceive or than this selfish state of man desireth But as every drop in the Sea is the same Water it was so every Soul will be the same Soul 2. And as to the incapacity of misery which you talk of why should you think it more hereafter than here If you think all Souls now to be but one doth not an aking Tooth or a gouty Foot or a calculous Bladder suffer pain tho it be not the body that feeleth but the same sensitive Soul is pain'd in one part and pleas'd in another And if all Souls be now but God in divers Bodies or the Anima mundi try if you can comfort a man under the torment of the Stone or other Malady or on the Rack or in terror of Conscience by telling him That his Soul is a part of God Will this make a Captive bear his Captivity or a Malefactor his Death If not here why should you think that their misery hereafter will be ever the less or more tolerable for your conceit that they are parts of God They will be no more parts of him then than they were here But it 's like that they also will have an uniting inclination even to such as themselves or that God will separate them from all true unity and say Go you cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels c. § 33. No doubt it 's true that you say page 7 and 8. That matter is still the same and liable to all the changes which you mention But it 's an unchanged God who doth all this by Spirits as second Causes who are not of such a changeable dissoluble partible nature as Bodies are It is Spirits that do all that 's done in the world And I conjecture as well as you That universal Spirits are universal Causes I suppose That this Earth hath a vegitative form which maketh it as a matrix to receive the Seeds and the more active influx of the Sun But Earth and Sun are but general Causes Only God and the seminal Virtue cause the species as such The Sun causeth every Plant to grow but it causeth not the difference between the Rose and the Nettle and the Oak The wonderful unsearchable Virtue of the Seed causeth that And if you would know that Virtue you must know it by the effects You cannot tell by the Seed only of a Rose a Vine an Oak what is in it But when you see the Plants in ripeness you may see that the Seeds had a specifying Virtue by the influx of the general Cause to bring forth those Plants Flowers c. Neither can you know what is in the Egg but by the ripe Bird nor what the Soul of an Infant is but by Manhood and its Acts. § 34. You here pag. 7. divert from the point of the Immortality or Nature of the Soul to that of the Resurrection of the Body of which I will now say but this Christ rose and hath promised us a Resurrection and nothing is difficult to God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 oft signifieth our living another life after this The Body hath more parts than Earth and Water The Spirits as we call them which are the igneous parts lodged in the purest aereal in the blood c. are that body in and by which the Soul doth operate on the rest How much of these material Spirits the Soul may retain with it after Death we know not and if it have such a body it hath partly the same and God can make what Addition he please which shall not contradict identity Paul saith of Corn God giveth it a body as pleaseth him in some respect the same c. in some not the same that was sown We do not hold That all the flesh that ever a man had shall be raised as that mans If one man that was fat grow lean in his sickness we do not say that all the flesh that sickness wasted shall rise It shall rise a spiritual body God knoweth that which you and I know not § 35. You add how easie it would have been to you to believe as the Church believeth and not to have immerged your self in these difficulties Ans 1. The Church is nothing but all individual Christians and it is their Belief which makes them capable of being of the Church As we must be men in order of Nature before we are a Kingdom of men so we are Believers before we are a Church of Believers A Kingdom or Policy maketh us not men but is made of men and Church-society or Policy maketh us not Believers but is made up of Believers Therefore Belief is first and is not caused by that which followeth it And why doth the Church believe Is it because they believe And whom do they believe Is it themselves I doubt you have fallen into acquaintance with those whose Interest hath made it their Trade to puzzle and confound men about things as hard to themselves as others that they may bring them to trust the Church and then tell them that it 's they that are that Church as a necessary means to the quieting their minds And they tell them You are never able by reason to comprehend the mysteries of Faith the more you search the more you are confounded But if you believe as the Church believeth you shall speed as the Church speedeth But it 's one thing to believe the same thing which the Church believeth and another to believe it with the same faith and upon the same Authority