Hares Foxes and other-like pursued Creatures are invented and acted and the like for Apes and Elephants and their Docility and that of Horses and Dogs and the very Insects Wasps and Serpents know their Powers to Hurt and use them accordingly without that any Man is or ever was able to give a full and true Account of the Means Power and next Natural Causes of such Actions or by what direct Mediums they are performed Shall we then go about to cover our Ignorance of the Immediate Powers and Actings in Mens Heads and Brains by inventing for him an unknown and unprovable Spiritual Being residing in him we know not where coming into him we know neither when nor from whence guiding and ruling we know not how sitting perhaps in Majesty in the Head but rejected or over-powered in the Heart by the Natural Inhabitants the Affections and Passions of it Solomon was wiser than so to be intangled Prov. 20.12 says The hearing Ear and the seeing Eye the Lord hath made even both of them seems a tacite Confession that he knew not how and Eccles 8 17. makes an open Confession that Man cannot find out the Works of God not those which are of thi World the wisest of Men cannot do it And my Lord Bacon amongst the wisest of our Naturalists tells us in his Advancement of Learning Pag. 200. that a Rational Account of the Soul cannot be expected from Philosophy because the thing is Supernatural and Inspired Whence it seems we seek in vain to know what it is or whence it is or where it is or why it is since we cannot know that it is but from the Divine Fountain of Faith and Revelation in his Opinion But says he Man hath a Sensible Soul as the Organ to his Rational which may rather be called a Spirit being a Corporal Substance attenuated by Heat and made Invisible of a Flamy Airy Nature nourished part by an Oily and part by a Watery Substance spread all over the Body and repaired continually by Spirituous Blood We may perceive why he forbears to describe or discourse farther of the Self-subsisting Soul because it is not Natural but Inspired and of which a Reason therefore cannot be required to give any tolerable Account seems tantamount to saying he did not understand the thing nor would make any farther Inquiry into the Truth of it but was content to accept of the Opinion as of a Notion which had long gone for currant in the World and was grown the General if not the Universal Opinion amongst Christians of the later Ages But if we credit Baxter our Author he tells us Pag. 72. That some think the Soul to be Material of a Purer Substance than Things visible and that the common Notion of its Substantiality means nothing else but a Pure as they call it Spiritual Materiality And thus thought not only Tertullian but almost all the old Greek Doctors of the Church or Fathers that write of it and most of the Latine or very many of them and there are few of the Old Doctors or Fathers who thought that the Soul was not some ways Material And now say I upon what new Reasons or Revelations is that Opinion of the Old Fathers of the Church come to be changed Why should not we think now of the Soul as the Fathers and Primimitive Church and Christians thought of it It seems we neither pretend any New Revelation for it nor have found out any either Scriptures or Reasons which were not known to them It may be not unaptly surmised that from the Time of Gregory the first called the Great Bishop of Rome in the end of the Sixth and beginning of the Seventh Century there rose a Conceit in his Church from a Story told to that Pope by the Bishop of Centum Cellae that Christian Souls were put to Penances and Sufferings after Death of the Body for expiating of Sins commited whilst they were in the Flesh whence Prayers were made for them first out of a Charitable Design and then Alms came to be distributed likewise on their behalf then the Clergy and Poor People began to be hired and have Money distributed and given to them for such Purposes And in time there came a Place to be assigned where such Penances were thought to be performed or Penalties for Purging of Sins were supposed to be suffered and this Opinion became beneficial to the Poor and profitable to the Clergy of that Church and went on like such kind of Projects increasing till it grew up to a perfect Purgatorial Fire over which his Holiness took the Supream Command which he hath been reputed to enjoy for the space of some Hundred of Years last past to the great Enlargement of his Reputation and Revenues and the Benefit of his Sons and Servants the Clergy and Ministers of his Church And this hath now continued for about the space of Eleven hundred Years time enough to radicate and fix the Belief of a Self-subsisting Soul in all Believers deriving under that Church or that have been subjected thereunto But whatsoever the Cause hath been of the present Christians declining and swerving from that of the Primitive Fathers in this Point it seems the State of this Question deserves to be diligently reviewed and considered Our Author undertakes to prove this Self-subsisting Spiritual Substance in Man from Three Topicks or Grounds viz. 1. From Reason or Nature 2. From Moral Congruity 3. From Express Places and Texts of Scripture How concise and short he is both in the Words and Sense of his Reasoning in this Point any who will bestow the pains of perusing him will evidently and easily perceive All that he says in proof from this Topick hath been truly related before and without farther Descant thereon it seems less can hardly be said than Id aliquid nihil est and he leaves his important Undertaking proving such a Soul in Man from Reason or Nature with turning himself about to Matters and Things or rather to Conceipts and Phantasies of very small Value as Page 13. Whether the Soul be an Individual Spirit or be an Act or Emanation of God or of some Universal Soul in the Body of Man Pag. 15. Whether the Soul be annihilated by Death and then whether it shall be destroyed by the Dissolution of its Parts Pag. 17. Then whether Souls subsisting after Death do sleep as the Body doth till the Resurrection Pag. 21. Whether Souls subsisting after Death and not sleeping shall continue distinct Beings or fall into one Common Soul or be united to God and so lose their Individuation and Separated Being Upon this Question Pag. 22. he cites S. Austin de Anima putting the Question Whether Souls are all but one and not many But that he utterly denies 2. Whether they are many and not one And that he could not well digest 3. Whether they were at once both one and many And though this might seem ridiculous yet he was most inclined to the Belief of
nourishing the once kindled Flame so long as the Materials shall be able to last or endure and that in Men and Beasts is their old and decrepit Age and the utter Expence of that Humidum Radicale whereby their Flammula Vitalis might be nourished and maintained or that it be corrupted and vitiated by other noxious Humours and thereby rendred improper for the Purposes to which it was designed In Men and Beasts it seems there is a Material Spirit kindled and enflamed and thereby attenuated to so great a degree of Subtilty as to become Invisible and so asserts My Lord Bacon in the Place before quoted And so our Author Pag 72. says Some think that the Soul is Material yet of a purer Substance than things visible and thus thought Tertullian and almost all the Old Greek Doctors of the Church that write of it and so most of the Latines or very many Some thought the Soul an Igneous Body such as we call Aether or Solar Fire or rather of a higher purer Kind and that Sensation and Intellection are those Formal Faculties which specifically difference it from inferiour meer Fire or Aether And there are few of the Old Doctors or Fathers who thought it not some of these ways Material And to all this we do willingly subscribe and agree believing as the Primitive Fathers of the Church both Greek and Latine have by our Author 's own Testimony thought and taught before us And we conceive that the Beasts have a like Material Spirit inflamed lambently but whether altogether so fine and subtile as that in Humane Bodies we find not Ground enough to assert or determine But Solomon tells us what befalls Men befalls Beasts As one dies so dies the other Yea they have all one Breath and a Man hath no Preheminence above a Beast their Bodies go all to one Place they are of the Dust and turn to it again and who knows the Difference of their Spirits that of a Beast goes downward to the Earth viz. dies with the Body and turns to Dust and who knows that the Spirit of a Man doth not do so but goes upward Hence it seems there was an Opinion at that time amongst the Jews that the Souls of Men did not die with their Bodies like the Beasts And we find Solomon in the Close of this Book saying upon a Mans Death The Dust shall return to the Earth as it was and the Spirit shall return to God who gave it Now whether he was better resolved in the Point at this time or that he used this Expression to comply with the Opinion of his Countrey we will not pretend to determine But it seems plain that amongst Men and Beasts there is a great Congruity in their Parts Frame and Composition as that all have different Members acting sutable to their Kinds as Head Feet Back Belly and Inward Parts as Heart Liver Lungs Spleen Brain and all the Organs of Sense and Nerves Veins Arteries Ventricles Muscles Joynts and the same Nature of Flesh Bones Blood and Breath which shall be left here and changed for the Consideration of their Internal Powers of Sense Motion Phancy Memory Intellect and of their Affections Passions and Powers of Perception Utterance and the like Faculties Concerning such Faculties we begin from the Senses and do find the Beasts have all the same with those of Men and that they can make as accurate and beneficial Use of them as any Men can do and in the Perceivance by them divers Beasts do excel Men some in the Use of one Sense and some of another and every Beast and Bird have Voices Tones and Notes all serving to warn and direct their Young ones to call for their Food or complain for the Want of it to give warning of Weather or Danger to call for Company of their own Kind to threaten and terrifie their Inferiours in Strength the Birds also to vie with one another in Melody delighting therewith the Ears of other Creatures that can perceive the Suavity and Variety of them The Affections and Passions in Beasts are the same with those in Men. We have named five Principals of them viz. Ambition Covetousness Lust Wrath and Fear the three last of which are altogether as eminent and active in Beasts as in Men. Ambition is not so and yet Beasts and Birds of all Kinds will fight without giving quite over until there be an acknowledged Mastery amongst them the Stronger will compel the Weaker to give Way and to follow and observe him Nor is Covetousness in Beasts any thing comparable to that in Man some of them do hoard up Provision for their Support in Winter and others for whom it is proper will steal it from them or fight for it if there shall be an Occasion So as in Beasts these Affections are but very feeble in comparison to what they are in Man Whereas Lust Wrath and Fear are equally potent and prevalent in the one Kind as in the Other And for Proof that Beasts have Phantasies their Dreams are Evidence in which sometimes they are vehemently agitated and affected and that they have Perfect Memories is proved by a Horses learning to know a Way but once gone and sooner than ordinary Passengers do by a Cows returning to the Place where her Calf was parted from her although she be driven away many Miles from it by the Docility of Horses Camels Dogs Apes Elephants most knownly but truly of many other Creatures And there seems to be no sufficient Doubt of finding all other Powers that are in Man resident in some Beasts except that of his Intellect which he can imploy in framing many Notions or Propositions and drawing Consequences and Conclusions such we do not know that any Beasts can do nor have they Means of making them known to us Sometimes we light upon Effects which carry a great Semblance of Proceeding from such Causes as in Dogs their Kindness to the Bodies of their dead Masters and discovery of their Murtherers That of Sabinus supported his Master's dead Body in the Tiber till he sunk with it Alexander's Elephant who would never take Food after the Royal Harness was taken from him and put upon another but starved and died upon it Androgeo and his Lion are reported and made famous in divers Roman Histories and other-like Effects are related that might serve to this Purpose but too long and circumstantial to be here related But from the Docility of Creatures Beasts we may with some certainty collect that they have an Intellect of simple or single Notions what and when and how their Directors will have them to act And Hares and Foxes do it seems invent Means to deceive and baffle their Pursuers But of Complex Notions Discourse or Reasoning in their Minds we do not perceive that any Beasts are capable although they are notable Observers of their Masters Eyes and can perceive their Pleasure or Displeasure in them and act according as by them directed Yet that they
but not so well Vehement excessive Objects of other Senses do only destroy the present Act or at most but the Organ But such Objects of the Touch may kill as vehement Heat Cold Hardship Smell or Taste can also kill but that comes from their Touches and such Power as an Aspect may have to that Purpose is by Power of what touches Prov. 2.4 Solomon directs Seek Knowledge and Truth as Silver and search for them as for hid Treasures And thus have we ransacked the Treasures of this Philosophical Treatise and Storehouse the best furnished towards the present Purpose of any Magazine which by Art or Nature we know to have been collected there hath no Part of it been left without our closest Scrutiny by which we seem to have found that the Philosopher had made a like Search to this very Purpose in the Times Ages and Writings of those who had lived before him and by such Search had found that Orpheus and Thales held Opinion That the whole World was Animatum and that there was in it an Universal Soul from whence the particular Souls were sent out to animate and inform all that were in Capacity to receive both the Vegetative Sensitive and Rational upon whose future Dissolution the Form Soul Virtue or Active Principle returned back to the Universal Soul or Spirit or Power and mixed therewithal as the Drops of Water returning are received and incorporated into their Ocean or Element And if this were true there must thence follow a Subsistence of Souls after Dissolution of the inspirited Bodies but not in their Individuations or Particulars Next came Pythagoras and he taught an Individuation of Souls That every Animal had its particular Form or Soul and the Souls of Men and Beasts were all of a Mode and transmigrated sometimes into Men and sometimes into Beasts according to their Deserts or as it happened or there was Need in the World This Opinion maintains and requires a Separate Subsistence of Souls after Death of the Body and that in every Particular or in their Proper Individuations and necessarily supposes a Pre-existence of Souls And there must be a great Stock Magazine or Provision of Souls whence all who have need may abundantly be supplied Likewise it supposes an Immortality in the Souls or else in length of time they might come to be clean spent and worn out Then came Democritus and he and Leucippus were of another Mind For they thought that upon the Aptitude and Fitness of the Body for the Receipt of a Soul the Vital Heat required and obtained a Respiration and therewithal the Globular or Fiery Atoms which fly about in the Air are drawn in at each Breathing and they give continual Supply to such Atoms as were in the Body before So long therefore as Animals breath and draw in such Atoms they may live but no longer for want of fresh Atoms or Fire for a continual Supply of their Souls This Opinion makes a Soul created by the Congregating of Globular Atoms not capable of a Separate Subsistence as a Soul but is again dissolved into its Atoms upon Death of the Body Then the Philosophers who more regarded Rational and Knowing Faculties in the Soul than its Vital and Moving ones such as Empedocles and Plato They thought the Soul to be a Compositum of the Elements amongst which Fire was most eminent and potent that all being wrought into an amicable Inclination and mixed in a sutable Proportion there rose from that Mixture a Spiritual Flame which they called a Harmony of them all during whose Continuance the Animal lives and hath Vigor in a like Proportion but in Death it ceases And if this be not the Soul which then leaves the Body what can Men think to be that Soul that then leaves it But if in truth this be the Soul which in Death leaves the Body then first it hath a Beginning but together with the Body and this is taken also away with Death of the Body for that there doth not come to Humane Perceivance or Knowledge of any other sort of Soul departing at Death but this only Flame by them called Harmony Other Opinions of Anaxagoras Heraclitus Almaeon Diogenes Hippo and Critias are also cited before And it seems the Opinion generally current was That the Soul was a distinct Principle from the Body and had a separate Subsistence after Death so strongly conceited as some killed themselves to enjoy Soul-felicities the sooner And this Ancient and General Conceit had so much Power even over Aristotle himself as to induce him to discourse of the Soul generally after the Mode of his Time viz. as of a Self-subsisting Principle and to affirm that a Part of it the Prime and Contemplative Part of it the Intellect actu is Self-subsisting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Immortal and Eternal And to prevent any Bodies demanding what this Soul is he says It is that only which it is and that only is Immortal and Eternal But he gives no manner of Confirmation from Reason or offers any Dilucidation or any farther Discourse upon the Thing But on the contrary whensoever he comes to argue from Reason upon this Point of Subsistence of the Soul in a State of Separation from the Body all his Arguments conclude against such Subsistence of a Soul in that Separate State for that it hath nothing to do wherein the Body joins not with it nor can do any thing not so much as move it self but by the Body nor act any thing in the Body but by the Animal Spirits cannot go out of the Body nor alter any thing in it cannot command the Passions Affections or Appetite but struggles with them after a Natural Manner and uses sometimes Natural Means both outward and inward to obtain Victory cannot punish a rebellious Opposer nor make a Hair White or Black or diminish or increase the Stature can finally do nothing but in a Natural Way and by Natural Means by the Organs bodily and the Animal Spirits and therefore in all his Arguments and Collections from Particulars or Experience the Soul seems to be a Natural Agent acting in and by the Body and employing chiefly the Heart as Vital and the Head as Sentient and Intellectual and all other Parts in Passions Affections Appetites and Motions And yet as this Life of the Soul is according to Nature the same Strength of Reason may seem to conclude for her a sutable Exit such as may best agree with a Natural or Material Spirit Des Caries in his Philosophical Principles Part 4. Sect. 197. mentions thus much shall we say or thus little of the Soul he says We do well enough comprehend how by the Bulk Figure and Motion of one Body divers Motions and Changes may be excited in another Body and such as have great Power to affect the same by acting upon the Senses But says he we cannot at all understand by what Mode these Bulk Figure and Motion do produce or effectually Work upon
Samuel in Shiloe by the Word of the Lord without such Revelations of God as are miraculous or are derived from that Original it seems so extream hard to find out God as that no Man by Force of Natural Wit or Intellect can have the Power to do it and if the Soul of Man be an Immaterial Spirit it will fall under a like Difficulty Pag. 30. He supposes Cogitando as it seems that God had made a Compleat Body of a Man without inspiring him with a Rational Soul but placing about his Heart an inkindled Heat or inlucid Fire This like the Fuming of moist Hay or the heated Steems of working New Wines would says he effect in the Bodies of Men all that can now by Men be performed except only their Power of Cogitation and that without the Co-operation of any Soul at all And the like he supposes may be done also in the Bodies of Beasts but he found not in his Cogitations that this was enough to produce Reason in Man but he dream'd that the same was fully supplied to Man when God had created for him a Rational Soul and had joined it to his Body after a certain Manner such as the Author had invented for him Pag. 34. The Animal Spirits are like the most subtil Winds or more like the purest Flames which continually and plentifully ascend from the Heart to the Brain and by these are the Bodily Members moved Pag. 36. Says The Automata made by Man must all fall short in two Points 1. Nothing can be made to answer properly to unforeknown Questions 2. Nothing can be made to act Motions beyond what were specially intended Not to answer accidental or all occasional Motions He says That Beasts cannot speak comes not from Defect of Organs in them witness Magpies and Parrots But we do not admit these Witnesses for Proofs But says he Men who are Deaf and Dumb will find and learn Signs to express their Minds a plain Sign that Men have Reason and Beasts have not And we allow the Sign and grant the Thing And he grants some Beasts excel others of their own Kind in Sagacity Apprehension and Docibility and so some Kinds excel other Kinds in such Qualities This say I seems a clear Proof that Beasts are not Machines but have Perceptive Souls and are Voluntary Agents knowing both what they do and having an Intent and Design in the doing of it Pag. 37. Says The Humane Soul cannot be Ex traduce or grow out of Matter but must needs be created Then says That the Soul is a thing of great Concernment and the Error which is great next to the Denial of a God is the Belief that the Souls of Men and Beasts are of the same Nature and consequently that nothing is to be hoped for or feared after this Life no more than for Flies or Pismires It seems the Mans Cogitations upon this Subject were extreamly erroneous and as much deceived as his Senses ever were or ordinarily can be in any competent Sphere of their Activity as a Christian and Learned It seems not to be imagined but that he had perused S. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians and had in the 15th Chapter thereof found written what that Apostle there delivers concerning the Resurrection of the Dead and without the Mention or least Hint of a Soul Separately Subsisting he puts the whole Weight of Christian Religion upon the Belief of a Resurrection of the Dead The Apostle says Such Resurrection is as certain as it is that Christ is risen And if that be not true and certain nothing in Christian Religion is so But our Preaching is vain and your Faith is also vain Nay and we are evinced 〈◊〉 be false Witnesses and you are yet in your Sins and can have no Benefit at all by Christ and all who are fallen asleep in Christ are perished If Mens only Hope in Christ were in this Life they were most miserable but the thing is not so for Christ is risen as the first Fruits and at the last Trumpet the Dead shall be raised And he tells us how and with what Bodies and concludes Abound in the Work of the Lord as knowing your Labour shall not be in vain for most certainly this Resurrection shall come So Matth. 24. Ver. 30. and to 33. Mark 13.24 Luk. 21.28 And when that comes then do you Christians and of the Good look up and lift up your Heads to the Clouds and above them So 1 Thess 4.14 Those who are asleep in Jesus will God bring with him and the Dead in Christ shall rise first and then shall be ever with the Lord. Mat. 25.31 shews us the Method and Proceeds of the Last Judgments and the Rewards and Punishments then to be expected without Word or Mention of a Separate Self-subsisting Soul or any thing concerning the same We need not take the Pains to try our Author's Cogitations by these Texts of Scripture because the Clearness and Wideness of the Difference needs no Dilucidation but are apparent at the first View We proceed to his Treatise De Passionibus in the very Entrance to which we take for observable That what God hath put together viz. the Soul and the Body whilst they are in Composito our Author Des Cartes endeavours to separate and pull in sunder taking all Sorts of Cogitation from the Body and because there is a Body of very great Motion and Heat viz. Fire therefore he will take all Heat and Motion from the Soul and bestow it upon the Body both which Assertions or Propositions we do utterly reject and do say That the Soul doth not nor cannot understand nor consider without the Animal Spirits and Organs of the Body nor hath the Body Heat or Motion without the Soul and the Energy and Efficiency thereof nor can have them without that Assistance and Conjunction Artic. 5. Says Men have thought that Heat and Motion depended upon the Soul and yet he shews no Reason to think otherwise and therefore Men may think so still and it seems will do it Art 6. He says Death never comes by any Defect in the Soul I say That is more than he knows though it should be an Immaterial Spirit but if a Material one then it certainly may cause Death by its Deficiency Art 8. Says There is a continual Heat about our Hearts as long as we live and this Fire is the Corporeal Principle of Motion in the Body And we say the same of the Animal Spirits and Corporeal Flame which is the Material Spirit Art 9. is granted Art 10. Says That the Animal Spirits are most subtil Bodily Particles extream rare and thin moving most swifty and like the Flames of Fire and never are at rest these rise in great plenty from the Heart to the Brain where they are in continual Action and they pervade the whole Body and all its Members and move every Part of it as Occasion may require And for this we are at Agreement with
