Government of Men does on several sorts of brute Beasts and the AEthereal Powers also have a Right and Exercise of Rule over the AErial Whence nothing can be committed in the World against the more indispensable Laws thereof but a most severe and inevitable punishment will follow every Nation City Family and Person being in some manner the Peculium and therefore in the tutelage of some invisible Power or other as I have above intimated 4. And such Transgressions as are against those Laws without whose observance the Creation could not subsist we may be assured are punished with Torture intolerable and infinitely above any Pleasure imaginable the evil Genii can take in doing of those of their own Order or us Mortals any mischief Whence it is manifest that we are as secure from their gross outrages such as the firing of our houses the stealing away our jewels or more necessary Utensils murdering our selves or children destroying our cattel corn and other things of the like sort as if they were not in rerum natura Unless they have some special permission to act or we our selves enable them by our rash and indiscreet tampering with them or suffer from the malice of some person that is in league with them For their greatest liberty of doing mischief is upon that account which yet is very much limited in that all these Actions must pass the consent of a visible person not hard to be discovered in these unlawful practices and easy to be punished by the Law of Men. 5. And the AErial Genii can with as much ease inflict punishment on one another as we Mortals can apprehend imprison and punish such as transgress against our Laws For though these Daemons be invisible to us yet they are not so to their own Tribe nor can the activity and subtilty of the Bad over-master the Good Commonwealths-men there that uphold the Laws better then they are amongst us Nor may the various Transfiguration of their shapes conceal their persons no more then the disguises that are used by fraudulent men For they are as able to discern what is fictitious from what is true and natural amongst themselves as we are amongst our selves And every AErial Spirit being part of some Political subdivision upon any outrage committed it will be an easy matter to hunt out the Malefactor No Daemon being able so to transfigure himself but upon command he will be forced to appear in his natural and usual form not daring to deny upon examination to what particular Subdivision he belongs Whence the easy discovery of their miscarriages and certainty of insupportable torment will secure the World from all the disorder that some scrupulous wits suspect would arise from this kinde of Creatures if they were in Being 6. To which we may adde also That what we have is useless to them and that it is very hard to conceive that there are many Rational Beings so degenerate as to take pleasure in ill when it is no good to themselves That Socrates his Aphorism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be in no small measure true in the other World as well as in this That all that these evil Spirits desire may be onely our lapse into as great a degree of Apostasy from God as themselves and to be full partakers with them of their false Liberty as debauched persons in this life love to make Proselytes and to have respect from their Nurslings in wickedness And several other Considerations there are that serve for the taking away this Panick fear of the incursations and molestations of these aerial Inhabitants and might further silence the suspicious Atheist which I willingly omit having said more then enough of this Subject already See Cap. 3. Sect. 7 8. 7. If any be so curious as to demand what kinde of Punishment this People of the Aire inflict upon their Malefactors I had rather referre them to the Fancies of Cornelius Agrippa De Occult. Philosoph Lib. 3. Cap. 41. then be laught at my self for venturing to descend to such particularities Amongst other things he names their Incarceration or confinement to most vile and squalid Habitations His own words are very significant Accedunt etiam vilissimorum ac teterrimorum locorum habitacula ubi AEtnaei ignes aquarum ingluvies fulgurum tonitruorum concussus terrarum voragines ubi Regio lucis inops nec radiorum Solis capax ignaráque splendoris syderum perpetuis tenebris noctis specie caligat Whence he would make us believe that the subterraneous caverns of the Earth are made use of for Dungeons for the wicked Daemons to be punished in as if the several Volcano's such as AEtna Vesuvius Hecla and many others especially in America were so many Prisons or houses of Correction for the unruly Genii That there is a tedious restraint upon them upon villanies committed and that intolerable is without all question they being endued with corporeal Sense and that more quick and passive then ours and therefore more subject to the highest degrees of torment So that not onely by incarcerating them keeping them in by a watch in the caverns of burning Mountains where the heat of those infernal Chambers and the steam of Brimstone cannot but excruciate them exceedingly but also by commanding them into sundry other Hollows of the ground noysome by several fumes and vapours they may torture them in several fashions and degrees fully proportionable to the greatest crime that is in their power to commit and farre above what the cruellest Tyranny has inflicted here either upon the guilty or innocent But how these Confinements and Torments are inflicted on them and by what Degrees and Relaxations is a thing neither easy to determine nor needful to understand Wherefore we will surcease from pursuing any further so unprofitable a Subject and come to the Third general Head we mentioned which is What the Moral condition of the Soul is when she has left this Body CHAP. XI 1. Three things to be considered before we come to the moral condition of the Soul after death namely her Memory of transactions in this life 2. The peculiar feature and individual Character of her AErial Vehicle 3. The Retainment of the same Name 4. How her ill deportment here lays the train of her Misery hereafter 5. The unspeakable torments of Conscience worse then Death and not to be avoided by dying 6. Of the hideous tortures of external sense on them whose searedness of Conscience may seem to make them uncapable of her Lashes 7. Of the state of the Souls of the more innocent and conscientious Pagans 8. Of the natural accruments of After-happiness to the morally good in this life 9. How the Soul enjoys her actings or sufferings in this Life for an indispensable Cause when she has passed to the other 10. That the reason is proportionably the same in things of less consequence 11. What mischief men may create to themselves in the other world by their Zealous mistakes in this
to protect such Monsters as I describe being haply far less in proportion to the number of the other state then these here are to this they will be necessarily exposed to those grim and remorsless Officers of Justice who are as devoid of all sense of what is good as those that they shall punish So that their penalty shall be inflicted from such as are of the same principles with themselves who watch for such booties as these and when they can catch them dress them and adorn them according to the multifarious petulancy of their own unaccountable humours and taking a speciall pride and pleasure in the making and seeing Creatures miserable fall upon their prey with all eagerness and alacrity as the hungry Lions on a condemned malefactour but with more ferocity and insultation by far For having more wit and if it be possible less goodness then the Soule they thus assault they satiate their lascivient cruelty with all manner of abuses and torments they can imagine giving her onely so much respite as will serve to receive their new inventions with a fresher smart and more distinct pain Neither can any Reason or Rhetorick prevail with them no Expostulation Petition or Submission For to what purpose can it be to expostulate about injury and violence with them whos 's deepest reach of wit is to understand this one main Principle That every ones Lust when he can act with impunity is the most sacred and soveraign Law Or what can either Petitions or Submissions doe with those who hold it the most contemptible piece of fondness and filliness that is to be intreated to recede from their own Interest And they acknowledging no such thing as Vertue and Vice make it their onely interest to please themselves in what is agreeable to their own desires and their main pleasure is to excruciate and torture in the most exquisite wayes they can as many as Opportunity delivers up to their power And thus we see how in the other life the proud conceited Atheist may at last feel the sad inconvenience of his own Practises and Principles For even those that pleased themselves in helping him forward while he was in this life to that high pitch of wickedness may haply take as much pleasure to see him punisht by those grim Executioners in the other Like that sportful cruelty which some would appropriate to Nero's person of causing the Vestal virgins to be ravisht and then putting them to death for being so 7. But this Subject would be too tedious and too Tragical to insist on any longer Let us cast our eyes therefore upon a more tolerable Object and that is The state of the Soul that has according to the best opportunity she had of knowledge liv'd vertuously and conscientiously in what part or Age of the world soever For though this Moral Innocency amongst the Pagans will not amount to what our Religion calls Salvation yet it cannot but be advantageous to them in the other state according to the several degrees thereof they being more or less Happy or Miserable as they have been more or less Vertuous in this life For we cannot imagine why God shoud be more harsh to them in the other world then in this nothing having happened to them to alienate his affection but Death which was not in their power to avoid and looks more like a punishment then a fault though it be neither to those that are well-meaning and consciencious and not professed contemners of the wholsome suggestions of the light of Nature but are lovers of Humanity and Vertue For to these it is onely an entrance into another life Ad amoena vireta Fortunatorum nemorum sedesque beatas Which Truth I could not conceal it being a great prejudice to Divine Providence to think otherwise For to those that are free her wayes will seem as unintelligible in overloading the simple with punishment as in not rewarding the more perfectly righteous and illuminate For from a fault in either they will be tempted to a misbelief of the whole and hold no Providence at all 8. Let there therefore be peculiar priviledges of Morality every where to those that pass into the other State For unless God make a stop on purpose it will naturally follow that Memory after Death suggesting nothing but what the Conscience allows of much Tranquillity of minde must result from thence and a certain health and beauty of the AErial Vehicle also better Company and Converse and more pleasant Tracts and Regions to inhabit For what Plotinus speaks of the extreme degrees Ennead 4. Lib. 