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. Now first published according to the perfect Copie and the Authours mind Math. 22.32 I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living LONDON Printed by ROGER DANIEL and are to be sold by Antony Williamson at the Queens Armes in St. Pauls Church-yard An. 1653. THE PREFACE SO great and sovereigne to Man hath been the benignity of indulgent Nature as that she hath not only bestowed upon his soul above those of other creatures the high and singular Prerogative of immortality but hath moreover imparted to him light whereby he might come unto the knowledge of it and by that same knowledge be excited to make a diligent inquiry after the obligations that follow on it and how also in this life he may make his best advantages and preparations for the next Neither is this same Truth of immortality any new discovery but acknowledge of old by the Heathenish and Pagan Nations of which thing we in the Work ensuing are to give in a large evidence by our producing the many testimonies of a full and frequent Senate of ancient Sages who being destitute of revelation had nothing but nature to instruct them in this same verity Against these powerfull impulsives and clearer notions of truth the adverse party hath nothing to oppose but mere surmises or suspicions such namely as the Authour of the Book of Wisedome out of their own mouths recordeth saying There hath not any one been known to have returned from below Or else such as Pliny doth imagine who grafteth the opinion of immortality not upon an innate or naturall longing and appetite as he should have done but contrariwise upon a false ambition and greedinesse in man of never ceasing to be Or againe as Lucian who brings nothing to make good what he conceiveth besides down-right impiety dressed up and set forth with facetious scoffes and derisory jestings wherewith neverthelesse sundry ill-affected spirits and feebler understandings are easier perswaded then with solid arguments The Chorus of Seneca afterwards alleadged moved as it may seeme with no better or stronger arguments then these is driven as by a storme into dark and doubtfull cogitations touching the souls mortality and so also is another Chorus consisting of Mahumetan Alfaquies in the English Tragedy of Mustapha By such shadowes also as these a late Philosopher was affrighted and before him some of the ancients so farre forth as to be made imagine that even granting the soul should survive the body yet that it would not thence follow it were perpetuall but that contrarywise in tract of time it might decay and vapour it self at length to nothing burning or wasting out it 's own substance like a torch or candle or at least have a period of duration set it connaturally to the principles of constitution beyond which it was not to passe but at that term or point presently and naturally to extinguish or return to nothing of which vain phantasy we are to consider more hereafter But if suspicions may come to be examined we shall find that there be other sort of them perswading the souls mortality that seeme more hollow and deceitful then the former are as namely a depraved appetite or an unbridled and untamed sensuality that sollicites perpetually to be satisfied and is desirous without feare of future reckonings in the other world to wallow for the present and tumble like a swine in the mire of dirty pleasures and to conceive some shadow of security for it that so with the old Epicureans it might merrily say Ede bibe lude post mortem nulla voluptas Eate and drink and play thy fill There 's after death nor good nor ill Doubtlesse these later perswaders seem to be more ruinous and corrupt then the former and of more dangerous consequence And thus we see that on either side there want not suspicions namely as well for concluding of mortality as of immortality if we will be guided by them But into this high Court of judicature wherein causes so weighty and so grave as this are to be decided suspicions and dark imaginations will not be allowed for evidence or be able to cast the businesse either way To these other proofs which after I alleadge I adde this one which I have placed in the frontispiece of this Treatise namely these words of Christ Matth. 22. partly recited by him out of Exodus I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaak and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead but of the living By force of which Text the Sadduces who denied there surrection were convinced and not onely they but this Authour also against whom we deale for the place proves the soul's immortality as well as the bodies resurrection Because if God be the God of Abraham after death then must his body one day rise againe to the end that being reunited with the soul there might result an Abraham again if he be the God also of the living then must his soul continue living without any intermission from death for as without a body there is no Abraham so without a soul there is no vivens or thing endued with life If you object that it is sufficient if it live then when the body is to rise though not before I answer that this intermitted living neither is nor can be sufficient because then according to this same supposition the soul must have a revivall and refuscitation for the which we have no warrant any where and feign it we must not or if we do it will want weight and be rejected It follows then that the soul of man after the departure of it from the body must either alwayes live or never and so by consequence seeing the soul must live once more it must live alwayes that is to say not onely at the resurrection as this Authour feigneth but continually from the time of the separation to the time of the reunion and so after everlastingly And this is the conclusion was intended And thus much touching the argument of the Treatise following Now touching the Adversary I am to let you know that if the Readers had not deserved much more regard then he and besides if the matter had not required some elucidation more then his objections did an answer I had been wholly silent and spared all this labour I have taken Peradventure it may seem to some that over and above an answer given to this erroneous Authour the paines bestowed in opening the cause of the soul's indeficiency and also the tracing out the severall paths which lead unto the places from whence arguments are to be raised for the proving
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
their materiality namely by conceiving them conformably unto it self that is to say after a manner abstracted and immateriall declaring thereby the spirituality of it's being for it is as great a signe of a spirituall Being to understand a matter immaterially as it is to understand a spirit that hath no matter Thirdly I answer that although our power apprehensive does attire spiritual substances in formes corporeall by reason of the imaginative faculty upon which it borders yet the judging and discursive faculties do not so for these two cast of all figures and resemblances corporeall determining Angels for example to be spirits purely and devoid of all figure and corporeity as also in like sort that privations though apprehended as positive entities yet are not so in so much as the soul by meanes of judgement and discourse goes further then the phantasy and findes out truths which the phantasy could not tell it by thus surmounting forms corporeall shewes her independency upon the body and that some of her acts be inorganicall By this then it appeares that the apprehension of spirituall objects under lineaments corporeall is but the first enterteinment of them which though it do argue some imperfection in the soul concerning her manner of being yet not in the being it self Wherefore as on the one side this imperfect way of apprehension argues the soul to be in a degree inferiour unto Angels or pure Intelligences so on the other side the acts of judgement and of discourse which it doth exercise afterward do sufficiently evict that it is in a degree superiour to corporeall entities I exemplify for declaration sake God when he first arrives in our understanding by the out-portalls of simple apprehensions appeares unto us in the habite of a body an Angel in the likenesse of a man Time drest up in wings in his hands a sithe and houre-glasse Death like a raw-bon'd sire armed with a dart c. but forthwith Judgement and Discourse do waite upon them dismissing Apprehension and being thus stepped in devest this Time for example pull of his strange disguize bid him lay down his sithe clippe his wings and break his houre-glasse and to appeare in no other likenesse but his own that is to say without colours or lineaments corporeall and thus having disrobed him of his borrowed attire the soul judges of him as he is and gathers new verities of him by discurring And as the understanding proceeds in this one example so it does in others of the same nature thus the difficulty which Melinaeus made hath found out a solution A fifth head of probation is from the appetite of man that can be satiated with nothing but eternity the desire of which is universall and infinite This desire being generall must needs be from Nature and therefore right and not a vicious rapacity or greedinesse as Pliny seems to make it and so being right cannot be frustrate This argument is urged earnestly by Alex. Valignanus l. contra Japonios apud Possevinum parte 1. Biblioth l. 10. c. 4. Thomas Carmelita l. 11. de salute omnium Gentium procur c. 12. and by sundry other learned men and it seems to be very efficacious because this same appetite of perpetuity is very vehement restlesse and incessant and besides universall yea Pliny himself acknowledgeth as much Wherefore as from the generall and pressing appetite of meat we do inferre rightly a convenient provision of sustenance ordered by nature so in like sort from this ingrafted longing after a perpetuity we may inferre no lesse rightly a provision of immortality ordeined for us One Pontius a late Scotist in his Philosophia universa secundum mentem Scoti excepteth against this argument and divers others also with whom not being willing to wrangle we returne him no other answer but this viz. that he who is more in love with the determinations of any one Master be he never so eminent then he is with truth especially in doctrines of concernment is not an Eagle of the right breed nor deserves the name of a Philosopher It may be here objected that if an appetite were a good argument to prove a satisfaction it would prove we should never dye because against death man hath a great and naturall aversion I graunt it proves that either we shall not dye or else at least should not have died if we had remained in that state of innocency in which Adam was created for death entred into the world onely by sinne but this punishment of death is not of the soul but of man and againe the death of man is no more but a separation of soul and body out of which the death of the soul does not follow but that of the body onely for although a body cannot live without a soul yet no reason can be given why a soul cannot live without a body nay on the contrary side though we may easily understand how a soul may be annihilated yet it is a thing hardly intelligible how it should dy The soul is a form assistent as well as an informant and therefore may well subsist without an actuall informing It appeares that this appetite is naturall First because it is universall and followes the whole species Secondly because it cannot be supprest from breaking out into actuall and vehement longings after immortality out of which it followes first that immortality is a thing possible because nature does not incline us to impossibilities secondly that the appetite is right and rationall and cannot be erroneous as Scotus did object it might for at least in the generalities the works of nature be the works of a high intelligence thirdly that this immortality is not onely possible to be obteined but also shall be atteined Neither if this argument from naturall appetite be a good one would it follow thence as Abulensis in c. 22. Matth. q. 224. conceiveth it would namely that the Resurrection would be a naturall effect and might be proved by reason this I say doth not follow because as Aquinas teacheth 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 1. lib. de veritate q. 24. a. 10. ad 1. in supplement q. 75. a. 3. Ferrariensis l. 4. con Gen. c. 79. the inclination of nature and her power be both of one latitude and therefore because no naturall efficient is able to reunite a body once separated nature does not incline unto it and so not unto the resurrection Wherefore that unto which nature does incline us is onely to a continuance of the soul with the body and not to a restitution of it after it is once separated from it in so much that if any longing do remaine still in man to have a body by way of resurrection it is but as hote embers the remnants of an ancient fire It is then in this case as it is in the desiring of having all our limbs perpetually entire for if by chance any be cut off as it is not then in the power of nature
