Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	action_n	answer_v	apostle_n	22	3	5.2306	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A86451	The grand prerogative of humane nature namely, the souls naturall or native immortality, and freedome from corruption, shewed by many arguments, and also defended against the rash and rude conceptions of a late presumptuous authour, who hath adventured to impugne it. By G.H. Gent.	Holland, Guy, 1587?-1660.	1653 (1653)	Wing H2417; Thomason E1438_2; ESTC R202443	95,057	144

from the starres and the Poets in relation also to this did feign that Prometheus stole fire from heaven wherewith he gave life to his men of clay which he had made Now fire as we know is an element alwayes in action yea even then when it is raked up in ashes for even then it works both upon the food that maintains it and also on the adjoyning bodies Wherefore no charm no medicine soporiferous can cast the spirit of man into such a dull and deadly heavinesse as it shall not so much as have a feeling of it self nor be awaked by any other voice then that of the last trumpet which shall with a dreadful found call all to judgement and which noise shall be heard even by bodies then which there is nothing more dead or more corrupted nothing farther off from life as having the atomes of which they were composed now all disordered and scattered with the wind and therefore that soul which can be rouzed up by a voice no lower must needs be more then a sleep or laid down to rest Sleep is a thing different from Death though nearly allied unto it as Seneca doth signifie in the Prosopopeia following Et tu somne domitor laborum Pars humanae melier vitae c. Sharp sorrows tamer steep that art Of life humane the choicer part Astrea's off-spring here beneath Faint brother unto pallid Death Consanguineus Lethi Sopor saith another Sleep is Death's kinsman but how near we will not examine and yet so near we are sure as to a spirituall or intellectuall substance they are both one and one of them as destructive of life in it as the other because though they in themselves be things distinct yet sleep is as deadly to the soul as death it self is to the body and can agree as little with it because though sense can rest from action yet reason cannot in regard there is a greater and a more eminent kinde of vivacity in the one then in the other If the Authours of this phantasie would be understood let them declare first what kinde of Entity they take a spirit to be secondly seeing a spirit hath no body to rest nor senses to shut up nor vitall or animall spirits to repair what this sleep of a spirit is I mean how they will define it If they cannot do this then are they bunglers and speak they know not what and therefore not regardable If they say it is a cessation from action and from possibility immediate of action then hath a spirit no life left in it more then a stone or a dead body and so in this case to sleep and to dy signify the same thing though in terms that are different Yet say that they indeed could tell us what kind of thing this sleep should be that same is not enough unlesse besides they do prove it strongly for such extravagancies as this is are not to be admitted without convincing arguments to make them good Let us hear then what their arguments be and let us consider also of what weight CHAP. IX Volkelius his Arguments for this Errour examined and refuted VOlkelius a known man and a most principall Socinian is the stoutest Champion in this attempt therefore let us hear him what he saith Holy men saith he after their change of this present life with death are said in the Scripture not to be any longer Psal 39.14.37.10 Jerem. 21.15 Matth. 2.18 Thren 5.6 and being dead do neither live actually nor understand c. And though the spirits of men return to him that gave them as shall be demonstrated elsewhere yet that those same spirits be persons which do any thing or be sensible or do now enjoy pleasures everlasting is a thing so farre off from being taught us by the holy Scripture as on the contrary side it is easily shewed to be repugnant to them and that also by reasons very evident For Paul affirmeth that if the resurrection of the dead were not to be hoped for a vain thing it were to think of piety or for the Truth 's sake to undergo so manifold calamities and that of all men the Christians would be the most miserable Which assertion of his could not be true of the souls of men without the resurrection were setled in such pleasures and authority as that they did not onely enjoy a good eternall but were also in a state to give assistance unto others because that same felicity of theirs would be so great as scarcely no accession might be made unto it by the resurrection Thus reasoneth Volkelius My answer to the first part is by denying it to be said in Scripture simply and absolutely that souls departed or men departed have no Being at all but onely that they have no being upon the earth in regard that by dying they cease not only to be men any longer of this world but even to be men as before death