do not make use of their ignorance for the extracting from thence an Unintelligible Extraneous Spirit for the Government of a Humane Body Memory or Understanding The case of the Watch shews the thing moved and made a noise and the Indians did not and could not discover the cause thereof and therefore they concluded it was moved by a Spirit which contains the very Ground of your Argument viz. We understand not how a Material Agent can perform such a sort of acting Therefore there must be an Intelligent Spirit in the case or else such things could not be done yet if you will but make this Grant That a Man doth generate a Man as truly and perfectly as one Horse generates another it will prove like Archimedes his Postulatum of a Ground whereupon to fix his Instrument for thence will apparently follow all that in my Treatise hath been asserted For what is begotten and born of Flesh is Flesh and I would not advise you to venture upon the task of proving any other way of proceeding or framing of Humane Souls 7. Paragraph You pretend to prove an Intelligent Spirit in Man from the Power and Effects of Conscience in him You say no Beasts have it and yet it is very potent and prevalent in Man And I agree that Man hath a Conscience and that it hath a great Power in him and over him But I do not grant the Beasts are without it in a degree sutable to their Capacities and Understandings You say That Conscience in Man is natural to him or slows from his pure Natural Faculties unassisted by Education or Rules But this I deny and assert that Conscience in Man is not derived barely from Nature in such manner as his Vital Powers viz. Digestion Nutrition and Generation are nor as his Passionate Powers viz. his Ambition Covetousness Lust Wrath and Fear are nor as his Sensitive Powers or the use of this Senses are nor as his Rational Powers viz. his Understanding Phancy Memory Judgment are For all these Faculties are so natural to every Man that he can and doth act them and by them without either Rule Tutor or Example But Speech is not so natural nor is Conscience so natural but they must both be Learned and Directed by Rules Doctrine or Examples and then they may be varied and changed according as things shall fall out or it shall come into the Phancies of Men But without some sort of Education Rule Direction or Opinion there is no more Conscience in Man than in Beasts For take a Salvage Person bred up amongst Beasts he will not know that Killing in a Sin nor spare a Man in his Hunger or his Wrath any more than a Beast And for Adultery he is not capable of knowing it because he knows not what Marriage is And for Incest it is naturally so much unknown as that the first People practised it with Sisters lawfully and it seems Abraham thought it no Crime nor the Princes to whom he avowed it for that it pass'd without Punishment or Reproof from them And for Theft and Robbery it pass'd for a Glory amongst Barbarous People and so it doth amongst Conquerours at this day and it is counted a sufficient Crime for the Vaniquished to defend his Goods or Women from the Conquerour and he will yet be kill'd for so doing without any remorse or sense of Conscience in the Conquerour Nor is the Fact against Nature however Rules may perhaps determine otherwise I say then that Conscience is not an absolutely Natural Faculty in Man but rather is Faculty Complicated of Nature and other Adjuncts and Ingredients the Natural Powers that act in it are the Understanding the Memory and the Judgement and the Effects of it viz. Joy and Grief are also Natural but to compleat the Faculty of Conscience in Man there must be also some Rule for Direction of the Judgment whose proper Office is to compare the Fact and the Rule together and if they be found to agree the Effect is Joyous and Pleasing if they differ the Effect is Sorrow and Fear and the widelier they differ the stronger Effects are produced But say you these Effects are sometimes so potent and violent as they could not be if they did not proceed from an Intelligent Spirit Concerning which I will again quote to you Melanct. dicto lib. pag. 148. There he says Let our Students learn to admire the Wonderful Works of God in Man our Principal Powers and Faculties Vital Sensitive Affectionate Cogitative efficiuntur Spiritu Vitali Animali ideo aliqui dixerunt Animam esse hos Spiritus seu Flammulas Vitales Animales sua Luce superant Solis omnium Stellarum Lucem quod Mirabilius est his ipsis Spiritibus in Homibus piis miscetur ipse Divinus Spiritus and makes this Light in Man more Refulgent Active and Inclinable to apprehend Divine Truths and to practise accordingly And on the contrary When the Devil gets a Possession or but an Entrance