bitter sport as the Cat makes with the Mouse much to her sorrow while it lasts when it ends then to no lesse then her destruction Such bits as these unworthy of God unworthy of man must they swallow down who will maintain the soul's mortality The whole desire of mans heart as it is either to be happy or else not to be at all so is it either to have this happinesse perpeually or else to have it never given him Tully in the end of his Dialogue entituled Hortensius although he takes exceeding great comfort from the consideration of the soul's immortality yet neverthelesse to the end he might make all sure in case it should not be so he addeth saying But if that wherewith we are sensible and do understand be mortall and ruinous this extinguishment and setting of it cannot but be pleasant to him who hath discharged aright the offices of humane life and may without being molestfull at all be embraced by him as a repose or quiet of his life Thus pleadeth Cicero with whose resolution S. Augustine remaineth much unsatisfied wondring justly how a man of so great with as he and who places humane felicity in the contemplation of the truth could promise a pleasant good-night or set of that intellectual substance whereupon all this felicity of his is founded as if saith S. Augustine that thing did dy which we did not love or rather which we so deadly hated as in the destruction of it we should rejoyce Thus strongly argueth S. Augustine l. 14. de Trinit c. 19. Surely if we love our own soul and our felicity we cannot rejoice or take any contentment in the extinction and destruction of either but rather on the contrary side be incredibly afflicted with it and the sole remembrance of it cannot but be unpleasant and cause a most vehement contristation in the heart of man and finally let Epicurus say what he will strike such a damp into his pleasures as would be of power sufficient to extinguish them I know well that God may do with his creatures what he pleases his jurisdiction over them is illimited by any other thing then by his own justice and mercy Job in his affliction confessed this when he taught us c. 9. v. 12. Who is it can say why dost thou so and by and by after v. 17. In a whirlewinde he will crush me and multiply my wounds even without a cause What he can do we do not enquire but what he will do or hath done we may give a guesse by his other mercies towards us If things should thus go with man we might resemble his state to a Guest that should be entertained for one night with all the dainties the welcome and delight that might be and the very next morrow be sent to the gallowes there to make a conclusion of his joyes and welcome In fine whatsoever is not perpetuall is nothing and mans heart cannot receive true content from any thing which he is to loose and whose possession is without date immortall Non est mortale quod opto Our hearts aspire not after any thing which is mortall neither when we have considered well do we say within our selves Aut Caesar aut nihil but Aut aeternum aut nihil Not to be Caesar or nothing but to be eternal or not at all For as Marcus Antoninus in l. de vita sua rightly ponders like a man of wisdome after death is once come quid habet ille qui vixit tribus seculis plus illo qui vixit triduó what hath that man who lived three ages left him more than any other that lived but three single dayes This argument though it prove another life after this yet doth it not directly evict there shall be no interruption of living in the soul untill the resurrection nevertheless it perswades it strongly because the fairest way of perpetuity is by continuing it in the soul and by the leaving there a pledg for a totall accomplishment to follow after and the more because this dying of the soul is an improbable invention such as in Philosophy or Divinity hath no foundation but rather indeed is a great step to infidelity for if men have much adoe to perswade themselves that after the body is dead and rotten it shall have the ashes gathered together and rise again they would finde much more difficulty if they should think that the soul it self was mortall and to be extinguish'd and so in the whole man nothing left of life A sixth probation is from the absolutenesse and independency of humane will which matter is well followed by Aureolus in 2. sent dist 19. A seventh is drawn from the benignity and justice of God in favouring the good and giving recompense for all their labours and sorrows in this life which recompense since it is not given in this life it must be in another and so there must be another life I confesse also that this argument though it prove a second life yet doth it not exclude an interruption of living in the soul more then it doth in the body for at the resurrection a compleat recompense may be made both to soul and body notwithstanding they both had been extinguish'd for a time but yet because this fancy of the souls being extinguish'd is not proved by any one argument which is considerable therefore that same medium which proves a second life after the departure from the body proves also a continuance of the second with the first for no Philosopher or Divine of note hath hitherto been found so devord of sense as to dream of any interruption of living in the soul but that if it was to live after death it was to do it continually or if it died then it was to live no more for all eternity So that this mans reviving of souls is an errour as absurd and improbable as his resurrection of beasts which is the expresse doctrine not of Christ the great and true Prophet but of the grand Impostour and false Prophet Mahomet both in his Alcoran and the books of Sonna as Guadionolus reciteth out of him in his Book against Achmet Ben Zin a Persian Mahumetan Some labour to evade this argument by saying that no such recompense is necessary in another life because a full amends is made in this If you ask them how they tell you that Virtus divitiis animosa suis nec indiga laudis est praemium sibi Virtue is rich and is a reward unto her selfe This saying is nothing but a Stoïcall tumour or swelling which hath no solidity in it for first say it were a reward yet not rightly distributed or dilated for how small a portion of mortall men are sensible of this aiëry reward Secondly mans reward is his felicity and therefore must be both great and perpetuall but this same reward is a very slender one besides the slendernesse it is of small duration out of which it follows that this contentment received
divers have laboured to extinguish by denying with the old Academicks and late Socinians that there is any certainty in it and by becoming so witty as to know nothing His regall sceptte I mean his naturall liberty by the command of which the Empire of his little world was swaied is wrested out of his hands and voiced to be wholly forfeited and not any longer to appertain unto him His crown and life was the immortality of his better part as therein chiefly being superiour to beasts and all other things irrationall but behold here also a privy but a dangerous traitour endeavours to despoil him of it so that in fine if all these treacherous assailants might have their wills he shall be wholly mortall poor feeble blind and miserable dethroned from his wonted dignity and cast down unto the lower classe of Beasts Profectò plurima homini ex homine mala as Pliny justly complaineth even though he himself be one of the Authours of those evils which come from man against himself Was it not enough that all inferiour creatures do rebell against us but we must basely and treacherously conspire against our selves The man that going from Jerusalem to Jericho fell amongst thieves had hard measure offered him for he was despoiled and wounded by them and left onely half alive but those thieves amongst whom we are now fallen be farre more cruell for they would kill us outright that is to say both in soul and body and with lesse then this will not be contented But now it is time we begin to examine what urgent reasons what killing arguments there were that moved this new Authour unto so extravagant a course of rigour against all mankind for if these be not very urgent and invincible we must conclude this man guilty not onely of much folly but also of heinous malice and temerity against the rights and prerogatives of man in defense of which we now come into the field against him CHAP. II. His first Classe of arguments examined and refuted HIs first arguments be drawn from mans creation fall restitution and resurrection the principall is this That what of Adam was immortall through Innocency was to be mortalized by transgression But whole Adam quatenus animal rationale was in Innocency immortall Ergo all and every part even whole man liable to death by sinne Upon this bungling argument or syllogisme the weight of all his cause must lean which as I perceive by the posture should have been a syllogisme if the Authour could have cast it into that form but since that might not be we will be contented to take it in grosse as it lies rather then passe it over without an answer We grant then that indeed all Adam for example by sinning became mortall and all and every part of him that is to say he was after so much of his age exspired to yield up to death and be totally corrupted or which is all one he was to have his two essentiall parts disunited and after that untill the resurrection neither he nor any of his parts thus dissevered and disunited to be Adam or a man any longer All which might be without that either the matter of his body or substance of his soul should perish or be destroyed as Thomas de Argentina expresly teacheth in 2. dist 17. ar 1. ad 1. arg And forasmuch as concerns the matter of his body it is an evident case because matter is a thing both ingenerable and incorruptible and so neither produced by his generation nor destroyed by his corruption and as by generation onely fashioned and united so again by corruption or death onely defaced and disunited or dissolved And as for the soul the other part there is no more necessity death should destroy it then there was it should destroy the matter there being no more reason for the one then for the other Wherefore Saint Paul wishing death that so he might be with Christ did not desire to be destroyed as this silly Authours doctrine would infer but to be dissolved for surely if his soul was to have been destroyed by any naturall deficiency or otherwise he could not think to be with Christ during the time of that destruction or dissolution which he wished and so his words and wishing would have been very vain seeing according to this Authour he should by his being dissolved come never the sooner to be with Christ because according to him neither alive nor dead he was to come unto Christ before the generall resurrection nay further his wish would have made against himself and his own ends because he knowing Christ a little in this life might in some small measure injoy him in it but if by death his soul be killed as well as his body he should have no knowledge at all nor comfort of Christ but be cast further off from him then he was before Now as all agree that matter throughout all mutations remaineth incorrupted so also according to the judgement of sundry knowing men and diligent inquirers into the works of nature and transmutation of naturall compounds naturall and materiall forms themselves also do not perish at their parting from their matters but onely are dissolved and dissipated lying after that separation in their scattered atomes within the bosome of nature from whence they had been before extracted by force of the seed the result of whose union was the form So that the entity of the form remains still unperished after corruption though not in the essence and formality of a form or totally and compleatly Thus teacheth the learned Authour of Religio Medici and exactly declares himself of the same mind is the famous late Physician Daniel Sennertus in his Hypomnemata though sometimes not so fully as for example when he ascribes to forms precedent the full production of the subsequent assigning a genitall power or vis prolifica in every form for multiplying of it self by which doctrine he seems to recede from his former principles of Atomes and not to stick constantly to them yea and besides to deliver a conceit which is hardly understood and which moreover seems to be improbable for who can explicate what one form doth when it multiplies another or what kind of causality it doth then exercise or by what strange influence that effect is wrought and the form made up of nothing This same doctrine of Religio Medici and that also which we deliver here touching the origination of forms was the doctrine of old Democritus expressed by him in his constitution of Atomes or minima naturalia as we find it largely expressed and illustrated by Joan. Magnenus l. de Philosophia Democriti ' Disp 2. c. 2. seqq as also by Petrus Gassendus in his voluminous work de Philosophia Epicuri tomo 1. with whom in substance agreed Leucippus as we may find by that which Laertius and others do deliver of him Not that every Atome did contain a form as Sennertus seems to think but rather