and then in kindled or inflamed first for Conserving of Life and next for being a Principle of Motion in the Animal extending to every Member and Part of it stirring them up and inabling them to the Performance of those Duties for which they were by God intended and ordained The Vital Spirit is Flammula quaedam bred in the Heart out of the purest Blood and thence by Vital Heat communicated and conveyed to the rest of the Members imparting Power and Activity to them by their Natural Heat and Motion and stirring them to act and perform those Duties for which by Nature and Creation they were ordain'd and made The Organs for conveying this Vital Spirit into all Parts and Members of the Body are the Arteries The Animal doth no otherwise differ from the Vital Spirit save that in being transferred to the Brain that hath Power to rarify and make it more Lucid and Subtil and then being from thence infused into the Nerves it incites and enables them to exercise their Faculties Powers and appointed Offices of Sensation and Motion And by both these sorts of Spirits the Principal Actions of Animals and even of Humane Bodies are effected Namely Life is preserved and thence proceed Nutrition Generation Sense Motion Cogitations and Affections Hence it hath come to Pass that some have thought these Spirits to be the very Soul it self or at least the immediate Instruments to it by which the Body both lives and moves Hoc postremum says our Author verum est To which we do not assent but rather hold with the former Lib. 2. Cap. 2. Pag. 697. Treats Ex Professo de Anima and cites out of Tully That Dicaearchus a Peripatetick Philosopher and Scholar to Aristotle held there was no more Soul in Man than in Beasts This says our Author though it should be the Opinion of all Philosophers we ought not to follow or believe them in it because the Scriptures says he are against it Pag. 69â— He takes it pro confesso as agreed on all hands that Souls of Beasts do die with their Bodies without a Principle of separately Subsisting after Death of the Body but there are many Disputes concerning Humane Souls 1. What a Humane Soul is 2 Concerning its Nature and Operations 3 Concerning its Original Whether by continual New Creations or that it grow Ex traduce from Generation or be pre-existent And if newly created then whether first created and then infused or be created within the Body Whether the Vegetative the Sensitive and the Rational be all one same Soul in Man or that they be so distinct as that the two first may die and the third only be that which can separately subsist but the Question of the Souls Nature est per Difficilis per Obscura Tertullian S. Austin and Greg. Nyssen have written of it largely and Pomponacius and Simon Portius two famous Italian Philosophers have since taught That Aristotle held the Soul to be Mortal and that its Immortality cannot be proved by any sufficient Reasons But Men must be left to the Evidence of Faith for that Point and many there are who think there is not enough Evidence to be a sufficient Ground for that Faith Pag. 699. He therefore proposes his first Enquiry viz. What is the Nature and Essence of the Soul Upon this Query he propounds the Definitions made of the Soul by three Ancient Philosophers and very learned Men viz. Plato Aristotle and Galen the great Latin Physician but none of them come up to this Point and therefore he rejects them all especially that of Galen who says The Soul is but a Temperature and sutable Proportion of the Parts and Humours whereby the Animal hath Life and the Vse of all its Faculties And this Opinion he took from his Master Hyppocrates and endeavours to confirm it with divers Reasons and of this Opinion was then Dynarchus the Philosopher and Simmias and divers others The Author brings three Arguments against this Opinion but they are rather Sophistical than Solid He rejects also those of Plato and Aristotle But in lieu of them all he gives us one of his own Pag. 705. viz. A Humane Soul is a truly Spiritual Substance Incorporeal and Immaterial Upon this last Word he lays a great Stress For says he the Souls of Beasts are Essential Forms but drawn out of Matter from which they cannot be separated And there are those who think the Soul which is the Form to our Body to be neither Accident nor Body and that yet it is Material so as to depend upon Matter from which it cannot be separated and therefore must extinguish with Death of the Body Upon this therefore the whole Stress of the Question lies concerning the Mortality or Immortality of the Soul Whence says he this our Definition ought to be well and fully proved Says Humane Souls have the same Essence with Angelical Spirits their only Difference being that the one is Form to a Humane Body and the other not His Proofs he begins from Texts of Scripture but we yet in the Bounds of Nature and Reason will pass them over Animo revertendi and consider here his Arguments from Reason only to which he comes Pag. 709. 1. He says The Soul governs the Body and resists the Passions Complexion excites and begets Passions Here is the Soul contending against Passions and Natural Inclinations supporting them Ergo here is a Substantial Soul In Answer I say The Soul hath no greater Share in the Resisting than in the Exciting of Passions But that the Soul is the living and moving Principle in every Part and Member of the Body understanding and perceiving and remembring in the Head affecting and passionate in the Heart feeling and moving in the whole Body and in every member of it The Souls Regard and Care is for the whole Compositum to chuse the beneficial and to avoid the hurtful Things Hence Intellect and Passion are not one of them of the Soul and the other not the Soul but both are Faculties of the same Soul The Heart desires one thing as vitally Good or abhors it as Harmful The Intellect from common Sense and Understanding often opposes such Desires or Fears from Considerations more percipient and duly weighed and the Contest rises most often from the Nearness or Distance of what they contend about viz. Present or Future one Faculty affixing chiefly upon the Enjoyment and the other contemplating the Consequence withal Now if the Soul did govern the Body as our Author faith it doth the Contest could not be maintained against it by the Passions which should naturally be ordered to yield an easie Submission to it whereas it is too evident that the Passions do often over-power and over-rule the Intellect And as Aristotle hath told us their Contest is more like a Game at Tennis than a Government sometimes one of them prevails and sometimes the other So they look not like a Governor and a Governed but rather like Equal
Competitors sharing in the Command and Government and this sine fine The Contest hath no Determination but by Dissolution of the Compositum and this proves the Thing to be of Nature and so doth the Universality of it there being not a Humane Soul rightly constituted wherein this Contest is not fully evident Our Author hath well foreseen that his Definition of the Souls being a true Spiritual Incorporeal Substance would be easily granted But his Word Immaterial was that which would make the Boggle and therefore he promised diligently to prove the same but in this Argument we meet not with any Mention of that Quality and therefore conclude we are not at all pressed by it Pag. 710. He propounds Three Rules upon Material Forms 1. That they act not but when they are Forms of some Body 2. They are that Principle by which the Compositum is acted and do not work to Effect but by the Compositum 3. They are limited in their Extent not reaching farther than the Subject in which they are And to these we do also agree He argues the Humane Soul is not only the Cause that the Man doth understand but such Soul doth understand by her self For this he cites Arist De Anima Lib. 3. Cap. 4. I have searched that Chapter but do not find it there and however do not grant or believe the Thing to be true 2. He argues The Senses take Harm by an over-vehement Force of their Objects but the Intellect doth not so This he hath from Aristotle Hence he concludes the Soul to be Immaterial which we pass for an apparent non sequitur 3. He argues The less our minds are employed in External Things the more apt and ready they are to work This I deny and say the more exercised and practised the more apt and ready they are for those Things be they Worldly or Contemplative 4. He argues The Soul understands and knows it self its Powers and Actions and that it is a Substance differing from the Body All this I deny 5. Argues The Intellect can apprehend all Finite Things but if it were Material it could not discern one Matter from another nor know their Differences This I say the Beasts do easily perform 6. Argues The Intellect perceives Abstracted Things and Immaterial as God Angels Universals and Mathematical Notions therefore it is Immaterial We answer Universals and Notions are derived from Particulars and Materials and what Men know of God and Angels comes from Revelation and Sense of all which a Material Spirit acting in and with fit Organs is enough capable 7. Argues Quicquid recipitur fit ad Modum recipientis but the Intellect turns all into Universals and Immaterial Notions This I deny can do it I grant It is capable both of Particulars and Universals seems alike capable not one more Natural than the other whence the Modus recipiendi is first of the Particular by observing and Correction of which Rules are framed and Notions raised by ordinary Proceeding in a Rational Intellect not needing or to me proving an Immateriality of the Soul 8. Argues The Outward Senses convey the Species of their Objects to the common Sense that transmits them to the Phantasie thence there must be Organs to convey them to the Intellect but once come thither the Intellect orders them and judges of them without Help of any Organs at all This if he can maintain by good Proof Erit Apollo and shall have the Garland but till that be done we are where we began 9. Pag. 713. His Ninth Argument seems to be a Ramble Pag 716. His Tenth Argument is taken ex non Concessis 11. Argues God is the Souls Chief Good Therefore the must necessarily have Means to attain to him but that she cannot do whil'st she is in the Body obstructed by Sensual Powers therefore she must have a Subsistence out of the Body in which she may arrive to that Enjoyment I answer this beggs the Question or presumes the Case determined that there is such a She as our Author promised to prove and now brings her to stand upon a bare Supposal with as little Firmness as when he began his Argument The Subsistence in Separation is continued to be denied and till that evinced to be Erroneous this Argument is very Vanity 12. Argues That which doth really move and act it self must be Immaterial But Mens Souls do so and have a free Will and Choice to do or not to do I demand if these Things be not in Beasts He says the Elements do not move because they are Material I demand how he disposes of the Fire which the World takes to be always in Motion and that Naturally He says the Beasts can make no Resistance to their Appetites but must needs follow them yet every day affords us Proofs that Beasts can and do resist their Appetites A Setting-dog hath a great Desire to run and his Mouth will work and his Chaps water and yet he contains himself and sits still in sight of his Game for a long time together 13. Argues Pag. 717. Men have Power to chuse Loss of their Blood and Lives and that shews their Souls Superior and not dependent upon their Bodies And we agree the Soul to be all that and that the Intellect hath a swasive Power over other Faculties and sometimes prevails with them to suffer Pains and Present Death in expectation of believed future Rewards and this by a Power of Discretion in the Intellect without Dependence upon the body or Immateriality in the Soul Pag. 718. Says If the Soul were Material it would languish with the Body suffer in its Sickness feel its infirmities and weaken as the Body grows weak And all this we say it doth Sequitur Temperamentum Corporis and that is a Proof of its Materiality He says Mens Minds in Sickness and at Death are more lively sensible of their Sins than in Health that grows from Tear of approaching Danger of being taken away in a State of Sin for which Punishment is undoubtedly to be awarded at the Resurrection without Means or Hopes of any Alteration in the Space intermediate betwixt Death and that and not from a Quickness of Mind more than or above ordinary but from the nearness and greatness of the Concern He says When Men forsake Worldly Business they are made more apt for Contemplation And it is agreed that there are outward Helps as Abstinence and Retiredness which may advance the Intellective Faculty of the Soul and strengthen it against the Passionate and Sensual Faculties and so it may be assisted by Purging Bleeding or other Physick so by good Air good Company and even by good News which all are Tokens of the Souls Participation with the Body and induce to apprehend its Material Subsistence with and in the Body Our Author concludes he hath enough proved the Souls Immateriality but we still deny that he hath enough done it and how much he hath done towards it shall be left to common
help of other Circumstances of Time Place or Persons c. This we leave as doubtful Pag. 740. There are in Animals Three Sorts of Motion 1. Vital 2. Commanding or Stimulating 3. Prosecuting or Endeavouring That Commanding Force is in the Sensitive Appetite from whence all our Affections do arise and they reign and command in Animals Beasts and Men as Animal and act to Motion the whole Body or the several Members of it The Prime Vital Motion is that of the Pulse placed in the Heart the Seat of Life and Vital Motion acted by the Soul Pag. 741. The Actors in this Motion are the Inward Heat and Spirits viz. the Vital Spirits When this Motion ceases all Animals die and the Vital Spirits vanish But says he it doth not therefore follow that the Soul dies If he had proved or shall prove that there is a Soul in Man which did ever live doth live or can live in Separation from the Body we will admit of this Caution of his and not infer Death of such a Soul by the Ceasing of this Vital Motion in the Body Palpitations of the Heart agitated by the Affections and the Faculty of Respiration are also Vital Motions Appetive commanding Motion Pag. 724. is Vegetative Sensitive and Intellective It consists in prosecuting things liked and avoiding things disliked with Passion or at Leisure cites Matth. 15. They all proceed from the Heart and have their Rise from the Affections although many Causes may work in and upon them viz. Complexion of the Body Education Conversation Examples Doctrines c. their general Aspect is upon Pleasure or Pain to follow or avoid the Vigor of their Motion grows from Lust Wrath and Fear or present outward Sense greatly affected the Affections are not ill in themselves but useful helpful necessary for nothing is from God or Nature which is not Good the Evil which they produce is but by Accident Pag. 744. The Prosecutive Power lies in Local Motion This hath its Root in the Brain whence the Nerves and their Power and Motion are derived animated and enlivened by Spirits from the Heart This says he Galen teaches who is in that Point to be preferred before any other Testimony But it seems both he and Hyppocrates his Master were mistaken concerning Man's Compages of Body and Soul if our Author fall out to be right The Powers moving the Nerves and in them are the Vital and Animal Spirits and thence Motion is derived to the Muscles Bones Joints and every Member These Spirits which are partly Corporeal and partly quasi Incorporeal or Spiritual excited by the Soul omitting how or by what Means these Spirits move and guide the Nerves which are like Reins to the whole Body and they quicken and guide the Muscles and the small Cords or Strings which reach to them By these are the Bones Joints and Members of the Body moved And thus the moving Power of the Soul prosecutes the Mandates of the Appetite and Affections this seems a weak or foolish Sort of Soul that will or must use its Motive Powers to satisfie those Affections which drive to Action against the Will and Dictates of the Soul it self Whence we conclude it more likely that all these Motions are Natural and Animal that Intellect or Reason is one Natural Faculty in Man and that it is Chief and hath a Priority of Order and Power in him that Sense and the Affections are another Natural Faculty in Man and that Vital Inclinations and Powers of Vegetation are another Natural Faculty in him not divided by so many Souls but that one Soul serves all these Faculties viz. that Flaming Spirit or Principle of Life Motion and Action first breathed into Man by his Creator and once quite extinguished can never be again rekindled but from Heaven by miracle A Vital Spark or Origine of this Fire likely may be kindled in Heat of Coition lodged in the Matter by Ordinance of Nature and her Director This hath its appointed Natural Times and Means first of Vegetation and Motions then of Sense and Affections and lastly of Intellect and Reason The Matter Shape and Organs of the Body do by Degrees enlarge themselves and grow and they increase the Blood and Humors which nourish continually the Vital Active Flame whence the Increaseof Body and Soul goes on together till they arrive to their Fullness of Stature Proportions and Activities and in Ordinary Course of Nature they grow stand and decay together This Active is the Motive Principle enlivening and quickening all Man's Faculties to act according to their Natural Powers Propensities and Appointments If any Organ or Part of Matter be out of Order this Active Power not being Rational but in the proper Place for that Faculty cannot remedy that Want but can only put on to Action all that is in the Body fit for it inclining and helping them to and in the Actions that are proper or peculiar to them in the Heart the Primum Vivens and most Vital Part of the Body This Flame and Heat is most Predominant and Intense there the Blood is purified and ratified and refined there the Vital Spirits are generated and thence they are dispersed to several Parts of the Body but chiefly to the Head In the Heart therefore we place the Chief Seat of Life and Vegetation for whose Defence each other Part will be ready to expose it self knowing and feeling that the Loss of that Fort destroys the Microcosm The Place of next Value to this but of much greater Activity is the Head for there reside the Senses both Internal and External and there resides also the Rational Faculty viz. the Intellect and the Judgment so as these two Faculties of Sense and Reason are very close and near Borderers upon one another and although our Author go with the Stream of deriving Mens Affections all from the Senses therein seems to be an apparent Mistake for as we do allow to the Intellect a Will as well as to the Senses an Appetite so there must be allowed to Reason a Power of making and gaining the Affections of equal or greater Potency and Might then that which is attributed to the Senses Whence in Contests betwixt Reason and Sense or Will and Appetite that Part which prevails upon the Affections must be Victor over the other for the Affections stirred and gained excite move and sway the Heart which is drawn and bent by them to resolve and execute accordingly and there appears no such Difference between the Prevalency of either of these Faculties as that Men can determine which doth oftnest prevail or which of them is naturally endowed with the most strong and prevalent Power each have a Power in some Persons more than in others and in all Persons more at one Time or upon one Occasion then upon another In no Persons naturally doth the Stream run one Way but as S. Paul says 'T is not of willing or running but God gives the Victory perhaps often But
is very unwilling to do just as Men are to die And he proposes 10 Similitudes in this Supposition which seem not well grounded nor weighty Pag. 845. Quotes Texts of Scripture urged against his Tenet and answers them but Three in all Then he comes to the Opinion that Souls departed do sleep till the Resurrection void of all Operation till the Resurrection and then the Bodies rise from Death and the Souls from their Lethargy This Sleep says our Author is plain Death as that of the Body is called Sleep Pag. 846. He says Sure it is good Souls separated do go into Heaven and enjoy the Vision of God and the evil do go into Hell but they are not compleatly Happy or Vnhappy till the Resurrection But from whence he takes this Rule he shews not nor offers Proof of it It is an absurd Thing and against God's Wisdom That the Form of any Body should alwaye subsist separately from that Body I say if this be absurd it is very near of Kin to Absurdity That it should subsist at all without its Body It was objected to him That if Souls went to Heaven at the Death what need was there then of a Resurrection He answers The Form or Soul could not always subsist without the Body Why not say I as well as do so for Hundreds or Thousands of Years Says he It would be absurd and against God's Wisdom I do perceive this Consequence and he doth not offer to prove it therefore I think it no more absurd in the one Case than in the other Pag. 847. Says The Separation of the Soul and Body is by Violence and Nullum Violentum est Perpetuum I say nor Diuturnum Cites 1 Cor. 15.19 If there be not a Resurrection Christians are of all Men most miserable How can that be if good Souls go to Heaven at the Death and there behold the Face of God He answers This Saying concerns only the Bodies of Christians and not their Souls Their Bodies says he would be most miserable Not more miserable say I than the Bodies of other Men and therefore not of all others the most miserable He cites Psalm 146.4 When the Breath of Man goeth forth he shall turn again to his Earth and that very day all his Thoughts perish So Psal 78.39 Mans Spirit as a Wind passeth away and comes not again Pag. 848. He will not allow Spirit in these Places to signifie the Soul but in Places making for him it must do so as when Stephen says Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Cites Psal 115 17. and in other Places The Dead praise not thee O Lord nor all they that go down into the Silence But the Living do it So Isa 38. he answers Souls after Death do praise God proved Rev. Chap. 5. and Chap. 19. and opposes this Trance to the other Texts Pag. 849. Cites Job 17.16 Also in the Grave the Weary are at rest and fear no Oppressor Therefore bad Souls not punished Pag. 850. He closes his Treatise of the Soul with a long Definition of it according to his Mode and with all the particular Qualifications which he hath before designed for it We may now observe in short upon this Author that he was very much inclined and bent to maintain the Immateriality of the Soul as a thing without which there could not be a future Reward or Punishment a Mistake wherein all are involved or pretend to be involved who maintaintain his Opinion We see he hath been very laborious about it hath read all that he could find written of it and studied and delivered to us a Multitude of Arguments about it and hath shewed Learning Judgment and Industry to a high Degree joined with Integrity or a good Meaning and Belief that he did well and bestowed his Pains upon a Subject that deserved them and that it was a very Needful Truth which he supported But with what Success he hath done it must be referred to Judgment after Perusal of the Answers which have been offered to his Arguments upon the Differences arising between the Opinions of the Author and the Answerer upon many Occasions or Particulars and because we have very much studied and affected Brevity in both our Observations and Answers it need not be doubted but that those who are desirous of a more full Satisfaction upon this Point will think our Author worthy of their own Perusal concerning this Subject and many others Franciscus de Oviedo a Jesuit wrote a Body of Philosophy and in it Of the Soul Printed in a large Folio at Lions Anno 1640. and therein Fol. 6. N. 17. He joins with others in finding Fault with Aristotle's Definition of the Soul because he doth not tell us Quid sit Anima but Cujus sit Our Author offers to mend that of Aristotle by a Definition of his own viz. The Soul is the Constituent Act or Moving Power of a Compositum that is able to exert or exercise Vital Actions I say this seems a Difference without a Diversity or but one pretended and it may be collected that a Soul hath no proper Genus or such Specifical Difference of its own whereby it can be defined or known nor that it can be conceived otherwise than as it is a Constituent Part of a Compositum by the Conjunction of a Soul and a Body Whence we pretend to infer That the Soul in its Nature is not a Substance subsisting by it self or in Separation from its Body nor can be otherwise defined or understood than by its Reference and Relation to a Body Both our Definitions call it the Actus Primus of the Compositum or of an Organical Body so as we have no Conception of it at all save by the Relation which it hath to the Body or to the Man and without that it is to us unintelligible and thence it seems a Separate Subsistence cannot be Natural to it or at least to our Conception or Knowledge of it Fol. 8. N. 2. He says There is no Degree of Reason in Brutes and but some Degrees of Sense and in Brutes we find no Degree of Intellect or Sign of it but all they do is by Instinct To the contrary of this we have said before that Beasts do know by single Intellect and are taught to remember Duty and deny their Appetites and obey their Teachers and other Men in Things which they have learned and use both Obedience and a Rational Subtilty in them He says every Soul is the Act of a Mortal Body that an Angel is a Simple Compleat Substance but the Soul is an Incompleat Substance ordained to be totally Compounded with the Body with which it is united that by Means of the Material Organs it may produce Sense and Intelligence in such Bodies as have them This I take well enough to agree with a Material Soul Fol. 10. N. 15. He says it is objected The Humane Soul doth so communicate it self to Matter as that still it keeps its own Subsistence He