4. Cap. 45. is also true of the intermediate else Divine Justice would be very maime For a man saith he having once appropriated to himself a pravity of temper and united with it is known well what he is and according to his nature is thrust forward to what he propends to both here and departed hence and so shall be pulled by the drawings of Nature into a sutable place But the Good man his Receptions and Communications shall be of another sort by the drawing as it were of certain hidden strings transposed and pulled by Natures own fingers So admirable is the power and order of the Universe all things being carried on in a silent way of Justice which none can avoid and which the wicked man has no perception nor understanding of but is drawn knowing nothing whither in the Universe he ought to be carried But the good man both knows and goes whither he ought and discerns before he departs hence where he must inhabit and is full of hopes that it shall be with the Gods This large Paragraph of Plotinus is not without some small Truth in it if rightly limited and understood but seems not to reach at all the Circumstances and accruments of happiness to the Soul in the other State which will naturally follow her from her transactions in this life 9. For certainly according to the several degrees of Benignity of Spirit and the desire of doing good to mankinde in this life and the more ample opportunities of doing it the felicity of the other World is redoubled upon them there being so certain communication and entercourse betwixt both And therefore they that act or suffer deeply in such Causes as God will maintain in the World and are just and holy at the bottome and there are some Principles that are indispensably such which Providence has countenanced both by Miracles the suffrages of the Wisest men in all Ages and the common voice of Nature those that have been the most Heroical Abetters and Promoters of these things in this life will naturally receive the greater contentment of Minde after it being conscious to themselves how seriously they have assisted what God will never desert and that Truth is mighty and must at last prevail which they are better assured of out of the Body then when they were in it 10. Nor is this kinde of access of Happiness to be
by those of their own Tribe 6. Other reasons of the security we find our selves in from the gross infestations of evil Spirits 7. What kinde of punishments the AErial Officers inflict upon their Malefactours 427 Chap. 11. 1. Three things to be considered before we come to the moral condition of the Soul after death namely her Memory of transactions in this life 2. The peculiar feature and individual Character of her AErial Vehicle 3. The Retainment of the same Name 4. How her ill deportment here lays the train of her Misery hereafter 5. The unspeakable torments of Conscience worse then Death and not to be avoided by dying 6. Of the hideous tortures of external sense on them whose searedness of Conscience may seem to make them uncapable of her Lashes 7. Of the state of the Souls of the more innocent and conscientious Pagans 8. Of the natural accruments of After-happiness to the morally good in this life 9. How the Soul enjoys her actings or sufferings in this Life for an indispensable Cause when she has passed to the other 10. That the reason is proportionably the same in things of less consequence 11. What mischief men may create to themselves in the other World by their Zealous mistakes in this 12. That though there were no Memory after Death yet the manner of our Life here may sow the seeds of the Souls future happiness or misery 435 Chap. 12. 1. What the Spirit of Nature is 2. Experiments that argue its real Existence such as that of two strings tuned Unisons 3. Sympathetick Cures and Tortures 4. The Sympathy betwixt the Earthly and Astral Body 5. Monstrous Births 6. The Attraction of the Loadstone and Roundness of the Sun and Stars 449 Chap. 13. 1. That the Descent of heavy Bodies argues the existence of the Spirit of Nature because else they would either hang in the Aire as they are placed 2. Or would be diverted from a perpendicular as they fall near a Plate of Metal set slooping 3. That the endeavour of the AEther or Aire from the Centre to the Circumference is not the cause of Gravity against Mr. Hobbs 4. A full confutation of Mr. Hobbs his Opinion 5. An ocular Demonstration of the absurd consequence thereof 6. An absolute Demonstration that Gravity cannot be the effect of meer Mechanical powers 7. The Latitude of the operations of the Spirit of Nature how large and where bounded 8. The reason of its name 9. It s grand office of transmitting Souls into rightly prepared Matter 458 Chap. 14. 1. Objections against the Souls Immortality from her condition in Infancy Old age Sleep and Sicknesses 2. Other Objections taken from Experiments that seem to prove her Discerpibility 3. As also from the seldome appearing of the Souls of the deceased 4. And from our natural fear of Death 5. A Subterfuge of the adverse party in supposing but one Soul common to all Creatures 6. An Answer concerning the Littleness of the Soul in Infancy 7. As also concerning the weakness of her Intellectuals then and in Old age 8. That Sleep does not at all argue the Souls Mortality but rather illustrate her Immortality 9. An Answer to the Objection from Apoplexies and Catalepsies 10. As also to that from Madness 11. That the various depravations of her Intellectual Faculties doe no more argue her Mortality then the worser Modifications of Matter its natural Annihilability And why God created Souls sympathizing with Matter 471 Chap. 15. 1. An Answer to the experiment of the Scolopendra cut into pieces 2. And to the flying of an headless Eagle over a barn as also to that of the Malefactors head biting a Dog by the eare 3. A superaddition of a difficulty concerning Monsters born with two or more Heads and but one Body and Heart 4. A solution of the difficulty 5. An Answer touching the seldome appearing of the Souls of the deceased 6. As also concerning the fear of Death 7. And a down-bearing sense that sometimes so forcibly obtrudes upon us the belief of the Souls Mortality 8. Of the Tragical Pomp and dreadful Praeludes of Death with some corroborative Considerations against such sad spectacles 9. That there is nothing really sad and miserable in the Universe unless to the wicked and impious 481 Chap. 16. 1. That that which we properly are is both Sensitive and Intellectual 2. What is the true notion of a Soul being One. 3. That if there be but One Soul in the World it is both Rational and Sensitive 4. The most favourable representation of their Opinion that hold but One. 5. A confutation of the foregoing representation 6. A Reply to the confutation 7. An Answer to the Reply 8. That the Soul of Man is not properly any Ray either of God or the Soul of the World 9. And yet if she were so it would be no prejudice to her Immortality whence the folly of Pomponatius is noted 10. A further animadversion upon Pomponatius his folly in admitting a certain number of remote Intelligencies and denying Particular Immaterial Substances in Men and Brutes 491 Chap. 17. 1. That the Author having safely conducted the Soul into her AErial condition through the dangers of Death might well be excused from attending her any further 2. What reasons urge him to consider what fates may befall her afterwards 3. Three hazzards the Soul runs after this life whereby she may again become obnoxious to death according to the opinion of some 4. That the aerial Genii are mortal confirmed by three testimonies 5. The one from the Vision of Facius Cardanus in which the Spirits that appeared to him profest themselves mortal 6. The time they stayed with him and the matters they disputed of 7. What credit Hieronymus Cardanus gives to his Fathers Vision 8. The other testimony out of Plutarch concerning the Death of the great God Pan. 9. The third and last of Hesiod whose opinion Plutarch has polisht and refined 10. An Enumeration of the several Paradoxes contained in Facius Cardanus his Vision 11. What must be the sense of the third Paradox if those AErial Speculators spake as they thought 12. Another Hypothesis to the same purpose 13. The craft of these Daemons in shuffling in poysonous Errour amongst solid Truths 14. What makes the story of the death of Pan less to the present matter with an addition of Demetrius his observations touching the Sacred Islands near Britain 15. That Hesiod his opinion is the most unexceptionable and that the harshness therein is but seeming not real 16. That the AEthereal Vehicle instates the Soul in a condition of perfect Immortality 17. That there is no internal impediment to those that are Heroically good but that they may attain an everlasting happiness after Death 503 Chap. 18. 1. The Conflagration of the World an Opinion of the Stoicks 2. Two ways of destroying the World the Ancients have taken notice of and especially that by Fire 3. That the Conflagration of the World so farre as it respects us is to be understood onely of the burning of the Earth 4. That the ends of the Stoicks Conflagration are competible onely to the Earths burning 5. An acknowledgement that the Earth may be burnt though the proof thereof be impertinent to this place 6. That the Conflagration thereof will prove very fatal to the Souls of wicked Men and Daemons 7. Five several Opinions concerning their state after the Conflagration whereof the first is That they are quite destroy'd by Fire 8. The second That they are annihilated by a special act of Omnipotency 9. The third That they lie sensless in an eternal Death 10. The fourth That they are in a perpetual furious and painful Dream 11. The fifth and last That they will revive again and that the Earth and Aire will be inhabited by them 12. That this last seems to be fram'd from the fictitious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Stoicks who were very sorry Metaphysicians and as ill Naturalists 13. An Animadversion upon a self-contradicting sentence of Seneca 14. The unintelligibleness of the state of the Souls of the Wicked after the Conflagration 15. That the AEthereal Inhabitants will be safe And what will then become of Good men and Daemons on the Earth and in the Aire And how they cannot be delivered but by a supernatural power 524 Chap. 19. 1. That the Extinction of the Sun is no Panick feare but may be rationally suspected from the Records of History and grounds of Natural Philosophy 2. The sad Influence of this Extinction upon Man and Beast and all the aerial Daemons imprison'd within their several Atmospheres in our Vortex 3. That it will doe little or no damage to the AEthereal Inhabitants in reference to heat or warmth 4. Nor will they find much want of his light 5. And if they did they may pass out of one Vortex into another by the Priviledge of their AEthereal Vehicles 6. And that without any labour or toil and as maturely as they please 7. The vast incomprehensibleness of the tracts and compasses of the waies of Providence 8. A short Recapitulation of the whole Discourse 9. An Explication of the Persians two Principles of Light and Darkness which they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and when and where the Principle of Light gets the full victory 10. That Philosophy or something more sacred then Philosophy is the onely Guide to a true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 538 FINIS Errata PAg. 222. l. 5. for Gamaitus read Gamaieu's 2â—4 l. 10. for Tyc r. Tye. 327. l. 2. for Immortality r. Immorality 458. l. 22. for stooping r. slooping 462. l. 13. for E F H r. angle E F H. 488. l. 9. for inclogg'd r. in clogg'd 521. l. 16. for lightning r. lighting 528. l. ult dele those