of speaking this same separation of it be no death or true manner of dying secondly by being subjected unto damnation which as we know is called in Scripture a second death But as for the annihilation of it or of the body that is it which we deny and so to do we have just reason In fine as Generation is nothing but the union of the parts and not the creation or absolute production of them so again Death and Corruption is nothing but the disunion or dissolution of them and in no wise the annihilation according as this wise Authour would perswade us As for the article of the Resurrection it proves nothing against the perpetuity of the soul for we never read of any resurrection besides that of the body wherefore to averre a resurrection of souls were a grand foolery and a doctrine never debateable or heard of amongst Christians till this silly Authour came to teach it And so much for his first chapter CHAP. III. Scripture no way a favourer of the souls mortality HIs places cited out of Scripture in favour of his errour are so impertinent as that it were no small piece of folly to examine them one by one They all of them signifie that man shall die or sometimes that for example Joseph or Simeon is not as Gen. 42.36 all which how they are to be expounded and understood may sufficiently appear by that which hath been said in the precedent chapter and how again they make nothing at all against the souls immortality Touching the words of Ecclesiastes c. 3. the answer is that they were no determinations or resolves but a history or an account given of what sometimes came into his thoughts and what obscurities and desolations of soul he had and what lastly was one of the first difficulties that troubled him and stirred him up unto a sollicitous enquiry for certainly this one verity of the immortality of mans soul is that which is to order mans designs to regulate his actions and to put life and vigour into them this being a truth most fundamentall Wee see this one was it which moved Clemens Rom. l. 1. recogn if he be the true Authour of that which passeth under his name to a serious inquiry and care for the finding out what he was to do whom to consult what to esteem most and in fine what to fear or hope most and how to order all the passages of his life This is the question that usually troubles men first of all till a resolution be had suffereth their hearts not to be at quiet every man at first suspiciously as Solomon did asking of himself as Seneca in Troade gallantly expresseth saying Verum est an timidos fabula decipit Vmbras corporibus vivere conditis Cum conjux oculis imposuit manum Supremusque dies Solibus obstitit Et tristes cineres Vrna coercuit Non prodest animam tradere funeri Sed restat miseris vivere longius An toti morimur nullaque pars manet Nostri cum profugo spiritus halitu Immistus nebulis cessit in aera Et nudum tetigit subdita fax latus Is it a truth or is' t our fears Have buzz'd a fable in our ears That mans hovering spirits do live And their interred corps survive When grieved consorts hands do close Their eyes and their last dayes oppose Our bright Hyperions beamy light And drowns the slender shades in night Then when our bones to ashes burn To be confin'd within an urn Be not the funeralls our fate But there must be a longer date For wretched man Or doth he die Intirely and intombed lie Or may he not forthwith consume And vanish all in slender fume Then when his wandring spirit flies And mingles with the aiery skies And when the dismall funerall torch His side insensible doth scorch After this sort do anxious and afflicted spirits oftentimes argue and dispute within themselves laying before their eyes all the doubts and difficulties imaginable before they descend to the making of any conclusion at all or to the determining of any setled doctrine Thus and no otherwise did Solomon when first revolving in his thoughts the matter of the souls condition and touching upon the various suspicions of men concerning it with no small sense and anguish of mind at length Eccles c. 12. drawing to a conclusion he determines saying Let the dust return unto the earth from whence it came and the spirit unto God who gave it And this text alone is sufficient to confound the Adversary and to confute whatsoever he hath endeavoured to draw out of Scripture for mans totall corruption and mortality I adde according to good Expositours that Solomon in this place representeth not what he himself did judge nor what a rationall man ought to judge but rather what Epicureans and voluptuous persons did or were wont to judge according either to the desires or at least to the apparences of sense for according to them man and beast do breathe out their lasts alike but this judgement of theirs Solomon absolutely condemns as appeareth plainly by that which before hath been alledged out of him CHAP. IV. His argument out of reason viewed and examined WHat the severall fancies were of heathen Philosophers touching the nature and definition of the soul is not much regardable sundry of them being so monstrous and absurd But it is a thing very considerable that amongst so many stragling and wild conceits all or most of all at least of the noblest and the best Philosophers have taught the immortality of the soul it self howsoever in other businesses concerning it they might sometimes disagree Permanere animos arbitramur saith Cicero Tuscul l. 1. consensu nationum omnium qua in sede maneant qualesque sint ratione discendum est and again in his Hortensius as witnesseth Saint Augustine l. 14. c. 19. de Trinitate Antiquis Philosophis hisque maximis longeque clarissimis placuit quod aeternos ammos divinosque habeamus We are perswaded by the consent of all nations that souls remain but must learn of reason of what quality they are and in what places they remain Again in Somnio Scipionis he determineth saying Infra Lunam nihil est nisi mortale caducum praeter animos generi hominum Deorum munere datos Beneath the Moon there is nothing which is not corruptible excepting souls alone bestowed upon mankind by the munificence of the Gods Thus Cicero who in his book de senectute delivers himself more at large as also in the first book of his Tusculan questions and also bringeth reasons for what he saith This assertion of Cicero for consent of Nations and Philosophers in this truth hath been shewed to the eye by the great diligence and learning of Augustinus Steuchus commonly called Eugubinus in the 9 book of his excellent work de perenni Philosophia in which he voucheth to this purpose the authorities of Phereâ—ides Syrus who as Cicero witnesseth was the first that delivered
from virtue is no sufficient recompense nor reduceth things unto equality nor lastly commends or justifies the providence of God Thirdly this contentment received in the soul from virtue cannot keep the virtuous from being miserable because this solace is received onely in the minde or soul notwithstanding which content he may be in poverty captivity sicknesse in Perillus his Bull or upon the rack in which cases as the body suffering for a good cause receives contentment from the soul so in like sort the sorrows be reciprocall for the soul is made partaker of the miseries of the body and is afflicted by means of it so that in fine here is no full and clear contentment but a mixture of joy and sorrow and consequently here is no desired reward or felicity neither of soul nor body and much lesse of the whole man who consists essentially of both and is totally to be rewarded and not the one half of him alone whether soul or body Num saith Anastasius Sinaïta quaest 73. quando oportebat certare corpus plus sudoris expressit quando autem est tempus coronarum sola coronatur anima Shall the body endure the greatest trouble in the conflict and the soul alone receive the crown or comfort this were no justice or equity Certainly a man in this state would stand in need of patience which virtue I think was never necessary for the happy man but for the afflicted nor for the enjoying of felicity but the enduring of misery In summe it were a fury to think that while these two parts of man body and soul are linked together that one half of him can be happy while the other is miserable or that the reward of the soul alone is the reward of the whole man and able to give him satisfaction But that contrariwise as the soul of man is but one half of him though indeed much the better half so likewise the felicity of the soul alone is but one half of mans felicity and so again the affliction of his body one half of his infelicity though by much the lesser See of this point Abulensis in c. 4. Deut. q. 7. Thomas de Argentina in 4 dist 49. art 4. Vincentius Beluacensis l. de Consolat ad Regem Ludov. c. 11. also our countrey-man Jo. Bacon the famous Carmelite in 4. dist 50. q. ult and principally Marsilius in 4. d. ult The Stoicks invented for man this harsh and miserable felicity for supplying the defect of their doctrine touching providence and humane felicity which they could not patch up otherwise then with such rotten stuff as this which will not hold the examination nor indeed can be without the Christian doctrine of the resurrection So that albeit reason alone without revelation cannot prove the resurrection to be because this effect exceeds the virtue of naturall causes there being allowed in nature no regress à privatione ad habitū yet reason proves that article to be very convenient credible for an accomplishment of all without which there is no way remaining either for the justifying of providence or the rewarding beautifying of man or lastly for the giving any life and encouragement to virtue Now if a reward over and above the inward contentment of the minde be due to virtue and this reward is to be of the whole man and also to be paid him after this life then must this reward be such as will fully satisfie and content him for satisfied he is to be and also satisfied by that which is a reward consequent to his actions wherefore his contentment must be eternall for nothing else can please him as elsewhere we have endeavoured to evict and as I suppose every mans own heart will tell him without book wherefore the soul which is to enjoy this must also be eternall or which in our sense is all one immortall Pontius the Scotist struggles against this argument also for the defence of his Master Scotus but the zeal of defending truth and of delivering healthfull doctrine I value above that other of defending the sayings of any one particular Master whatsoever if he be but a man as Scotus was no more Eighthly the doctrine of the soul's immortality is the foundation of virtue without which she must needs fall unto the ground this is clearly shewed by Lessius and long before him by the Platonick and Heathen Philosopher Hierocles Unlesse saith he something should subsist in us after death fit to be adorned with verity and virtue which subsistent thing without doubt is no other than the reasonable soul we should have no pure desire of honesty or virtue For the suspicion of an abolishment would choak the desites of these and divert us to corporeall pleasures of what sort soever or whensoever they might be gotten by us And according to that doctrine how could it seem the part of a prudent or moderate man not to be so indulgent to his body as to grant it all things seeing the soul in that case was preserved for the bodies sake and of it self had no existence but accrued unto man from the conformation of his body Or why under the name of virtue should we molest our body if the soul so perish with it as virtue her self can have no subsistence left for whose sake we endure death Thus farre Hierocles and that very cordially and truly If then the doctrine of the soul's immortality be the foundation of virtue doubtlesse it is a truth assured because virtue and a rationall manner of conversation taken in the generality cannot be founded upon any falsehood or uncertainty as Ludovicus Vives hath notably declared I might add here the arguments of Scaliger Exercit. 