Masters in Philosophy That they answer and solve all Arguments which may be alledged against this Tenet of the Immortality N. 7. He says Let the Learned search into the Reasons and Grounds of this Immortality which all confess to be taken principally from God's Special Providence for Rewarding the Good and Punishing the Wicked in a Future State N. 8. Goes on upon the same Ground N. 9. Mentions only that some do reason for it from Man's Capacity to apprehend Eternal Things and to desire and expect them but doth not insist upon such Arguments or so much as say that they are firm N. 1. He discourses concerning Powers and Acts of Souls Separated with little Assurance and says They have an Innate Inclination and Appetite again to inform and to be united to their proper Matter Upon this our Author we may observe a Love and Inclination to Truth somewhat constrained by the Duties of his Obedience and Profession and the Place of his Abode and Conversation but in Things not forbidden him he seems congruous enough to the Natural Truth and Reason of Things I met with a Pamphlet printed 1645. in English intituled The Prerogative of Man or The Souls Immortality the Author not named but learned full of Quotations concernining our present Point Page 9. He says The Old and Great Philosophers have agreed a Separate Subsistence of Souls And this I do not deny He cites Cicero Permanere Animos arbitramur But what they then are and whither they go we are yet to learn Pag. 13. Cites Marcus Aurelius Emperour As Bodies dying are turned to Earth and Dust by Degrees so Souls carried into the Air are liquified and conjoined to the great Soul of the World which says the Author is nothing but God Cites Tacitus In Vita Agric. If to Good Spirits there may be any Place remaining if Great Souls extinguish not with their Bodies may'st thou rest in Peace Cites Macrobius who after reciting sundry Opinions touching the Nature of the Soul concludes That the Opinion that it was Incorporeal and Immortal had prevailed over all the other Opinions And this we do easily grant Page 10. He grants Aristotle did not declare himself in this Point but thinks he forbore so to do because he knew not how to dispose of such Souls after Death Page 14. He says It imports little that Dicoearchus Aristoxenus Pherecrates Tertullian Sextus Empericus and some other Learned Men have thought the Soul to be Mortal for that some Philosophers have held very odd Opinions He says The Term of Soul is taken for an Exhalation of the Purer Blood sometimes for a Ruling Spiritual Intellect and sometimes for the Immaterial Immortal Part of Man Page 15. He says Increase or Diminution of Knowledge grow from the Difference Advantage or Alteration in the Organs and thence a Man understands better than a Child a Learned than an Illiterate and a Diligent better than a Negligent Person And this we agree to with this Addition That the Soul or Flame of Life hath its Vicissitudes as well as the Body and its Organs Page 16. He says Some Acts of the Soul are Independent of the Body and wholly Inorganical as divers Learned Authors have shewed This shews like an open Blot in his Tables for this Thing is the most precise Point in Issue Prove this and carry the Cause And that in this Point he should shuffle us off without offer of one Quotation or one Reason in Proof of his Assertion inferrs he could find nothing to say in it that was satisfactory to his own Reason or likely to satisfie other Inquisitive People P. 17. Says An Immortal Soul cannot be generated And therefore it is not dependent upon Matter or the Being of a Compositum And this would be true if the Thing were so viz. that Mans Souls were Immaterial but that still wants Proof and so the Argument proceeds ex non concessis He cites an Argument against his Opinion viz. The Anatomies of Men and Beasts shew their Bodies to be alike and their Senses Affections Memories Phantasies are found to be alike and they have each an Intellect and Common Sense some more and some less Perfect whence then can such Difference arise between them in Nature that the Souls of Beasts must be Mortal and those of Men Immortal And this carries the Sense of our former and main Objection and being put by our Author upon himself it seems he should make a Substantial Answer to it but all the Answer he gives is this viz. We do collect from the Operations of the Souls of Men and of Beasts That there is not only a Gradual but an Essential Difference between them and that their being like doth not prove them the same The last we grant and for what he will collect it may be what he pleases but need be no Rule to others But here is no Reason shewn why or wherefore he makes such a Collection nor how that must needs or can be so done P. 18. He offers as some Proof the Difference between the Faculties of Mens Sensual Affections and their Reasons Yet he doth not say a Man hath two Souls and that Affections proceed from one of them and Reason from the other but pretends an Essential Difference between the Faculties of the same Soul which seems absurd in Nature and he might with as good Reason say that Love and Hatred in Man should inferr a Specifical Difference in his Soul Pag. 25. He affirms Generation cannot produce a Humane Soul but argues ex non concessis supposing it Immaterial and then what he says is true But it begs the Point in Question and which will not be granted him P. 26. Says Reason cannot be generated no more can Sense But the Organs of both may be so and the Powers and Spirits that actuate them I but says he Reason and Judgment can and do at times act Inorganically This hath been said before but neither then nor now was nor is proved or offered to be so and therefore is not believed Pag. 26. Says Generation is not performed by Acts of Wit or Vnderstanding but those of Vegetation and Sense and a Soul doth not generate a Soul still supposing a Non supponendum that a Soul is Immaterial and separately subsisting but taking it for a Material Spirit the producing it by generation is easie and natural Pag. 27. It follows says he that because a Man doth not generate with his Mind but his Body therefore his Body is Corruptible and his Mind or Soul is Immortal It seems this needs no Answer Pag. 28. says The Learned Sennertus a famous Physician was moved by certain Reasons which he could not overcome to think the Soul is generated and that the Seed it self is animated with a Humane Soul as in the Case of the Beasts but this Physician and Justus Lipsius called before the Divines and told the Consent of Divines was to the contrary they declared their Resolutions to obey the Order of
that it is a Vegetation holding upon the Part of the Matter only and hath in it no Performance of the Office of a Soul and yet it fashions an Organical Body to make it fit for the Reception of a Soul To which I answer There is nothing of this either proved or granted P. 40. He tells us what Dr. Sennertus says in his Books viz. he holds it probable That the Soul proceeds from Procreation and that from the first Instant of the Conception the Seed is animated with a Rational Soul Also That nothing created is Immortal by a Principle of Nature but only by the Free Will and Gift of God Also That by Force of God's Direction and the Words Increase and Multiply there was given Power to every Soul to Multiply another To the first of these Positions our Writer says That by the Doctor 's Leave it infers the Soul's Mortality for whatsoever is generated is Corruptible and must go out as it came in And this is easily granted him To the next he says It is neither true likely nor Philosophical for by this a Fly may be as Immortal as a Soul And this is also granted him As to the Seeds having in it the Principle of producing a Reasonable Soul the Writer demands P. 41. what becomes of all those Souls contained in mis-spent Seed or ineffectual Coitions Innumerable Souls says he must so be lost and perish He might as well have said Bodies also for there is no Soul till there be a Body they are both equally in the Seed and but potentially But they rise and grow together out of the same Root and Power and together and if their Principle the Seed perish nothing is lost but it self any more than Men can say when a Swine eats Akrons that he hath eaten up so many Oaks Then he demands Why doth the Soul depart from the Body but because it leaves to be Organical I may as well ask Why the Body departs from the Soul And we do not find that either doth depart from the other until Death them depart and that they cannot help it Durum Telum Necessitas and that is the Common or only Cause why the Soul and Body are parted or rather do cease to be And it seems not likely that when they are parted there remains any more a Soul than a Body The Man is departed the Body is turned to a Carkass and what becomes of the Soul no Man naturally can tell unless it extinguish with the Vital Flame and Spirits of the Body Thus many Thousands Years are past in the Worlds Age and yet Men are but as wise as Solomon left us in that Point and as Men had been from the Beginning to his Time For if former Times had known it he could not have doubted as he did Aristotle who lived about 700 Years after Solomon and doubted and searched in this Point as that Wise King did yet he could not resolve but hath left Posterity under the same Doubts that Solomon did Who knows the Difference or that there is a real Difference between the Natures or Souls of Men and Beasts in Point of their Separate Subsistences after Death Our Writer tells us It is the Father's Office to provide a Body for his Child's Soul which he performs by his Deputy Seed For my part I should rather have thought this to have been more properly the Office of the Mother But he goes on and tells us how this is Naturally Performed The Seed says he hath a Natural Strength and Cunning to frame a Body for the Child's Soul done by the Form of the Seed without any Animation of it with a Soul and so doth an Akron by Virtue derived from the Tree upon which it grew and the Forming Virtue is the Seeds own Form excited and assisted by the breeding and connatural Warmth of the Maternal Body and works as the Seed of the Cock impregnates the Egg with a Chicken And yet says he is it probable that in so small a Seed as comes from the Cock the Soul or Essence of a Cock should be resident Why not say I as well as the Vegetative Soul and Essence of an Oak in an Akron And to what he last before affirmed That the Father provides a Body for his Child's Soul he offers no Proof and for ought appears he may as truly prepare a Soul for the Body as a Body for the Soul He says The Forming Virtue is the Seeds own Form I say the Quickening Virtue is as properly in the Seed as the Forming Virtue and nothing can Naturally enliven the Body but the Soul and therefore both Soul and Body proceed Equally and Naturally from the Generation and Efficiency of the Parents without any need of New Creation of Souls in such Cases P. 42. Our Writer agrees the Effect of Sennertus's Assertion upon the Words Increase and Multiply but not by deriving the Younger Souls from the Elder but by the doing of some Act out of which such Forms should connaturally flow As Material Forms he says they grow by Resultancy but the Immaterial by Creation from a higher Cause which Creation is to follow and is due by a Regular Ordination and Existence of Nature and so they may be truly generated viz. given and communicated though not made by the Force of Generation I say This Act done out of which the Humane Form should connaturally flow or follow must be the Natural Coition of the Man and the Woman and the Form of the Child being by this Tenet Immaterial must be created as a Thing due by regular Ordination and Exigence of Nature to such Fact of Coition I demand from what Original he hath copied out the Regular Ordination here delivered He quotes no Authority in the Point nor offers any Reason for the maintaining it Therefore we take it for a bold Romance invented by himself for Supporting his Tenet of the Souls Immateriality the Dissenters from which have no need of this Conceipt agreeing That the Essential Parts Constituent of the Man viz. his Body and Soul are generated and take Growth together till they attain to their Perfection of Degrees and then decline decay and perish accordingly maintaining a strict Union and Copartnership both in Weal and in Woe till Death dissolve and finish their Association Men thus perswaded have no need of our Friend 's invented Regular Ordination or Exigence of Nature but may reasonably fix upon it the Terms of a bare and a needless Fiction P. 42. He tells us that Sennertus argues If the Parents do not give the Form viz. the Soul then they do not generate the Man but they do generate the Man and therefore they do give the Soul also and unless they do communicate the Soul it cannot be truly said that Like doth generate its Like Our Friend answers The Parents do give and communicate both Form and Matter but without producing either of them certain it is they give the Matter and as certain that they do
not produce it and the same may be said for the Form viz. the Soul the Parents give it but they do not produce it This Answer seems clearly Concessive that the Parents generate the Soul as much and as effectually as they do the Body and more than that is not required by Sennertus or any other But our Friend insists Learn says he the Effects of Generation from those of our Dissolution our Death doth dissolve the Vnion of our Parts but it doth not destroy those Parts but only the Man whence as by Generation we become Men by Dying we cease to be so This also grants that all which perishes in Death was generated by the Parents The Body had a Time to get Life and grow and so it hath to putrifie and consume and the Soul began with Life in the Embrion and in the Body and it seems to extinguish in Death of the Body naturally or we desire to be yet scientifically instructed from Reason or Nature what it is and where it is or at least that it is and hath a Separate State and Subsistence of its own P. 43. He recites another Argument of Sennertus viz. If the Seed be not animated from the first Instant and then the Progenitor happen to die before the Time of Animation it might be truly said that a Dead Man did Genenerate He answers This Case is like one who puts Sparks of Fire amongst Fewel then leaves it and the Fire doth not take hold and burn till a good while after yet this Man is said to have made the Fire And we do agree the Similitude to be apt enough in this Case and that it seems to import The Seed is as much the Efficient of the whole Child as the Sparks put into the Fewel are of the Fire more than which hath not been demanded Our Friend says he hath chosen to contest this Point against Sennertus because that Doctor was a Man of great Worth and Substance And says he magnified his Wisdom greatly in Submitting his Opinion to the Divines worthy to be imitated herein by all other Men But that before hath been delivered doth sufficiently evince that there is a great Latitude and Difference of Opinions in the World Concerning this Writer of An. 1645. we may observe he had the Advantage of the Wren in the Fable who sate upon the Back of the Eagle and was carried by her into the Clouds and coming to the full Extent of the Eagles Height she put her self to the small Stretch of her own Wings and mounted above the Eagle by so much He had perceived the great Incongruities of continually newly created Souls and intended at mollifying them by assigning them a Regular Ordination as a Duty upon the Exigence of Nature This Course appears healing and helpful Posito that the Soul be Immaterial but it is no Manner of Proof that the Soul is so And if it be not so but only a Material Spirit then is there no need of this Invention and then it is as hath been said not only an Invention but a needless one And yet it testifies the Writer amongst his other Endeavours to have been a Person of Wit Learning and Consideration All the Authors presently in our Possession or Reach concerning the Soul have before been Cited and Considered viz. Four Foreign and Four of our own Later and Domestick Writers And concerning the Materiality or Immateriality of Humane Souls we may observe from that they have spoken that there are Two particular Queries or Questions the Determination of which will advance much towards the knowledge of the Souls Nature and Qualifications If One of them be proved or granted thence the Immateriality of the Soul may be strongly inferred and if the other be proved or granted thence may he as strongly inferred the Souls Materiality The First of these is held in the Affirmative by divers of our Authors viz. More Digby Zanchius and the Pamphlet of 1645 who do all expresly and often affirm That the Soul in Life-time of the Man doth at some times and in some cases act of and by her self without Aid or Ministry of the Body or its Organs or any Members or Powers of it If this Assertion have been proved or can or shall be proved We grant from the Conclusion a very strong Inference may be drawn for the Souls Immateriality agreeing the Truth of Aristotle's Assertion in his Treatise of the Soul Chap. 1. That if the Soul have any Operation or Affection peculiar to her self and wherein she can effectually Act without Use or Aid of the Body or the Members Organs or Spirits of it then it is very likely that she may also be capable of a Subsistence in a State of Separation from the Body But says he If the thing be not so and Men fail in Proof of such a peculiar in the Soul certainly she cannot subsist in a State of Separation from the Body Our Authors for Proof of such a Peculiar in the Soul do alledge That the Soul can conceive Spiritual Beings and Universals Second or Abstracted Notions Logical Mathematical and Metaphysical Beings and Things which Matter is not very capable of nor that it can be Assistant to the Formation or Contemplation of such Conceptions In answer to which may be opposed the same Authors Assertions That whilst the Soul is in the Body she cannot act without the Animal or Vital Spirits of the Body and before hath been observed That the Soul cannot see but by the Eyes nor remember but in the Memory And these Organs and Faculties may be lost by Accident and yet the Soul remain perfect still but without Sight or Memory for want of the Bodily Organs and if the Intellect be crazed the Soul cannot understand but according to such Capacities as remain in the Organ and it seems the like may be said for all other Faculties of the Soul and Organs of the Body which infers the Soul cannot operate without the Spirits and Organs of the Body As to the Conceiving Spiritual Beings and Things it hath been said such Knowledge hath been derived from Revelations made to the Senses of some Men and their Testimony of them to other Men and for the Conceptions of Universals and Abstracted Notions it seems the Soul in the Intellect working Comparate and Abstractive by using the Joynt Powers of Intellect Phantasie and Memory and by composing and comparing what is found in them may well enough be able by abstracting them from Conceptions of Matter and Sense and sorting them first then ranking and comparing them the Soul by Joint Use of these Organs may naturally be able to raise Generals out of Particulars and from Generals ascend to Universals and so likewise raise abstracted Notions from the often Repetition and comparing Things first made known to them by the Senses We do not then agree that any of our Authors have proved that the Soul hath any Operation or Affection so peculiar to her self as that the Body
hath no Participation thereof with her or that she doth or can act any thing or produce any Effect without the Spirits Members and Organs of the Body which it seems cannot be excluded from participating with the Soul in all its Affections Operations and Motions no more than the Soul can be unconcerned in the Health Accidents Rejoicings or Sufferings of the Body We come now to the other Question or Query which if it be determined in the Affirmative will strongly inferr the Souls Materiality viz. Concerning the Mode of the Generation of Mankind If the Parents do generate a Child like unto themselves consisting of the same Matter and Form or such a like Soul and Body as themselves are if the Child's Soul and Body be generated by the Parents as well the one as the other if the Thing have been proved or can and shall be proved effectually so to be done a very strong Inference and Argument may thence be drawn That the Soul is of the same Nature and Constitution with the Body Materially and Naturally Extinguishable by Dissolution of the Compositum Man whose Constituent Parts they were For it seems Generation and Corruption do mutuo se ponere tollere What grows from Generation hath a Natural Tendency to Growth Strength Decay and Dissolution If therefore one Man doth generate another like himself and so the Soul as well as the Body it seems likely that what comes from Generation is under a clear Capacity of Corruption if it be not under a Necessity of Terminating by that Means We are in a great Measure convinced that the Parents do procreate Children like themselves both their Souls and Bodies and that therefore both those Parts have in Nature and Reason a Capacity or a Tendency if not a sort of Necessity to terminate in Corruption So as we do not perceive that Arguments drawn from Reason or Nature and hitherto produced are strong enough to evince That the Humane Soul is Immaterial or Self-subsistent after the Dissolution of the Person and Corruption of that Body to which it was knit and which whilst Life lasted it did inform direct and actuate And herewith shall be concluded the Disquisition intended concerning the Soul of Man founded upon the Grounds of Nature and Reason and tried by the Arguments extracted from them We proceed from them to the Second Sort of Arguments offered for Proof of a Soul 's Separate Subsistence drawn by our Opposers from the Ground of Moral Congruity There must be say they a Reward and Punishment future to this Life of this the Corrupted Carkass is by no Possibility in Nature capable and therefore the Soul must needs have a Separate Subsistence that thereby Future Rewards and Punishments may have a proper Subject to work upon And this sort of Argument is propounded and handled by Baxter in his Quoted Book at P. 34. reaching thence to 40. and by Dr. More in his 18th Chap. of the quoted Book Pag. 314. to the End of that Chapter and by Sir K. Digby in the 10th Paragraph of his 9th Chapter And all our Authors have mainly insisted upon this Argument in Places before quoted And it is done by them upon very good and unanswerable Reason such as the Wit of Man grounding it self only upon Nature and Reason is not able to make sufficient Reply unto or to overcome This we look upon as the Potent and Prevalent Argument whereby the whole World and in all the Ages of it hitherto hath been drawn and even forced to consent to the Opinion of a Separate Subsistence of a Humane Soul and to invent Elisiums Fortunate Islands and Paradises for the Good also Tartarums and Barathrums and Gehenna's for the Wicked Souls departed The Silly Americans have not wanted their more crude Conceipts viz. That in Places beyond their Mountains the Good Souls Sing and Dance amongst Groves and Fountains and the Wicked ones are relegated to Denns and Caves and other Dark and Disconsolate Places suting with their Demerits Thus from the Necessity of Future Recompences the Opinion of the Souls Separate Subsistence hath been spread and received over the Face of the whole Earth far and wide without stint in place or stay in time All Nations and all Religions have accepted of this Opinion and it hath hitherto prevailed amongst them and thus may their Argument be framed It is Morally Congruous amongst all Men That Good Men and Actions should be rewarded and recompenced and that Bad Men and Actions should be punished But Men find and see it falls out very often that Rewards and Punishments are not so distributed in this World Ergo Moral Congruity requires and that proves there must be a future State wherein Men and their Actions shall be Rewarded and Recompenced according to their Deserts This. Men cannot reasonably refuse to grant and then ex concessis it may be further argued Man is Constituted but of Two Essential Parts viz. his Body and his Soul His Body dying Corrupts and Turns to Dust and so becomes incapable of Reward or Punishment in a future State Ergo If the Man and his Actions be Rewarded or Punished in a future State he must receive the Effects of such Reward or Punishment in that part of him which is reputed capable and may by possibility have a separate Subsistence after the Mans Death viz. in his Soul and that this may be done The Soul must have a separate Subsistence after Death of the Body And the same holds true Negative There is nothing of Man to be Rewarded or Punished in a future State but his Body or his Soul But the Body in a State of Dissolution is not capable of Reward or Punishment and if the Soul extinguish in Death then is there nothing of the Man lest capable of receiving Reward or Punishment in a State future to this Life Ergo That the Rules of Moral Congruity may stand and be maintained in the World the Soul of Man must needs enjoy a separate Subsistence capable of Reward and Punishment after Death and the Dissolution and Corruption of his Body This Argument appears irrefragable not to be confuted or effectually answered by the uttermost strength of Mans Reason And therefore it is nothing strange that it hath prevailed with Jews and Gentiles Mahometans and Christians inducing them generally to belive a Separate State of Humane Souls after Death and it is still used by all our Authors for maintenance of the same Opinion at this time We still agree that the force of this Argument cannot by the bare Wit or Reason of Mankind be Answer'd and Refuted but yet we say that the same may be fully so Answered by Deductions out of the Divine Revelations and Oracles of God and that by Arguments thence to be taken both Negative and Positive and though we do mainly relie upon our Positive Argument on this behalf yet it seems not requisite to pass over in Silence the Negative Argument which may be drawn out of our Holy
Man without Design to teach concerning it 2. We may observe that the Retribution expected to be made at the Resurection will be both more compleat and formal than what Men conceive to be in the Procedure concerning a Separately Subsisting Soul We read God would not execute upon Sodom without a full Examination of the Matter and so there shall be in the Resurrection All shall stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ and the Books shall be opened that of Conscience and that of Life That of Conscience hath enough Evidence to condemn the whole World but those whose Names are found written in the Book of Life and those only shall escape by special Priviledge or Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ And as the Proceeding will be more Formal so the Retribution will be more Compleat and made to both the Essential Parts of Man his Soul and his Body which as they have Jointly and Inseparately acted in this Life so shall they Rejoice or Mourn at the Resurrection after the Sentence of a Last Judgment passed upon them 3. We may observe That Death in the New Testament is frequently called and compared to a Sleep and that the most sound and profound and in such a Sleep viz. a sound Sleep whatsoever time passes over the Sleepers head he hath no perceivance of if it be two ten or twenty hours the length or shortness of the passing time doth not at all appear to the Sleeper but at his waking he rises as if he had been but newly fallen asleep Man's Death is such a profound Sleep and his Resurrection such a Waking If during that Sleep there go over the Dead man's head Months or Years to an Hundred or a Thousand this is no way perceivable by the Dead Person but when he rises it will be but as if he had newly fallen asleep We read that a Thousand Years with God are but as one Day nor are they in truth so much And in our present Case we may say that a Thousand Years going over such a Sleeper's head are but as one Day to him or are rather less viz not so much to the Sleeper as one Day to a Man that is Active in the World for that the Dead man is not at all affected with the time which passeth over him but when the Last Trumpet shall sound the Dead World shall awake as if they had then but newly fallen asleep ready to obey the Summons of Rise ye Dead and come to Judgment Whence although the time betwixt Death and Judgment appear upon a sudden Conception to be long or over-long yet upon a better Search it will be found of very small importance either in respect to God or Man And notice it seems may be taken that it would look like a great impropriety to term Death a Sleep if it were true that after Death the better part of the Man viz. his Soul continued Waking and alive and at a greater Liberty and Freedom of Action then ever it enjoyed during its Conjunction with the Body 4. We may observe That the same which dies rises and as the Soul is principal in Man so Man shall be more the same at his rising in respect of his Soul then of his Body for his Body shall be but of the same kind as Wheat comes of Wheat and Barley of Barley but when Providence hath so formed the Body and kindled in it the Flame of Life by breathing into him the Breath of Life to be derived only from Heaven his Humane Powers and Faculties viz. his Senses and Common Sense his Phantasie Intellect and Judgment his Affections and Passions his Knowledge and Memory shall be altogether the same that they were when he died and as much the same as they are at a Man's waking again after a sound and long Sleep taken and the person rising shall be more the same then an Old Man is the same person that he was when he was Young The same Person Soul and Body that died shall be revived and rise again as one who falls asleep wakens and returns to the former Powers Affections and Actions of his Life But if the Soul were in a Separate Being and State of Activity during all that time of the Separation how could it be said to obtain a Resurrection or be conceived to desire a Re-union with that Body which before was but as a Cage or Prison to it And it seems such a Soul should rather fear and resist such a Re-union with its former Body then rejoyce at it or be contented with it 5. We may observe That betwixt the Death and Resurrection of Man no alteration of his Condition can be expected or hoped for but as the Tree falls so it must lie and as Death leaves us so Judgment shall find us The Body is returned to the Dust from whence it was taken and if the Flame of Life and Activity first derived from God and sine propagated by Generation be by Death extinguished there remains nothing for an altering Power naturally to work upon Solomon tells us There is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave but all is rest and peace there And so says Job There the wicked cease from troubling and there the we ary are at rest So Chap. 3.11 Oh that I had died from the Womb I should then have been as though I had not been Solomon again As a Man comes out of his Mothers Womb so shall he return to go as he came and shall take nothing with him And so for the Resurrection Men shall rise as they lay down without natural or appearing Possibility of any Alteration We proceed now to the Proof of what we have before asserted viz. That the Resurrection is an Article or Point of the Christian Religion as clearly taught and asserted as well evidenced and attested and as fully and certainly to be believed as any other Point or Article of the Christian Religion whatsoever And for this our Evidence shall begin from the Old Testament There Exod. 3.6 God is stiled The God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and from that Stile the Resurrection is proved by our Lord but we must agree that the Proof which it makes rises more from the Authority of him who quoted it as a Proof than in the Evidence of the Words themselves For God might reasonably be so stiled from the great Favour which he had shewed to those Persons and his Covenant and Promises made with them and to them But the Sadduces refused to admit of any other Scriptures save Moses his Writings And to prove the Resurrection out of those Writings our Lord made choice of this Text and from his Authority the same must be admitted amongst Christians to be a good Proof of our Future Resurrection from the Dead And as Ordinary Readers could hardly have drawn a good Proof out of that Text so another Proof of the Resurrection appears not till we come to the Book of Job and there