amongst them he disturbs and tortures both Heart and Brain and drives them into Cruel Motions and manifest Furies And thus this Excellent Divine instructs us what are the proper Causes of the great and violent Stings of Conscience which you have chosen for a strong Proof of an Intelligent Immaterial Spirit in Man And that Conscience is not barely from Nature but is a Complex of Nature and Rules there are divers Texts of Scripture which may be cited to prove Rom. 2. St. Paul says Men do by Nature the things contained in the Law of Moses this intends a Cultivated Nature ordered and directed by other Rules although they were ignorant of Moses's Law and those other Rules became to them a Law written in their hearts which if they followed their Conscience was satisfied and if they acted contrary to those Rules their Consciences accused them for it St. Paul's Nature in this place therefore intends not Nature in puris naturalibus utterly unpolished and barbarous or salvage and naked of Rules Education and Examples but such a Nature as hath submitted it self to some Rules Education or Example though they be utterly ignorant of Moses's Laws Rom. 5.13 Though sin those acts which are sinful were in the world until or before the Law yet sin is not imputed where there is no Law or Rule to direct the Judgment and therefore without some sort of Rule rising from Institution Example or Opinion as there can no Sin be imputed so no Consciousness of Sin nor Sting of Conscience for it So Rom. 7.7 I had not known sin but by the Law some Rule Education or Example which taught me that this is Sin bare or salvage Nature would not have taught me what was a Sin and what was not John 9.41 Our Lord says to the Pharisees If you were blind purely ignorant ye should have no sin Chap. 15.22 If I had not spoken to them instructed them they had not had sin 1 John 3.4 Sin is the Transgression
those of Sensation And Lastly in the Rational and Superior Powers of Understanding Phancy Memory Judgment and Will You have required of me Proofs how such things are or can be acted in Man by a Material Spirit to shew the hardship of such an Imposition I now demand the like of you on behalf of an Immaterial Spirit not believing that you will undertake the Imployment or that you or any other man can make a good performance of it or discover so much on that behalf as I have but now done on behalf of the Material One It seems my Demand upon you may pass lege talionis it is thereby done to you as you thought fit to do viz. Bind an heavy Burthen and lay it upon others Shoulders which it may be you will avoid touching with one of your fingers believing the whole to be much too heavy for you and this shall finish the Answer to your Demand of the Quomodo operatur Anima Materialis in Homine 2 Paragraph Here you raise an Argument for the Immateriality from the Acts and Powers of Conscience in Man which you think cannot grow or be derived from Matter and Motion I grant it is no more derived from meer Matter and Motion than the other Faculties of Man are God who created both Matter and Motion and acts them in Plants Insects Fowls and Beasts to the Production of all that is done amongst them acts them also in Mankind to the Instruction and for the Guidance of their Natures and Actions the Conscient Powers in Man viz. his Understanding Memory and Judgment I have said are Natural and the Effects of Conscience viz. Content and Joy or Sorrow and Fear are also Natural but to the Constitution and Compleating of Conscience there must also be allowed some Rules Examples or Conceptions to which Men have submitted their Minds in such manner as to believe what is done according to those Directions is well done and what is contrary to them is a Fault or Offence And this Conscience I say is common to Beasts as well as Men though not so much or in so high a Degree but according to the proportion of Understanding amongst them A Child young hath no perceivance of Conscience but as it grows to the Cognizance of Rules it becomes subjected to the Strokes and Stings of Conscience How are Beasts taught Duty but by Rewards and Punishments the Remembrances of which act upon them so as to make them correct a Failure in Duty by a quick correcting of themselves in Action and Amendment thereupon And what is Conscience in Man more than a Perceiving or an Apprehension that he hath acted against his Rule which hath gotten the Ascendent over him and for which he hath an Expectation of Punishment or Suffering such so great so lasting and intolerable as those who have delivered the Rules to him have taught him to conceive and apprehend but that amongst Men that are Savage and utterly uncultivated by any sort of Education without