of Mechanick Philosophy 14. The great pleasure of that study to pious and rational persons 15. Of what concernment it would be if Des-Cartes were generally read in all the Universities of Christendome 16. An excuse of the prolixity of his Preface from his earnest desire of gratifying the publick without the least offence to any rational or ingenuous Spirit THat the present Treatise may pass more freely and smoothly through the hands of men without any offence or scruple to the good and pious or any real exception or probable cavil from those whose Pretensions are greater to Reason then Religion I shall endeavour in this Preface to prevent them by bringing here into view and more fully explaining and clearing whatever I conceive obnoxious to their mistakes and obloquies 1. And indeed I cannot be well assured but that the very Title of my Discourse may seem liable to both their dislikes To the dislike of the one as being confident of the contrary conclusion and therefore secure That that cannot be demonstrated to be true which they have long since judged not worthy to be reckoned in the rank of things probable it may be not so much as of things possible To the dislike of the other as being already perswaded of the truth of our conclusion upon other and better grounds which would not be better if the natural light of Reason could afford Demonstration in this matter And therefore they may haply pretend that so ambitious a Title seems to justle with the high Prerogative of Christianity which has brought life and immortality to light But of the former I demand by what faculty they are made so secure of their being wholly mortal For unless they will ridiculously conceit themselves inspired when as they almost as little believe there is either God or Spirit as that they have in them an Immortal Soule they must either pretend to the experience of Sense or the clearness of Reason The former whereof is impossible because these bold denyers of the Immortality of the Soule have not yet experienced whether we subsist after Death or no. But if they would have us believe they have thus concluded upon rational grounds I dare appeale unto them if they can produce any stronger reasons for their Cause then what I have set down Lib. 3. Cap. 14. and if I have not fully and fundamentally answered them If they will say their confidence proceeds from the weak arguings of the adverse party I answer it is weakly done of them their own Arguments being as unconcluding as they can fancy their adversaries to be so secure that Truth is on their own part rather then on theirs But this can touch onely such managements of this Cause as they have seen already and censured But that is nothing to me who could never think I stood safe but upon my own leggs Wherefore I shall require them onely to peruse what I have written before they venture to judge thereof and after they have read if they will declare that I have not demonstrated the Cause I have undertook I think it reasonable just that they punctually shew in what part or joynt of my Demonstration they discern so weak a coherence as should embolden them still to dissent from the Conclusion But to the other I answer with more modesty and submission That the Title of my Book doth not necessarily imply any promise of so full and perfect a Demonstration that nothing can be added for the firmer assurance of the Truth but onely that there may be expected as clear a Proof as Natural Reason will afford us From which they should rather inferre that I doe acknowledge a further and a more palpable evidence comprehended in Christian Religion and more intelligible and convictive to the generality of the World who have neither leisure nor inclination to deal with the spinosities and anxieties of humane Reason and Philosophy But I declined the making use of that Argument at this time partly because I have a design to speak more fully thereof in my Treatise Of the Mystery of Christian Religion if God so permit and partly because it was unsutable to the present Title which pretends to handle the matter onely within the bounds of natural Light unassisted and unguided by any miraculous Revelation 2. Which will be a pleasant spectacle to such as have a Genius to these kinde of Contemplations and wholly without danger they still remembring that it is the voice of Reason Nature which being too subject to corruption may very well be defectuous or erroneous in some things and therefore never trusting their dictates and suggestions where they clash with the Divine Oracles they must needs be safe from all seduction though I profess I doe not know any thing which I assert in this Treatise that doth disagree with them But if any quicker-sighted then my self do discover any thing not according to that Rule it may be an occasion of humble thankfulness to God for that great priviledge of our being born under an higher and exacter light whereby those that are the most perfectly exercis'd therein are inabled as well to rectify what is perverse as to supply what is defectuous in the light of Nature and they have my free leave afore-hand to doe both throughly all along the ensuing Discourse And this may serve by way of a more general Defence But that nothing may be wanting I shall descend to the making good also of certain particulars as many as it is of any consequence further to clear and confirme 3. In the First Book there occurre onely these two that I am aware of The one concerning the Centre of a particular Spirit whose Idea I have described and demonstrated possible The other concerns my Demonstration of the Impossibility of the Suns seeing any thing upon Earth supposing him meerly corporeal In the making good the former I have taken the boldness to assert That Matter consists of parts indiscerpible understanding by indiscerpible parts particles that have indeed real extension but so little that they cannot have less and be any thing at all and therefore cannot be actually divided Which minute extension if you will you may call Essential as being such that without that measure of it the very Being of Matter cannot be conserved as the extension of any Matter compounded of these you may if you please term Integral these parts of this compounded Matter being actually and really separable one from another The Assertion I confess cannot but seem paradoxical at first sight even to the ingenious and judicious But that there are such indiscerpible particles into which Matter is divisible viz. such as have essential extension and yet have parts utterly inseparable I shall plainly and compendiously here demonstrate besides what I have said in the Treatise it self by this short Syllogism That which is actually divisible so farre as actual division any way can be made is divisible into parts indiscerpible But Matter I mean that
notion of a Spirit 1. AND thus we have fairly well gratified the Fancy of the Curious concerning the Extension and Indiscerpibility of a Spirit but we shall advance yet higher and demonstrate the possibility of this notion to the severest Reason out of these following Principles AXIOME XI A Globe touches a Plain in something though in the least that is conceivable to be reall  AXIOME XII The least that is conceivable is so little that it cannot be conceived to be discerpible into less  AXIOME XIII As little as this is the repetition of it will amount to considerable magnitudes AS for example if this Globe be drawn upon a Plain it constitutes a Line and a Cylinder drawn upon a Plain or this same Line described by the Globe multiplyed into it self constitutes a superficies c. This a man cannot deny but the more he thinks of it the more certainly true he will find it AXIOME XIV Magnitude cannot arise out of meer Non-Magnitudes FOR multiply Nothing ten thousand millions of times into nothing the Product will be still nothing Besides if that wherein the Globe touches a Plain were more then Indiscerpible that is purely Indivisible it is manifest that a Line will consist of Points Mathematically so called that is purely Indivisible which is the grandest absurdity that can be admitted in Philosophy and the most contradictions thing imaginable AXIOME XV. The same thing by reason of its extreme littleness may be utterly Indiscerpible though intellectually Divisible THis plainly arises out of the foregoing Principles For every Quantity is intellectually divisible but something Indiscerpible was afore demonstrated to be Quantity and consequently divisible otherwise Magnitude would consist of Mathematicall points Thus have I found a possibility for the Notion of the Center of a Spirit which is not a Mathematicall point but Substance in Magnitude so little that it is Indiscerpible but in virtue so great that it can send forth out of it self so large a Sphere of Secondary Substance as I may so call it that it is able to actuate grand Proportions of Matter this whole Sphere of life and activity being in the mean time utterly Indiscerpible 2. This I have said and shall now prove it by adding a few more Principles of that evidence as the most rigorous Reason shall not be able to deny them AXIOME XVI An Emanative Cause is the notion of a thing possible BY an Emanative Cause is understood such a Cause as meerly by Being no other activity or causality interposed produces an Effect That this is possible is manifest it being demonstrable that there is de facto some such Cause in the world because something must move it self Now if there be no Spirit Matter must of necessity move it self where you cannot imagine any activity or causality but the bare essence of the Matter from whence this motion comes For if you would suppose some former motion that might be the cause of this then we might with as good reason suppose some former to be the cause of that and so in infinitum AXIOME XVII An Emanative Effect is coexistent with the very substance of that which is said to be the Cause thereof THis must needs be true because that very Substance which is said to be the Cause is the adaequate immediate Cause and wants nothing to be adjoyned to its bare essence for the production of the Effect and therefore by the same reason the Effect is at any time it must be at all times or so long as that Substance does exist AXIOME XVIII No Emanative Effect that exceeds not the virtues and powers of a Cause can be said to be impossible to be produced by it THis is so plain that nothing need be added for either explanation or proof AXIOME XIX There may be a Substance of that high Vertue and Excellency that it may produce another Substance by Emanative causality provided that Substance produced be in due graduall proportions inferiour to that which causes it THis is plain out of the foregoing Principle For there is no contradiction nor impossibility of a Cause producing an Effect less noble then it self for thereby we are the better assured that it does not exceed the capacity of its own powers Nor is there any incongruity that one Substance should cause something else which we may in some sense call Substance though but Secondary or Emanatory acknowledging the Primary Substance to be the more adequate Object of divine Creation but the Secondary to be referrible also to the Primary or Centrall Substance by way of causall relation For suppose God created the Matter with an immediate power of moving it self God indeed is the Prime cause as well of the Motion as of the Matter and yet nevertheless the Matter is rightly said to move it self Finally this Secondary or Emanatory Substance may be rightly called Substance because it is a Subject indued with certain powers and activities and that it does not inhaere as an Accident in any other Substance or Matter but could maintaine its place though all Matter or what other Substance soever were removed out of that space it is extended through provided its Primary Substance be but safe 3. From these four Principles I have here added we may have not an imaginative but rationall apprehension of that part of a Spirit which we call the Secondary Substance thereof Whos 's Extension arising by graduall Emanation from the First and primest Essence which we call the Center of the Spirit which is no impossible supposition by the 16. 