308. n. 20. of Aureolus Renatus des Cartes and divers others but these alone well explicated and considered are sufficient These are the chief seats of arguments from whence Authours do usually fetch them which how much more or lesse valid or perspicuous they may seem yet have they been held for good by the wisest Philosophers both Heathen and Christian and to be concluding But howsoever that be the verity it self hath been counted certain and evident insomuch as Aureolus himself although he found difficulty in sundry of the arguments yet did he not doubt to say speaking of the soul's immortality in 2 Sent. dist 19. This doctrine of faith is to be held undoubtedly and it is the common conception of the minde and a verity evident of it self though to give a reason for it it is not so casie So Aureolus with whom consenteth Cicero when as he said as hath been before alleadged out of him that it is the consent of all nations Now saith he if the consent of all be the voice and verdict of Nature then are we to think the same Besides how could so many Heathen Philosophers have acknowledged unanimously this doctrine of immortality otherwise then by the light of nature and common reason out of which it is plain that naturall reason doth
the reprehender with greater force then it can be cast upon them by him or any man Now although it be a thing not evident that the spirits seeming to appear are really the souls of such or such deceased persons yet have we no reason to think otherwise but if that they are their good or evill Angells which by divine appointment do act in their behalf and likenesse yet even by that it will appear that those souls are still alive for God himself did often appear by such deputies and manifest himself to Moyses and Abraham by the apparition of his Angels But yet it is a thing no lesse reasonable to judge that they are humane spirits that make an apparition in themselves or at the least in their deputies then to judge that they are spirits Wherefore whoso question 's whether these appearing spirits be souls or no but rather deluding Devils putting on their likenesse may as well doubt whether on the contrary side those same Devils be really Devils and not the souls of men or again whether those living men whom our eyes daily do behold be really men or rather not some delusive apparitions I would fain learn why men contrary to the doctrine of Aristotle Epicurus should distrust their senses in judging every thing to be the same it seems unlesse they see some urgent reason to the contrary Surely in behalf of such apparitions there may be just reasons given because it is not unlikely that souls which had so much dealing in the world during the time of their habitation in the body and contracted so many obligations of justice might after death have something remaining here for them to rectifie and to give notice of unto the living whom it doth concern Besides say that they who appeared were Devils and not souls yet this alone would argue immortality for to Doggs and Horses or such like who have no relation to a future life neither Devils nor souls doe appear neither were it to any purpose that they should I add that if no returnes of souls were to be admitted but that being once gone from hence they were never to be heard of more many men would be afraid that indeed our soules were nothing but a breath or a slender exhalation which after it was once dissipated was never again to be drawn together and consequently that all the reasons brought for immortality were but sophisticall and found out to flatter us in that opinion for so indeed it fell out with Epicurean and wicked men who pleased themselves with Nō est agnitus qui sit reversus ab inferis There was never any known to have returned from the Dead which is as much as to say There were never any Ghosts or souls of men that did appear unto the living after death In the first Edition of this small Tract this argument of Apparitions brought up the rear but it pleased the Censurer of it in Oxford to dash it quite out though for what reason I do not know If it were because he counted all the narrations of apparitions to be fabulous he must give us leave to preferre before him so many faithfull witnesses who have avowed them Again although he esteemed them fabulous yet seeing all men of judgement did not so he might have left the argument to go as farre as it might and every reader to censure of it as he should see cause and not thus to impose laws upon other mens understandings and presume to put down his judgement as a rule to others But contrariwise if he scraped out this argument for fear such stories of apparitions might lead the way to some doctrines which he himself was not willing to admit this his way of proceeding I must tell him seems to me to relish more of craft then ingenuity and also to be so farre from reasonable as he who uses it may justly be compared to him who after a preposterous manner would deny the Premises therefore onely because he did not like the Conclusion or to an evil Astronomer who will not frame his Hypotheses according to his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or celestiall apparences but contrariwise correct his apparences according to his Hypotheses Wherefore our Censurer by this course of his seemed desirous to maintain what he did hold already to be true or false rather then to correct his errours and to take right information for beating out the truth We do acknowledge that the Law the Prophets and the Gospell well understood are sufficient to instruct us and again that for our ordinary intelligence and concernments we are not to expect messengers from the dead yet this will not inforce us to discredit all the testimonies of apparitions which time hath left us or to say that in all occasions they are fruitlesse for as Tostatus reasoneth although they would do no good upon the kindred of Dives which as it seems was hard-hearted yet they might upon others and again although they did not conferre to any living mans conversion and salvation yet they might rectifie some injustices and errours committed by the dead and this for the most part is the errand for which they pretend to come as Tyraeus and other writers teach us and of this Tostatus q. 89. in c. 16. Matth. and q. 54. in c. 17. recites an example happening in his own time and also teaches that at the transfiguration the soul of Moyses appeared upon mount Tabor CHAP. VIII The Catabaptists errour about the sleeping of Souls related and refuted HAving examined our Adversaries chief arguments brought by him for proving the soul's dying and mortality it remains that we take into consideration another errour one of no small affinity with this yea and in effect all one with it namely the sleeping of soules and their being in a state insensible from the first instant of their separation from their bodies untill the generall resurrection Such as maintain this errour not daring as Zanchius l. 2. de oper creat c. 8. notech openly to deny the immortality of mens souls because it seemed over plainly contradictory to the holy Scripture and to the judgements also of the gravest and wifest Philosophers and Divines do therefore deprive them of all sense knowledge or any other vitall operation and lay them to sleep untill the judgement day in which they are to be reunited to their bodies which time is to be the first of their awaking But indeed if this tenet of theirs be viewed diligently we shall finde that this pretended sleep is nothing else but a direct death and onely different in the name and the reason is because for a spirit to be destitute of all vitall and intellectuall operation is nothing else but to be dead seeing that life is nothing else in the soul besides the perpetuall motion or action of it Wherefore in consideration and acknowledgement of this incessant activity Cicero and others delivered that the souls of men were made of fire celestiall and unextinguible borrowed
the whole and afterward to be happy onely by the halfes is a great and capitall inconvenience Let the soul be where it will and as happy as can be yet if the body do not rise again but ly trampled under foot be triumphed over by death everlastingly the condition of man as man would be very miserable that of a Christian more then of an ordinary man Besides as the soul findes pain and contentment by the body in this life so ought it afterwards or else it would want somewhat of the former perfection To the fourth part I answer that notwithstanding the soul be happy before the resurrection yet great will the advantage be that both the soul and also the whole man shall get at that great day For then at that time man recovers himself is put into a new possession of what he lost by death now what I beseech you can be dearer and more welcome unto man then he himself is neither can his victory over death be compleated till then neither again is his crown of glory finished before that recovery be made Besides this the soul also gains not a little portion of felicity by this recovery for so think many grave Doctours both ancient and modern but what is the certainty or the particulars that is a mystery which we know not yet some may guesse that as at the resurrection there is an accession of one essentiall half of man added to the soul which is the other half essentiall so also there is one half greater or lesse of felicity that doth then accrew and is not one half of felicity a notable accession and a great advantage It may well be for ought Volkelius knowes to the contrary that the soul during the state of separation shall have allotted to it by the verdict of the first Judgement which is a judgement of souls such a portion onely or proportion of felicity as belongs unto it under the title of being a forme assistent in which capacity it might act divers things by it self without assistance or cooperation of the body but at the resurrection the same soul shall have by a verdict of the second Judgement which is a judgement of men another portion of felicity allotted to it so much namely as might correspond unto the soul as it is a forme informing and makes up together with the body organicall one compleat agent which compleat agent is the Authour and Actour of the greater part of all the actions of this life See Estius in a. sent dist 45. § 7. ad 4. So that the former portion of felicity hath a correspondence to the soul alone the later portion both to soul and body not as they are severall but as united and knit up into one All this whether it be true or no I know not but yet thus much I know that it may be true for ought that Volkelius hath said and therefore is it sufficient to break the force of his argument and wholly to evacuate it till he have proved the contrary My conclusion is that as in death there is a sorrowfull departing and the farewell between soul and body is a very sad one so in like sort at the resurrection when they meet never after to be divorced there needs must be a joyfull interview between them and those second nuptials be a most solemne festivall a day of light and exultation in which the mutual congratulations will be unexpressible And therefore let Volkelius imagine what he pleases the soul by the last day and by the resurrection will be a mighty gainer and receive new joyes new treasures of felicity To the alledged place of the Apostle to the Corinthians I answer that it makes