may be saved in the Day of the Lord viz. that at the Resurrection the Whole may be saved Spirit put for the Whole Man Chap. 7.34 The unmarried Woman is holy in Body and Spirit viz. Soul and Body together holy in the whole Compositum Ezek. 11.19 I will give them one Heart and put a new Spirit and a Heart of Flesh within you Chap. 13.3 Wo to the Prophets that follow their own Spirit and have seen nothing Ver. 17. They prophecy out of their own Heart And thus we see Spirit put for the Person the Heart the Affections the Passions for Mind Understanding Knowledge Reason Conscience viz. for Man and every of his Sublime and Spiritual Parts or Faculties but most properly and especially for his Breath As Job 12.10 In the Hand of God is the Soul of every living thing and the Breath of all Mankind Ch. 34.14 If God set his Heart upon Man if he gather unto himself his Spirit and his Breath all Flesh shall perish together and Man shall turn again to his Dust Psal 104.29 When thou takest away their Breath they die and are turned again to their Dust when thou lettest thy Breath go forth they shall be made and thou shalt renew the Face of the Earth Gen. 2.7 By God's breathing into Mans Nostrils the Breath of Life Man became a Living Soul Rom. 14.7 None of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself but we live to the Lord and die to the Lord whether therefore we live or die we are the Lords Hence it need not seem strange that a Dying Man should recommend his Person to the Lord by the Term of his Spirit for the Body as well as the Soul is under the Knowledge and Provision of Providence When good Men lie down to sleep they customarily recommend themselves to God and going to sleep in Death makes such a Recommendation both the more earnest and the more solemn and cannot reasonably be intended of the Spirit only but of the whole Compositum by that Term and God will raise them both up again at the Last Day both Soul and Body John 6.44 The Man that comes to me I will raise him up at the last Day the whole Man both Soul and Body Psal 31.6 Into thine Hands I commend my Spirit thou hast redeemed me O Lord God of Truth David spake this when he was in a way of Living and had both a Body and a Soul and apparently sought God's Protection for them both viz. for his Person under this Term of Spirit Jo. 11.25 He that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live viz. the Compositum of Soul and Body Our Lord knew he should have a speedy Resurrection and foretold it to be within Three Days Time both of Soul and Body And it seems that by this Term of Spirit he recommended them both to the Protection of his Father and that S. Stephen did the like to our Lord Whence here appears no Necessity of Inferring a Separate Subsistence of a Humane Soul from these Texts which plainly did not intend to teach the Doctrine and it seeems may be very well satisfied by another very different Construction of them Joh. 6.40 It is God's Will that he who believeth should have everlasting Life and I will raise him up at the last Day Soul and Body without mention of an intermediate Estate And we do not accept our two quoted Texts as a sufficient Proof of that Point Acts 2.27 Thou shalt not leave my Soul in Hell or Death is construed to comprehend the Body also and both were raised accordingly Rom. 2.9 Tribulation and Anguish upon every Soul of Man that doth Evil this comprehends the Body also So Chap. 13.1 Let every Soul be subject to the higher Powers Whence we conclude that by recommending the Dying Spirits intended the Dying Bodies also and was intended of the Whole Man or the Person then departing out of this World 2 Cor. 5.1 If our earthly House of this Tabernacle were dissolved we have a Building of God a House not made with Hands eternal in the Heavens And desires to be clothed upon with that House Groans to be clothed upon that Mortality might be swallowed up of Life yet would not be unclothed whilst we are at home in the Body we are absent from the Lord walking by Faith not by Sight we desire to be absent from the Body and present with the Lord for we must all appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ that every one may receive the things done in his Body according to that he hath done whether good or bad We read Rev. 22.12 I come quickly and my Reward is with me to give every Man according as his work shall be Ver. 20. Surely I come quickly Amen even so come Lord Jesus Heb. 10.37 Yet a little while and he that shall come will come and will not tarry Ver. 35. 36. We must wait with Patience and Confidence till the Time promised do come James 5.8 Be ye also patient stablish your Hearts for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh 1 Pet. 1.5 Who are kept by the Power of God through Faith unto Salvation ready to be revealed in the last Time as if the last Time was near Chap. 4.5 Men shall give an Account to him that is ready to judge the Quick and the Dead viz. in a short Time coming 2 Pet. 3.12 Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the Day of God to Judgment 1 Joh. 2.28 Abide in Christ that when he shall appear ye may have Confidence and not be ashamed at his coming as if he were expected to come in their Time So 1 Tim. 6.14 Keep this Commandment without spot until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ as if Timothy might live to that Time And elsewhere The coming of our Lord draweth nigh 1 Joh. 2.18 Little Children it is the last Time And The Time is short he that is holy let him be holy Rev. 22.11 And he which is filthy let him be filthy still as if Christ's coming to Judgment were even then at hand 2 Pet. 3.9 Men then said that Day was slack in its coming and Ver. 4. that the Promise of his coming was over-long delay'd From all these Evidences it appears that the Church at that Time did believe the coming of our Lord to Judgment to be nigh at hand and that when he should appear we should be like him and that then as Philip. 3.21 Our vile Bodies should be changed and fashioned like his Glorious Body 1 Cor. 15.51 We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed And to this Change it seems S. Paul's Words in our Proving Text are to be applied He would not be unclothed but clothed upon with the House which is from Heaven that so he might not be found naked but that Mortality might be swallowed up in Life Whilst we are at home in the Body viz. our Natural Body we are absent from the Lord
be better known it seems it can have but little Force of Proof in this Argument Joh. 12 26. If any Man serve me let him follow me and where I am there shall also my servant be Chap. 14.3 If I go and prepare a Place for you I will come again and receive you unto my self that where I am there ye may be also This later Text expounds the former viz. Christ's Servants shall be where he is intending after he hath first prepared a Place for them and then comes again to receive them These particular Texts of Scripture are all that we meet with that are quoted by others or are observed by us and tending materially to Proof of the Separate State or Subsistence of Humane Souls after this Life ended And yet there remains one Perswasive which inclines common Readers as much or more than any other Argument to believe that there is a Separate State of Souls Subsisting after they are parted from the Bodies a Perswasive rising from Induction of many Scriptural Expressions concerning the Soul and the Body as different and even opposite Things and Principles Rom. 7. describes the Contest betwixt the Flesh and the Spirit as if they were naturally different Principles in Man whereas they are but different Faculties in Man viz. the Affections Passions and Appetites Vital combating the Faculties Intellectual the Knowledge and Reason of the same Party with various Success But these being exprest by the Terms of Flesh and Spirit of the Man seem to represent them as two Principles different and contrary one to the other Such Faculties we agree they are different and contrary but such Principles we say they are not but all proceed from the same Principles the Constituent Parts of Man viz. his Soul and his Body The Natural Powers of such a Compositum all these Faculties equally are and seem the one of them independent upon the other and seldom free from a Contest amongst them in which the Judgment or highest Prudence of the Party bears the Sway and hath the Determinative Power naturally residing in it So as what is here signified by the Terms of Flesh and Spirit are so far from a Possibility of a real Separation one Sort from the other as neither of them can subsist but in eodem subjecto with the other and the Compositum which hath not all of them is Imperfect Chap. 8.1 They who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit This taken for a Humane Spirit or Soul must intend the Reason or Intellect And the Chapter goes in Terms of Flesh and Spirit inducing Readers to accept them as different Principles and thence Separable Whereas we are ready to put the Stress of our Argument upon their being Joint-Principles of one Compositum Man which cannot consist without both And it seems as he Man cannot subsist without them so they not without one another And so in a Compositum they are generated grow stand and fall together one and all the Soul the Body and the Compositum and so they shall rise and be recompenced together And what God hath so joined together in Bands of Nature and absolute Coherence one of them to another the Power of Mens Wits and Perswasions will never be able finally to separate or to evince their Subsistence in a State of Separation one of them from the other Matth. 26.41 Our Lord says to his sleeping Disciples The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak intending the Body is often unable to act according to the Reason and Desire of the Mind Judgment and Intent of the Man and that Infirmity of Weakness and Weariness is peculiar to the Flesh thereby made unable to act with that Vigour and Continuance which the Soul acting in the Phantasy and Reason of the Man requires and shews such Connexion of the Matter and Form as in the Man one of them cannot act without the other Rom. 8.10 The Body is dead because of Sin but the Spirit is Life because of Righteousness 2 Cor. 7.1 Let us cleanse our selves from all Filthiness both of Flesh and Spirit Galat. 3.3 Having begun in the Spirit are ye now made perfect in the Flesh Ch. 5.16 Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the Lust of the Flesh Ver. 19. Works of the Flesh Ver. 22. Fruits of the Spirit Coloss 2.11 Putting off the Body of the Sins of the Flesh 1 Cor. 7.34 The unmarried Woman cares that she may be holy both in Body and in Spirit Eph. 4.4 There is one Body and one Spirit 1 Thess 5.23 I pray your whole Spirit and Soul and Body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord. James 4.5 The Spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy 1 Pet. 2.11 Beloved I beseech you abstain from fleshly Lusts which war against the Soul Ch. 3.18 Christ was put to death in the Flesh but quickned by the Spirit Ch. 4.1 He that suffers in the Flesh hath ceased from Sin and must live the rest of his time in the Flesh not to the Lusts of Men but to the Will of God 2 Pet. 2.10 Wicked Men walk after the Flesh in Sins here named Rom. 13.14 Make no Provision for the Flesh to fulfil the Lusts thereof 1 Cor. 6.20 Ye are bought with a Price therefore glorifie God in your Body and in your Spirit which are God's These Texts and their like have a Sound or Semblance of Supposing a Separating Difference betwixt the Soul and the Body whereas their true Signification seems to be a Distinction between the Powers or Faculties of the Compositum viz. those Vital or the Vegetative and Sensual from those Intellectual and Rational viz. Man's Ambition Covetousness Lust Wrath and Fear and their Descendents from his Knowledge of Common Sense his Phantasy Opinion Reason and Prudence The first Sort of these Faculties and their Inclinations and Desires are signified and intended under the Name and Term of Flesh in S. John's Epistle called the World And the second Sort of these Humane Faculties are signified and intended under the Name and Term of the Spirit or the Soul But both Sorts are Fundamentally and even Inseparately united in the Nature of Man or that which is the Compositum both of Soul and Body Both Sorts are derived from the Conjunction of these two Principles or Constituent Parts of the Man it seems not singly but each from the Whole or the Compositum Not the first Sort from the Flesh and the second Sort from the Spirit or Soul really for the Flesh by it self cannot live or act And that a Soul by it self either ever did or that it can act was questioned by Aristotle and not found or believed by him It hath been affirmed by some of our Authors quoted but their Proofs offered are so weak as they appear very unlikely to perswade Considering People who can put off their former Prejudices Nor have they prevailed yet to induce a Belief that the Soul cannot act those Faculties of the Second
Dark Receptacles How can meer Matter and Motion hit upon forming every Species amongst them like those of their own Kind How comes it that upon their first Production they seek their Dams Paps for Nourishment What teaches them the proper uses of their several Armatures not meer Matter and Motion What teacheth them Art Natural or Acquired Also their Senses both Inward and Outward their Phancies and Memories How come they by these and the use of them not by meer Matter and Motion but even as Men do though in a much Lower Degree Gen. 1.25 God made the Beast of the Earth after his Kind ver 26. He said Let us make Man in our Image Here appears a plain Intention of God to make both Man and Beast and that they were made by him accordingly and that he indued each sort of them with a Generative Faculty or Power whereby they were inabled and even naturally and generally provoked to generate their like according to their several Species Chap. 5.3 Adam begat a Son in his own likeness after his Image whence Men are generated in the same Image and Likeness that they were created The Maintainers of the Immateriality pretend to expound the Texts of Genesis last quoted and they do it thus where it is said That God made Man after his own Image this Image of God say they was the Soul of Man but not his Body for that cannot be the Image of a Spirit and God is a Spirit Then upon Adam's begetting a Son in his own Likeness after his Image They say This begetting after his Image must be intended of the Body only and not of the Soul for that the Parents cannot generate Souls of their Sort viz. Intelligent and Angelical but that must be newly created by God upon every new Procreation of Bodies by the Parents I answer That both these Expositions are meerly precarious and arbitrary not agreeable to Reason or grounded upon Scripture Not upon Scripture for they are contrary to the Letter and Words of the Texts The first says God made Man after his own Image Here Man say I must intend the Compositum of the Soul and Body for we never heard or read of a Man without a Body And as this Contexture of Soul and Body is the Image of God so Death by Dissolving of that Contexture destroys that Image of God which was the Man whil'st that Contexture continued So for the other Text Adam begat a Son in his own Likeness after his Image This say I intends a begetting of the Soul as well as the Body for we never heard of a Son of Man without a Soul and think that in Nature there cannot be that thing viz. a Son of Man without a Soul But they reply Flesh and Blood cannot generate Soul of our Sort not an Angelical Spirit for that which it born of flesh is fleshly and not such a Spirit This I grant to be true and infer thence That a Humane Soul generated is not an Intelligent Spirit but a Material though very much Refined Spirit and of a Flamy Aiery Nature as Heraclitus and my Lord Bacon have described it and as Hippocrates Galen Sennertus Willis and Ent have spoken of it I say then That God created Man endowing Matter with Motion and the Contexture of such a Spirit or Soul as did enable him to perform all those Actions and was able to actuate all those Powers which God intended for him and bestowed upon him That God can so do at his pleasure I believe there are few that doubt Willis page 5. bot says Dum ita Creatoris opera quisque ad ingenii sui modulum exponit sentire utique videtur quod Deus nihil amplius fabricare valeat quam quod homo possit concipere aut effingere To this he adds page 40. That the Vital and Animal Spirits are prime parts of the Sensitive Soul in Men and Beasts And says Vt nihil referam illis qui hosce Spiritus prorsus negant quorum existentia fere palpabilis ab effect is probari potest neque de illis redarguendis solicitus sim qui viventium sensus facultates quascunque perceptivas non nisi à substantia immateriali immortalique obiri posse contendunt And to the like Sense Melanchton De Anima p. 5. Spiritus vitales in homine nascuntur in corde vere sunt flammae P. 7. Moses teaches Animam carnis in sanguine esse significat autem anima Hebraeis vitam And when Moses says The Life or Soul is in the Blood vult sanguinem vehiculum esse vitae spiritus vitales illam ipsam rem esse quae ciet corpora quam nominamus animam P. 21. The Powers of a Sensitive Soul Monstrant aliquid quod cogitari potest in materia fons esse actionum non tamen haec prorsus perspicimus sed naturam fons intuemur experimur cernimus motus quod cur it a factum est sapientia est artificis non nostra P. 112. Nulla pars in universa natura ita introspici potest ut penitus tot a agnoscatur Admirandum est cerebrum quod est domicilium sapientiae ac officina cognitionum judicii ratiocinationis memoriae actiones cerebri quantum differunt à physicis qualitatibus quae est substantia cerebri ubi quomodo fiunt hae mirandae actiones in hac squalida massa haec fateamur non penitus sciri agnoscamus Deum esse Naturae nostrae conditorem actiones cerebri proprias maxime testari hunc mundum non extitisse casu Deum conditorem esse mentem sapientem beneficam justam veracem quia impossibile est discrimen honestorum turpium casu aut à natura bruta ortum esse Upon which I thus descant That as God hath given to Brutes quasdam notitias proper to their Natures of which Men cannot perceive the Origins or Causes as in the Arts of Bees Ants Spiders Birds Building Procreation Government and Feeding Brutes Knowledge of their Natural Enemies and the strength and use of their own Armatures and the Proprieties of their Food and Medicines These and their like come from particular Notices planted by God in the Natures of Creatures and it seems Congruous enough to such Proceedings That God may have given to Mankind the easie apprehension honestorum turpium and the Notion of Expectation of a Ruling and Protecting Divinity as proper Notices and Instincts very sutable to the Nature of Man and his Commodious Living in this World The same Author P. 205. says Many things we know are acted in us and by us Ita condita est hominum natura divinitus ut fieri cogitationes in nobis formari ordinari imagines sciamus quomodo fiant non cernimus sed ita Deus voluit And this to me seems a sufficient Account of Mens using their Faculties of Understanding and Reason ita Deus voluit and that it is to be preferred before the Expedient or Proposal
to such purposes 1. Making the Soul Tota in qualibet parte 2. Setting on foot a New Creation of Souls by God every day and for Adulterous Incestuous and Buggered Procreations where the Shape is Humane by a Creando infunditur 3. It immerses pure young innocent Souls newly created in the filth of Original Sin without any Cause given or Offence committed by them 4. St. Austin had thereby his Imagination confounded not knowing if such Soul was One and not Two or Two and not One or were at once both one and Two and made him think the last though a Paradox to be the most likely 5. Upon this Errour is grounded the Prae-existence of such Souls and the Consequences thereof viz. their hovering in the Air their attending New Procreations of Bodies that thence they may glide down into them and forsaking Dying Bodies return again into those Aiery Habitations 6. The Transmigration of such Souls from one Humane Body to another and some made the Transmigration Common between Men and Beasts as the Pythagorean Schools maintained at this day by the Eastern Indians and the Chineses 7. Hence have grown the Inventions of Mahomet's Paradises his Purgatories and his Gehenna's as formerly the Heathens had their Eliziums and Barathrums supposed Receptacles in the Bowels of the Globe of our Earth Such a Case we find argued in Salust betwixt Caesar and Cato Caesar calls Mortem aerumnarum requiem jam cuncta mortalium mala dissolvere ultra neque curae neque gaudio locum esse Cato answers that by this Speech it appears what Caesar thought of Death Credo falsa existimans ea quae de inferis memorantur diverso itinere malos à bonis loca tetra inculta foeda atque formidolosa habere 8. Hence hath arisen the Popish Purgatorium where his Holiness is allowed to have an absolute Command and by which he makes Profit accordingly 9. Hence hath grown the Errour of Praying for the Dead in the Romish Churches 10. Those Churches have upon this Errour followed the Heathen Practices of Adoring Dead Persons the one as Gods and the other as Saints Pliny in his Natural History lib. 7. cap. 55. says That the Body or Soul of Man hath no more Sense after Death than they had before their Nativity and yet the folly and vanity of Men says he is so great as that they imagine the Humane Soul extends even to future Ages and that they have Sense whereupon Men render them honour and worship making a God of him who is not so much as a Man as if the manner of Mens breathing differed from that of other Creatures And thus hath the Popish World practised to make them Images and to believe their Personal Appearances as Saul believed the Soul of Samuel appearing in the Witches Specter and to it Saul stooped with his face to the ground and bowed himself so worshipping the Devil instead of the Prophet as the Papists do instead of their Saints who likely have no manner of being nor shall have until the Resurrection at the Last Day You say That a Separate Subsistence of Souls doth not infer Purgatory And I grant it but it is the causa sine qua non of that Opinion for if no Separate Subsistence then no Purgatory nor no Prayers for or to Persons departed this life and returned to the dust from whence they were taken Farther to evince a Sparate State of the Soul you offer to raise Evidence out of a Collect in the Office of our Burial Praying That we and those departed may have a perfect consummation of Bliss in Eternal Glory I say this Consummation of Bliss is to be intended after the Resurrection without necessarily supposing any Intermediate State unless it be to such as are before-hand perswaded that there is such a State In the close of your 6th Paragraph you say That your Zeal against the Opinion of the Materiality is grounded upon your own apprehensions that this conceipt would introduce an inundation of Atheism and Prophaneness Looseness and Sensuality To me these Consequences do not appear at all likely Not of Atheism for that it asserts God the Creation Generation and Resurrection all acted by Divine Power Nor of any the other three for that it approves and maintains the extreamest Recompences dispensable in a Future State after the Resurrection And my Apprehension is That although in your Future Ministration you should never insist more upon the Souls Immortality but inforce your Exhortations pertaining to Future Recompences from the Certainty and Concernment of the Resurrection the Last Judgment and Execution of the same your Auditors would not thereby become any whit more Atheists than they were before or more Sensual Loose or Prophane upon that Occasion but probably would continue to act and live as formerly they have done without that any alteration would thereupon be visible or consequent And for the Intermediate State you say The Fathers owned a Middle State which was neither Heaven nor Hell and because they either could not tell what that State was or not agree about it we seem left at liberty by them to think as we may concerning it We have not found any Text of Scripture positively asserting the Separate Subsistence nor such a Doctrine concerning it as that the principal aim and intent of it was to teach this Assertion for a Truth The Fathers Opinions about it are disagreeable to one another and unknowing of what was the clear Truth in this Poin. You say They thought Souls were neither in Heaven nor Hell I have quoted to you Mr. Baxter's Book p. 398. where he tells us That many of his friends holy persons were gone to Heaven and that is spangled with their spiritual stars the place is honoured with them and they with it This his Opinion of going to Heaven or Hell upon Death I take to be the most commonly embraced amongst us and I shall be glad to receive your particular Opinion thereupon but these Uncertainties concerning the Separate State the Manner and Places thereto belonging make me more to question the Verity of it and to conclude upon it rather in the Negative You quote to me a Saying of Cicero That if the Opinion of the Immortality be an Errour libenter erro this you translate the Opinion pleaseth me well it is an innocent Disception as if the liking of an Opinion and the innocency of it were the same thing whereas it is evident Men like and chuse sometimes false and harmful Opinions before those which are tried innocent and beneficial as I doubt not but you think I do in this Point not sub nomine erroris but by a deceived heart carried and drawn away by pride conceitedness contumacy and disobedience to the Ordinance of God as you word it and yet you do not cite one Ordinance of God to which the Opinion of the Materiality is contrary but I desire you will do it in your next Return You say You do not require an implicit