18. and 19. Axiomes we are led from hence to a necessary acknowledgment of perfect Indiscerpibility of parts though not intellectuall Indivisibility by Axiome 17. for it implyes a contradiction that an Emanative effect should be disjoyned from its originall 4. Thus have I demonstrated how a Spirit considering the lineaments of it as I may so call them from the Center to the Circumference is utterly indiscerpible But now if any be so curious as to ask how the parts thereof hold together in a line drawn cross to these from the Center for Imagination it may be will suggest they lye all loose I answer that the conjecture of Imagination is here partly true and partly false or is true or false as she shall be interpreted For if she mean by loose actually disunited it is false and ridiculous but if only so discerpible that one part may be disunited from another that is not only true but necessary otherwise a Spirit could not contract one part and extend another which is yet an Hypothesis necessary to be admitted Wherefore this Objection is so far from weakning the possibility of this notion that it gives occasion more fully to declare the exact concinnity thereof To be brief therefore a Spirit from the Center to the Circumference is utterly indiscerpible but in lines cross to this it is closely cohaerent but not indiscerpibly which cohaesion may consist in an immediate union of
very question of the Praeexistency of Soules of the Sensitive and Rationall especially 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whether both kindes doe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is praeexist before they come into the Body or whether the Rationall onely and he concludes thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. It remains that the rationall or intellectual Soule onely enter from without as being onely of a nature purely divine with whose actions the actions of this gross Body have no communication Concerning which point he concludes like an Orthodox Scholar of his excellent Master Plato to whose footsteps the closer he keeps the less he ever wanders from the truth For in this very place he does plainly profess what many would not have him so apertly guilty of that the Soule of man is immortall and can perform her proper Functions without the help of this terrestriall Body And thus I think I have made good the two first parts of my answer to the proposed Objection and have clearly proved that the Praeexistence of the Soule is an opinion both in it self the most rationall that can be maintained and has had the suffrage of the renownedst Philosophers in all Ages of the World and that therefore this sequel from our arguments for the Immortality of the Soule is no discovery of any fallacy in them CHAP. XIII 1. The third part of the second Answer That the forgetting of the former state is no good argument against the Soules Praeexistence 2. What are the chief causes of Forgetfulness 3. That they all conspire and that in the highest degree to destroy the memory of the other state 4. That mischances and Diseases have quite taken away the Memory of things here in this life 5. That it is impossble for the Soule to remember her former condition without a Miracle 6. The fourth part of the second Answer That the entrance of a Praeexistent Soule into a Body is as intelligible as either Creation or Traduction 1. AS for the two last Difficulties concerning the Soules Memory of her former state and the manner of her coming into the Body I hope I shall with as much ease extricate my self here also especially in the former For if we consider what things they are that either quite take away or exceedingly diminish our Memory in this life we shall find the concurse of them all and that in a higher degree or from stronger causes contained in our descent into this earthly Body then we can meet with here they none of them being so violent as to dislodge us out of it 2. Now the things that take away our Memory here are chiefly these either the want of opportunity of being reminded of a thing as it happens with many who rise confident they slept without dreaming such a night and yet before they goe to bed again recover a whole Series of representations they had in their last sleep by something that sell out in the day without which it had been impossible for them to recall to minde their Dream Or else in the second place Desuetude of thinking of a Matter whereby it comes to pass that what we have earnestly meditated laboured for and pen'd down with our own hands when we were at Schoole were it not that we saw our names written under the Exercise we could not acknowledg for ours when we are grown men Or lastly some considerable change in the frame and temper of our Body whether from some externall mischance or from some violent Disease or else from old age which is disease enough of it self which often doe exceedingly impaire if not quite take away the Memory though the Soule be still in the same Body 3. Now all these Principles of Forgetfulness namely the want of something to reminde us Desuetude of thinking and an Extraordinary change in the Body are more eminently to be found in the Descent of the Soule into these Earthly prisons then can happen to her for any time of her abode therein For there is a greater difference in all probability betwixt that Scene of things the Soule sees out of the Body and in it then betwixt what shee sees sleeping and waking and the perpetuall occursions of this present life continue a long Desuetude of thinking on the former Besides that their descent hither in all likelihood scarce befalls them but in their state of Silence and Inactivity in which myriads of Soules may haply be for many Ages as the maintainers of this Opinion may pretend by reason of the innumerable expirations of the aëreal periods of life and the more narrow Lawes of preparing terrestrial Matter And lastly her coming into this Earthly Body is a greater and more disadvantageous change for the utter spoiling of the memory of things she was acquainted with before then any Mischance or Disease can be for the bringing upon her a forgetfulness of what she has known in this life 4. And yet that Diseases and Casualties have even utterly taken away all memory is amply recorded in History As that Messala Corvinus forgot his own name that one by a blow with a stone forgot all his learning another by a fall from an Horse the name of his Mother and kinsfolks A young Student of Montpelier by a wound lost his Memory so that he was fain to be taught the letters of the Alphabet again The like befell a Franciscan after a Feaver And Thucydides writes of some who after their recovery from that great Pestilence at Athens did not onely forget the names and persons of their friends but themselves too not knowing who themselves were nor by what name they were called Atque etiam quosdam cepisse oblivia rerum Cunctarum neque se possent cognoscere ut ipsi as the Poet Lucretius sadly sets down in his description of that devouring Plague out of the fore-named Historian 5. Wherefore without a miracle it is impossible the Soule should remember any particular circumstance of her former condition though she did really praeexist and was in a capacity of acting before she came into this Body as Aristotle plainly acknowledges she was her change being far greater by coming into the Body then can ever be made while she staies in it Which we haply shall be yet more assured of after we have considered the manner of her descent which is the last Difficulty objected 6. I might easily decline this Controversie by pleading onely that the entrance of the Soule into the Body supposing her Praeexistence is as intelligible as in those other two wayes of Creation and Traduction For how this newly-created Soule is infused by God no man knowes nor how if it be traducted from the Parents both their Soules contribute to the making up a new one For if there be decision of part of the Soule of the Male in the injection of his seed into the matrix of the Female and part of the Female Soule to joyn with that of the Males besides that the decision of these parts of their