they had been and this must needs be the true meaning of the places quoted by the Adversary in the Margin and not that other which he pretendeth because it is a thing most evident both in reason and in holy Scripture also that the parts of which men are composed be not annihilated by death without any remnant of Being left them but that they cease onely to be united or to be men in respect of which deficiency alone it might be truely affirmed of men as it is in Scripture that after death they are not in being To the second part I say that although the soul after separation from the body be not a person humane or an entity compleat yet still hath it a stable subsistence and leaveth not to be a substance intellectuall or a spirit Wherefore it doth not follow that because the soul is not a person or a compleat entity after separation that therefore it can have no action but must either sleep or dy The soul be it separated or united is a spirit a spirit is intellective an intellective substance can neither dy nor wholly cease from action as before hath been proved and therefore is not capable either of sleep or slumber or in any danger of being benummed and much lesse of death To the third I answer that the Apostle speaketh there not of Christian souls being miserable but of Christian mens being so and therefore let the souls be never so happy after death yet if there should be no resurrection the men could be never otherwise then miserable yea farre more miserable then any other men because in this life they should be afflicted in a higher degree then others and in the next they should not be at all You will say What matter is it if the men be miserable in this world and never happy in any world so the souls in the next world be made happy In opposition to this I say Yes it is a matter and a very great matter also if we will weigh things rightly for to be miserable in

Augustus c. do all note this contrariety of desires in man but none do note the same to be in beasts for even Plutarch in his Gryllus doth observe the contrary Thus we see what opposition reason finds in man from sense but reason cannot be contrary unto it self nor doth it struggle and strive with its own powers and dictamens and therefore it is a different power from sense And so much in answer to this chapter omitting the particular examination of his other inferences of absurdities as he calls them against the doctrine of immortality because either they are answered beforehand in that which hath been said already or else are such wretched fluffe as they can afford no matter for any sensible answer or serious undertaking CHAP. V. Arefutation of certain shifting Answers given unto sundry Texts of holy Scripture THe first place 2 Cor. 5.6.8 where Saint Paul declareth that while we are present or at home 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the body we are absent from our Lord but he desireth rather to be absent from the body and to be present with our Lord. Out of this it may be inferred not that immediately after death we all shall be present with God and attain to glory as this Authour idlely objecteth but that during the time of our absence from the body we may be present with Christ and enjoy God whether this be immediately after death or no about which point we do not now contend His answer is that the Apostle speaks not of the interim betwixt Death and the last Judgement but of the state of the Resurrection This Glosse of his corrupts the Text for the state of the Resurrection is not the state of separation or separated souls but the Apostle speaks plainly and expresly of absence or peregrination from the body which is the state of separation during which state he might as he saith be present with Christ I do not deny but that in the precedent and subsequent Texts he may speak also of the Resurrection but it does not therefore follow that he speaks of that state onely and as for his words they clearly bear witnesse to the contrary therefore after death and before any re-union with the body the soul remaineth And by this clear sense his second shift is taken away whereby he seeks to elude a like place of the same Apostle Phil. 1.23 24. Gen. 35.18 It is said of a woman that her soul was departing therefore there was such a thing as a soul that continued after death He answers that the meaning was she died Be it so yet the words do not import that onely but besides that this dying of hers was by the departing of her soul from her body and not by the perishing or destruction of the soul departing For example when we say The enemy is departed from such or such a place we do not mean he is slain but onely gone and do intimate that he is still alive She could not die saith he if her soul were living This is both false and also absurd for it was not the living of her soul which made her live but the being of it living within her body and the informing of it with the same as then this presence and union of a living soul made her live so on the contrary side the taking away of this presence and dissolving this union must make her