Faith to Church Ordinances and do you shew me Ordinances of God convincingly such in this point and then I promise you to be obedient to them and there will need no more words in the Case now disputed But if you cannot or which will come to one do not do it you may have some Title to the Term of a False Accuser of your Brethren whose conceits or errours perhaps of weakness you cannot infect or sully by the sowre and tainted Originals from whence you are pleased ignorantly to derive them And for your Conclusion That the Opinion of the Materiality tends to subvert the Fundamentals al 's Religion it is neither proved nor granted but asserted to strengthen the Foundation of Future Rewards and Punishments by fixing them upon very many and very plain Texts of Scripture and the Articles of our several Creeds clearly proving the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last Judgment Whereas Proofs of the Immortality are neither plainly asserting nor with any manner of clearness proving the same nor is it made an Article in any of our Creeds nor is any thing of it in the 39. Articles of our Church But there I find Artic. 6. That whatsoever is not read in Scripture nor may be proved thereby is not to be required of any Man that it should be believed as an Article of Faith or be thought requisite to salvation We all perceive that during Life there is a Contexture of Soul and Body and such an Union as they jointly participate of all that befals the Person and act undividedly and inseparably from the Person and from one another That Death is a Separation of them is clear also and What then becomes of the Soul is our Question and that we trace from its Nature as near as we can investigate If it be a small intelligent Spiritual Substance created by God upon every Procreation of Man likely it is to have a Separate Subsistence after Death of the Person but then it cannot be properly said The Man or the Person dies but the Body dies And if the Humane Soul be a Flame of Life kindled by God in Adam when he made him a Living Person and from that time hath passed by generation from one Man to another then more likely it is that this sort of Soul is extinguished in Death or that the Extinguishment of this Flame totally or in every part of the Body is the Death of the Person Originally it seems Men were of kin to Beasts in their Manner and Way of Living and Acting Of the Thracians in Orpheus's time we read Silvestres homines sacer interpresque deorum Caedibus victu foedo deterruit Orpheus Dictus ob id lenire tygres rabidosque leones Our own Ancestors in Caesar's time and many years after were naked as their Beasts and had no other Covering but their Skins their Food Acorns and Wild Fruits and their Manners were much sutable and of late we have heard like things of Wild Irish People Americans Libyans and in divers other parts of Africa who go naked as the Beasts and feed upon Raw Flesh and Snakes and the very Guts and Garbage of the Creatures and are as wild says Lithgow as their four-footed companions in the Libyan desarts In a State of so great Simplicity it seems Mankind may be well enough compared by us as it was by David to the Beasts that perish Since my ending the very last Period came to my hands a little Book written by Naudaeus printed Lond. in 12o. 1637 in page 248 he cites Lactantius asserting that Democritus Epicurus and Dicaearchus would not have so confidently denied the Immortality of the Soul Mago aliquo praesente qui sciret certis carminibus cieri ab inferis animas adesse praebere se humanis oculis videndas loqui futura praedicere I do so little approve of the Fathers Opinion in this that if his Magus should shew me such Souls like the Witch of Endor I should take them for his Conjurati and to be no proof at all of the Separate Subsistence of a Humane Soul P. 38. He mentions Archimedes his Mundane Globe the Moving Tripods of Vulcan made by Daedalus Architas his Pigeon Regiomontanus his Eagle and his Fly Men could not believe these Engines could move as they did without a Spirit which they thought could not be Material because that cannot act upon Hard Bodies as Wood Iron c. therefore they concluded those Motions were acted and guided by an Immaterial Spirit viz. a Daemon and that therefore these Artificers were Magi in the worst Sense very Conjurers But from this Crime our Author defends them and says The things were all feasible by Art Natural although Men do not now know nor did then understand the Rules or the Artifice of making such things or other things like or equal to them And this gives us a good semblance of Reason why Men have been apt to maintain their Souls to be Immaterial because they cannot perceive or learn the means and manner by which a Material Soul can act and govern Common Sense Apprehension Phancy Memory Judgment Conscience and the Affections and Passions incident to Humane Nature P. 299. In conclusion he says Men must take good heed not to be carried away with the current of common Opinions that when we are swayed by example and custom and go with the throng in the way we slip and fall one over another alienis perimus exemplis Besides this Book I have since this writing perused another viz. Mr. Robert Boyle his Experiments printed London 1662 2d Edition there p. 190 he says He inclines to think the Air necessary to ventilate and cherish the Vital Flame continually burning in the Heart And he found a new kind of resemblance betwixt Fire and Life the one lasting no longer than the other P. 190. The Flame of Spirit of Wine will burn long upon fine white linnen or paper without consuming either Eminent Naturalists do esteem the Heat which resides in the Heart to be a true Flame and this says he I do not oppose provided they add that it is such a temperate and almost insensible Fire as that before-mentioned and yet he thinks that to be hardly fine enough I have mentioned before a Tenuity to an Invisibility P. 197. He takes Animals for a kind of Curious Engines set on work and kept in Motion by Heat and Air. Dr. Willis in his oft quoted Book p. 4. tells us That Epicurus taught the Soul to be compounded ex atomis levissimis rotundissimis non multum diversis ab eis ex quibus est ignis compactum ex quodam calido flatuoso aerio P. 38. He says He hath given Reasons Quare haee flamma vitalis non uti flamma vulgaris visibilis destructiva fuerit P. 53. As soon as this flame is extinguished the compages of Soul and Body is dissolved and as long as this Soul is in the Body semper nascitur
and kept glowing in Man and Beast none of which can continue living without it Some have lived a long time without Food in great Distempers or Maladies but Breath failing or being stop'd for some sew moments the Flame of Life is thereby Suffocated and Extinguished and that Extinguishment is Death and nothing can then restore this Flame once totally extinguished in all parts of the Body but such an Animating Breath to enkindle it not to be imparted by any Power lets than Divine which first breathed it into Adam's Nostrils This Breath or Spirit Eccles 3. Solomon argues upon and says Who knows the Spirit of a Man that goes upward and the Spirit of a Beast that goes downward to the Earth who knows that there is that difference between them And if the one go no more upward then the other goes downward to the Earth it seems there should be neither one nor other in the Case for plain and agreed it is that the Spirit of Beasts extinguisheth in Death and therefore goes no whither not downward to the Earth and so for the Man to me it seems his Spirit also extinguisheth and goes no whither therefore not upward so as Solomon's Expressions both in this Text and that of Chap. 12. seem delivered by him according to common Opinion Like Moses Gen. 1.16 concerning God's making two great Lights Solomon Chap. 12. is describing the Degrees and Ceremonies of Peoples Departure in Death and concludes The Body returns to the Earth whence it was and the Spirit shall return unto God who gave it Moses had taught That God breathed into Adam the breath of Life and when the Man died it was the common Opinion and perhaps might seem true to him that such animating Breath or Spirit returned to God who gave it to Man at the first but there seems not Reason enough to conceive that Solomon intended by this short Sentence to teach a Separate Subsistence of the Soul of Man after Death of the Body And it seems to me spoken transciently and according to common Opinion rather than with an intent to teach or establish that Doctrine 2. A Second Argument to prove that this Text was not intended for a Teaching Direction may be taken from the generality of ' its Expression viz. The Spirit shall return to God who gave it It seems the Spirit of man is an Indefinite Expression and aequipollent to an Universal as if be had said All Humane Souls return to God who gave them for all have a like dependance upon him the bad as well as the good Numb 16.22 Moses calls God the God of the spirits of all flesh and Dan. 5.23 he tells Belshazzar The God in whose hand thy breath is haft thou not glorified I suppose you will not deny that all Spirits have a like dependance upon him and that he is the Giver of them all alike to the bad as well as to the good Whence by the words and sense of Solomon's Text they should all go alike to God the one as well as the other But this is disagreeable both to Heathen Christian Mahometan and other Religions The Heathen sent their better Souls into Elisium and their bad ones before Minos and other severe Judges of Hell to receive their Sentences and so Cato Diverso itinere malos à bonis they had several ways to go and places for Souls to go to commonly three viz. Heaven Hell and a Purgatorium So had many of the Heathen as the Platonists so have at present the Mahometans and the Papists The Reformed Churches acknowledge but two places for Souls after Death viz. Heaven and Hell And the General Opinion amongst them is That all Departed Souls go immediately either to one of these places or to the other but that the number of bad Souls going to places of Torment do very much exceed those who go to God and Heaven Our Lord shews plainly when he says The way is narrow and the gate strait that leads to life and few there be that find it but the other way and gate are broad and wide and many go in and into them viz. all who do not hit the narrow way and strait gate So as those who go to the Devil do very much exceed in number those who go to God according to their own Opinions Hence Solomon's Text The Spirit returns to God or all Humane Spirits return to God who gave them cannot hold true in your own Sense or Separately Subsisting Souls but seems to be a great mistake and very far out of the way A part of the Academick School held an Opinion punctually agreeing with this Text of Solomon viz. That all Souls and particularly the Humane were Sparks and Particles of God emaning from him for the animation of his Creatures upon whose Death those Souls returned again to God and became united to him as before and thus the Spirit returns precisely to God who gave it but thereby the Individuation of such Souls must needs be destroyed as Rivers after their falling into the Sea or Drops into a quantity of Water though they are still Water yet they are no more Drops nor Rivers So Humane Spirits thus returning to God who gave them should be still Spiritual in their being but are not Souls Separately subsisting That the greater number of Mankind by far go into Perdition I have no doubt and how then all Souls or Spirits given by God do return to him I am not yet able to understand but desire to receive your Instructions thereupon 3. A Third Argument in Opposition to your Proof by this Text may be drawn from other Texts of Scripture importing to the contrary of it Solomon himself Eccles 11.8 just before your Proving Text says Remember the days of darkness for they shall be many This thwarts the Separate Souls going presently to Heaven for then the Man would have no dark days at all Job 14.12 Man lieth down and riseth not till the heavens be no more This say I cannot be intended of the Body only for that is not the Man but if there be a State in Separation the Soul must be the Man Nam forma dat esse rei Whence it seems That if the State of a Separate good Soul were such as is generally supposed the Man cannot properly be said to die at all Solomon's Father Psalm 49. Observes That even such amongst Men as attain to Honour have not so much Understanding as to exempt them from being compared unto or being like the Beasts that perish viz. in their Natural state But God hath given to Men a full assurance of a Resurrection which he hath not given to the Beasts Solomon Eccles 3. compares them in like manner Jud. 15.19 Sampson ready to die for thirst God clave an hollow place that was in the Jaw-bone out of which Water proceeded and when he had drunk his Spirit came again and he revived So 1 Sam. 30.11 12. The Servants of David found an Egyptian in the Field
Considerable in the Degrees of them for that he had Collected together all that I had met with in my former Authors for the Maintenance of his Tenet and had placed and used them Dexterously and as they appeared to serve the most Advantageously for his Deign So as it seemed I had not much more to expect from Dr. Bentley or any other Writer who should or might Undertake the maintenance of that Opinion I thought it deserved my serious Consideration yet found it not convictive of my Judgment in the Point nor able to give any considerable stagger to it And therefore for my own Satisfaction in the first place and Assistance of others in the next place I undertook to make a stricture upon all the Arguments delivered in this Book for Proof of the Point Controverted and this by Pages according to his Order used in the delivery of them And as he brings no new Arguments but only uses those which in my former Writings have been mentioned so are my returns thereunto but a Repetition of things before delivered applied to the Particulars as they are urged by him And because the Answers are Repetitions my intent is to abbreviate them as much as I can without rebating the edge or taking from the vigour of them Pag. 5. He comes to the Soul of Man and says God's Breath infused it and our Breath continues its Vnion with the Body Here though I conceive not that God hath Breath or doth breath yet I grant that God did by an Animating Breath give Life to the Body of Man first fitted and prepared to receive and act by the same He remarks the Ability of Speech is conferred on no other Soul but Mans This I should Word It was conferred on no other Body but Mans for that Mans Soul cannot speak without his Tongue and if there be a defect in that Organ the Soul can neither help it nor act to Speak without it Pag. 6. Says That by calling Mans a living Soul it is distinguished from all other Souls This I deny and say That Beasts Souls are living as well and as Naturally as Mens Pag. 7. Amongst his many Expressions not granted I grant this That Adam's Soul came by Inspiration from the Lord. He says It it a most astonishing Mystery to see the dust of the Ground and an Immortal Spirit clasping each other with such dear Embraces I confess this Mystery is so astonishing as quite discourages my belief of the thing He quotes Austin for the infundendo creatur but not any part or place of that Author where the Words quoted may be found and I doubt he is wrong in it and that this Expression is of latter date than Austin's time Pag. 8. The Breath of our Nostrils he says and nothing else links and holds these Two Natures viz. the Mortal and Immortal together for the Soul comes and goes with the Breath and cannot stay one minute after the Breath is gone I grant That as Fire for want of Air is suffocated so both the Humane and Bestial Soul for want of Breath but that is not the only want which can extinguish or dislodge such Souls the want of Blood will do it and so will the want of Food or Nourishment For Breath Blood and Food are all of necessity for the Life and Support of an Humane as well as of a Brutal Soul they cannot subsist if any of these be wanting to them And it passes with me for a strong evidence that the thing which cannot subsist without all these Material Supports is it self also Material viz. both the Brutal and the Humane Souls which therefore I take for Material Spirits Our Author here says No Elixir or Worldly Power can make the Soul stay one minute after the Breath is gone And I say so for the Blood and so when all the Nouriture is spent the Soul can stay no longer says he live no longer in the Body say I. Here he says The Humane Soul is of Divine Original Created and Inspired by God I refuse the Word Created for that it is not in Moses's Text here expounded neither in Letter nor Sense that I can perceive And for the Divine Original and Inspiration it seems the Brutal Soul and first Breath may lay a good claim to them both although Moses have not so fully declared the manner of God's acting with or upon them Pag. 9. Says The Nature of the Soul cannot be perfectly known Pag. 11. To prove the Humane Soul is in strict and proper sense created by God he cites Zech. 12.1 The Lord who stretcheth out the Heavens and layeth the Foundation of the Earth and formeth the Spirit of Man within him Comenius tells us That the Word here Translated formeth is in the Hebrew Jatzar used for the forming of Mans Body out of the Ground viz. a Formation from some Prae-exsistent Matter I say from these Words the Formation of a Material Soul Vital Animal Rational may very well be intended and that this seems most likely to be the sense and intent of it To prove the Soul created he Cites farther 1 Pet. 4.19 Let them that suffer commit the keeping of their Souls to God as unto a faithful Creator I demand of what God was the Creator not of Souls singly but of Bodies also and here commit the keeping of their Souls intends themselves or their Persons An usual Scripture Expression in the like Cases thus his Proofs for the single Creation of Souls out of nothing are answered which renders his Design vain viz. of proving that the Soul is a Substance because created out of nothing I grant the Material Soul to be a Substance but says he Not a substance created out of nothing Yours say he Flows from the Matter and depends upon it And say I so doth the Humane Soul do as appears before and he hath yet made no good Proof of a single Creation of it out of nothing Well but he hath another Argument to prove that the Soul is such a Substance viz. the Soul doth exist and subsist by it self alone when separated from the Body by Death And I grant if he proves this it will do his Work and he Cites in Proof Luk. 23.43 the Case of the Thief upon the Cross and Christ's promise to him And Matth. 10.28 Fear not them that kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul To each of these Texts I have answered before as fully as I can and hold it not fit to repeat those Answers here St. Matthew's Text I grant is a clear Proof that he was of our Authors Opinion viz. That the Soul might have a Subsistence separate from the Body but St. Paul in St. Lukes Gospel 12. â—4 hath otherwise worded Our Lord's Doctrine upon that occasion and it seems by 1 Cor. 15.18 and 2 Thes 4.15 and 1 Cor. 4.5 Chap 1. vers 7. and 8. that Paul did not hold or know the Separate Subsistence of Souls and so an intermediate State betwixt
do deny and he proves it not For other Brute Creatures I say it is very probable God gave them their first Breath though Moses have not expressed it He says The Opinion of the Souls Propagation from the Parents by Generation is very Antient and Tertullian and divers of the Western Fathers closed with it And so do I. He says Antiquity is no pasport for errors and so say I He cites an Objection against the daily Creation of Souls and in Proof of their Generation out of Dr. Brown's Religio Medici Pag. 32. He pretends to Answer this Objection but uses to that purpose only Scholastical Distinctions and Niceties and brings no material or solid Reason from Nature so as I think the Objection is not enough Answered but holds still good against the Creation and for the Generation of the whole both Body and Soul Pag. 33. Cites Gen. 22. God rested on the seventh day from all his Work which he had made Pag. 34. This says he Intends he ceased from making any new Species or Kinds of Creatures but he still creates Individual Souls of the same kind and nature with Adam 's Soul and he means all Humane Souls So as upon Fruitful Coition of Man and Woman or of Man and Beast where the product is of Humane shape God creates a new young Soul to enliven and inform every such Body whence every day hour and moment he is creating such Souls for all the Earth over I would know where he found his Distinction of God's ceasing from Creation of New Species but not of New Individuals he quotes no Author or Original for it and till he so do it will pass with Readers for his own Fiction and do him no service at all And his Proof of his New Creation is a kin to this Distinction he cites for Proof of it Our Lord's Words My Father worketh hitherto and I work How this proves Gods Continual New Creation of Souls I do not perceive and I suppose sew others will be drawn to believe such New Creations upon this Proof He says To me it is clear that the Soul is not generated for that which is generable is corruptible This I agree and thence infer The Humane Soul both generable material and extinguishable He Reasons against this but by Arguments before Answered Pag. 35. Farther to prove a New Creation of Souls he quotes again Heb. 12.9 Men must be in subjection to the Father of Spirits intending it to signifie the Father of their Spirits or Souls This I do not grant but say This Sense restraining to Humane Spirits only is against the express Words of the Text as well as the intent of it He quotes again Zech. 12.1 before examined he quotes Isa 42.5 God that giveth Breath unto the people upon the Earth and Spirit to them that walk therein I take Breath and Spirit here for the same thing Here he cites Chap. and Vers of four places more I have searched them and find no mention of Spirit or Soul in any of them Pag. 36. He says These Texts speak of Creating Heaven and Earth yea and their Souls also Of Heaven and Earth they all speak but of Souls not a word whence it is not safe to take even a good Mans word in Matter of Controversie Pag. 36. Cites Solomon's Text again Dust returns to the Earth and the Spirit to God who gave it The Soul and Body says he Are the two Constitutive Parts of Man and have two distinct Originals the Body is of the Earth the Soul a Spirit given by God who gave it Being by Creation I say God gave the Body a Being by Creation as well as the Soul and as the Elements of the Body are Earth and Moisture so that of his Soul are likely Air and Fire and at Death the Body goes to the Earth the Fire extinguisheth and Air vanisheth What Solomon's Expression intended and the manner of that Expression hath been before disputed Pag. 37. Says The Soul hath no Principle out of which by Order of Nature it did arise I say the Body had no such Principle neither God created it of the Earth and breathed into Adam 's Nostrils the Breath of Life and he became a living Soul whence the Man was created Body as well as Soul He agrees the Souls of Brutes are generated but says he There is a Specifick Difference betwixt the Brutal and Rational Soul This I deny and say The Soul is not Rational but is so in the Head only where there are Organs created proper for that Faculty and in no part of the Body can the Soul act rationally but in the Head Pag. 38. He demands Why are not Brutes capable of performing Rational and Religious Acts I Answer because God hath not given them Rational Powers and Organs in so high a degree as he hath done to Men nor can one Man perform like another in such occasions But whatsoever their Souls are the People can act but according to the Capacity of their Organs and the Temperament of their Bodies and Complexions and Humours Men have a different Posture of Body from other Creatures more Capacious Heads in Proportion and store of Brains and finer Matter and they have Heads and Tongues whereby they can better learn direct and act than any Brutes These Differences set Humane Bodies far above the Brutes and yet it seems they may be acted as the Brutes are by a Material Spirit for the Flesh and Blood are Materials of both sorts and that which nourishes is alike in both without Breath Blood and Food both sorts perish and their Souls depart or vanish and yet as Mens Bodily Organs exceed the Brutes for Use and Aptitude so may their Spirits for fineness of Matter and plenty of it and purity and brightness of that flame of Life in them Pag. 39. Says Seed of the Soul is not to be found in Man because the Soul is a Spiritual Essence I say this begs the Question but if this Spirit be Material he will not deny that the Seed of it may be found in Man Pag. 40. Upon this I say Remove the Opinion or later Invention of the new Creation of Souls for all Adulterous Incestuous Buggerly Humane Procreations and then all his Questions here argued are needless and useless He confesses he cannot tell how a Newly Created Spirit should come to be defiled with Original Sin I say he need not trouble himself about it for that the thing is not at all so Pag. 41. He asks How so many Souls become foolish forgetful injudicious It seems he means Men. He supposes it to come from the Bodily Temper and Organs and I grant that very often it doth so But yet I say that my sort of Soul viz. the Flame of Life or the Material Spirit is subject to Defects Infirmities and Obstructions as well as the Body Pag. 42. His Deduction of Original Sin upon Man draws it only from his being a Child of Adam whence it seems his