something of it and being determined by the fancy of the Woman might sign the humid materials in her Womb with the image of her Minde 4. Wherefore if Fienus had considered from what potent causes Signatures may arise he would not have been so scrupulous in believing that degree of exactness that some of them are reported to have or if he had had the good hap to have met with so notable an example thereof as Kircher professes himself to have met with For he tells a story of a man that came to him for this very cause to have his opinion what a certain strange Signature which he had on his Arm from his birth might portend concerning which he had consulted both Astrologers and Cabbalists who had promised great preferments the one imputing it to the Influence of the Stars the other to the favour of the sealing Order of Angels But Kircher would not spend his judgement upon a meer verbal description thereof though he had plainly enough told him it was the Pope sitting on his Throne with a Dragon under his feet and an Angel putting a Crown on his head Wherefore the man desirous to hear a further confirmation of these hopes he had conceived from the favourable conjectures of others by the suffrage of so learned a man was willing in private to put off his doublet and shew his Arm to Kircher who having viewed it with all possible care does profess that the Signature was so perfect that it seemed rather the work of Art then of exorbitating Nature yet by certain observations he made that he was well assured it was the work of Nature and not of Art though it was an artificial piece that Nature imitated viz. the picture of Pope Gregory the thirteenth who is sometimes drawn according as this Signature did lively represent namely on a Throne with a Dragon under his feet leaning with one hand on his Seat and bearing the other in that posture in which they give the Benediction and an Angel removing a Curtain and reaching a Crown towards his head 5. Kircher therefore leaving the superstitions and fooleries of the spurious Cabbalists and Astrologers told him the truth though nothing so pleasant as their lies and flatteries viz. That this Signature was not impressed by any either influence of the Stars or Seals of Angels but that it was the effect of the Imagination of his Mother that bore him who in some more then ordinary fit of affection towards this Pope whose picture she beheld in some Chappel or other place of her devotion and having some occasion to touch her Arm printed that image on the Arm of her Child as it ordinarily happens in such cases Which doubtless was the true solution of the mystery 6. The same Author writes how he was invited by a friend to contemplate another strange miracle as he thought that did invite him to behold it that he might spend his judgement upon it Which was nothing else but an exposed Infant of some fourteen days old that was gray-hair'd both head and eye-brows Which his friend an Apothecary look't upon as a grand Prodigy till he was informed of the cause thereof That the Mother that brought it forth being married to an old man whose head was all white the fear of being surprized in the act of Adultery by her snowy-headed husband made her imprint that colour on the Child she bore Which Story I could not omit to recite it witnessing to what an exact curiosity the power of Fancy will work for the fashioning and modifying the Matter not missing so much as the very colours of the hair as I have already noted something to that purpose 7. To conclude therefore at length and leave this luxuriant Theme Whether it be the Power of Imagination carrying captive the Spirit of Nature into consent or the Soule of the Infant or both it is evident that the effects are notable and sometimes very accurately answering the Idea of the Impregnate derived upon the moist and ductil matter in the Womb Which yet not being any thing so yielding as the soft aire nor the Soule of the Mother so much one with that of the Infant as the separate Soule is one with it self nor so peculiarly united to the Body of the Infant as the Soule separate with her own Vehicle nor having any nearer or more mysterious commerce with the Spirit of Nature then she has when her Plastick part by the Imperium of her Will and Imagination is to organize her Vehicle into a certain shape and form which is a kind of a momentaneous birth of the distinct Personality of either a Soule separate or any other Daemon it followes that we may be very secure that there is such a power in the Genii and Separate Souls that they can with ease and accuracy transfigure themselves into shapes and forms agreeable to their own temper and nature 8. All which I have meant hitherto in reference to their visible congresses one with another But they are sometimes visible to us also under some Animal shape which questionless is much more difficult to them then that other Visibility is But this is also possible though more unusual by far as being more unnatural For it is possible by Art to compress Aire so as to reduce it to visible opacity and has been done by some and particularly by a friend of Des-Cartes whom he mentions in his Letters as having made this Experiment the Aire getting this opacity by squeezing the Globuli out of it Which though the separate Souls and Spirits may doe by that directive faculty Axiome 31. yet surely it would be very painful For the first Element lying bare if the Aire be not drawn exceeding close it will cause an ungratefull heat and if it be as unnatural a cold and so small a moment will make the first Element too much or too little that it may haply be very hard at least for these inferiour Spirits to keep steddily in a due mean And therefore when they appear it is not unlikely but that they soak their Vehicles in some vaporous or glutinous moisture or other that they may become visible to us at a more easy rate CHAP. VIII 1. That the Better sort of Genii converse in Humane shape the Baser sometimes in Bestial 2. How they are disposed to turn themselves into several Bestial forms 3. Of Psellus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Igneous splendours of Daemons how they are made 4. That the external beauty of the Genii is according to the degree of the inward vertue of their minds 5. That their aerial forme need not be purely transparent but more finely opake and coloured 6. That there is a distinction of Masculine and Feminine beauty in their personal figurations 1. AFter this Digression of shewing the facility of the figuring of the Vehicles of the Genii into personal shape I shall return again where we left which was concerning the Society of these Genii and Souls
of all Philosophers in all Ages that held it Incorporeal 10. That the Gymnosophists of AEgypt the Indian Brachmans the Persian Magi and all the learned of the Jews were of this Opinion 11. A Catalogue of particular famous persons that held the same 12. That Aristotle was also of the same minde 13. Another more clear place in Aristotle to this purpose with Sennertus his Interpretation 14. An Answer to an Evasion of that Interpretation 15. The last and clearest place of all out of Aristotles Writings 237 Chap. 13. 1. The third part of the second Answer That the forgetting of the former state is no good argument against the Souls Praeexistence 2. What are the chief causes of Forgetfulness 3. That they all conspire and that in the highest degree to destroy the memory of the other state 4. That Mischances and Diseases have quite taken away the Memory of things here in this life 5. That it is impossible for the Soul to remember her former condition without a Miracle 6. The fourth part of the second Answer That the entrance of a Praeexistent Soul into a Body is as intelligible as either Creation or Traduction 252 Chap. 14. 1. The knowledge of the difference of Vehicles and the Souls Union with them necessary for the understanding how she enters into this Earthly Body 2. That though the name of Vehicle be not in Aristotle yet the thing is there 3. A clearing of Aristotles notion of the Vehicle out of the Philosophy of Des-Cartes 4 A full interpretation of his Text. 5. That Aristotle makes onely two Vehicles Terrestrial and AEthereal which is more then sufficient to prove the Souls Oblivion of her former state 6 That the ordinary Vehicle of the Soul after death is Aire 7. The duration of the Soul in her several Vehicles 8. That the Union of the Soul with her Vehicle does not consist in Mechanical Congruity but Vital 9. In what Vital congruity of the Matter consists 10. In what Vital congruity of the Soul consists and how it changing the Soul may be free from her aiery Vehicle without violent precipitation out of it 11. Of the manner of the descent of Souls into Earthly Bodies 12. That there is so little absurdity in the Praeexistence of Souls that the concession thereof can be but a very small prejudice to our Demonstrations of her Immortality 257 Chap. 15. 1. What is meant by the Separation of the Soul with a confutation of Regius who would stop her in the dead Corps 2. An answer to those that profess themselves puzled how the Soul can get out of the Body 3. That there is a threefold Vital Congruity to be found in three several Subjects 4. That this triple Congruity is also competible to one Subject viz. the Soul of Man 5. That upon this Hypothesis it is very intelligible how the Soul may leave the Body 6. That her Union with the aerial Vehicle may be very suddain and as it were in a moment 7. That the Soul is actually separate from the Body is to be proved either by History or Reason Examples of the former kinde out of Pliny Herodotus Ficinus 8. Whether the Ecstasie of Witches prove an actual separation of the Soul from the Body 9. That this real separation of the Soul in Ecstasie is very possible 10. How the Soul may be loosned and leave the Body and yet return thither again 11. That though Reason and Will cannot in this life release the Soul from the Body yet Passion may and yet so that she may return again 12. The peculiar power of Desire for this purpose 13. Of Cardans Ecstasies and the Ointment of Witches and what truth there may be in their Confessions 267 Chap. 16. 1. That Souls departed communicate Dreams 2. Examples of Apparitions of Souls deceased 3. Of Apparitions in fields where pitcht Battels have been fought as also of those in Church-yards and other vaporous places 4. That the Spissitude of the Aire may well contribute to the easiness of the appearing of Ghosts and Spectres 5. A further proof thereof from sundry examples 6. Of Marsilius Ficinus his appearing after death 7. With what sort of people such examples as these avail little 8. Reasons to perswade the unprejudiced that ordinarily those Apparitions that bear the shape and person of the deceased are indeed the Souls of them 286 Chap. 17. 1. The praeeminence of Arguments drawn from Reason above those from Story 2. The first step towards a Demonstration of Reason that the Soul acts out of her Body for that she is an immaterial Substance separable therefrom 3. The second That the immediate instruments for Sense Motion and Organization of the Body are certain subtile and tenuious Spirits 4. A comparison betwixt the Soul in the Body and the AErial Genii 5. Of the nature of Daemons from the account of Marcus the Eremite and how the Soul is presently such having once left this Body 6. An Objection concerning the Souls of Brutes to which is answered First by way of concesson 7. Secondly by confuting the Arguments for the former concession 8. That there is no rational doubt at all of the Humane Soul acting after death 9. A further Argument of her activity out of this Body from her conflicts with it while she is in it 10. As also from the general hope and belief of all Nations that they shall live after death 297 Chap. 18. 1. That the Faculties of our Souls and the nature of the immediate instrument of them the Spirits doe so nearly symbolize with those of Daemons that it seems reasonable if God did not on purpose hinder it that they would not fail to act out of this earthly Body 2. Or if they would his power and wisdome could easily implant in their essence a double or triple Vital Congruity to make all sure 3. A further demonstration of the present Truth from the Veracity of God 4. An Answer to an Objection against the foregoing Argument 5. Another Demonstration from His Justice 6. An Answer to an Objection 7. An Answer to another Objection 8. Another Argument from the Justice of God 9. An Objection answered 10. An invincible Demonstration of the Souls Immortality from the Divine Goodness 11. A more particular enforcement of that Argument and who they are upon whom it will work least 12. That the noblest and most vertuous Spirit is the most assurable of the Souls Immortality 311 BOOK III. Chap. 1. 1. WHY the Author treats of the state of the Soul after Death and in what Method 2. Arguments to prove that the Soul is ever united vitally with some Matter or other 3. Further Reasons to evince the same 4. That the Soul is capable of an aiery and aethereal Body as well as a terrestrial 5. That she ordinarily passes out of an earthly into an aerial Vehicle first 6. That in her aiery Vehicle she is capable of Sense Pleasure and Pain 7. That the main power of the Soul over her aerial