Rules or Laws of any sort amongst such Persons there is no Transgression nor Conscience of Sin viz. no Conscience at all And we may compare the Faculty of Conscience to that of Speech amongst Men they are things to which Humane Nature hath a great Aptitude and Inclination but yet they are not so Natural as to grow out of bare Nature without any sort of Instruction or Teaching whatsoever Mothers and Nurses commonly give the first Rudiments of them both and they receive Alterations according as future Informers and Practices get Power over them High Expectations of Eternal Rewards or Punishments are able to transport Men and have transported some with ardent Desires others with Afflictions and terrible Fears so as they are throughly perswaded and convinced of such Future States as we are taught to believe if upon Examinatien of the Conscient Powers the Man find his Actions contrary to his Rules and that therefore he is in a State of unmeasurable ill expectations It seems natural and likely that this man shall be apt to fall under the tyranical dominion of his Fear and that he needs no Immaterial Power to induce such Conceptions in him or inflict such Rigors upon him his own Connatural Conscient Powers and the Cruelty and Tyranny of his Fear thence arising are enough and if any farther addition be needful I have before quoted Melanchton That a Diabolical assistance is often ready to act in such cases for making the Effects more atrocious and remarkable without needing the Opinion of a Soul 's being Immaterial for Solution of the Quaery of the Quomodo such things are possible to be done And though the Acts of Conscience be Natural yet the Rules which govern it are chiefly if not only the Apprehensions or Opinions of the Persons under Trial growing from Education Institution Example Observation Opinion or Conceipt however Superstitious or Fallacious the same may be To what you say That you had given Instances concerning Acts of Conscience and Terrour upon them in Persons who were above all Prejudice or Fear I answer That no Man can be above these Adjuncts or Qualifications but all Educated Persons have always been taught to believe and fear a Divine Being and Vengeance even when Jupiter and Apollo Woden and Frea past in the World for their Prime Deities And it seems observable that however highly a supposed Immaterial Spirit may impress Terrour upon the Conscience yet let any man come and demonstrate convincingly that there is a mistake in that the Fact is not against the Rule or that the Rule it self is an Errour and so the Wrath and Vengeance of God not due or reasonably to be expected to follow upon such Failures Such an Opinion and Belief must and will naturally appease and cure the greatest Horrours of a Troubled Conscience and do it as substantially as a Physician can cure any other Disease whatsoever viz. by removing and curing the Efficient Causes of it You demand of me How Rules for Direction for Conscience came to Men at the first when there were but few Persons in the World and Customs or Conceipts were not so various or common as of later times they are grown To this I answer That the only Persons in the World free from Prejudices and Rules imposed upon them by Education were our first Parents Adam and his Wife and to them we read God gave an Express Rule viz. Of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil thou shalt not eat of it for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die Next we read of Mens sacrificing to God for which I do not perceive any ground in Reason or Nature viz. That Man should or could from Reason invent or conceive that the killing or shedding the Blood of Bulls Rams or Goats should be pleasing or acceptable to the Omnipotent God Whence I collect that this early Practice amongst Men sprung from the Positive Direction of God and soon after this Practice began Cain
of the Law not known to bare Nature And finally Rom. 4.15 Where no Law is there is not transgression so no Conscience accusing or approving And all this proves That Conscience in Man is not an Act purely Natural but a Complex Act of and Educated Nature under the Direction of some sort of Rules You say That Man hath a kind of Natural Expectation of receiving Rewards or Punishments as soon as he departs this Life I grant only Such a kind of Natural as Education and Custom can make Men expect to receive what they are taught and therefore do believe will be given them if taught to believe receiving as soon as they are dead their Expectation will be sutable if taught to defer their Expectations till the Resurrection and Christ's Second Coming to Judgement it will be as easie and natural to expect the Rewards and Punishments