Notwithstanding the Souls Separate Subsistence Vers 15. We have testified of God that he raised up Christ whom he raised not up if so be that the Dead rise not Vers 18. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished But if at Death they went to Heaven they should not be perished though there were no Resurrection Thus by the Doctrine of the Immediate Avolation to Heaven that of the Resurrection the Main Comfort and Support of Christian Believers is not only undermined but is made a kind of Insipid and Useless Doctrine not worthy to be remembred by our Author or other Zealous Proselites and Defenders of the Immateriality Let them alone as Persons hood-winked by an Old mistaken Opinion to lead those who follow them into lesser Falls or more dangerous Precipices but our endeavor is to detect the Fallacies of that Opinion which I pray God prosper no otherwise than as it is Grounded upon Truth and Verity To this Pag. 46. Our Author goes on in a proving manner and I have traced him accordingly Page by Page but in his Progress he now begins to make Inferences and raise Doctrines of which I do not pretend to take Notice but intend to pass over them without omitting any thing which I think to be Material and Proving Pag. 48. He says Happy had it been for bad Men if their Souls had been like the Beasts extinguishable in Death for then all their Miseries had ended there I say Mark what little or no account he makes here of the Resurrection so solemnly plainly and fully Published and Promised in the Gospel he doth not so much as name or remember such a thing which would fully avoid his Positive Determination Pag. 49. Says 'T is a great mistake that the Soul is only capable of Social Glory in Partnership with the Body and cannot exert its own Power nor enjoy Happiness in the absence of the Body The Opinion of the Sleeping Interval says he took its rise from this Error Say I from this Truth only the Holders of this Opinion did not Penetrate to the bottom of the Truth viz. the Temporal Extinguishment of the Soul They thought it had a Separate Subsistence but in a Limbus or Dormitory where it neither did nor suffered any thing wanting a Capacity to do so without the Body I say The Temporary Extinguishment is to be preferred before this Dormitory and is far more agreeable to Nature and Reason He says The Soul doth not necessarily depend upon the Body in its Operations but that it can live and act out of a Body as well as in it I say What is Petitio Principii if this be not And so is all the rest which follows here He quotes Luke 23.43 and Phil. 1.23 both before fully answered Pag. 50. He says All Souls by Nature are as excellent one as another I say there are great differences amongst them and we see it plainly in the different Performances and Perfections of Men to be referred partly to Body and Organs and partly to the Vigor Purity and Brightness of the Material Soul in them He cites Ezek. 48.4 All Souls are mine This I say intends Persons the Soul that sins shall surely die viz. the Person Vers 5. If a Man be just c. shews Soul here intends Person Pag. 51. and is but a phancy but I say Redemption was not of Souls only but of Persons Pag. 52. cites 3 Joh. 2. I wish that thou mayest prosper and be in health even as thy Soul prospereth I say this intends thy Person and Temporal Affairs as thy Practices of Piety Then he says There are great differences betwixt Soul and Soul in respect of Natural Gifts and Abilities of Mind and the Soul is more vigorous when the Body and its Organs are more sound and apt And says the same that I said before against what himself said before Pag. 54. Says Those who perish will find themselves as capable of Blessedness as those that obtain it I say perhaps their Bodily Temper and Capacities could not be equally assistant to their Souls Pag. 59. Says The Food of every Creature is agreeable to its Nature and that the Soul doth not live upon Material Things as the Body doth I say The Soul cannot live in the Body without Food and if not in the Body then no where For I think there is no place where it can live but in the Body and each in its own Body and not out of that Body to which it is Con-natural He cites Luke 12.19 Soul take thine ease Eat Drink and be Merry and says The Soul cannot do so I say Soul here as in very many places intends Person or the Man and yet the Soul of Man is refreshed and renewed by Meat and Drink and cannot subsist without them Pag. 61. Cites Rom. 1.9 Paul says God whom I serve with my Spirit adding Paul durst appeal to God who searched his Heart as if he took Heart and Spirit for the same thing here and to that I agree Pag. 63. To what he says here I answer Humane Apprehensions of a World to come may fully be answered by the Resurrection and the Last Judgment And yet I do not grant that such Apprehensions do grow from Mans Nature purely or nakedly considered but Nature cultivated by Education or Doctrine He cites Rom. 2.14 The Gentiles do by Nature the things contained in the Law I say this intends Cultivated Nature or an Universal Education We find all People have Speech and yet Men cannot speak without being Taught and those who Teach them to speak give them Impressions of Morality and Religion viz. Nurses and Mothers Pag. 65. I say to this He who ingages against Man doth so against his Soul and Body for they are inseparable by any thing but Death Pag. 68. This Discourse by the Word Soul intends Heart or Affections and the Mind of Man Pag. 70. He says The Soul and Body are knit together by the feeble hand of the Breath in their Nostrils but his Quotation speaks more truly And I say That Union is a Work of God and his Hand-maid Nature that it Springs ab ovo and both grow out of the same Root or Principle viz. the Seed in Generation and are separable only by Death He says The Life of the Body results from its Vnion with the Soul as James 2.26 and I grant it Pag. 74. Cites Psal 104.29 When thou takest away their Breath they die and return to their dust This say I makes Soul and Breath Equivalent He cites Psal 66.8 God holdeth our Soul in Life This I say intends keeps us alive viz. our Persons Pag. 89. Cites Revel 6.9 and calls the Text a firm Foundation for the Souls Immortality Whereas this Cry of Souls under the Altar is apparently Parabolical and no more real than the Voice of Abel's Blood Crying from the Ground to God no more than the great Red Dragons drawing the third part of the Stars with his Tail
and casting them to the Earth or Jerusalems coming down out of Heaven and therefore this is no firm Foundation for the Souls Immortality Pag. 92. He says John saw those Souls those Spiritual Immortal he should have added Invisible Substances separated from their Bodies And these Souls says he All that had died for Christ from Abel till that time John saw in the Spirit in a rapture not under a Material Altar but Christ was represented by this Altar and the Souls were at the foot or basis of it Whereas the Text says under it The Truth is he says what he will concerning it The Souls which John saw he will have to be the very Immortal Substances separated from their Bodies but the Altar was a Parable and the Souls not under it as they might under the Mosaical or Solomon's Altars which were hollow and covered with Boards but at the Foot of it this seems a meer Invention of his own I say all this was but a Figure and Teaches no more but that they who were Martyred for Christ still lived to God under his Care and Knowledge and should be Rewarded as 2 Tim. 4.8 And in the mean time they sleep in Christ and rest as in Daniel the last verse and shall stand first in the Lot at the end of the days He makes the Things which were Visible in Nature to be Figure For he says There was neither real Altar nor White Robes but the Souls which are in Nature invisible he will have to be real it seems without Success Pag. 95. To prove the Soul is Immortal he says 't is Immaterial I say the one as much as the other and he might as well say 't is Immaterial because it is Immortal Pag. 96. Says The Appetite of the Mind is unlimited and never says it is enough I say the Eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the Ear with hearing so the Fire and the Barren Womb never say it is enough and yet these are all Material Pag. 97. Says Age makes no decay in the Soul I say it doth and both must refer our selves to the common Experiences of those who live to very great Ages and such as Converse with them Pag. 98. He propounds a Simile of a Musician and his Instrument But these I say are different Subjects and not Indentified in the same Subject as the Soul and the Body are and therefore goes not in Proof of his Point He says from Hypocrates The Soul's Essence cannot be changed I say this intends it will be still the Soul notwithstanding the Alterations by Meat Drink c. He here cites divers Texts promising Blessedness Future to this Life never taking notice of the Resurrection which answers them all but as if without the Separate Subsistence there could be no means of Future Rewards and Punishments which Error I take for the Original of the Immaterial Opinion Citing in Confirmation of Recompencing at the last Day Our Lords own Words four times repeated by him John 6.40 I will raise him up at the last Day without mention of any thing Intermediate or before that Day Pag. 99. The Promises here cited by him shall not fail but be fullfilled at the Resurrection He says Though our Bodies die yet they shall live again and I say the same of our Souls And his Quotation Rom. 8.11 agrees with me and Vers 10. which mentions a Difference intends between the Sensual Powers and the Rational Mind He cites Matth. 22.32 and says If the Patriarchs perished in Soul as well as in Body How can God be their God for he is not so of those who are utterly perished To this I say Neither their Bodies nor Souls are utterly perished for they shall both rise again the Brutes are termed the Beasts that perish viz. utterly for that no Resurrection is granted to them Pag. 100. Says How shall the Wicked be Eternally punished if their Souls have not an Eternal Duration I say as before by the Resurrection and Last Judgment and then their Bodies shall be as durable as their Souls He began this Section Pag. 94. by citing a third time Matth. 10.28 and I grant it to be his best Weapon viz. the strongest Text if not the only strong One for Proof of the Souls Separate Subsistence Now Pag. 100. He produces the strongest of his Rational Arguments for the same purpose and which also I grant to be of great Weight Pag. 101. He says The Souls Immortality hath been generally held by all Nations and Ages and thence seems likely to be a Natural Notion to all Mankind The first Assertion viz. It s Universal Prevalency amongst Men I grant not so the Second it may be demanded Whence could it so come to pass if not from Nature I say from an Humane Frailty and Ignorance of Gods Appointment People saw many times good Men Afflicted and the Wicked Prosperous in this World so living and so dying Hence arose a Rational Inference ergo There are Rewards and Punishments Future to this Life and those must be applied to the Body or to the Soul but not to the Body soon Corrupted and turned to Dust ergo to the Soul only And that so it might possibly be the Soul must have a Separate Subsistence after Death of the Man This Argument might reasonably induce Mankind to entertain the Belief of this Opinion But since the Christian Doctrine hath been received and the Belief of the Resurrection and Last Judgment accepted that Doctrine consented unto gives a Satisfactory Answer to that Argument drawn from the Congruity that reasonably there must be Recompences Future to this Life Still it may be insisted That Christians since the Resurrection revealed have as generally received and believed that Old Opinion of the Immortality And I grant that too and say they might have these Inducements so to do First They found this Opinion already rooted in the Minds of Men. Secondly They Read in St. Matthew's Gospel his Text Chap. 10.28 whose Allowance of the Separate Subsistence of Souls might likely enough pass that Opinion amongst the First Christians which were of the Jewish Nation and Read principally if not only that Gospel for that it was Written first or before the other Three and was Written in Hebrew their own Language whereas the Others are Written in Greek which the Jews generally did not understand As Acts 21.37 The Chief Captain says to Paul a Jew Canst thou speak Greek And apparent it is That the First Christians and Teachers of Christianity were Jews and such as Taught but what they had Learned were likely enough to Teach this Doctrine but St. Paul and the other Apostles were not such Teachers He says Galat. 1.12 For I neither received the Gospel of Man neither was I taught it but by the Revelation of Jesus Christ And by such Revelation he Dedicated to St. Luke that Gospel passing under Luke's Name Published divers Years after that of St. Matthew and in the Grecian Language And that Doctrine
be obtained presently upon the Death of the Body I say The Words mention neither the one time nor the other nor it seems do intend the one any more than the other for they import a present Being come to those Advantages and not a future He confesses here That Humane Wisdom cannot Penetrate into the Future State of Souls and that Men know but little of them I say can know just nothing of his sort of Souls Pag. 192. He cites 1 Joh. 3.2 It doth not yet appear what we shall be I ask whence that will appear the Text says it will appear at Christ's Second Coming that when he shall appear we know we shall be like him which intimates Men must stay till that time for such Knowledge Pag. 196. He says When Death comes the Soul disputes its Possession of the Body with him from Member to Member like Soldiers in a Stormed Garrison and at last loses the Royal Fort Intimating that his Soul 's Being is like that of Death's Being viz. no Real Subsistence but an Imagination Pag. 197. Says The falling asleep in Death or sleeping in Jesus must not be stretched to a length in respect of the Soul but offers no Proof of this I say That it concerns the whole Person Soul as well as Body and likely will strech it self to the very time of the Resurrection Pag. 202. Says Angels carry our Souls to God And for Proof cites the Parable of Dives his only Ground for that Opinion which I say is too sandy to support it for that here was no real Fact related but only a Similitude fitted to the common Jewish Opinion of that time Pag. 203. Grants there is no necessity of such Conveyance of the Soul but it is used for State or Decorum All this seems but his Phancy and he gives no other Proof either of the one viz. that there was such a Fact or of the other viz. that it is for State and Decorum Pag. 204. Says The presence of Angels or Spirits affright the Spirits not only of Men but of Beasts and thence the Soul of Man by consent But of such a Consent he offers no Proof nor that there is a Soul different from the Material which I say is of the same Nature both in Man and Beast which by the Production of like fears both in Man and Beast at the appearance of Spirits seems to me somewhat confirmed Pag. 205. Delivers but his own Phancy thereupon Pag. 206. He asks What Form Shape or Figure can the Phancy of Man cast his own Soul into as an help to understand its Nature I answer into none at all mine hath no certain Form of it self and of his may be said ex nihilo nihil fit But if such a Soul there be one may Form an Idea of it as well as of any other Spirit And for Raptures I have said the Understanding Phancy and Memory may be effectually Wrought upon and affected Pag. 214. Says The Souls of the Just go immediately to Glory from the time of the Persons Death And offers Proof Luk. 23.43 of the Thief also Luk. 16.22 of Lazarus being carried and Phil. 2.23 a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ all cited and answered before Pag. 215. Speaks but his own Phancy and without Proof Pag. 225. Says Good Souls departed have a satisfying Apprehension though no perfect Comprehension of the Divine Essence and mentions the seeing God Face to Face Whereas St. John teaches We know that when he shall appear at his Second Coming we shall see him as he is Christ doth not say see God But the Author produces no Proof of any sort of seeing after Death Pag. 234. Says Those who went to Heaven before Christ's Ascension were fully at rest in God and yet upon Christ's Coming to Heaven their Happiness was advanced Cites to prove this Heb. 11.40 God having provided some better thing for us that they without us should not be made perfect To this I say it rather seems to prove a stay of Perfection till the whole Number be accomplished at the Resurrection as the Answer to the Souls in the Revelation also doth Pag. 243. Says It is too great a dificulty to trace the Soul beyond the limits of this World I say it is so to trace his sort of Soul in this World and I deny that his Text proves that Death perfects the Spirits of the Just which shall not be done till the Number be compleated at the Resurrection Pag. 244. Says We have more Acquaintance with Souls than with Angels He means with his sort of Souls and then I deny it for Angels and Spirits have appeared and been otherwise sensibly perceived to act but we know not that ever an Humane Soul by it self was known or perceived so to do Pag. 252. He says The Radical Moisture which is daily consuming by the Flame of Life must needs be spent ere long Here we agree Pag. 266. Says Separated Souls are capable af performing God's Commands as well as Angels are This I deny and he offers no Proof He says Some departed Souls have returned and appeared in this World Instances in Moses and Elias and the Bodies of Saints which appeared at Christ's Resurrection To this I say All these Appearances were of Bodies except Moses and of him it may be doubted what appeared Pag. 267. Says Apparitions as of Dead Persons are not indeed so but are acts of other sorts of Spirits To this I agree Pag. 273. Men oft meet a Mortal Enemy's Spirit in the disguise of a dead Friend Pag. 274. Says That after the Resurrection the Raised shall know one another and talk and converse but till that time Souls departed do converse only with God How proves he this not at all ergo it is a bare Invention Yes says he it must needs be so for if Souls could act thus before the Resurrection would be needless and to no purpose I say Souls going to Heaven and seeing and enjoying God and Heaven before that time makes the Resurrection of small value and little signification Pag. 284. Says 'T is confest that the Soul concerning it self singly is made perfect and enjoys Blessedness in the absence of the Body He tells us not who hath made this Confession He quotes Words of Alstedius here but they do not import such a Confession but whosoever did confess it I am sure that I deny it mente manu and he should prove it but doth not Pag. 285. Cites 2 Thes 4.15 It says Those which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him This says he must properly respect the Body for the Soul sleeps not I say as much as the Body doth Pag. 304. He says I should rather chuse to live meanly then to die easily and if both Parts were to perish no Man would die or desire it And the Opinion of the Immortality say I prevails not with those who live at ease to desire Death He says It would be a madness for
Recompencs are warrantable to be expected viz. at Christ's Second Coming and to look for them sooner is against his own Direction in this Text Well fortified and confirmed by Acts 3.19 Repent ye therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord and he shall send Jesus Christ whom the Heaven must receive until the times of the restitution of all things The time when amongst other things Men shall be restored to their former Beings and become the same Persons that they were before and so shall account at the Last Judgment and in all probability not before Well but what becomes of people in the mean time I take it for most likely that the Body verges to Dust Gradatim and the Flame of Life which I take for the Soul extinguishes in Death as Dr. Willis says Illico nihil est it vanishes as the Flame of Spirit of Wine when the Spirit is consumed And thus I conceive Men die thus they rest and Believers sleep in Jesus till time of the Restitution of all things Job 14.12 Even as the Flood decayeth and drieth up so Man lieth down and riseth not at all till the Heavens be no more they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep Thus Job and I agree punctually in our State of Death and so we do in that of the Resurrection Job 19.25 I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the later day upon the Earth and though after my Skin Worms destroy this Body yet in my Flesh shall I see God And as 1 Joh. 3.2 We know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is At his Second Coming and not till then not by going to Heaven in Effigie But till then Believers in Death enjoy such a Rest as the Revel calls Blessed They sleep in Jesus and rest from their Labours So Heb. 4.1 There is a Promise left us of entring into his Rest Ver. 6. Some must enter therein Ver. 9. There remains a Rest to the People of God Ver. 10. He that is entred into his Rest hath ceased from his own Works as God did from his And such a Rest is a pious Death and in assured hope of a joyful Resurrection Dan. 12.13 The Angel says to him Go thy way till the end be for thou shalt rest and stand in the Lot at the end of the days And here I cease and rest my Second positive Argument against the Immateriality and Separate Subsistence of Souls and their going to Heaven or Hell before the Resurrection And upon this Argument I intend to make Three short Observations The First of which grows from our Author's Expressions Page 49. of his said Book There he says 'T is a great Mistake that the Soul is capable only of Social Glory or Suffering or a Blessedness in Partnership with the Body and that it can neither exert its own powers nor enjoy its own happiness in the absence of the Body The Opinion of a sleeping Interval of the Soul he says took its rise from this Error They conceived the Soul to be so dependant upon the Body at least in all its Operations that when Death rends it from the Body it must needs be left as in a swoon or sleep unable to exert its proper Powers or enjoy that felicity which we ascribe to it in its state of Separation Thus our Author To which I Reply They who so conceived were Fathers very Ancient and of great Authority in the Church and in my Opinion the Ground they stood upon was firm and good viz. they and we and all Men who consider may and do perceive by hourly Experiences that the Soul doth no more act or suffer without the Body than the Body without the Soul nor either of them without the other This constant Experience teaches To this also Reason very well agrees and Men have never yet met with good Reason plain Experience or clear Scripture to the contrary Nor doth our Author or any other shew any convincing or strong or likely Evidence that ever any Soul did or that it can act or suffer without Partnership with the Body and in Conjunction with it It may be asked How then can it subsist in a State of Separation from the Body if it can neither act nor suffer without it I Answer That I am not to Account for such a Subsistence because I deny the thing and say the Soul extinguishes in Death But those who held both Opinions viz. The Separate State and the Non-Activity did imaginarily cast the Soul into such a Swoon or Sleep as the Author mentions in a Limbus or Dormitory created by Invention to that purpose and those who so believe both Opinions are necessitated to invent such Places That the Soul neither acts nor suffers without the Body being true and the Separate Subsistence being granted Places for Dormitories were a reasonable and necessary Invention But if the Truth stand with me and the Soul extinguish in Death it neither acts nor suffers without the Body nor yet is there need to invent Dormitories or Purgatories for reception of such Souls as have no real Subsistence He hath truly related a Cause why the Ancients did believe Souls rested in Dormitories till the Resurrection not going to Heaven or Hell till that time and a Re-union with their Bodies viz. Because they believed Souls could not act or suffer without their Bodies according to the common Course of Nature and Experience This I agree to be true and a reasonable Ground for them to stand upon in this Point and that they erred only in believing a Separate Subsistence whence they were forced to invent Dormitories But I say though the Author have given us a true and good Cause why the Ancients thought Souls went not to Heaven or Hell before the Resurrection grounded upon the Nature and Constitution of Mankind there is another Cause and Reason for their so believing as true well grounded and evident as the former which will weigh with many Believers more than that can do viz. The Tenour and Consent of all the Texts before quoted by me in this Argument There is another Marvellous Agreement amongst them for all say the same things viz. That all Men must after Death appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ at his Second Coming at that Day at the Last Day when he shall appear Without mention of any other Time or any other Judgment or any going to Heaven or Hell in the mean time This sort of Declaration of the state of things after Death was a good and sufficient Ground for those Ancients to believe that Souls went not to Heaven or Hell before the Resurrection and I hold this Declaration to be a good true and sufficient Ground for People so to believe at this day And with this I finish my first Observation upon this Argument 2. My