or Faculty of any Essence changes it self for it is the Essence it self that exerts it self into these variations of Modes if no externall Agent is the cause of these changes And Mr. Hobbs opposing an Externall Agent to this Thing that he saies does not change it self does naturally imply That they are both not Faculties but Substances he speakes of 7. Wherefore there remains onely the latter Proposition to be examined That no Essence of it self can vary its Modification That some Essence must have had a power of moving is plain in that there is Motion in the world which must be the effect of some Substance or other But that Motion in a large sense taking it for mutation or change may proceed from that very Essence in which it is found seemes to me plain by Experience For there is an Essence in us whatever we will call it which we find endued with this property as appears from hence that it has variety of perceptions Mathematicall Logicall and I may adde also Morall that are not any impresses nor footsteps of Corporeall Motion as I have already demonstrated and any man may observe in himself and discover in the writings of others how the Minde has passed from one of these perceptions to another in very long deductions of Demonstration as also what stilness from bodily Motion is required in the excogitation of such series of Reasons where the Spirits are to run into no other posture nor motion then what they are guided into by the Mind it self where these immateriall and intellectuall Notions have the leading and rule Besides in grosser Phantasmes which are supposed to be somewhere impressed in the Brain the composition of them and disclusion and various disposall of them is plainly an arbitrarious act and implies an Essence that can as it lists excite in it self the variety of such Phantasmes as have been first exhibited to her from Externall Objects and change them and transpose them at her own will But what need I reason against this ground of Mr. Hobbs so sollicitously it being sufficient to discover that he onely saies that No Essence can change the Modifications of it self but does not prove it and therefore whatever he would infer hereupon is meerly upon a begg'd Principle 8. But however from this precarious ground he will infer that whenever we have a Will to a thing the cause of this Will is not the Will it self but something else not in our own disposing the meaning whereof must be That whenever we Will some corporeall impress which we cannot avoid forces us thereto But the Illation is as weak as bold it being built upon no foundation as I have already shewn I shall onely take notice how Mr. Hobbs though he has rescued himself from the authority of the Schools and would fain set up for himself yet he has not freed himself from their fooleries in talking of Faculties and Operations and the absurditie is alike in both as separate and distinct from the Essence they belong to wich causes a great deal of distraction and obscurity in the speculation of things I speak this in reference to those expressions of his of the Will being the cause of willing and of its being the necessary cause of voluntary actions and of things not being in its disposing Whenas if a man would speak properly and desired to be understood he would say That the Subject in which is this power or act of willing call it Man or the Soul of Man is the cause of this or that voluntary action But this would discover his Sophistry wherewith haply he has entrapt himself which is this Something out of the power of the Will necessarily causes the Will the Will once caused is the necessary cause of voluntary actions and therefore all voluntary actions are necessitated 9. Besides that the first part of this Argumentation is groundless as I have already intimated the second is sophisticall that sayes That the Will is the necessary cause of voluntary actions For by necessary may be understood either necessitated forced and made to act whether it will or no or else it may signify that the Will is a requisite cause of voluntary actions so that there can be no voluntary actions without it The latter whereof may be in some sense true but the former is utterly false So the Conclusion being inferred from assertions whereof the one is groundless the other Sophisticall the Illation cannot but be ridiculously weak and despicable But if he had spoke in the Concrete in stead of the Abstract the Sophistry had been more grossly discoverable or rather the train of his reasoning languid and contemptible Omitting therefore to speak of the Will separately which of it self is but a blind Power or Operation let us speak of that Essence which is endued with Will Sense Reason and other Faculties and see what face this argumentation of his will bear which will then run thus 10. Some externall irresistible Agent does ever necessarily cause that Essence call it Soule or what you please which is endued with the faculties of Will and Understanding â—o Will. This Essence endued with the power of exerting it self into the act of Willing is the necessary cause of Voluntary actions Therefore all voluntary actions are necessitated The first Assertion now at first sight appears a gross falshood the Soule being endued with Understanding as well as Will and therefore she is not necessarily determined to will by externall impresses but by the displaying of certain notions and perceptions she raises in her self that be purely intellectuall And the second seems a very slim and lank piece of Sophistrie Both which my reasons already alledged doe so easily and so plainly reach that I need add nothing more but pass to his second Argument the form whereof in brief is this 11. Every Cause is a sufficient cause otherwise it could not produce its effect Every sufficient cause is a necessary cause that is to say will be sure to produce the effect otherwise something was wanting thereto and it was no sufficient cause And therefore every cause is a necessary cause and consequently every Effect or Action even those that are termed Voluntary are necessitated This reasoning looks smartly at first view but if we come closer to it we shall find it a pittifull piece of Sophistry which is easily detected by observing the ambiguity of that Proposition Every sufficient cause is a necessary cause For the force lyes not so much in that it is said to be Sufficient as in that it is said to be a Cause which if it be it must of necessity have an Effect whether it be sufficient or insufficient which discovers the Sophisme For these relative terms of Cause and Effect necessarily imply one another But every Being that is sufficient to act this or that if it will and so to become the Cause thereof doth neither act nor abstain from acting necessarily And therefore if it doe act
it addes Will to the Sufficiency of its power and if it did not act it is not because it had not sufficient power but because it would not make use of it So that we see that every sufficient Cause rightly understood without captiositie is not a necessary cause nor will be sure to produce the Effect and that though there be a sufficiency of power yet there may be something wanting to wit the exertion of the Will whereby it may come to pass that what might have acted if it would did not but if it did Will being added to sufficient Power that it cannot be said to be necessary in any other sense then of that Axiome in Metaphysicks Quicquid est quamdiu est necesse est esse The reason whereof is because it is impossible that a thing should be and not be at once But before it acted it might have chosen whether it would have acted or no but it did determine it self And in this sense is it to be said to be a free Agent not a necessary one So that it is manifest that though there be some prettie perversness of wit in the contriving of this Argument yet there is no solidity at all at the bottome 12. And as little is there in his third But in this I must confess I cannot so much accuse him of Art and Sophistrie as of ignorance of the rules of Logick for he does plainly assert That the necessity of the truth of that Proposition there named depends on the necessity of the truth of the parts thereof then which no grosser errour can be committed in the Art of reasoning For he might as well say that the necessity of the truth of a Connex Axiome depends on the necessity of the truth of the parts as of a Disjunct But in a Connex when both the parts are not onely false but impossible yet the Axiome is necessarily true As for example If Bucephalus be a man he is endued with humane reason this Axiome is necessarily true and yet the parts are impossible For Alexanders horse can neither be a man nor have the reason of a man either radically or actually The necessity therefore is only laid upon the connexion of the parts not upon the parts themselves So when I say To morrow it will rain or it will not rain this Disjunct Proposition also is necessary but the necessity lyes upon the Disjunction of the parts not upon the parts themselves For they being immediately disjoyned there is a necessity that one of them must be though there be no necessity that this must be determined rather then that As when a man is kept under custodie where he has the use of two rooms only though there be a necessity that he be found in one of the two yet he is not confined to either one of them And to be brief and prevent those frivolous both answers and replyes that follow in the pursuit of this Argument in Mr. Hobbs As the necessity of this Disjunct Axiome lyes upon the Disjunction it self so the truth of which this necessity is a mode must lye there too for it is the Disjunction of the parts that is affirmed and not the parts themselves as any one that is but moderately in his wits must needs acknowledg 13. There is a more dangerous way that Mr. Hobbs might have made use of and with more credit but yet scarce with better success which is the consideration of an Axiome that pronounces of a future Contingent such as this Cras Socrates disputabit For every Axiome pronouncing either true or false as all doe agree upon if this Axiome be now true it is impossible but Socrates should dispute to morrow or if it be now false it is impossible he should and so his Action of disputing or the omission thereof will be necessary for the Proposition cannot be both true and false at once Some are much troubled to extricate themselves out of this Nooze but if we more precisely enquire into the sense of the Proposition the difficultie will vanish He therefore that affirms that Socrates will dispute to morrow affirms it to use the distinction of Futurities that Aristotle somewhere suggests either as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is either as a thing that is likely to be but has a possibility of being otherwise