nothing at all for Volkelius his purpose because it is not said there that without the resurrection there is no felicity but onely that our faith was void unlesse Christ had risen and if our faith were void then would all promises of comfort and felicity be void also and so by consequence neither our souls nor our bodies should attain to happinesse Out of which defect it would also follow that Christians of all other men should be the most miserable because they in this life should have more afflictions fewer comforts then other men in the next life have none at all nor any thing wherewith to recompense them for their labours abstinences and sufferings here But say that the souls might be compleatly happy although there should be no resurrection yet neverthelesse even in this case the condition of a Christian would be more sad and more unhappy then that of other men so farre forth as concerns his body at the least which is one half of man and one essentiall part and also is that of which the Apostle doth in this place principally entreat and so the Adversaries argument can conclude no way You may further object that in sundry places of holy Scripture dying men are said to sleep for example with their fathers and this manner of speaking is very frequent But the answer is manifest because this word sleep is meant of the body onely which being dead lies in the sepulchre quietly as in a bed and is at the great day to be called up again as one that wakened out of a sleep a very dead one Besides this word sleep when meant of the soul is onely a symbolicall expression My Conclusion is with S. Hierome ad Pammach Incorporalem aternam animam in modum glirium immobilem torpentemque sentire non possumus We cannot be perswaded that the incorporeall and everlasting soul is like to a Dormouse immoveable and benummed or to Swallowes that sleep all winter So thought this ancient Doctour and for our own part we can be as soon perswaded that the soul may dream as that it should sleep and if we will believe Albertus magnus in 4. dist 44. ar 41. to hold that separated souls should dream were a thing ridiculous and therefore no lesse to think that they can sleep or slumber Again as Carolus Bovillus noteth it is a thing contrary to nature reason and Philosophy to put any substance destitute of connaturall operation wherefore either grant the operation or else take away the substance and so let the souls of men either be active and awake or else let them not be at all for to say they are and yet are not operative is a grosse non sequitur and not to be admitted by men of reason Wherefore if we grant the soul to be a substance intellectuall then to go consequently to this we must also grant it to be immortall and again if both intellectuall and immortall that then also it can never cease from the exercise of connaturall operations and so lastly can never be a sleep I end this chapter with the magistrall doctrine of the learned B. Tostatus l. de statu Animae Concl. pr. 1. of Avila The souls saith he if they remain immortall after death
severall pieces for the composition of it according as every simple or ingredient of Diacatholicon for example is not Diacatholicon but contains something in it of which it is to be made up and from which as from differing heterogeneall parcels collected and united by an artificiall mixtion it results and for want of putting this difference or restraint Sennertus his own doctrine and explication of Democritus may seem defective But though we may approve of Physicall Atomes for the composition of naturall bodies yet we do not thereby allow of Atomes Mathematicall or indivisibles with Zeno of which point see Arriaga and our learned countreyman and Philosopher Compton otherwise called Carleton Neither again do we with Epicurus and some other old Philosophers maintain any casual meeting or accidentall confluence of them but contrariwise an assembling of them in generation by the force of seminall or spermatick virtue descending from the forms into the sperme or seeds and by the Creatour infused at the first creation into the forms As for the composition it self abstracting from these particulars it was also taught by Anaxagoras when he affirmed all to be in all or every thing and to have a preexistence in the bosome of nature even before such time as by the operation of seminall causes forms be accomplished and made to appear in their own likenesse upon this theatre This is also the judgement of Athanas Kircherius a late learned writer l. 3. de magnete part 3. c. 1. where he shews how rich compounds earth and water be as Chymick industries for separation have discovered insomuch as he noteth there is contained in them a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or generall magazine the common matter being from the first creation not lean and hungry but foeta and praeseminata with forms partiall and incompleat This also is the inchoations of forms and the rationes seminales pre-existent which many learned men have often favoured expresly taught by the great Albertus 1. Phys tract 3. c. 15. 16. 1. part summae tract 3. q. 14. ar 2. memb 2. tract 6. q. 26. ar 2. memb 1. part 2. tract 1. q. 4. ar 1. memb 2. Which doctrine of his being explained in this sense declared lies no way within the danger of the objections of Gandavensis Durandus Dominicus de Flandria or Thomas de Argentina who all proceed against it according to a way of understanding though true in it self yet quite different from this and also as we may justly think from the true meaning of Albertus or of Jacobus de Viterbo related by the afore-nominated Argentina l. 2. sent dist 18. ar 2. and there impugned by him The same doctrine for inchoations of forms in the matter before generation I mean not in materia prima but in secunda praeseminata is largely declared proved and defended by our learned countreyman Jo. Bacon a Carmelite l. 1. Quodlibet q. 6. and also in 2. sentent dist 18. q. unica in which latter place he shews that this doctrine is according to the meaning of S. Augustine These same inchoations are the rationes primordiales concreated with the matter in whose bosome they lie as it were a sleep untill such time as by the genitall power and agency of forms which are in perfection and displaid they be called out and united not accidentally but substantially into one Compositum which Compositum when it is to be dissolved all those unfolded seminall reasons do shrink up again and withdraw themselves into the self same beds from which they came And this is the doctrine of Albertus and Bacon although they do not descend to such particulars as be expressed here but hold themselves aloof according to the custome of the Schools in more generall principles and expressions This lastly is nothing else but in a good sense an eduction of forms ex potentia materiae which is Aristotles and his Disciples Doctrine for it cannot be thought that Aristotle ever intended to presse or squeez any forms out of the dry skeleton of matersa prima which matter is a principle onely receptive and no promptuary out of which to educe a form by virtue of any naturall agent whatsoever for in such a spare entity as that what fecundity is imaginable And so much touching the original of forms which is one of the abstrusest and nicest points in all philosophy and that which by vulgar Authours is meanliest handled and by the wisest is known but by conjecture Thus his main argument is answered after which all the rest will fall down headlong with any light touch though but of a finger Immediately after this he argueth out of Gen. 3.19 where Adam is told that for his disobedience he must turn into that dust of which he was made out of which he concludes that all and every part of Adam must be converted into dust which if it be so as he saith then not onely his earthly particles but his aiery watery and fiery parts must to dust also and not onely his body but his soul if he have any must be turned into the same matter See what fine conclusions follow out of this mortall souls philosophy It sufficed then that so much of his body or of the whole man was to return to dust as had been made up of it And by this alone the commination of God is fulfilled without any more ado After this he comes upon us with his false Latine saying as followeth Death reduceth this productio entis ex non-ente ad Non-entens returns man to what he was before he was that is not to be c. and by and by citing impertinently two or three places of Scripture falls to another argument drawn from the resurrection As for the Latine word Non-entem whether it be right or no we will not examine but apply our selves to the consideration of the sense which is as faulty as the Latine can be know therefore in brief that death did not reduce Adam to non ens but to non Adam it did not cause him absolutely not to be but onely not to be man or Adam any longer And forasmuch as concerns his body it is confest and certain that it was not turned by death or mortality into nothing or non ens but into dust which is an ens or something that is to say his body was not annihilated but corrupted and to die is not wholly to be destroyed but partially onely which act is all one with dissolution Now if to the totall mortalizing of man it be not necessary that his body be destroyed then can it not be needfull that his soul should be so and thus our adversaries stout argument is more then mortalized for it comes to nothing which man by dying doth not We will not deny him but that the soul of man did die and die again as much as it was capable of death for first it died by the being separated from the body although indeed according to a philosophical propriety
and the self same he defineth l. de Demonstratione alledged by the ancient and learned Nemesius l. de Anima c. 1. Also before Galen Hippocrates resolved the very same whose words l. de Carne are these Of things saith he celestiall and sublime I am as it to me seems to say nothing save onely that men and other creatures which live upon the earth and are bred there have their Originall from thence and that the soul is from heaven Now will I declare my opinion Verily it seems to me that the thing which we term hote and heat is something which is not mortall So he according as we finde him cited by Fernelius in the place before quoted and so much for the honour of Physicians in order to this truth Our next authority is that of Apollonius Tyaneus that famous Pythagorean Philosopher whose life Philostratus Lemnius hath writ at large and amongst other accidents l. 8. relates of him how after his decease he appeared to a young man a student in philosophy resolving him as followeth The soul is immortall and no humane thing but proceedeth from the providence divine This therefore after the body is corrupted as a swift courser released from his bonds delivered from a troublesome servitude removeth up and down and intermingles with the gentle â—ire Thus he to whom consenteth most expresly Hierocles in his commentary upon the golden verses of Pythagoras in sundry places telling us that the the soul is not onely incorruptible but also made immediately not by procreation but the hand of God See him of the Greek and Latine edition of Paris pag. 101. 