watching every New Procreation of a Body and thence if glides down intâ— the Impregnated Womb and insinuates it self into the Seed or the Embrion they cannot well tell whether Others say God creates New Souls pure innocent Spirits for each new Procreation be it by Adultery Incest Buggery so as the Shape be Humane So often as people commit these Crimes with success God is ready to make a New Soul for every Procreated Body and that then he puts or casts these new innocent pure Souls or Intelligent Spirits into Bodies so procreated in Sins of the deepest Dye And what can this poor intelligent Spirit do to prevent its going into a Body procreated in and by wickedness and where she is sure to be polluted with Original Sin before she knows where she is If this were a true Story the Case of such Souls were much to be lamented and what Augustus said of being Herod's Son might reasonably enough be applied to it The making and using of Souls after such a fashion are alike contrary to the Goodness and Honour of God and the Invention is such as wants the ordinary grace of Romance viz. to be made probable or something like the Truth It is not so much as offered or attempted to be proved by any Sentence or Thing recorded or appearing in either of God's Two Great Books of Nature or Scripture and therefore it shall here be forsaken and left to the Maintainers as a rotten Prop for the Immateriality for which only intent it was first invented and set on foot and is still continued for that very Design and neither doth nor can serve for any other use intent or purpose whatsoever Now rejecting both these Opinions viz. Of the Praeexistence and the New Creation of Souls upon every Procreation of Bodies I stick to and maintain the Third Opinion viz. That Souls are generated together with their Bodies by Vertue and Power of Gods benediction Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth Procreate Children like your selves from one end of the World to another according to the Course appointed for all other Animals Shall we say or think That a Man generates more imperfectly than an Horse or a Bull our Experience doth not so prove to us nor does our Reason perswade us to believe it and Scripture affords no Proof of it How comes it then to be so generally professed to be believed only from an ardent Mistaking Zeal to maintain a Separate Subsistence of Souls without which the Old World could not and the later and present do not or will not conceive and believe Recompences future to this life can be and will be fully and sufficiently distributed to Mankind according to their Behaviours in this Life they will continue to believe That if Mens Souls have not a Subsistence in Separation from their Bodies the expectation of sufficient future Recompences is destroyed and this grows from the Pulpit where the Doctrine of the Resurrection hath been utterly put to silence by the Opinion of Souls going presently to Heaven upon Death And if in truth the Case were so the Doctrine of the Resurrection might well enough be laid aside as it is and fall into disesteem as little useful for the advancement of future Recompences The desire I say of maintaining a Separate State of the Soul for such purposes drives some to invent and most Men to believe such very unlikely and unreasonable Proposals and Assertions as I have late before and do here relate and endeavour to detect and confute Our Author hath the Ingenuity to confess That the Opinion of the Generation of Souls as well as Bodies is very ancient and was generally maintained by the Western Churches But say I the Opinion of the Separate Subsistence of Souls hath even quite rooted it out and that of necessity for what comes of the Flesh cannot naturally be Immaterial and to maintain Immateriality we find Men proneto deny visible experienced Truths and accept of gross unreasonable Fictions Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum when it falls under a confident Mistake as Christ foretels his Disciples When they persecute you they will think that in so doing they do God good Service And what if the present Writer meet with a like Usage He may say with St. Paul Galat. 26. Am I therefore become your Enemy or will you count me your Enemy because I tell you the Truth Or that which I believe to be so It seems such Proceeding would be both Unkind and Unchristian Joh. 8 40. Our Lord says You sâ—ek to kill me a Man that tells you the Truth and even for telling them the Truth this did not Abraham The best sort of People will not do so but they are ever the fiercest and therefore Persecution and Reproach are natural and common Consequences of those Endeavours which intend to stemm the Tide of a commonly received Opinion and roâ—e against the stream of it Acts 21 Paul was foretold of a heavy Persecution but he would not be perswaded to go out of the Right Way for avoiding it and as his Friends ceased so I rest my self Ver. 14. saying The Will of the Lord be done Our Present Text now under Examination Proves The Ancient Western Churches and amongst them St. Austin were in the Right in thinking the Soul Generated as well as the Body and that God's Direction is still observed by Nature For Men now as Adam did get Children after their own likeness viz. Living and Animated Persons and which ever since have replenished and do still replenish the Earth as the Effects of their Parents Fruitfulness And thus from the Creation and Generation of Mankind I pretend to have proved That the Soul or Spirit of Man is generated and born of the Flesh of the Parents and with the Flesh of the Children Connatural to the Body and no Stranger to it I take another Argument for Proof of the Materiality from Natural Supports of the Soul whil'st it remains in Conjunction with the Body and thereupon I argue thus That which can neither act or subsist in the Body without the Supplies and Supports of Material Provisions is it Self Material but the Soul cannot act or subsist in the Body without the Supplies and Supports of Material Provisions Ergo The Soul is most likely to be of a Material Nature The Major I prove by the Rational and Received Rule of Simile simili gaudet For proof of the Minor I instance in Three Material Things or Provisions all so necessary for the Soul of Man as that if any One of them fail or be wanting the Soul cannot act or subsist in the Body but must needs part from it either by Extinguishment or Avolation And these Three so necessary Provisions are Blood Breath and Food or Nourishment For the Blood if it be totally exhausted or corrupted a Man can live no longer but the Soul will be forced to dislodge out of its present Tenement For Breath we know by every days Experience
are capable of a Judgment arising from a Discourse in their own Minds we do not perceive and therefore will agree that Men in the Discoursive Part of their Intellect are very much beyond and above the Beasts and so do the Humane Bodies much excel the Beasts in the Instruments and Operations of their Tongues and Hands And yet as these Advantages of their Bodily Organs doth not set their Bodies in so much a superiour Orb to the Beasts as to exempt them from the common Diseases and Death belonging unto both their Kinds So it seems the Advantage which they have over Beasts in Strength of Intellect and Discourse in their Minds may not be taken for a firm and assured Argument that there is in the one a Soul spiritually different from the other but that perhaps this Difference in Intellect may be but gradual and proceed from the greater Subtilty and Tenuity of the Spirit acting The Copiousness and Fineness of Matter in the Head and Brain of Man and the Largeness and Aptitude of the Organs which create the Difference and give the Superior Quality and Advantage to the Intellect of Man as we know it to be in the Body by Aptitude in the Organs of the Hands and Tongue Amongst those who argue for the Being of an Immaterial Self-subsisting Soul in Man some avoid the Defending their Principle by Arguments drawn from Reason or Nature by confessing the thing cannot be so proved because it is not made of any Mundane Thing but inspired as my Lord Bacon is before cited to have expressed it And Sir Kenelm Digby in his Treatise of the Soul Fol. 394. tells us If you ask me by what Artifice a Man is able to perform the Rational and Discoursive Actions of the Phantasy Intellect Memory c. I will answer that they are done in an Admirable and Spiritual Manner But if you demand what the Manner is and how produced I must answer It is done I know not how by the Power of the Soul shew me a Soul and I will tell you how it works It seems we want some such Evidence for its being what our Arguers affirm it is He offers at some parcels of Proof from Effects but they are long not fit for this Place and how firm the Perusers must judge each for himself Our Author Pag. 161. confesses he knows not whether Souls do pre-exist and if so Whether they are Individuate in their Pre-existence or shall be so after separating from the Body and whether the Semen in Generation is animated and how the animated Semina of two make one and if animated then what becomes of the Anima Seminis Perditi or of an Abortive Whether the Body be animated as Vegetative or Sensitive before the Entrance of the Rational Soul What is an Act or Habit in the Soul or how not acting or habited it differs from it self acting or habited How its Acts are Many and yet but One or its Faculties at least and some other Riddles concerning the Souls of his Mode All these Three Assertors of the Immaterial Self-subsisting Soul confess They know neither the Quid Quale Quando Vbi or Quomodo of their Sort of Soul and wave the Proving it from Reason or Nature or make but some weak Offers upon that Account without pretending to a full Conviction of such as shall peruse their Writings upon this Point But Dr. More in his Book of the Souls Immortality 8o. Printed Lond. 1659. offers to make irrefragable Proof from Reason and Nature That there is in Man an Immaterial and Self-subsisting Soul and grounds all his Arguments for that Purpose upon a Natural Necessity of the Thing For that says he without such a Soul it would not be possible in Nature for Men to use their Senses Affections Phantasies Intellects Memories and Motions as they do if they had not such an Immaterial Substance and Spirit within them for the actuating directing and governing of them and giving to every Part and Organ that Life and Vigour that may suffice to perform the Duty and Function to each of them belonging And because his Design is our proper Subject in this Place his own Assertions and Words shall be quoted for the better Assurance of that he hath thereupon delivered First he determines That if in Man there be not such a Spirit then there can be nothing in him but Matter And Pag. 125. says Matter is utterly uncapable of such Operations And we find there is but one same thing in us which hears sees and tastes and perceives all the Vanity of Objects presented to us and that which is the Common Sense judging of outward Objects must likewise imagine remember reason and be the Fountain of Spontaneous Motion and of the like Faculties and Powers in Man Pag. 133. Matter is not affected by any Perception but of Corporeal Impression by the bearing of one Body against another But the Seoundae Notiones or Mathematical and Logical Conceptions cannot be seated in Matter but must be in some other Substance distinct from it Pag. 154. says I have plainly proved that neither the more Pure Intellectual Faculties nor those less pure of Memory and Imagination are competible to meer Bodies and have convincingly demonstrated That not so much as what we call External Sense is competible unto the same Pag. 227. To the Nature of Sensation and the other Operations the Animal Spirits are not sufficient of themselves nor the Soul of herself without the Assistance of the Spirits Pag. 205. Yet the Soul hath not any Power or exceeding little of moving Matter but only of determining Matter in Motion Pag. 298. But the immediate Instrument of the Soul are those Tenuous and Aerial Particles called the Spirits by which the Soul hears sees feels imagines remembers reasons and by moving which or directing their Motion she moves likewise the Body and helps to form it in the Womb but till the Body is finish'd the Soul flutters betwixt it and the Spirit of Nature or Soul of the World Pag. 329. The Souls most subtile and most intellectual Operations depend upon the Fitness of Temper in the Animal Spirits and it is the Fitness and Purity of them that invites her and enables her to love and look after Divine and Intellectual Objects And the Souls Nature is such as she cannot act but in Dependance upon Matter Pag. 330. It is a very wild Leap in Nature that the Soul of Man should skip from the impure Body newly turned to a dead Carkass and ascend thence immediately to the highest Heaven and to the Presence and Company of God and Angels From these Quotations Dr. More 's Opinions concerning the Soul may easily be collected and those which are desirous particularly to consider of his Arguments at large may consult his Book which is but of a small Bulk But here Notice only shall be taken of his Principal Foundation viz. That no Matter or Thing consisting of Matter can have a Principle of Motion or Activity
of a Mans Countenance Things which dull or unbred People do not well perceive or understand Our Author Baxter Pag. 38. is so moved with the Considerations as he there says That in their own low Concerns a Fox or a Dog nay even an Ass or a Goose have such Actions as we know not well how to ascribe to any thing below some kind of Reasoning or Perception of the same importance Whence he infers That the Difference betwixt Men and Beasts is rather in the Objects and Work of our Reason than in our Reason it self as such and that therefore the old difference of Man from Beast in the Word Rationale should be changed into Religiosum That Mans Genus shall be Animal still but his Characteristical Difference should be changed from Rationale to Religiosum We say further That in the Beasts there is a Sensitive Soul of a Flamy Airy Nature a Material Spirit extracted from the Blood and Humours of the Body actuated by Natural Heat and that Flammula Vitalis which pervades their whole Bodies and every part member and parcel of them passing with their blood into all places whither that can come This Spirit it is that directs and actuates the Motions works by the Senses forms the Voices imagines remembers and understands in the Head inlivens and moves the Heart and by which all other Faculties of the Beasts are stirr'd actuated put upon and supported in their Natural Imployments and Duties performed according to the Natural Operations of Spirits with great Mettle Quickness and Imperceptibility and this seems to be the State and Composition of the Beasts Whence we argue That all that is thus found in Beasts and by them performed springs from the motions and actings of a Material Spirit and the force and power of a Natural Flame What hinders then but that a Material Spirit in Man may as well perform the same productions in Body and Mind of those of his Kind and Species both his Motions Senses Affections Imagination Memory and Intellect and all his other Faculties with some more advantage in the degrees of them by how much the Spirits are more pure and subtil in the Humane Bodies the matter more fine and copious the receptacles of them large and the Organs every where properly fitted and terminating the product and performance to the Effect for which by the Creator they were intended and appointed and we conclude in Affirmative that it is likely to be so in very deed But in answer thereunto our Opposers bring in their lately delivered Assertion calculated as we have said and set on foot for such a time as this Viz. That Beasts do not perform their Functions of the Senses Affections Phantasie Memory and Intellect their Local Motion or any of them by the acting or energy of a Material Spirit But they soberly say Beasts are indowed with and actuated by an Immaterial Self-subsisting Spirit which pre-existed before it came into the Body of the Beast and shall subsist by it self after the death and corruption of its Body They do but say this without making or offering any Proof at all of it And one of their Associates in Opinion pinch'd with this Argument of what the Beasts can and do perform in this Kind takes quite another way and manner of evading from under the force and pressure of it Sir K. Digby to shew us there are more ways to the Wood than one takes a Course directly contrary to that of our fore-cited Authors for he fol. 205. and thence to 210. would perswade us and demonstrate as he says That Beasts are not to be esteemed so much as Voluntary Agents or that they have so much as the knowledge of what they do or why they do it but that they act stupidly by a natural sense of Heat and Cold and the density and rarity of their Blood and Members that they are meer Automata without so perceiving by their senses as to distinguish one thing from another He tells us That in his youth he saw two Machines the one at Toledo for raising Water to a great heighth the other at Segovia both set on work by the Current of a River This was used for the Coining of Money and of these Machines he gives us there the Description and then he compares all sorts of Plants both great and small to his Water-Engine at Toledo and all Sensible Living Creatures to his Machine at Segovia They move and work as that Machine doth and they do things that are very proper and useful for their Natures and contrive and act things sometimes very artificial and curious as he says we see in Spiders Webs and Birds Nests But the Animals know not what it is they do but are prompted so to act by a temperament in their Bodies which makes them uneasie and restless until they do act and employ themselves according to a propensity which they have in Nature but they have as little choice or perceiving either why or what they do as his Machine at Segovia of which he relates many Useful and Artificial Practices continually performed without sense or knowledge of any thing that it did and this seems the single Truth of his fore-cited Assertions But he proceeds upon a like Design to many more folio's It seems evident that these two Opinions of our Opposers are directly contrary one of them to the other and yet are intended both for one same purpose viz. to invalidate such an Argument as might be raised from the Nature Power and Practice of a Sensitive Soul that might perswade to the belief of what hath been before asserted by us of the Rational Faculties and Duties being possible and likely to be acted and performed by a Material Spirit if either of the fore-cited Opinions were true it were enough to rebate the edge of such an Argument and to invalidate the force of it but with those who do not believe the truth of either of them they will be of no force at all to the purpose We confide there is no need to labour in the Confutation of either of them for that they will hardly be acccepted or agreed to by Men of Reading and Reason and that therefore our repeated Argument will be of force and continue unimpeachable by either of these Allegations Whence we are at liberty to proceed in our farther Inquiries concerning the Soul We find that Aristotle who lived about Two thousand years ago wrote a Treatise intituled Of the Soul divided into Three Books and those into Chapters the First Book into Nine and the other Two each into Twelve and he treats therein as we have done of all the Three Known Souls viz. The Vegetative the Sensitive and the Rational and calls his Work A History of the Soul and in the very entrance thereunto the First Chapter of it he tells us It is extream difficult to detect the Essence of any thing or the Quid sit Yet that is the most sound Principle of Knowledge if it can
that Soul as well as it is in the Beasts With it and by it they live move and act With its Extinguishment they die and turn to immediate Corruption and Gradatim to their Original Earth and Dust So was it with Adam and his Soul and Body and from his Time hath so continued without Exception save in Enoch and Elijah by Divine Power or Miracle manifested in reviving Lazarus and some other dead Bodies by re-kindling in them the extinguish'd Flame of Life 2. He doubts not but that Eve's Soul was like Adam's and if his were created so was hers And this we grant as well the one as the other 3. Adam did not speak of her Soul but owned her Body of his therefore he knew not her Soul or what or whence it was Whence 't is not likely her Soul was made out of his but was a Creation from nothing I grant her Soul was not made out of his but made like his The Body Blood and Humours being prepared and fit the Flame of Life was kindled in her by the Divine Power and after her first Breath she lived by Respiration as Adam did so long as that Flame of Life continued unextinguished and she was made and so long she continued a Living Soul or rather a Living Compositum both of Body and Soul 4. If the Soul were generated there would be a subject Matter out of which it grew And then Solomon could not properly say it returned to God that gave it but it should rather return into such Matter as it was raised from He says Austin applied this Saying of Solomon only to Adam's Soul or the Orignal of Souls for that he would not oppose the Generation of Souls But the Author says it must doubtless be understood of all Souls Concerning this I say it appears as clearly that Solomon was not resolved concerning Humane Souls whether they went upward or downward or what became of them upon a Solemn Consideration and Argument Yet he doth after and without Argument summarily say the Spirit returns to God who gave it In both Places our Translators use the Term of Spirit and not of Soul The Breath Spirit and Life which is in Man goes not perceivably to Sense any whither Likely it is the common Opinion of his Time was for a Separate Subsistence of Souls For we read Saul applied himself to the Witch for bringing up of Samuel intending his Separately Subsisting Soul And the Devil favours this Opinion in pretending to be Samuel's disquieted Soul In these few Words of Solomon it may be conceived that unresolved in himself he thus expressed himself in Compliance with the Common Opinion of his Time and Country Also what is intended by Spirit Whether Breath and Life or Soul seems not very clear David says When God takes away Mens Breath they die and are turned again to their Dust Psal 104. But if he let his Breath go forth Men are made and the Face of the Earth renewed This Informing Breath first breathed into Adam leaves the Body at Death returns says Solomon to God who gave it But elsewhere says he knows not what to think of it whether it go upward or be extinguished with the Life as those of the Beasts are 5. and 6. Pag. 766. He cites Isa 57. Zach. 12. Exod. 21. That God makes the Souls And what Austin answers thereunto That it is by God that they come from the Parents He cites Theodoret That the Foetus in the Womb is first an unformed Embrion then becomes formed into the Perfect Shape of a Body and after That it first obtains a Soul Pag. 767. And if so How can the Soul rise out of the Seed or from Generation If says he you will say that in the Seed there is Vis Animae Parentis out of which the Infant 's Soul arises in due Time This he refuses by any means to admit of but why he doth not say because it is against Reason or Nature But because then it would follow that the Soul must be Corruptible and Mortal And to this Conclusion which he maintains with divers Arguments we do easily agree Pag. 771. See the same 7. The Soul of Christ was not from Generation Ergo other Mens are not so I say It seems Christ was born from the Seed of David and was the Seed of the Woman and being by Operation of the Holy Spirit upon her might be made and born in all things like to us except Sin For what he took by Generation from the Holy Spirit could not partake of Sin And it seems Temerity to affirm any thing concerning Christ's Soul which is not revealed as this Point is not for that neither the Manner nor the Matter can be traced or found out by the Powers of Humane Reason or the Dependance of Natural Causes to all which Proceedings this Birth is an absolute Mystery P. 769. He says both these Opinions viz. that of a continual New Creation of Souls and that of Propagating them by Generation have had great and many Abettors and Defenders in the Church For the New Creation of Souls he enumerates Greg. Nyssen Theodoret. S. Jerom Leo I. a Bishop of Rome S. Ambrose Hilary Says Flesh generates the Flesh but the Soul is the Work of God I say this is no absolute Denial of the Souls being generated as Austin hath said by God's Power and Providence For the Souls being generated with the Body held Tertullian Pag. 770. S. Augustin Greg. I. a Bishop of Rome he omits here Apollinaris and most of the Fathers of the Western Church before remembered The Opinions differed upon two Difficulties some would have a New Creation for that Generation concluded Souls to be Mortal others would have Souls generated with the Bodies because whole Man is involved in and put under the Guilt of Original Sin which if his Soul were Newly created by God can have no sound and reasonable Derivation upon it Our Author means to shew how New created Souls may be taken within the Guilt of Original Sin Pag. 772. He begins with Philsophers who have highly extolled the Soul and said it came from God Pag. 773. 1. Says Souls and Angels are of the same Nature Kind and Substance alike subsisting of themselves and as one Angel doth not generate another so it is for Souls they generate not I say this Parallel of Souls and Angels is bold but never granted 2. Says The Soul can understand and will without the Body or its Organs and therefore subsist without it I grant both alike and one as much as the other 3. The Soul is an Immaterial Spirit and cannot be propagated no not from another Soul and if it rise from another Soul it cannot be Immortal All but its Immateriality is granted 4. The Opposers say the Body cannot infect a New created Soul with Original Sin much less says he can it generate such a Soul nor can such a Substantial Immaterial Spirit proceed from Flesh and Blood a Spirit which
wrath Chap. 12.7 The dust shall return to the Earth as it was and the Spirit shall return unto God who gave it We say this may be expounded by Gen. 7.22 and 1 Sam. 30.12 and Job 12.10 all before Cited Then Chap. 34.14 If God set his heart upon man if he gather unto himself his Spirit and his Breath All flesh shall perish together and man shall turn again unto Dust Psal 31. Prays Let me not be put to confusion but deliver me be thou my Rock and Defence Into thy hand I commit my Spirit for thou hast redeemed me And Psal 104.29 When thou takest away their breath they die and are turned again to their dust When thou lettest thy breath go forth they shall be made and thou shalt renew the face of the earth Zech. 6.5 These are the four spirits of the heavens noted on the Margent or Winds These places make Breath and the Spirit mentioned by Solomon to be much if not altogether the same thing And it seems remarkable that when David prays for Deliverance from Dangers that were temporal as in Psal 31. he uses this Expression Into thine Hand I commit my Spirit this makes it seem to intend his whole Person himself both Soul and Body as hath been shewn to be usual and common in the Usage of the Word Soul Isa 29.24 They who erred in Spirit shall come to Vnderstanding Here Spirit seems to signifie a Faculty of the Man viz. his Mind or Intellect Upon the Whole it seems the Spirit 's Return to God in Solomon's Sence might be a willing Submission of the Mind or Understanding to that Dissolution by Death which he hath appointed to be the Natural End of all Mankind This makes Death appear a willing Return of a meek and quiet Spirit to God by an easie Surrender of its Fort and Hold the Body when others and they if they did not so meekly surrender would be Stormed and forced against their Wills to let go their Holds and be driven out of Forts which they have not Power to defend and maintain against the violent and prevalent Assaults and Storms of Death We meet in Isaiah Ch. 53.10 such an Addition concerning the Term of Soul as we judge not fit to omit viz. When thou shalt make his Soul an Offering for Sin This intended his whole Person And he shall see of the Travail of his Soul Chap. 57.16 I will not contend for ever for so should the Spirit fail before me and the Souls which I have made viz. the People which I have made So Is it such a Day for Man to afflict his Soul viz. himself And If thou draw out thy Soul to the Hungry if thou minister unto him Ezek. 37.14 I will put my Spirit in you Bodies rising from dry Bones and ye shall live And this was executed by the Four Winds blowing upon them Whence it seems Spirit Wind and Breath have a great Congruity one with another and are put one for another divers times And this helps to declare what Solomon meant by Spirit Dan. 2.3 The King's Spirit was troubled to know the Dream viz. his Vnderstanding Chap. 5.20 An excellent Spirit Knowledge and Vnderstanding was found in Daniel One of these Words expound another Micah 6.7 Shall I give my First-born the Fruits of my Body for the Sin of my Soul seems to import Shall I give or Sacrifice my Child for my own Sin Soul being here put for Person as we have shewn was very usual Zech. 6.5 These are the Four Spirits or Winds of the Heavens Chap. 12.1 The Lord that formeth the Spirit of Man within him viz. who hath given him Faculties of Sense Memory Vnderstanding c. Thus the Texts of the Old Testament which make most for the Proof of a Separate and Self-subsisting Soul of Man have been quoted and such Expositions made of them and Answers thereby made to them as appear to us sufficient to abate and take away the Violence or proving Force of them by shewing that they do not necessarily or strongly compel to the Belief of such a Separated Subsistance of Humane Souls But that they only be solved and answered by Senses or Constructions more Natural and likely and more consentaneous to the Natural Conceptions of a Humane Reason unbiassed or distorted by the Prejudices of formerly received and radicated Opinions We proceed to Texts of the New Testament which have been or may be quoted to the same Intent and Purpose Mat. 16.25 He that will save his Life shall lose it and he that for Christ's sake loses it shall find it For what is a Man profited if he gain the whole World and lose his own Soul or what shall a Man give in Exchange for his Soul For the Son of Man shall come in the Glory of his Father with his Angels and then he shall reward every Man according to his Works Here it seems the Word Soul intends the Life or Person of the Man and what shall a Man get by grasping or gaping after the whole World if he lose his own Life for without Life to enjoy it what Profit or Benefit can one make of the whole World if it could be gotten and no Man in his Wits will take the whole World in Exchange for his Life for he can have no Profit but plain Damage and Loss by that Exchange And yet says our Lord He that loses his Life for my sake shall find it viz. shall find Profit by that Exchange For he shall be recompenced at the Resurrection For the Son of Man shall come in his Father's Glory and then he shall reward every Man according to his Works The Man shall then receive an Eternal Recompence and be made a great Gainer by that Exchange Chap. 13.42 For then the Wicked shall be cast into a Furnace of Fire and the Righteous shall shine forth as the Sun in the Kingdom of their Father Next is quoted Matth. 17. the Relation of our Lord's Transfiguration repeated Mark 9. and Luke 9. There appeared to them viz. the three Disciples Moses and Elias talking with him They all saw the Appearances It must be true then that these Prophets have a Subsistence after their Departure out of this our World And for Elias his creates no great Difficulty in the Case upon Supposal that his Body went to Heaven and was changed as S. Paul says in a Moment into a Spiritual Body and there may well enough be still continuing And for Moses his Body it could never be found what became of it seems not very certain but not being to forth-come it was conjectured and concluded to be buried no Man ever knew where nor that there was or is a Certainty in that Fact It seems he went up the Hill alone and never returned nor was his Body found what therefore became of him we may think remains a Mystery and that he died may be taken for a Conjecture from common Probability He never returned nor was after to