or else as a thing certainly to come to pass If this latter the Axiome is false if the former it is true and so the liberty of Socrates his action as also of all like contingent effects are thus easily rescued from this sophistical entanglement For every Future Axiome is as incapable of our judgment unless we determine the sense of it by one of the forenamed modes as an Indefinite Axiome is before we in our minds adde the notes of Universality or Particularity Neither can we say of either of them that they are true or false till we have compleated and determined their sense 14. His fourth Argument he proposes with some diffidence and dislike as if he thought it not good Logick they are his own words to make use of it and adde it to the rest And for my own part I cannot but approve of the consistency of his judgment and coherency with other parts of his Philosophie For if there be nothing but Body or Matter in the whole comprehension of things it will be very hard to find out any such Deity as has the knowledg or foreknowledg of any thing And therefore I suspect that this last is onely cast in as argumentum ad hominem to puzzle such as have not dived to so profound a depth of naturall knowledg as to fancy they have discovered there is no God in the world 15. But let him vilifie it as he will it is the only Argument he has brought that has any tolerable sense or solidity in it and it is a Subject that has exercised the wits of all Ages to reconcile the Liberty of mans Will with the Decrees and Praescience of God But my Freeness I hope and Moderation shall make this matter more easy to me then it ordinarily proves to them that venture upon it My Answer therefore in brief shall be this 16. That though there be such a Faculty in the Soule of man as Liberty of Will yet she is not alwaies in a state of acting according to it For she may either degenerate so far that it may be as certainly known what she will doe upon this or that occasion as what an hungry Dog will doe when a crust is offered him which is the generall condition of almost all men in most occurrencies of their lives or else she may be so Heroically good though that happen in very few that it may be as certainly known as before what she will doe or suffer upon such or such emergencies and in these cases the use of Liberty of Will ceases 17. That the use of the Facultie of Free-will is properly
12. That though there were no Memory after Death yet the manner of our Life here may sow the seeds of the Souls future happiness or misery 1. FOR the better solution of this Question there is another first in nature to be decided namely Whether the Soul remembers any thing of this Life after Death For Aristotle and Cardan seem to deny it but I doe not remember any reasons in either that will make good their Opinion But that the contrary is true appears from what we have already proved Lib. 2. Cap. 11. viz. That the immediate seat of Memory is the Soul her self and that all Representations with their circumstances are reserved in her not in the Spirits a thing which Vaninus himself cannot deny nor in any part of the Body And that the Spirits are onely a necessary Instrument whereby the Soul works which while they are too cool and gross and waterish Oblivion creeps upon her in that measure that the Spirits are thus distempered but the disease being chased away and the temper of the Spirits rectified the Soul forthwith recovers the memory of what things she could not well command before as being now in a better state of Activity Whence by the 33. Axiome it will follow that her Memory will be rather more perfect after Death and Conscience more nimble to excuse or accuse her according to her Deeds here 2. It is not altogether beside the purpose to take notice also That the natural and usual Figure of the Souls AErial Vehicle bears a resemblance with the feature of the party in this life it being most obvious for the Plastick part at the command of the Will to put forth into personal shape to fall as near to that in this life as the new state will permit With which act the Spirit of Nature haply does concurre as in the figuration of the Foetus but with such limits as becomes the AErial Congruity of life of which we have spoke already as also how the proper Idea or Figure of every Soul though it may deflect something by the power of the Parents Imagination in the act of Conception or Gestation yet may return more near to its peculiar semblance afterwards and so be an unconcealable Note of Individuality 3. We will adde to all this the Retainment of the same Name which the deceased had here unless there be some special reason to change it so that their persons will be as punctually distinguisht and circumscribed as any of ours in this life All which things as they are most probable in themselves that they will thus naturally fall out so they are very convenient for administration of Justice and keeping of Order in the other State 4. These things therefore premised it will not be hard to conceive how the condition of the Soul after this life depends on her Moral deportment here For Memory ceasing not Conscience may very likely awake more furiously then ever the Mind becoming a more clear Judge of evil Actions past then she could be in the Flesh being now stript of all those circumstances and concurrences of things that kept her off from the opportunity of calling her self to account or of perceiving the ugliness of her own ways Besides there being that communication betwixt the Earth and the Aire that at least the fame of things will arrive to their cognoscence that have left this life the after ill success of their wicked enterprises and unreasonable transactions may arm their tormenting Conscience with new whips and stings when they shall either hear or see with their eyes what they have unjustly built up to run with shame to ruine and behold all their designs come to nought and their fame blasted upon Earth 5. This is the state of such Souls as are capable of a sense of dislike of their past-actions and a man would think they need no other punishment then this if he consider the mighty power of the Minde over her own Vehicle and how vulnerable it is from her self These Passions therefore of the Soule that follow an ill Conscience must needs bring her aiery body into intolerable distempers worse then Death it self Nor yet can she die if she would neither by fire nor sword nor any means imaginable no not if she should fling her self into the flames of smoaking AEtna For suppose she could keep her self so long there as to indure that hideous pain of destroying the vital Congruity of her Vehicle by that sulphureous fire she would be no sooner released but she would catch life again in the Aire and all the former troubles and vexations would return besides the overplus of these pangs of Death For Memory would return and an ill Conscience would return and all those busie Furies those disordered Passions which follow it And thus it would be though the Soule should kill her self a thousand and a thousand times she could but pain and punish her self not destroy her self 6. But if we could suppose some mens Consciences seared in the next state as well as this for certainly there are that make it their business to obliterate all sense of difference of Good and Evil out of their minds hold it to be an high strain of wit though it be nothing else but a piece of bestial stupidity to think there is no such thing as Vice and Vertue and that it is a principall part of perfection to be so degenerate as to act according to this Principle without any remorse at all these men may seem to have an excellent priviledge in the other world they being thus armour-proof against all the fiery darts of that domestick Devil As if the greatest security in the other life were to have been compleatly wicked in this But it is not out of the reach of meer Reason and Philosophy to discover that such bold and impudent wretches as have lost all inward sense of Good and Evil may there against their wills feel a lash in the outward For the divine Nemesis is excluded out of no part of the Universe and Goodness and Justice which they contemn here will be acquainted with them in that other state whether they will or no I speak of such course Spirits that can swallow down Murder Perjury Extortion Adultery Buggery and the like gross crimes without the least disgust and think they have a right to satisfy their own Lust though it be by never so great injury against their Neighbour If these men should carry it with impunity there were really no Providence and themselves were the truest Prophets and faithfullest Instructers of mankind divulging the choicest Arcanum they have to impart to them namely That there is no God But the case stands quite otherwise For whether it be by the importunity of them they injure in this life who may meet with them afterward as Cardan by way of objection suggests in his Treatise of this Subject or whether by a general desertion by all of the other world that are able
confined onely to our furtherance of what is of the highest and most indispensable consideration here but in proportion touches all transactions that proceed from a vertuous and good principle whereof there are several degrees amongst which those may not be esteemed the meanest that refer to a National good And therefore those that out of a natural generosity of Spirit and successful fortitude in Warre have delivered their Country from bondage or have been so wise and understanding in Politicks as to have contrived wholsome Laws for the greater happiness and comfort of the People while such a Nation prospers and is in being it cannot but be an accrument of happiness to these so considerable Benefactors unless we should imagine them less generous and good in the other World where they have the advantage of being Better And what I have said in this more notable instance is in a degree true in things of smaller concernment which would be infinite to rehearse But whole Nations with their Laws and Orders of Men and Families may fail and therefore these accessions be cut off but he that laies out his pains in this life for the carrying on such designs as will take place so long as the World endures and must have a compleat Triumph at last such a one laies a train for an everlasting advantage in the other World which in despite of all the tumblings and turnings of unsetled fortune will be sure to take effect 11. But this matter requires Judgement as well as Heat and Forwardness For pragmatical Ignorance though accompanied with some measure of Sincerity and well-meaning may set a-foot such things in the World or set upon record such either false or impertinent and unseasonable Principles as being made ill use of may very much prejudice the Cause one desires to promote which will be a sad spectacle for them in the other State For though their simplicity may be pardonable yet they will not fail to finde the ill effect of their mistake upon themselves As he that kills a friend in stead of an enemy though he may satisfy his Conscience that rightly pleads his innocency yet he cannot avoid the sense of shame and sorrow that naturally follows so mischievous an error 12. Such accruencies