103 132. Seneca the famous Stoicks minde may be learned easily out of his three severall consolatory Tractates namely to Polybius Helvia and Martia and Epist 121. as also out of other places wheresoever occasion was given His words to Martia be these Mobilis inquieta mens homini data est c. A minde saith he restlesse and unquiet is given unto man and no wonder if we look up unto the first Originall it is no concretion of any dull or earthly body but descendeth from a spirit celestiall is to be in motion incessantly it flyeth and is carried on with a swift course c. Thus he out of whose words we may gather three things first that the soul is from above and not by any naturall generation Secondly that it is immortall Thirdly that after once it is released from corporeall Organs it acts continually and never sleepeth I will adde to these the words of the Emperour Marcus Antoninus commonly called Aurel. de vita sua l. 4. n. 13. according to Merick Casaubon's division If souls saith he remain how from all eternity could the aire hold them or how the earth retain their bodies As here the bodies after they have lyne a while within the earth are changed and being dissipated leave space for other carkasses so souls carried up into the aire after they have been there some time whether kindled or liquefied are conjoyned to the common 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is unto the originall minde or great soul of the world Thus he as if he had said with Solomon the spirit returns to God that made it for the great soul of the Universe or the originall minde of all is nothing else Horace consenteth saying Melior pars nostri vitabit libitinam and Tacitus in vit Jul. Agric. Siquis piorum manibus locus sive ut sapientibus placet non cum corpore extinguuntur magnae animae placide quiescas If to the spirits of the pious there be any place remaining if as wise men do conceive great souls be not together with their bodies extinguished mayest thou rest in peace To these Ovid subscribeth Metamor l. 15. Morte carent animae c. Souls be exempt from death l. ult Cum volet ille dies quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet incertâ— spatium mihi finiat aevi Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar nomenque erit indelebile nostrum Come when it will my Deaths uncertain hour Which of this body onely hath a pow'r Yet shall my better part transcend the sky And my immortall name shall never dy Some may here imagine that this same immortality of the better part mentioned by Horace and Ovid is according to them nothing else but a never-dying fame yet this cannot be because fame though never so lasting is no part at all of us neither better nor worse The same doctrine is constantly taught by Pythagoras as appears by his doctrine of Metempsychosis and Palingenesia as also both Jamblichus and Porphyry in their severall histories of his life do witnesse of him as also Diogenes Lacrtius Porphyr l. de Abstinentia is also of the same opinion I conclude this Jury with the judgement of Macrobius who c. 14. in somnium Scipionis after he had recited sundry and differing fancies of severall Philosophers touching the nature of the soul concludes as followeth Obtinuit tamen non minus de incorporalitate ejus quam de immortalitate sententia Neverthelesse the opinion touching the incorporeity of the soul as well as touching the immortality of it hath been prevalent Against all these therefore it imports little that Dicaearchus Messenius a Peripatetick Philosopher and Scholar to Aristotle or that Aristoxenus should as Cicero relateth in the first of his Tusculanes and in the second of his Academicks hold and defend it to be mortall or that both he and as Cicero reporteth out of him another more ancient Philosopher by name Pherecrates one of the lineage of Deucalion did think there was no soul at all neither in man nor beast And forasmuch as concerneth the same Dicaearchus we reade in Sextus Empiricus and Tertullian l. 2. Hypot c. 5 as also in Job Fr. Picus of Mirandula l. de Doctrin vanit Gentiâ—â—â— c. 14. he was of the same opinion for there is nothing so absurd which some one Philosopher or other hath not maintained Sextus Empiricus was of the same minde also as he l. adv Mathematices acknowledgeth As for Epicurus and his associates they cannot be admitted to give sentence here and therefore their adverse judgment is not prejudiciall to our cause First because the common Epicureans were slaves to voluptuousnesse and vice using Philosophy onely as a cloak wherewith to palliate their enormities Secondly because they themselves are guilty persons and that in a high manner also for although as Tostatus in Genes determineth the right Epicureans were men of great gravity yet they offended grossely against the light of nature in sundry passages of Philosophy concerning the highest verities Moreover though Petrus Gassendus in his late voluminous tractates De vita Philosophia Epicuri hath freed Epicurus from many foul objections and imputations and with much labour hath washed him and wrung him and perfumed him yet many stains do rest behind which with all his art he was not able to fetch
minor of it and then what kind of conclusion it hath we may easily judge For first it is false that every thing is a temperature universally speaking which is subject to intension and remission excepting such things onely as be subject unto them per se and by their own nature and not by accident onely and this appears in the very businesse now in agitation between us for a greater clerk then this man is will hardly ever prove that the augment or diminution which is found in the acts of knowledge do arise from any internal alteration in the intellective faculty and not contrariwise from the difference advantage and alteration in the organ or the species and forms intentionall for this reason therefore a man may understand better then a child namely not because his faculty intellective is better then a childs but onely for betternesse in the organ also a learned man better then an illiterate and a diligent then a negligent because those may have acquired more species or forms intentionall or else have kept them better then these other that be illiterate and negligent and not for any intension or remission in the faculty This I say may be the reason of the difference and is likely so to be and not any variation in the faculty it self notwithstanding any thing which this Authour hath said and therefore this proof of his is defective and of no validity In the same sense we deny the minor also for it does not follow that the faculties rationall be more or lesse because the acts of it be more or lesse in regard that there may be more causes then one of this intension or remission as namely the different perfection of the organ as well as the severall measure of the faculty it self Wherefore it belongeth to this Authour to prove that this ebbing or flowing of acts of knowledge is to be referred to the soul's or understanding's wanings and increases and not to the differences of the organs which thing since he faileth to do his argument can by no means conclude or be admitted as good He argueth again Temperature is a quality A quality may be absent without the destruction of the subject Reason and understanding may be so therefore they are temperatures or qualities and not substances immortall The minor is proved by example of madnesse falling sicknesse c. In answer First I deny it to follow that because Reason is a quality therefore it is a temperature for there be many qualities which neither are temperatures nor belong unto them because no other qualities belong to temperature but onely such as be elementary Secondly I deny absolutely that reason or understanding can be absent without the destruction of the soul or of man I know the act of reason may be absent and the effluence of it hindred more or lesse as in infants mad men a poplectick persons and such like but still the root remains and without death cannot be removed Hence I inferre against this Authour that although sundry actuall intellections may be improved or impaired by sense yet the radicall cannot but is wholly independent Nay further even some acts of the soul are in the manner of working independent of the body and wholly inorganicall as divers learned Authours have shewed Some old authours have ascribed to the soul a body Aethereall but that it self was a body Aercall or Elementary I conceive none of them ever yet affirmed What that obscure writer saith whom he calleth Woolnor I neither know nor regard for he is no classicall Authour nor hath any voice allowed him in the Philosophers Parliament The severall absurdities which afterwards this Authour labours to inferre do not follow out of the doctrine of immortality but onely out of his own mistakes erroneous and ignorant conceptions and therefore he may take them all home to himself which to do I know it must be to his great losse for throughout his whole book he swarms so much with this kind of vermine as they eat up all the substance of his undertakings and discourse He addeth Every form depends of the matter and by separation perishes But we must tell him that this is false doctrine and can never be proved If it were not so saith he then one might be generated without the other a soul without a body and a woman be brought to bed of a spirit I answer That an immortall soul cannot at all be generated as first being by it self and its own nature ingenerable and secondly having no principle here on earth either materiall or efficient that is able to beget it all agents created in this kind being impotent as afterwards we intend to shew against this Authour as also against Sennertus Religio Medici and some others What reason is there saith he mans and beasts Anatomy being both considered and compared together that mans faculties in a higher degree should be an immortall spirit more then beasts in a lower degree but both elementary and finite For the finitenesse we grant you that both are finite but not both elementary or mortall and this we collect not from the Anatomy but from the operations by which we do collect not a graduall difference betwixt the two souls bestiall and humane but an essentiall See Aquinas l. 2. contr Gent. c. 66. Ferrariensis ibid. So that call it reason which is in beasts or call it what you will that reason which is in man is essentially superiour unto it and if that of beasts be reason then doth mans reason deserve another better term whereby to signifie the essentiall preheminence of it as Campanellae himself acknowledges in divers works of his and proves in his Metaphysicks at large We know that bordering nations do a little symbolize in their natures but yet are not therefore the same so then albeit the highest of vegetables as the herba viva or the Agnus Tartaricus if there be such a plant and the Zoophyta have some resemblance to creatures of sense yet neverthelesse are they different from them and the Zoophyta themselves belong onely to one classe or other and not to both So in like sort although the most perfect of animals have acts of sensation that something resemble the apprehensive discursive and judging faculties of man yet are they wholly and essentially distinct Wherefore as some erroneously may imagine the sense in beasts is not a weak or imperfect reason nor again in man is reason a strong and perfect sense for these two faculties be wholly different even in one and the same man as manifestly appeareth First by the severall degrees of subordinate perfections found in creatures which perfections whensoever extant in severall sorts of creatures be specifically or essentially distinct as namely the degree of vegetation is distinguished from that other next inferiour to it in all things that be destitute of life so again is the degree superiour of sensation from the inferiour of vegetation wherefore in like sort