not let the World be judge For our Lord 's main scope and intent in this Text appears clearly to be The Warning of his Disciples not to fear Men for that they could only punish with Death and no farther Not to fear them so much as God who can punish beyond Death by casting into Hell The Contents in both Evangelists express That our Lord exhorted his Disciples to preach to others what they had heard of him he bids them not be afraid so to do for that Men can only kill the Body and do you no more harm but God can punish after Death and cast you into Hell and this we ought to fear more than any thing that Man can do to us That St. Matth. hath worded our Lord's Expressions otherwise is true but that our Lord's intent here was to teach a Separate Subsistence of Souls after Death appears not in St. Luke's words nor in the Contexts of either of the Evangelists And the wording of it in St. Matthew's Text seems to me but the result of that Apostle's Judgment perhaps according to the Common Opinion of that Time And however here being two Relations of the same Thing and of equal Authority it seems Men may accept which of them they think most likely or most true without much apprehending the abuses which Atheists or Prophane Persons may make of it Parag. 11. You say I make Matthew and Luke to disagree again Yet the Case is no more but this Matthew says Two Thieves were crucified with our Saviour and those Thieves also which were crucified with him reviled him And Mark says the same thing viz. They Crucified Two Thieves with him and they who were Crucified with him reviled him Luke only relates the matter of the Thiefs Conversion which he had by hear-say Thus the difference which there is amongst them is not made by me who only relate the Case as it is leaving it to others to adjust such difference as there appears amongst them I do not deny the truth of St. Luke's Relation only say it may be questionable upon these differences But for Answer to the Objection from the Thiefs being that day in Paradise I say That the Crucifixion and Death was on Friday Evening and the Resurrection upon Sunday Morning and this Thief might and likely did rise at the time of our Lord's Resurrection Matth. 27.52 The Graves were opened and many Bodies of Saints which slept arose and went and appeared unto many And there is a great Concurrence of Opinion That the Old Patriarchs had part in that Resurrection This being granted I hope shewing the Sense of the Word this day is to very good purpose for this Promise to the Thief might be literally fulfilled if he rose at our Lord's Resurrection I wonder how you mist of this effect of my Answer fully exprest in my Treatise and yet it seems you did miss of it for else you would not have proceeded as you do in this Paragraph Paragraph 12. You say You wonder how I can conceive that the Parable of Dives was delivered to dilucidate our Lord's Doctrine in the 15th verse of that Chapter viz. That what was highly esteemed in the sight of Men may be an abomination in the sight of God I will tell you how I come to conceive so This Doctrine our Lord delivers ver 15. and ver the 19th begins the Parable distanced only by three intermediate verses and the Parable is very proper and significant for that purpose For what in Man's sight is more glorious and happy than the State of Dives and what more miserable than that of Lazarus and yet in God's sight and knowledge their State was directly the contrary But say you Christ delivered this Doctrine to the Pharisees I grant it and so for ought that I can perceive he did that Parable nor do I find any cause for you to doubt of it You are willing to suppose which I think is to grant that it is a Parable and you wonder that I should say Parables are a sandy Foundation for the building of Doctrines upon For say you Our Lord spake to the multitude in Parables and without a Parable spake he not unto them To this I answer His Disciples wondred at it and enquired why he did so and he told them the reason viz. That seeing they might not perceive and hearing they might not understand and be converted for God's appointments were to be fulfilled by means of their ignorance Acts 3.17 Peter tells the Jews concerning our Lord's sufferings I wot that through Ignorance you did it as did also your rulers but God so brought about what he had foretold by the mouth of all his Prophets So Paul Had they known him they would not have crucified the Lord of glory But when our Lord and his Disciples were by themselves together he expounded all things unto them and did manifest himself unto them and not to the world but all was delivered in Parables to them who were without John 15.15 Ye are my friends for all things which I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you and I heartily wish our Lord had expounded this Parable unto them Parag. 13. You demand What could move Paul to desire death rather than life I answer He was at Rome when he wrote to the Philippians such an one as Paul the aged and a Prisoner of Jesus Christ in continual expectation of Martyrdom Chap. 2.17 If I be offered up as a sacrifice I will joy and rejoyce with you and I would have you do so with me Your self may if you please contemplando put your soul into his souls stead as Job says or imagine your self to be in his Case I judge you would have no cause to desire a long or a longer continuance in that condition If it were not as he says for the opportunity and power to profit other men he says For him to die and be with Christ would be far better 1 Thess 4.14 As Jesus died and rose again even so them also who sleep in Jesus shall God bring with him but howsoever in such a Case you might judge I think for my self that if I were in that Case or a far more easie state of Life yet infirm and aged as I am and had withal so great assurance of a blessed joyful Resurrection as that Apostle had viz. That a Crown of Righteousness was laid up for him and to be given him at that day I think that I should make little doubt in the choice but fully desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ in the sense of resting or Sleeping in Christ to be of that number who being asleep in Jesus God will bring with him for that blessed are the dead who die in the Lord for they rest from their labours And so Job says There the weary are at rest freed from oppressions pains and sufferings You mention a mans becoming a prey to worms as a terrour of Death but I esteem
Scripture the Context is always well and throughly to be considered and all the parts so be understood and construed as may make the several Parts and Expressions of it stand and agree together and with the true and sober Rules of common Sense and Reason To make such an Exposition of these two Verses and the Words and import of them it seems to me the Expounders of them should begin from the next preceding Chapter viz. Chap. 4.8 there Paul begins to recount his Sufferings Vers 14. But after all He who raised the Lord Jesus shall raise us up also by Jesus and shall present us with you And therefore we must look aâ— things not seen and Eternal in comparison of which the present Affliction is but short and light Chap. 5.1 c. For we know we have a Building of God a house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens desiring to be cloathed upon with our house if so be that being cloathed we shall not be found naked For we do groan not for that we would be uncloathed but cloathed upon that Mortality might be swallowed up of Life Therefore we knowing that whilst we are at hone in the Body we are absent from the Lord and are willing rather to be absent from the Body and to be present with the Lord therefore we labour that whether present or absent we may be accepted of him For we must all appear before the Judgment seat of Christ that every one may receive the things done in his Body according to what be hath done whether it be good or bad To accord the Words absent from the Body and present with the Lord to the rest of the Context it seems we must take Body in this place for the Natural Body as it is distinguished from the Spiritual Body expected at the time of Christ's Second Coming Those who are raised to Happiness shall be raised Spiritual Bodies as 1 Cor. 15.44 and those who are alive at that time shall be changed viz. their Natural Bodies into Spiritual Bodies For Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God Whilst therefore we are at home in the Natural Body we are and must be absent from the Lord and do wish rather to be absent from this Body viz. have it changed into a Spiritual Body that this Mortal might put on Immortality and Death may not have Power over us but be swallowed up in that Victory Our Text is parallel hereunto we know we have an house eternal in the Heavens desiring to be cloathed upon with this house viz. the Spiritual Body that Mortality might be swallowed up of Life Therefore he desires not to be Uncloathed not to Die or put off this Tabernacle but to be Cloathed upon to pass to Life without passing the Gates of Death be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye for till a Resurrection or such a change we are like to be absent from the Lord Therefore he desires to be Cloathed upon with this house from Heaven that he may not continue in the Natural Body and thereby absent from the Lord He speaks as if he might live to that time says We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed And of absence from the Body by this change it seems St. Paul speaks in my Text which you have quoted and not of any thing to be done or expected after Death or betwixt that and the Resurrection The whole Tract recited seems to me intended for Comfort in times of Worldly Afflictions founded upon the Resurrection Chap. 4.14 and terminated in it Chap. 5.10 desiring whether absent in the Natural Body or present in the Spiritual to be accepted by Christ that we may come to that great Audit with Confidence as 1 Joh. 2.28 and not be ashamed before him at his coming but may rejoyce at it with joy unspeakable and full of Glory that the wicked rising or found alive at Christ's Coming shall be so changed or have Spiritual Bodies I do not find Written and it seems as likely that they may still remain in their former state of Nature sensible of what they suffer as in their first Life The difficulty thereupon will be how they should be able to dwell in Everlasting Burnings without being consumed But I pretend not to solve all Difficulties but shall leave this to farther Consideration and conclude my self Your obliged humble Servant 10. Nov. 93. In a Postscript to a Letter from my Opponent He says I can by no means consent to the making any thing of mine Publick but if they will serve you in Private you may keep them by you Dated Nov. 6.93 And to my Reply Dated 10. Nov. 93. His Answer was That he sent back my Papers without rejoyning to them foreseeing that the effect of his Rejoynder would be but another Answer from me and a fruitless trouble to us both He warned me to forbear Publishing my Opinion as new singular dangerous and false and likely to produce great inconveniences to my self from the ill treatment I might find from others who if they thought me considerable enough to be Answered were likely to give me Answer in Terms less civil than he had used towards me Dated Nov. 21. Anno 93. And thus finished the Intercourse betwixt me and my Learned Neighbour upon the Point before disputed Whilst I was employed upon this Argument with my said Neighbour there came to my hand a Sermon of Dr. Bentley's treating upon the same Subject and Intituled Matter and Motion cannot think Wherein he Undertakes or promises to prove That the Humane Soul is an Immaterial Intelligent Spirit and because I thought he fell short in his performance of that promise I made Observations in Nature of a Refutation upon that Sermon as far only as concerned that Point These Observations I sent to London as my Opposer says he had notice with intent to have them Printed but hitherto an Imprimatur hath not been obtained for them In them I press Dr. Bentley to a better performance of that his promise than I think he hath made in that Sermon and do desire him to take that promise to heart and perform it to the uttermost of his Power as a Work worthy of his Endeavours and requisite and very needful for the times we live in but when that my demand may arrive to him in the way which I intend I do not yet perceive but as I was musing a Friend Minister brought me a Book which he said had given him great Satisfaction in the Point thus far disputed and he thought it might probably do the same to me I found it Printed Lond. 1685. in 4o. Intituled A Treatise of the Soul of Man by John Flavel Minister late of Dartmouth upon perusal I found his Design the very same with that which I had prest Dr. Bentley to Undertake viz. to prove that the Humane Soul is an Immaterial Immortal Intelligent Spirit and that the Author was Learned Judicious and Industrious and
Death and the Resurrection and therefore Luke's Words in relating of that Fact do not import a Separate Subsistence of Souls And so it seems for Peter 1 Pet. 4.13 and 2 Pet. 3.11 and 12.13 c. So 1 Joh. 2.28 and 3.2 all importing they knew of no State between Death and the Resurrection and consequently of no Separate Subsistence of Souls Page 12. he quotes 2 Cor. 5.8 If absent from the Body and present with the Lord which I have in a few Leaves before largely expounded to a sense far different from the Authors intent He cites 2 Cor. 4.16 of the Outward and Inward Man which I say intends the two Faculties viz. Sensitive or Passionate and the Rational Pag. 13. Says The Soul is a substance I grant it so though Material for so is Heart Brain c. He says Affections and Passions Habits and Arts and Sciences are lodged and seated and rooted in the Soul and spring from it All this I deny and say they are all lodged seated and rooted in the Man and spring from and are perfected by the Contexture of his Soul and Body He says The Soul in Moses 's Text was a living active being of it self as opposed to Matter and Body This I deny and say That as the Body cannot move it self without the Soul so neither the Soul without the Body The Soul is in the Body as its proper Form or active Principle that it hath no proper place but the Body nor hath it any quickning Power without the Body It cannot quicken any thing else but the Body nor doth it act nor is it any thing but in the Body He says Moses in the Text calls it a living Soul This say I is an apparent mistake for the Text says not that the Breath became a living Soul but the Man did so the Man became a living Soul alias Person He says Take meer Matter and do what you will with it you can never make it see feel c. Mark his Consequence ergo God cannot effect it he might as well say you cannot make a Dog or a Mouse ergo c. Pag. 14. In Proof of the Soul 's being a Separable Spirit he Cites Luke 23.46 and Acts 7.29 I say That in these places by the term of Spirit the Persons recommended themselves to God as David in his full life used the very same Words Into thy hands I commend my Spirit intending his whole Person Also Christ made his Soul an Offering for Sin intending his whole Person Here he also cites Solomon's Text viz. The Spirit returns to God who gave it concerning which Expression I refer to what hath before been spoken of it Cites Heb. 12.9 You have been subject to the Fathers in the Flesh be now rather so to the Father of Spirits viz. say I of Angels and all other Creatures Cites again Zech. 12.1 yet cannot doth not deny Acts 17.25 That God giveth to all Life and Breath and all things ergo to Plants Insects and Brutes as well as to Men. He says Other Souls flow not from God by Creation but Man 's did I have denied such Creation and I think he hath not proved it I have granted Mans Soul in-kindled by God's Inspiration and so I think for the Brutes they had their first Breath from him and from that time Men and Brutes have been generated perfectly according to their first Patterns Pag. 9. He had told us That the Soul's Nature is so spiritual and sublime that it cannot be perfectly known by the most acute and penetrating Vnderstanding But being come to page 15. He tells us It is a substance as Incorporeal as other Spirits are that it is Invisible and hath no Extension of Parts it hath no Dimensions or Figure But I grant none of all these nor doth he offer to prove any of them He makes it a vast wonder that such a Spirit as his sort of Soul should be so tied and linked to a clod of Clay the Body that it can by no Art or Power free it self And I confess his sort of Soul is very Productive of strange and unlikely Consequences but to my sort of Soul all is in great Congruity I say there is no wonder at all but very Congruous that the Soul and Body should be so affected and affixed one to another for they are both of a piece are generated grow stand decay and fall together and they rejoyce and suffer share and share alike and that there is no more difference between Humane Souls and Bodies than Material Spirits differ from their Bodies and as they do and suffer together in this World so may it be expected for the World to come they will Rise be Judged and Recompenced together according to their joynt behaviours used in the time of their Earthly Life Pag. 17. He produces Des Cartes Principle and Dr. Bentley's viz. I know that I think and that Matter and Motion cannot think ergo There must be a Spirit to act thought in me This I grant but says he This must be a Spirit Immaterial Intelligent for God cannot act all Mans Faculties by a Material Spirit nor make Matter Cogitative I think he can do all this and thereupon I am at issue with Dr. Bentley and I believe that he hath so done And if God can act Mans Senses and Reason by a Material Spirit and hath so done all our Author's Allegations here are thereby answered and made ineffectual which otherwise do not seem very material He says No Man can think that combining Fire Air Water and Earth should make the Lump of it to know or consider And I grant this cannot be done by Man but by what consequence can it be said ergo God cannot do it I say such an ergo will have no Force or Coercion in it And I farther say Souls cannot think or understand without their Bodies He says We see manifestly that upon division of the Body viz. a Leg or an Arm cut off the Soul remains intire viz. the Vnderstanding Affections c. I grant That the Vital and Rational Faculties do in such case still remain intire but by Blows or Wounds in the Head the Understanding and Memory may be spoiled and yet the Vital and Generative Parts remain firm So as his instance proves no more but that the loss of a Member and the Spirit which enlivened it affects not other Members or the Spirit in them so much but that they can still exercise their proper Faculties as before and this is very well Comportant with a Material Spirit For his tota in to to qualibet parte I have quoted Melanchton who says The Expression is commonly Fathered upon Arist but it is not found in any of his Writings nor is the thing true For says he If we shall take the Humane Soul for an Immaterial Spirit we know such a Spirit can be but in unico loco at a time and not in tota in qualibet parte at the same time And
a Soul to desire to be dissolved if it thought it self should be extinguished I say No madness at all but a very reasonable and wise Choice viz. a desire to part with a troublesome and suffering Life for the rest of Death or sleeping in Christ in an assured Hope of a joyful Resurrection and of then receiving a Crown of Glory as Paul's Case was And if our Author were of another Mind 't is a signe he loved Life better than ordinary He hath also before said That the Grave was a good hiding place from the Storms of the World Which I there agreed and so do most People Pag. 310. Cites 2 Tim. 4.8 A Crown of Life will be given to all who love Christ's appearing I ask When shall this be done The Text says At that day The Author says This intends the Day of Mens Deaths No say I for that Day intends one time appointed whereas Days of Deaths are divers and various therefore the Day here intends the Resurrection P. 313. Says In Death the Soul attains its Rest I say the Man attains his Rest in hopes of a future happiness or fears of what may follow at that Day Pag. 314. Says Death finally and certainly cures seven several very great Humane Maladies And therefore say I is much more desireable than a troublesome or afflicted Life Pag. 326. Says Little do Believers think what Visions of God and ravishing Sights of Christ the Souls of their Friends have when they are closing their eyes with Tears I say Little doth our Author know for their Information in such Cases or for their Comfort 1 Thes 4.13 Paul comforts People in such cases by the hopes only of a Resurrection which gives me a great Assurance that he either knew not of our Author's Opinion or did not believe it He adds Evil Days should make God's People willing to accept of a hiding place in the Grave as a special Favour from God And I grant it and believe it often doth so Pag. 322. Cites Blessed are the Dead which die in the Lord for they rest from their Labours And that might make Paul desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. viz. To rest or sleep in Him Pag. 329. Cites Heb. 9.27 It is appointed for all Men once to die and after that the Judgment I say this intends one Judgment viz. the Last and that no intermediate Judgment can be proved Pag. 334. Cites 1 Pet. 3 19. He went and Preached to the Spirits in Prison And he says There are Difficulties in this Text and that Aestius reckons no less than Ten Expositions of it And says It is a very difficult Scripture in the Judgment of almost all Interpreters Pag. 335. Says What is called a Soul whilst in the Body after Separation is properly called a Spirit I deny then that ever it can be properly called a Spirit Pag. 339. He says Conscience is the Judge and prime Guide of the Soul I say of the Man He says The Will as potent as it is moves not until the Judgment comes to a Conclusion And this I Agree Pag. 340. He says Every Soul comes to its particular Judgment immediately after Death To Prove this he Cites Heb. 9.27 It is appointed for all Men once to die and after that the Judgment How this proves every Man's particular Judgment at Death I do not perceive It seems rather all Men must die before this Judgment and when all are dead then this Judgment But there is no Application of it to a particular Judgment Then he Cites Proverbs 11.7 When a wicked Man dieth his Expectation shall perish and the Hope of unjust Men perisheth I demand How this proves a particular Judgment after each Man's Death Then he Cites Matth. 7.22 Many will say to me in that Day Have not we done great Works in thy Name Then will I profess to them I never knew you depart from me Thus he proves a particular Judgment Many will say in that Day the Great Day and then I will say to them to those Many Such Scriptures as these he is forced to use for Proof of his particular Judgment Not that likely he or any Man can think them good Proofs of the thing but because this sort of Judgment is indispensably necessary to a Separate Soul's going to Heaven or Hell Without this sort of Judgment there can be no Truth in their Tenet and therefore they must Prove or Yield They cannot do it and I think he were as good not have offer'd at it as to have done it in this manner But neither I nor it seems He could tell how to do it better Pag. 350. Cites Heb. 4.3 We which have Believed do enter into Rest. I say this intends Rest from their Labours as the Revelation expresseth it and I do not find Heaven in it Pag. 359. Says Nothing more sure or awful than the Day of the Last Judgment I Agree it Pag. 361. Cites Matth. 16.26 What is a Man profited if he shall gain the whole World and lose his own Soul Or What shall a Man give in Exchange for his Soul Our great Difference upon this Text will be what is here intended by the Word or Term of Soul I say That as in a vast number of other Places so in this Place the Word Soul intends the Man's Self or his Person or Life Ver. 25. He that will save his Life shall lose it but he that loses it for Christ's sake shall find it Then follows our Text with Connexion For what is a Man profited if he shall gain the whole World and lose his own Soul or Life And what shall a Man give in Exchange for his Soul or Life Once lost it cannot be redeemed or recovered nor recompenced by any thing of this World yet He that loseth his Life for Christ's sake shall find it for he shall be recompenced at the Resurrection of the Just and as Heb. 11. 35. People were Tortured not accepting Deliverance that they might obtain a better Resurrection Pag. 362. He Quotes a Saying To win Venice and he hang'd at the Gates of it What good would it do any Man So says he of getting a vast Treasure with the Loss of ones Life And I Agree and say when a Man is dead What good can all the World do him And this I take for the true Meaning of this Text And our Lord shews how one that loses Life for his sake shall find it Ver. 26. For the Son of Man shall come in the Glory of his Father with his Angels and then he shall reward every Man according to his Works and this seems to sound strongly in Exclusion of the particular Judgment before spoken of Pag. 363. He magnifies the Expression or the Term Soul in this Text and says That Rocks of Diamonds are not worth it I say they are not worth any Man's Life to him and this the Devil knew when he said All that a Man hath will he give for his Life