at that time as to do it at the time of our Deaths Either of them is enough effective in us to create an Endeavour of Obtaining the Future Rewards and Avoiding such Punishments by the greatest Endeavours that in this Life can be used Knowing that there is no Work nor Device in the Grave whither we go But as the Tree falls so it is like to lie and as Death leaves Men so Judgment shall find them And we are therefore as much concerned to provide for a good departure out of this World in respect to the time of our Resurrection as if we expected an immediate Reward or Punishment from the time of our Death For that once dead in my Sense we are not are no more concerned in time nor the passing of it but shall rise again as if we had lain down but the hour before You say You cannot believe that the Primitive Martyrs would have died so cheerfully had they not thought that they exchanged this life for a better immediately But I believe they might do it in expectation of a Crown to be given them at that day the Great Day of General Doom or Judgement and so says Peter Martyr in his Common Places This is the consolation of the godly afflicted in this world they have an eye to the Resurrection and thereupon quiet themselves And again Martyrs in death were comforted by belief of the Resurrection And Heb. 11.35 Martyrs were tortured not accepting Deliverance that they might obtain a better Resurrection So 1 Thess 4.15 Paul comforts them is sorrow for their dead Friends not by giving them assurance of their being gone to Heaven but by assurance of the Resurrection the manner of which he there describes to them You say You have known some die with great chearfulness and in full expectation of an immediate transportation to Heaven by the ministry of Angels And I doubt not but your Assertion may be true for Men learn to believe and practise as they are taught And I doubt not but the Jews Turks Hereticks and the Old Women before-mentioned may be found dying some of all sorts with great Constancy and a good Assurance and Expectation of Future Felicity each of them in their own Way but my Opinion is that God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the World by the Man whom he hath ordained and that it is appointed for Men once to die and after that the Judgment at which all must appear and give account for their own Works The happiness which I desire before that day is that it may be said to me as to Daniel Go thy way Leave this life and wait till the end be for thou shalt rest and stand in the Lot at the end of the days the assured hope of a joyful Resurrection Paragraph 8. You grant that there do not occur in the Scriptures the Terms or Words of a Separately subsisting or Immaterial Soul I had said also not that of Immortal Soul and you might as well have granted that too for that neither you nor I can find it there You say I take the word Soul in Scripture very often to signifie Life or Person and you grant that in Hebrew it doth so But say I we find the like in Greek also for in St. Paul's Shipwrack there were in the Ship two hundred seventy six Souls alias Persons You say That in my Opinion I follow my friend Mr. Hobbs I say I follow nothing but Common Sense and Reason in it and that if Mr. Hobbs have said the same things I see no reason to think that strange but proceeding in both from one Common Principle which makes our Construction obvious to the Reason of Mankind If I had ever had the knowledge of Mr. Hobbs his Opinion or Writings I know no cause to reject or refuse the owning of it but for Truth 's sake I tell you that I never saw the Man but once and that without changing one word nor did I ever peruse any of his Writings to my remembrance nor have I received any light proceeding from him and you are the first Discoverer to me and the only that his Sense and mine agree in it Paragraph 9. You examine Solomon's Expression The dust shall return to the earth as it was and the spirit to God who gave it Concerning this Expression my Treatise shews That Spirit and Breath are often used in the same signification and may pass for Synonyma's Gen. 2.7 God made Man of the dust and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and Man became a living soul viz. a living person Ante. Roccius in his Book De Anima page 20. says The Souls of Animals or Brutes had a like beginning to those of Men quamvis per Emphasin ob majorem Animae Humanae dignitatem de ipsa id exactius exprimitur Very probable it seems that God gave to Brutes the Breath of Life as well as to Men Although as he says Moses hath not exprest it that by Spirit here may be intended the Breath and Life or the Breath of Life seems to me not unlikely And whatsoever the Sense may be