die to which effect the living of her soul afterward or the dying of it was a businesse impertinent for whether it after lived or died it being once separated she was dead and remained no woman any longer for the soul of a man or woman is not a man or woman though indeed the Platonicks together with Cicero Macrobius and Hierocles not knowing any thing of the Resurrection and of glorified bodies yet being sure that man was to remain and be rewarded after death they knew not how to defend this truth without their holding an errour viz. that the soul onely was the man and the body but as a prison of it but Aristotle he was wiser than to think so for he defined man not Anima rationalis but Animal rationale and this Doctrine is truly Christian and Philosophicall taught expresly by Marcus Varro apud Augustinum lib. 19. de Civit. dei cap. 3. His choice of the three opinions is saith S. Augustine of Varro that man is neither soul alone nor body alone but body and soul together and therefore that the supream good of man which is to make him happy consists in the goods of both that is to say of soul and body and by Saint Athanasius in his Creed Anima rationalis caro unus est homo Aquinas 1. p.q. 75. c. 4. A reasonable soul and flesh is one man and by Saint Methodius Bishop of Olympus in Lycia and afterwards of Tyrus in excerptis apud Photium Cod. 224. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A man according to nature is most truely said to be neither a soul without a body nor yet a body without a soul but a compound of them both joyned together in one form and beauty Thus he with whom consenteth the Prince of Roman Historians Crispus Salustius l. de Bello Jugurth Nam uti genus hominum compositum ex corpore et anima est c. For as the race of man is compounded of body and soul c. All these according with Aristotle who would not feign false principles for the avoiding of true difficulties which he could not solve though now they dissolve of themselves the Article of the Resurrection and of glorified bodies having been revealed to us which before was Mysterium à seculis absconditum A mystery hidden from the beginning of the world But after all this light some mens eyes it seems were dazzeled with it and by name John Wicliffes who as we may see in Waldensis tom 1. l. 1. ar 2. c. 33. 34. adhered still to the false opinion of Plato concerning the souls being the whole man and also stood stifly in the defense thereof his reasons for it are examined and effectually impugned by the same Waldensis in the places cited Dicaearchus an ancient Peripatetick ranne into another extreme holding that man was nothing else but body and that he had no soul at all neither mortall nor immortall which grosse errour of his needed no confutation but was hissed out of the schools as an open and manifest falshood Besides if it had not been manifestly false yet needed it no other confutation then those arguments by which the immortality thereof is proved to be a truth because according to the received old Maxime Rectum est index sui et obliqui The rest of the Authours evasions of this nature are forestalled and prevented by this that hath been answered already and so without any more ado about them may be dismissed Fear not them saith Christ who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul Therefore when the body is killed

be to make this forme to consist of both forme and matter and so to compound man of one forme and two matters one spirituall and the other corporeall yea and indeed by admitting materiality in Angels to make them lesse pure and simple then the soules of mortall men which to doe might seem to be a device in reality very simple True it is that matter taken in a large sense that is to say for potentiality and as contradistinguished to a pure actuality may be admitted in spirituall substances but yet this makes nothing for the dissolution of them into parts or for corruptibility of which kinde of materiality or composition the learned school-Doctour Thomas de Argentina hath said enough to satisfie 2. sent d. 3. q. 1. Moreover admit that properly speaking a spirituall matter were possible because some few Doctours be of that opinion and amongst the rest our countrieman Mr. Thomas Carleton aliàs Compton in his Philosophy lately published disp 9. this opinion of theirs does not take away the force of the argument first because we are not to consider what opinion this or that man does holde but contrariwise what he hath reason to hold secondly because if I hold this spirituall matter to be a thing implicatory and a fiction or that my reader do also think the same then according to our judgements at the least the argument is good and efficacious Neither is it requisite that no argument should be produced or be thought efficacious save onely such as in every Doctours judgement should be accounted such and to be concluding because then perhaps we should bring none neither for this same verity of immortality nor yet for any other wherefore although peradventure Scotus his sub-Philosopher Pontius or Arriaga or Carleton