as these there may be to our enjoyments in the other World from the durable traces of our transactions in this if we have any Memory of things after Death as I have already demonstrated that we have But if we had not but Aristotles and Cardan's Opinion were true yet Vertue and Piety will not prove onely useful for this present state Because according to our living here we shall hereafter by a hidden concatenation of Causes be drawn to a condition answerable to the purity or impurity of our Souls in this life that silent Nemesis that passes through the whole contexture of the Universe ever fatally contriving us into such a state as we our selves have fitted our selves for by our accustomary actions Of so great consequence is it while we have opportunity to aspire to the best things CHAP. XII 1. What the Spirit of Nature is 2. Experiments that argue its real Existence such as that of two strings tuned Unisons 3. Sympathetick Cures and Tortures 4. The Sympathy betwixt the Earthly and Astral Body 5. Monstrous Births 6. The Attraction of the Loadstone and Roundness of the Sun and Stars 1. WE had now quite finished our Discourse did I not think it convenient to answer a double expectation of the Reader The one is touching the Spirit of Nature the other the producing of Objections that may be made against our concluded Assention of the Souls Immortality For as for the former I can easily imagine he may well desire a more punctual account of that Principle I have had so often recourse to then I have hitherto given and will think it fit that I should somewhere more fully explain what I mean by the terms and shew him my strongest grounds why I conceive there is any such Being in the World To hold him therefore no longer in suspence I shall doe both in this place The Spirit of Nature therefore according to that notion I have of it is A substance incorporeal but without Sense and Animadversion pervading the whole Matter of the Universe and exercising a plastical power therein according to the sundry predispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon raising such Phaenomena in the World by directing the parts of the Matter and their Motion as cannot be resolved into meer Mechanical powers This rude Description may serve to convey to any one a conception determinate enough of the nature of the thing And that it is not a meer Notion but a real Being besides what I have occasionally hinted already and shall here again confirm by new instances there are several other considerations may perswade us 2. The first whereof shall be concerning those experiments of Sympathetick Pains Asswagements and Cures of which there are many Examples approved by the most scrupulous Pretenders to sobriety and judgment and of all which I cannot forbear to pronounce that I suspect them to come to pass by some such power as makes strings that be tuned Unisons though on several Instruments the one being touched the other to tremble and move very sensibly and to cast off a straw or pin or any such small thing laid upon it Which cannot be resolved into any Mechanical Principle though some have ingeniously gone about it For before they attempted to shew the reason why that string that is not Unison to that which is struck should not leap and move as it doth that is they should have demonstrated that by the meer Vibration of the Aire that which is Unison can be so moved for if it could these Vibrations would not fail to move other Bodies more movable by farre then the string it self that is thus moved As for example if one hung loose near the string that is struck a small thred of silk or an hair with some light thing at the end of it they must needs receive those reciprocal Vibrations that are communicated to the Unison string at a far greater distance if the meer motion of the material Aire caused the subsultation of the string tuned Unison Which yet is contrary to experience Besides that if it were the meer Vibration of the Aire that caused this tremor in the Unison string the effect would not be considerable unless both the strings lay well-nigh in the same Plane and that the Vibration of the string that is struck be made in that Plane they both lie in But let the string be struck so as to cut the Plane perpendicularly by its tremulous excursions or let both the strings be in two several Planes at a good distance above one another the event is much-what the same though the Aire cannot rationally be conceived to vibrate backwards and forwards but well-nigh in the very Planes wherein the strings are moved All
which things do clearly shew that pure corporeal causes cannot produce this effect and that therefore we must suppose that both the strings are united with some one incorporeal Being which has a different Unity and Activity from Matter but yet a Sympathy therewith which affecting this immaterial Being makes it affect the Matter in the same manner in another place where it does symbolize with that other in some predisposition or qualification as these two strings doe in being tuned Unisons to one another and this without sending any particles to the Matter it does thus act upon as my thought of moving of my Toe being represented within my Brain by the power of my Soul I can without sending Spirits into my Toe but onely by making use of them that are there move my Toe as I please by reason of that Unity and Activity that is peculiar to my Soul as a spiritual substance that pervades my whole Body Whence I would conclude also that there is some such Principle as we call the Spirit of Nature or the Inferiour Soul of the World into which such Phaenomena as these are to be resolved 3. And I account Sympathetick Cures Pains and Asswagements to be such As for example when in the use of those Magnetick Remedies as some call them they can make the wound dolorously hot or chill at a great distance or can put it into perfect case this is not by any agency of emissary Atoms For these hot Atoms would cool sufficiently in their progress to the party through the frigid aire and the cold Atoms if they could be so active as to dispatch so far would be warm enough by their journey in the Summer Sun The inflammations also of the Cowes Udder by the boyling over of the milk into the fire the scalding of mens entrails at a distance by the burning of their excrements with other pranks of the like nature these cannot be rationally resolved into the recourse of the Spirits of Men or Kine mingled with fiery Atoms and so re-entring the parts thus affected because the minuteness of those toms argues the suddainness of their extinction as the smallest wires made red hot soonest cool To all which you may adde that notable example of the Wines working when the Vines are in the flower and that this sympathetick effect must be from the Vines of that country from which they came whence these exhalations of the Vineyards must spread as far as from Spain and the Canaries to England and by the same reason must reach round about every way as far from the Canaries besides their journey upwards into the Aire So that there will be an Hemisphere of vineall Atoms of an incredible extent unless they part themselves into trains and march onely to those places whither their Wines are carried But what corporeal cause can guide them thither Which question may be made of other Phaenomena of the like nature Whence again it will be necessary to establish the Principle I drive at though the effects were caused by the transmission of Atoms 4. The notablest examples of this Mundane Sympathy are in histories more uncertain and obscure and such as though I have been very credibly informed yet as I have already declared my self I dare onely avouch as possible viz. the Souls of men leaving their Bodies and appearing in shapes suppose of Cats Pigeons Wezels and sometimes of Men and that whatever hurt befalls them in these Astral bodies as the Paracelsians love to call them the same is inflicted upon their Terrestrial lying in the mean time in their beds or on the ground As if their Astral bodies be scalded wounded have the back broke the same certainly happens to their Earthly bodies Which things if they be true in all likelihood they are to be resolved into this Principle we speak of and that the Spirit of Nature is snatcht into consent with the imagination of the Soules in these Astral bodies or aiery Vehicles Which act of imagining must needs be strong in them it being so set on and assisted by a quick and sharp pain and fright in these scaldings woundings and stroaks on the back some such thing happening here as in women with child whose Fancies made keen by a suddain fear have deprived their children of their arms yea and of their heads too as also appears by two remarkable stories Sr. Kenelme Digby relates in his witty and eloquent Discourse of the Cure of Wounds by the powder of Sympathy besides what we have already recited out of Helmont See Lib. 2. Cap. 15. Sect. 8 9 10. 5. Which effects I suppose to be beyond the power of any humane Fancy unassisted by some more forceable Agent as also that prodigious birth he mentions of a woman of Carcassona who by her overmuch sporting and pleasing her self with an Ape while she was with Child brought forth a Monster exactly of that shape And if we should conclude with that learned Writer that it was a real Ape it is no more wonderfull nor so much as that birth of a Crabfish or Lobster we have above mentioned out of Fortunius Licetus as we might also other more usual though no less monstrous births for the wombs of women to bear Of which the Soul of the Mother cannot be suspected to be the cause she not so much as being the efformer of her own Foetus as that judicious Naturalist Dr. Harvey has determined And if the Mothers Soule could be the efformer of the Foetus in all reason her Plastick power would be ever particular and specifick as the Soul it self is particular What remains therefore but the universal Soule of the World or Spirit of Nature that can doe these feats who Vertumnus like is ready to change his own Activity and the yielding matter into any mode and shape indifferently as occasion engages him and so to prepare an edifice at least the more rude stroaks and delineaments thereof for any specifick Soule whatsoever and in any place where the Matter will yield to his operations But the time of the arrival thither of the particular guest it is intended for though we cannot say how soon it is yet we may be sure it is not later then a clear discovery of Sensation as well as Vegetation and organization in the Matter 6. The Attraction of the Load-stone seems to have some affinity with these instances of Sympathy This mystery Des-Cartes has explained with admirable artifice as to the immediate corporeal causes thereof to wit those wreathed particles which he makes to pass certain screw-pores in the Load-stone and Iron But how the efformation of these particles is above the reach of the meer mechanical powers in Matter as also the exquisite direction of their motion whereby they make their peculiar Vortex he describes about the Earth from Pole to Pole and thread an incrustated Star passing in a right line in so long a journey as the Diameter thereof without being swung to the sides how these