or whether spoken by Solomon according to common conception or that he spake it as you take it for the last result of his Judgment I mean thereupon to follow Sir Walter Raleigh's Direction viz. In all dark and hard Questions the most easie and best end of them is to say I will not dispute that So I will not farther dispute the intent of Solomon in this place but willingly leave you and all men at liberty to think thereof as their Reason or Phancy shall direct and I hope for a like permission from other Men. Paragraph 10. You quote St. Matthew Fear not them who can only kill the Body but not the Soul Also St. Luke's Text in the same point which names not the Soul at all And you say We may perceive that the substance and intent of Christ's Doctrine was the same in both places viz. That the Body being mortal may be killed but the Soul not so Whether this your Assertion be true or
maintain the Truth But say you I cannot be sure that the Materiality is a Truth I grant that I am not sure but I would be sure if I knew how to be so and therefore I applied to you for obtaining your chief Arguments against it And I am ready to do so to any other likely Person capable to assist me in searching the Truth concerning it And therefore in my Observations upon Dr. Bentley's Sermon Intituled Matter and Motion cannot think I have requested and even provoked him to perform his promise made in that Sermon viz. that he will make good Proof of the Souls Immateriality from some positive Grounds Rational or Scriptural For that his telling us that God cannot make Men and act them by a Material Spirit nor by any other means but by an Immaterial Intelligent Spirit seems to me precarious erroneus and arbitrary in him And I think I may as well say God can make Man and act him by a Material Spirit as well as he hath done with his inferior Creatures and for ought that hitherto appears to me I think it most likely that he hath so done This finishes my Reply to my Friends Third Opposition after which I received a Fourth Paper of the like Nature Dated 6. Nov. 93 divided into 8 Paragraphs 1. Paragraph Concerned only the intent or meaning of Paul in his term of Nature whether intended absolutely in puris Naturalibus or cultivated by Education Rule or Example 2. Paragraph Was concerning my Expression of making Men trust in a Lye 3. Paragraph I Reply to it You seem to think that God can make Matter Cogitative and will not deny that to be in his Power and we are agreed in that but you think God hath not done so I think he hath done so and this it seems need not be determined but remain a Dissention without making it a Difference the Proof on either side appearing a very great difficulty 4. Paragraph Desiring to shew that there is a Knowledge of what is Morally good or bad Grounded in Nature Unassisted by Rules Education or Institution You Cite an Instance in Cain who you think knew he had sinned in killing his Brother and that before his Nature was assisted by Rules or positive Institution Here I say are Two Assertions First that he knew the Fact to be wicked next he knew this by simple Nature unassisted by any Rule or Institution whatsoever To the First I Answer It doth not appear in the Text that he knew that his Fact to be a Crime You say it appears upon the Margent The Text says My Punishment is greater than I can bear The Margent says Mine Iniquity is greater than can be forgiven Evident it is that the Complaint succeeds immediately to the Sentence pronounced after that Fact which induces me to believe it applicable to the Punishment rather than to the Sin and that therefore the Reading put into the Text by our Translators is more likely to be the true and proper Reading than that upon the Margent But if that which you pretend should be admitted and the Marginal Reading should be accepted Yet it seems the State of Cain at that time was not a State of bare and simple Nature unassisted by Institution or Rules For Adam was Divinely Instructed and probably brought up his Children under Discipline or a directive Education They were Taught the use of Sacrificing and vers 7. God himself gave Cain Directions for his Instruction in Morality and Piety Hence to me it seems your instance of Cain doth not enough prove that Conscience without Rules or Instruction is a Natural Guide to direct Men in their Actions able to make a true Distinction betwixt evil and good Rom. 5.13 For until the Law Sin was in the World but Sin is not imputed when there is no Law And Chap. 7.7 I had not known Sin but by the Law Vers 13. Sin by the Commandment became exceeding sinful viz. until or before the Law bad Actions were Sins but not imputed because not known to be Sins but when Institution and