should not like of this or that argument we are not therefore to reject it as not concluding or as a proof that is not probable or conducing to the decision of the point in hand But of the impossibility and improbability of this composition of matter and forme in spirituall substances see more in Lud. Moeratius tom 1. tract de Angelis disp 3. For the neglecting therefore of shifting answers to the arguments usually brought in the behalf of immortality the advice of Mr. Carleton is very prudent who disp 10. de Anima admonisheth saying In my judgement they doe not discreetly who go about to weaken arguments used to be brought by Philosophers and Divines for the soul's immortality and might more fruitfully for the Christian Common-wealth have imployed themselves in seeking to establish this doctrine which is the foundation of virtue then in picking quarrells at the arguments for no reason is so strong which by some shiftings may not be obscured For indeed out of that which hath been delivered touching the non-traduction of the soul by any seminall way or principles of propagation the deduction of the soul's incorruptibility will be a businesse very plain and easie and this by virtue of a twofold consequence the former of which is drawn from the soul 's not generating or active generation the later from the not being generated or passive generation Touching the former it is clear that whatsoever substance doth not generate that same is immortall even by Natures universall provision and ordination for as much as in all her workes she affects one kinde of perennity or other that is to say either a perpetuity of the individuall by an indeficient stability of the natural principles or else at least in the species by the intervention of generation and corruption so that wheresoever there is no propagation or acts of generation assigned for the maintaining a secondary immortality in the species there must of necessity be granted a primary and better immortality in the individuum Hence it followeth that because a man doth not generate with his minde but with his body therefore his body is corruptible in it self and perpetuall onely in the species and again that his minde or soul is immortall in it self and subjected no way to corruption not standing in need of any help or supplies from generation Touching the later it is manifest that every entity which is not produced by generation is not generable and therefore not corruptible That it is not generable we gather hence because whatsoever entity is by nature generable every such entity requires as by a connaturall way to be produced by generation as in like manner every entity that is simple requireth whensoever it is produced to be produced by no other way but creation By this it follows that whatsoever is produced and not by generation is by Natures laws ingenerable and so by consequence incorruptible and immortall But the minde or soul of man is produced and not by generation therefore it is an entity incorruptible That it is not generated hath been proved before as also that it doth not generate for a minde or rationall Soul cannot generate nor be generated by any other agent then a rational Soul nor by any other actions then acts of reason understanding by which acts since it procreates nothing which is like it self nor intends to do it the soul is neither generated nor doth it generate therefore according to the principles of being and the laws of Nature must be immortal unsubject to death or desition not be in any possibility to be corrupted by the virtue of agents natural The learned Sennertus being moved by certain difficulties which he could not overcome was very inclinable to think the Soul is generated and that the seed it self from the beginning is animated with a humane Soul Sennertus in Hypom 4. c. 10. but he together with Justus Lipsius reflecting upon the consent of Divines unto the contrary doth with him religiously submit and subscribe Pareamus Let us obey As for the said difficulties I do not finde them very urgent but that they may conveniently be avoided as we intend to shew in the next Chapter As for the reasons themselves which prove the immortality immediately without any dependency upon traduction from parents or not traduction they are often plentifully exhibited both by Philosophers Divines as namely by Javel l. de indificentia An. written by him at the earnest request of Pomponat who was sorry for his former errour retracted it by Scaliger Exer. 307. n. 20. by the Conimbricenses Tract de Anima separata also briefly and pithily by Eustachius Assellius à S. Paulo in summa Philosophiae Renatus de Cartes in his Metaph. his Principia Philosophica and sundry others and amongst Divines by Albert. magnus 2. sent d. 19. Antoninus in summ by Aquinas in both his Summes Raymund Sebunde in his Naturalis Theoloria Barthol Sibylla in Quaest Peregg Dec. 1. Lud. Vives l. de veritate fidei Christ. Postellus in Concordia Orbis Savonarola in Triumpho Crucis Vellosillus Advertentiis in S. Aug. Greg. de Val. Tom. 1. Lessius l. de immort Jo. Mariana l. de