of yeares withdraw his preservative or conservative influence and why the same influence is not still as formerly to be continued or what exigence of nature there is or may be which shall make the difference I grant them that in compounded bodies a Philosophicall reason may be given of such an alteration because it may fall out that the natural impugnation of them by the a gency of second causes for their corruption or dissolution may require such a revolution of influxe Also the same may be allowed for the set time of desition of accidents permanent then whensoever they come to be deserted by the subjects which gave them their support which thing may happen to them either by the dissipation of those substances or else by the violence of some external agent that shall dislodge them In accidents that be fluent and by nature successive a reason also may be rendred why they should continually cease to be and besides at a certain terme or period exspire for altogether But yet why substances incompounded by nature permanent such as naturally cannot be corrupted nor perish by dissolution of which sort all Intelligences be all other substances intellectual as namely the rationall souls why they I say should have a fatall houre assigned them then require to be annihilated and forsaken by the sovereigne first cause these new Philosophers have not yet told us much lesse why it should be so without any requiring on their part or any naturall exigence for it Wherefore leaving these light phansies to the Authours of them we say with the Poet His ego nec metas rerum nec temporapono Imperium sine fine dedi c. To these no limits I intend But grant an Empire without end Of which point see more in our learned Carleton alià s Compton Without doubt that soul which hath withstood and survived the violent assaults of Death then when it was rent from the body and forced to surrender that beloved Fort there can be no suspicion that it should faile afterwards grow old with time decay and come to nothing and all this without any other force Besides if the soul be of a simple uncompounded nature as intellectuall substances be then can it not dissolve or which is all one perish by corruption Wherefore if the principles of nature whereby the soul is constituted admit of no desition nor ending by corruption there can be no reason given why these by exigence of nature should not require to be continually susteined in their being by conservation from the first cause and much lesse why at such or such a point of time or age they should require to be forsaken and by the withdrawing of the first causes benevolence to return unto their first nothing Wherefore I account these conceits of mortality and aiery possibilities of desition to be unworthy of any further examination but rather to be rejected as inventions of contentious and sophistick braines that love to entangle all right threads of discourse and to obscure those lights which lead men unto truth Having seen all this in favour of an immortality of the soul let us now behold as uniforme and favourable a consent of the ancient Sages for the divine originall of the same and not humane by procreation as our impious Authour labours to maintain Salluste the Greek Philosoper in the place before alleadged out of him speaks plainly and tells us it cannot be produced by generation Manilius derives its pedigree from heaven as we have heard out of him already which he elsewhere confirmeth saying Stetit unus in arcem Erectus capitis victorque ad sidera mitt it Sidereos oculos propiusque adspect at Olympum Inquiritque Jovem nec sola fronte Deorum Contentus manet coelum scrutatur in alto Cognatumque sequens corpus se quaerit in astris Cicero in Som. Scip. determineth saying His animus datus est ex sempiternis illis ignibê° quae sydera stellas vocatis quae rotundae globosae divinis animatae mentibus c. Marcus Antoninus seems to draw mens particular souls from the great and common soul of the world and the Gentiles in generall do acknowledge them to have a celestiall originall by the received fable of Prometheus who composing the bodies of men of clay or earthly substance is feigned to have stollen fire from heaven wherewith to animate and inform those bodies signifying thereby that the fires of earthly furnaces were not sufficient for so excellent a work The Philosophers of later times are for the major part of them against the production of souls by procreation amongst the rest Laevinus Lemnius l. 1. de Occultis nature Miraculis c. 11. speaks much after the manner of some Heathens before alleadged calling the soul scintillam divinae mentis which is a high expression yet not meaning as literally it seems that it is any particle of the Deïty or any substance increated but denoting onely the sublimity of it and that the originall is not from the earth With him agreeth the great speculatour Jeannes Argenterius med ad 1. Aphor. Hippoc. The famous Fernelius l. 1. de Abditis rerum causis c. 5 7. declaring that the cause of all forms in generall is from heaven Andrew Laurentius l. 1. Anat. c. 1. teacheth in expresse terms that the reasonable soul is not generated but created The same doctrine is confirmed by Zacutus Lusitanus one of the most famous able Physicians of this time who tom 1. oper l. 5. Medic. Princ. Histor hist 3. q. 3. doth in this behalf open himself very fully and giveth reasons also why the soul can be no other but a substance indeficient or immortal I omit the rehearsall of more votes and come to enquire after the cause why it cannot be generated like other forms In the head of this search I propound the doctrine of Cicero who l. 1. Tuscul hath laid the foundation of the truth Animorum inquit in terris nulla origio inveniri potest c. No origine saith he of souls can be found on earth for in the minde there is nothing that is mixt nothing concreate or bred from out the earth nothing which is humid or aëriall or fiery for in these natures there is nothing which hath the power of memory of minde or cogitation which may retaine things past or provide for the future and comprehend the present which alone be things divine neither is it ever to be found out how they might betide to man but from God onely Wherefore the nature and power of the minde is singular and different from these usuall and known natures For which cause whatsoever that is which apprehendeth which is wise and willeth and is vigorous that same is heavenly and divine and is of necessity eternall So discoursed Cicero and rightly also if I be not mistaken The pressing home of this argument will consist of three points or heads First from the nature of the soul it self which
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
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
by which he will have one humane soul to beget another and on the instant to become with childe of it no bodie knows how neither by what particular operation nor from what Mine it should be digged For this manner of speaking makes shew rather of some empty Magick than of sound Philosophy and seems altogether as hard and impossible as the eduction of them out of the potentiality of the materia prima when understood in that sense in which he himself impugns it If the Parents objecteth Sennertus do not give the soul which is the form of man they do not generate the man but for certain they do generate the man therefore they give the soul also unlesse they communicate the soul like should not generate his like So he Hypomn. 4. cap. 11. In brief I answer that the Parents do give and communicate both form and matter but that work they may well do without the making or the producing either of them It is certain they give the matter and it is as certain they do not produce it wherefore the same may be said of the form without prejudice to the essence of generation or which is all one of one like or simile producing of another And that there is true generation without producing either part appeareth plainly for Death which is the opposite to generation and destroyes what the other made will shew us what generation is but Death is onely a dissolution of parts united and not a destruction of them it is destructive not of the matter or form but of the man for do but divide a mans soul and body and he is destroyed and remaines not a man any longer but loseth what he had got by generation that is to say by generation he got to be a man and by dying he loses it In fine as Argenterius rightly answereth Generation is not of the parts but of the compositum and so also answereth Zacutus in the place before cited He addes See him in 1. Aph. Hip. If the sperme from the first instant be not animated and the generatour dye in the interim before the animation it might be said that a dead man did generate I deny the consequence because that Parent while he was living did that act by virtue of which all the rest as their turns came did follow and that one and first act was generation and not the subsequent As for example he is said to make a fire who first puts the fire to these well and kindles it though all do not burn till a great while after because all the rest did follow in virtue of the first act Thus we see that the arguments of Sennertus were not so urgent and weighty as to be able to hinder such a wise Christian Philosopher as he was from relinquishing this tenet of his and from piously subscribing his Pareamus by which act he left behinde him an example worthy of great praise and of all true students to be imitated I have added to the Authour's objections whom I undertook to impugne these out of Sennertus who is a Writer of great worth and substance to the end that by occasion of his difficulties the matter in hand might be explicated with more satisfaction and for mine own satisfaction also who was weary with fighting with a shadow But say you if that the soul be not produced by virtue of the sperme how then can Originall Sin be transmitted from the loynes of Adam down to his posterity I answer that it may very well because that sin of Adam is not transfused into his descendents by any physicall influence or deduction but contrariwise by a legall devolution or by a way juridicall which way of conveiancy is founded upon an ordination or covenant annexed to the act of generation as also the rights of inheritances use to be that are so devolved from father to son and so downward throughout all the line or pedegree and to me there seeme no more difficulty in one descent then in the other both of them being morall and both also supposing some naturall action for the foundation of them But I leave this question to Divines CHAP. XIII The Adversaries resurrection of Beasts exploded together with a Conclusion of the Work IT is usually said that one folly brings on another and ordinarily one worse than it self and so it falls out with this wretched man against whom we deal at this present who after his grosse errour of mans totall mortality falls into one which is much grosser yea so absurd as it is to be numbred amongst the most ridiculous that ever were maintain'd even by Mahomet the father of absurdities and who was better at that work than any man that went before him But at the length what may this errour be I will give it in his own words and it is this All other Creatures saith he shall be raised and delivered from Death at the Resurrection my reasons ground for it be these First that otherwise the curse in Adam would-extend further than the blessing in Christ contrary to the Scriptures For as in Adam all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive 1 Cor. 15.22 Thus he abusing Scripture as we see for the upholding of this his prodigious folly Surely the man when he resolved upon these things was given over into reprobate sense and permitted for his greater confusion in sight both of God and the world to fall into such an Abyssus of absurdity as that no man might take harm or be seduced by him but such onely who had a mind to be deceived It seems then by this bestiall Doctrine that at the Resurrection all the Gnats and Fleas that ever were shall be revived all the Toads and Frogs and poysonous Serpents and other vermin Certainly those who are to live amongst all these are likely to have gallant time of it His places of Scripture which he profanes in alleadging to prove this need no expositour nor answer to them for I think no Reader is so simple as cannot do it by himself Doubtlesse both according to the common principles of Christianity and also those particulars of this Authour Christ is the cause of our Resurrection and none are to rise but those onely for whom he died and therefore since he died not for beasts they are not to have any Resurrection As for the Assertion it is grosser and more inexcusable in this Authour than it was in Mahomet because this Mahomet made a Paradise and felicity agreeing most of all to beasts and men of beshall dispositions for as it is well known out of the Alfurcan or Alchoran and as Theophanes an ancient and faithfull Historian relateth His Paradise was place of corporall eating and drinking Theophan apud Porphyr c. 17. Jacob. de Vitriaco l. Hist Orient c. 6. of wantonnesse with women where there was a River flowing with wine and hony and milke together with an incomparable beholding of women not these we have