Laws have detected or discovered to Mankind the Sin of such Actions viz. that they are Sins against God and his Laws This knowledge makes that which before was a Sin though not imputed to become by such Revelation exceeding sinful First a Sin in it self and next as made known to the acter by the Law or some other Institution that it is a Sin You give no farther or other Answer to what I had largely spoken concerning the Nature and Operation of Conscience in Man I desired to know your Apprehensions concerning the same and your silence therein seems to admit of my Conceptions thereupon as firm or probable 5. Paragraph You say I desire to know of you whence Humane Affections and their Powers grow You Answer They grow from the Corruption of Mans Nature by the Fall of Adam and the Curse attending it to evince which it seems you should shew what Man 's Nature was before the fall and wherein and how far the same became Corrupted upon that Occasion But that is a thing which I think you neither know nor have means to discover and that therefore we are driven to consider Humane Nature as we now find it so considered It is found and you grant that Affections and Passions have a very great Power in disposing of Humane Actions and the Applications and Practices of the same that they do very often and most commonly over-power and mislead the National Faculty and its Dependencies and drive or draw the Person Soul and Body into very impure and wicked Practices even reclamante Ratione and maugre all the Spiritual Powers which ordinarily they meet with in Mankind And these Affections Ambition Covetousness Lust and the Passions Wrath and Fear are as natural to Man as his Vital and Rational Faculties are All Men have them and one who hath them not is not perfect in his Nature The Beasts have them viz. Lust Wrath and Fear and they act with as much Violence and Power in the Beasts as in the Men And our First Parents had them before the Fall The Woman saw the Tree was good for Food and pleasant to the Taste hereby was her Lust tempted And a Fruit desirable to make one Wise here was her Ambition tempted and by these Affections Satan prevailed as amongst Men of our times he daily doth to draw our First Parents into the ruinous Accomplishments of Sin and Wickedness I say then The Affections and Passions appear to grow not as an effect of Adam's Fall but as a Fruit of Natural Production and from the same Principles and Originals that his Nutritive Generative and other Vital Powers do grow that his other Sensitive and his Rational Faculties do also grow They seem to have one same Original and that they are as Natural to Man as any of the other are and that they have received no more Detriment or Vitiated Quality from the Fall than the other
founded upon Rules and whether those Rules are right or wrong really their being accepted for right makes them obligatory to the Party accepting them so as Offences against Erroneous Rules reputed true are equally burthensome to the Conscience as if they were the most true and rectified that can be delivered to Men and yet they are capable of a more easie Cure viz. by discovery of the Falsity and Errour of them Hence may be inferred that without some sort of Rules and Submission to them the Acts and Power of Conscience are not perceivable which shews they do not flow from the Soul Material or Immaterial but from Education Custom Opinion and Rules to which Actions must be compared for without such a Comparison Judgment cannot be made whether they are right or wrong That Conscience grows as aforesaid appears also from diversity in the acts of it for some Men make a great scruple of Conscience to do things which others think they are bound in duty to do and cannot omit them without check of their Conscience whereas Immaterial Souls pass for all alike And if Conscience were a Natural Efflux from them there could not be such difference and contrariety in the Acts of it I have observed how it grows in Children and Beasts from the effects of their Education made powerful in them by the terrour of a Humane Vengeance expected to follow upon their swerving from the Rules of their Discipline and which the apprehension of Legal Punishments hath often inflicted upon Offenders before Temporal Execution overtook them The Conscience of Sins against God is of a like nature and the Terrour of it grows from Fear that he being offended for the Breach of what Men are perswaded he hath commanded to be done or not done will inflict terrible punishments for the same of unimaginable torment and endless duration as Men are taught to believe and expects by such Rules and Doctrines as are daily represented to them and pressed upon their apprehensions and belief And thus have I summed and shortned my formerly longer Expressions concerning Conscience to which I shall be glad to receive a reasonable Answer either long or short 4. Paragraph You quote the words Whatsoever is not of faith is sin and you say Faith here signifies Conscience My sense of those Words is Whatsoever Men do believing it to be a Sin that is a Sin in them though the Action in it self be good but if it be contrary to those Rules to which a Man hath submitted himself this is a Sin against the Mans Conscience though if there were no accepted Rule against it there would be no transgression in it You express also to think that Beasts cannot be brought by any Education to resist and conquer their Appetites forgetting what formerly I said of a Setting Dog whose Mouth will water and his Chaps move and all his Members and Motions shew a great Desire to be in with his Game and yet he will sit for a long time constrained by the remembrance of punishment to be expected and executed upon his doing otherwise And many instances may be produced of other Bestial Actions in this kind You make it my wonder That Sensual Powers do for much the greater part over-rule the Rational and prevail against it You say I may likely find it often so in my self and I grant it and therefore is that none of my wonder And you demand From whence comer Mens uneasiness of Mind upon such occasions I answer It comes from finding their Actions do not agree with their Rules and therefore not with their Duties for the Failure in which they expect punishment less or more according as their Delicts may seem to deserve not from Powers of Nature in its Simplicity but its Cultivated Capacity under the Conduct of Rules Examples or Opinions to which Men have submitted their Minds and this makes men nocent as the contrary makes men innocent in the judgment of their own Underftanding which is their Conscience 5 Paragr Upon your maintaining That Mans Soul is an Immaterial Intelligent Spirit created each for the Government of each Person I demand Whence it comes that this Soul doth not or cannot so prevail with or over the Person whom it should Govern as to keep it in Rational and Vertuous Ways of Living and Practice but that the far greater number of people follow Vicious Practices contrary to Right Reason and the Desire and Design of such an Intelligent Spirit And the true Cause of my wonder is What that can be in Man which hath Power to oppose and overthrow the Government and Command of this Kind of Soul in him To this you answer You say with St. James This comes from mens lusts which war in their members To you I reply and ask From what Original in Man do such Lusts grow viz. Affections Passions Sensualities Either they grow from the same Originals with Reason and his other Faculties viz. from the Contexture of his Soul and Body or from some other Cause You say I should not wonder at the thing for that universal Experience teaches that so it is This I grant and therefore do not wonder at the being so of the thing but at the Cause and Manner how this comes to pass viz. from what Original in Man this Effect can grow Apparent it seems that Affections and Passions in Man grow from the Contexture of his Soul and Body as all his other Powers and Faculties do and are Natural to him for one that hath them not is not a compleat Man But if their Energy proceed from Mans Soul a Spirit governing this Soul in acting the Affections and Passions so vigorously seems to act blindly and unintelligently or else that it is divided against it self and therefore its Kingdom cannot stand but such Lusts as it self produceth and acteth prevail to overthrow its Government and bring the poor indiscreet Soul under the Pestilent Power of Sin and Satan If thus it be not I desire you will Answer what I Object in this Point which is that Mans Soul acts against reason and its own Interest in so highly actuating of these Lusts or which is far more likely that the Humane Soul is not Intelligent For what you say concerning St. Paul's Text Rom. 9. I hold with you that many places of Scripture do testifie a Power in Man to act for his own Advancement in Piety and towards future Happiness And I assent to that Opinion the rather for that the same is consonant to the reason of Mankind but to agree this Opinion with St. Paul's Text is beyond my Capacity and I should be glad to know your manner of doing it You mention ill effects from the Opinion of the Materiality Omnia tuta timens consonant to the Nature of Zeal and Affection That in your Exhortations you have a great respect to the Resurrection and last Judgment I think to be well done and upon very firm Grounds but for the Immateriality it seems no