now but of others also long lasting pleasures of obscenity and other such things full of luxury and folly So writeth Theophanes But this man who will seem a Christian might have learned out of the Gospel a felicity of an higher strain one purely refined from all dregs of basenesse and carnality and that the blessed shall neither marry nor be married but live like the Angels in Heaven not enjoying the felicity of a swine but a celestiall Wherefore leaving Mahomet and other beasts with him to enjoy such a felicity as they deserve and feigne unto themselves I passe unto our Authour's last folly which is his calling it a Riddle that the soul immortall is all of it in all and again all in every part wondring how this should be and holding it a meer fiction and thing impossible But I for my part do not wonder that a man of so grosse a wit and narrow a capacity as he in this book hath shewed himself should not understand this Doctrine or saying especially if he will judge of the nature of indivisible presences by those that are divisible as it seems he does Yet I have cause to wonder why so stupid and so sorry a fellow as this is should dare to hold it to be a Riddle or impossible onely because he with his small with is not able to understand it as if forsooth nothing were possible to Nature or to God the Authour of Nature saving that alone which he understands how it can be done I am now quite weary of this man and sick with raking so long in such a heap of dirt and therefore at this instant I leave him to bethink himself about making a timely recantation Now turning with delight unto my Reader to solace and refresh my self after all this travaile I desire him to look into Hierocles Commentary upon the Golden Verses ascribed to Pythagoras in which he seemeth to have discovered the original of this pernicious errour touching the souls mortality What availes it saith he with perjuries and murders and other wicked wayes to gather wealth and to seem rich unto the world and to want those good things which are conducible unto the mind But besides to be stupid and insensible of them and thereby to augment the evill or if they have any remorse of conscience for their offences to be tormented in their souls and affraid of the punishments of Hell comforting themselves with this alone that there is no way of escaping them and from hence are ready to cure one evill with another by a perswasion that the soul is mortall to sooth up themselves in wickednesse judging they are not worthy to have any thing of theirs remaining after death that so they might avoid those punishments which by judgment should be inflicted on them for a wicked man is loath to think his soul to be immortall for feare of the revenges that are to follow his misdeeds Wherefore preventing the Judge who is below he pronounceth the sentence of death against himself as holding it fit that such a wicked soul should have no longer a being nor subsistence Behold here the fountain-head of this errour opened and purged by Hierocles In fine from whatsoever puddle this errour sprung let us remember what Socrates being to die delivered touching the various condition of souls after this life He said as Cicero relateth l. 1. Tuscul there were two different pathes or voyages of souls at their departure from the bodies for all such as with humano vices had contaminated themselves and were delivered wholly up to lust with which as with domestick vices being blinded they had by lewd actions defiled themselves or had attempted against the Common-wealth any crime or fraud inexpiable that these had a wandring way assigned for them sequestred from the assemblies of the Gods but such againe as had preserved themselves entire and chaste contracting little or no contagion from the body having alwayes retired and withdrawn themselves from it and had in humane bodies imitated the conversation of the Gods these found opened for them an easie way of returne to them from whom they proceeded at the first This is the Doctrine both of Cicero and of Socrates What then remaines to do but to hearken attentively to the wise counsell of the Prince of Philosophers Aristotle and to suffer it to have a powerfull influence into all the passages of our life His words l. 10. Ethic. c. 9. according to the division of Andronicus Rhodius be as follow If then saith he our understanding in respect of man be a thing divine so that life which is led according unto the understanding if compared with life humane is divine also neither as some perswade is it lawfull for a man to relish and follow onely that which is humane and being mortall those things onely which are mortall but as much as in him lieth he ought to vindicate himself from all mortality and to take speciall care that he live according to that part which is most excellent within him Now that which is best within us is our mind which though it be small in bulke and weight yet in power and excellency doth furpasse the rest And with this wise counsell of the Philosopher I conclude this whole Question which though the day of every mans departure will decide and give a sinall resolution to it yet in the mean season are not disputes of this nature fruitlesse or superfluous because if they be well performed they are like burning torches which in the darke gallery of this life teach us how to direct our steps and before that black day come to help us for the making our preparations before-hand that so with better hopes of safety we may meet out deadly enemies in the gate Without all doubting for the repressing of brutish bestiall and unworthy affections and again for our encouragement to noble and generous designements the best preparatives against death there is no no consideration so powerfull and efficacious as that one of the high perfection of mans soul and the immortall nature and condition of it for as Cicero observeth l. 1. de legibus Qui seipsum nôrit primùm aliquid sentiet se habere divinum ingeninmque in se suum sicut simulacrum aliquod dedicatum putabit tantóque munere Deorum semper aliquid dignum faciet sentiet He that doth know himself will forthwith finde within him something that is divine and will hold his understanding as a statue dedicated and be alwayes thinking or doing something answerable to so great munificence of the Gods That is to say he will be mindfull that as in upright shape of body and the perfection of his spirit he excelleth beasts and all creatures irrationall so he will endeavour to do in the condition of his living by disdaining to stoop to any thing which is base or to defile the house in which his foul inhabits with any unworthy or ignoble actions Without all doubting there is
no man who as a Poet speaketh hath any thing within him that leaps under his left breast but that if he be well perswaded of his souls immortality and so by a plain sequel thereupon sees that he hath a longer part to act after his Exit from off this earthly Theatre then he hath here he will never live unmindfull of that second state and therefore will be sure to stop his eares against the Sirens bewitching songs and not drink of the inchanting cups of Circe whose fordid pleasures are feigned to have turned Vlysses his unwary companions into swine nor lastly Esau-like for a small pittance of temporall contentments or for a few voluptuous hours consumed in vice or vanity neglect the safety of his immortall spirit and sell his birth-right of Eternity I will seal and signe this whole dispute with the determination and censure of the book of Wisdome which book whether it be received into the Canon or no yet is it confessedly very ancient and therefore by consent of all may claim a just precedence of authority before any Heathen Philosopher whatsoever the words are these Justorum animae in manu Deisunt non tanget illas tormentum mortis visi sunt oculis insipientium mori illi autem sunt in pace The souls of the just be in the hands of God and the torment of death shall not touch them to the eyes of the foolish they seemed to dy but they remain in peace Chap. 3. Behold here in the judgment of this venerable Authour what kind of people they are who hold the souls mortality namely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as be destitute of true judgement and understanding This is not my censure neither is this character of my making for who am I that I should presume so far but it is the judgment of the ancient Authour of the book of Wisdome whose yeares and credit may deserve regard even amongst those spirits that be most confident of their own conceptions and be the greatest admirers and idolaters of themselves In fine this ancient Sage brands all deniers of our souls immortality with the self-same note of ignominy that David the kingly prophet did mark that wretched mortall who closely in his heart had said There is no God Psa 13. Yet there is this odds between them two and worthy to be observed for though both of them be impious and absurd yet one of them had some shame in him and said it onely in his heart but this Adversary of ours goes further and had the face to publish his impiety in Print or at least the heart to do it so as he himself might ly concealed his name unknown Which covert way of his though it appear not altogether so bold and bad as if he had put his name unto his work yet was it an act too bold for any Christian man or true Philosopher to exercise or to be an Authour of in Print for alas after so many great Divines and deep Philosophers whose uniforme suffrages we have for the dignity of man that is to say for the soul 's immortal nature and incorruptibility how could the cogitations unto the contrary of this poor worm be a matter any way considerable with men of understanding and ability A Peripatetick Disquisition touching the Rationall Soul's Immortality whether it be Natuturall to it or no. THis intellectuall substance the Soul which is our Intelligencer for all things abroad being shut up here in an obscure prison of a corruptible body doth not without great difficulty know it self and learn out what kinde of entity it is corporeall or spirituall corruptible or free from corruption Hence arose so many varieties of opinions and even amongst those who asserted immortality so many degrees thereof Dicaearchus a Peripatetick Philosopher of Sicily was of opinion that men had no souls at all but notwithstanding this the soul being ashamed to be so grossely ignorant as to deny it self this man was left alone and had no followers Epicurus Lucretius and Pliny granted man a soul but denied the immortality of it condemning it to a death perpetuall which impious assertion hath been refuted by all the best Philosophers of Plato's Pythagora's Zeno's and Aristotle's School also excepting Alexander and some very few of no note Amongst those that admitted a perpetuity to the soul some did it with an intermission as namely the Hereticks called Arabici who as Georgius Syncellus in his Chronicle now newly published Parisii◠1652. ex typographia Regia anno Christi 237 testifieth did impiously hold the soul in the hour of death to perish with the body and again both of them to be revived at the resurrection concerning which point a famous Synod was assembled The same errour is largely shewed of them by Abraham Ecchellensis in his Historiae Orientalis supplemento where he describeth the customes and doctrines of the Arabians Now it is manifest that during the interim between death and the resurrection the soul is in being is alive and also awake by those reasons that do prove the immortality simplicity and immateriality of it as also by apparitions of them of which the Christian Histories are full and it is justified by Eustratius a Priest of S. Sophia in his Tract remembred by Photius in his Bibliothecae wherein he affirms that souls do appear really and not good or evil Angels in their places and lastly the same is confirmed even by Ethnick Histories as for example by that which Phlegon Trallianus in his Book de mirabilibus longaevis relates first of Polycrates after of Philinion by the appearing of Apollonius Tyanaeus after his death to his scholars assuring them of the souls incorruptibility about which they had been doubtfull and disputing if we may believe Philostratus who writ his life by the apparition of a Ghost to Athenodorus recorded by Pliny in his Epistles and last of all by Plutarch out of whom Georgius Monachus Syncellus relateth this notable following History Chronogr anno Christi 37. Caligulae 3. Caius Caligula saith he also slew Julius Canus the Stoick Philosopher of whom the Greeks relate a fiction beyond all credit namely that he being led to dy is reported to have foretold to one Antiochus a Seleucian who followed him with a minde undisturbed that the night following he would be with him and deal about a question worth the discussing and moreover that Rectus another of his fellowes should be slain by Caius within three dayes all which the event proved to be true he being slain within that space Antiochus relating what he had seen by night and that he had beheld Canus who had disputed with him concerning the immortality of the soul and the passage of it after death unto a purer light Thus Syncellus which relation I see no reason why he should hold to be a fiction Averroës as we use to call him grants a soul that is spirituall and immortall yet grants but one and that one to