we are now come in Faith Hope and Expectation having received a full and true Declaration of them We have thus traversed the large Fields of St. Paul's Epistles collecting Evidences concerning his Doctrine and Opinion touching the Future State of Mankind after a Death in this World The Texts of his which have been quoted treat particularly of such Future State and intend to teach concerning the same delivering thereupon according as in the said Quotations hath been expressed Before have been quoted on the other hand Four Texts of his said Writings alledged in Proof of the Immateriality viz. 2 Cor. 5. Ver. 6. 8. and Phil. 1.23 and Heb. 12.9 and Heb. 12.22 To these I say none of those Places treat particularly of the Future State of Mankind or intend to Teach or Examine what the same shall be Next I say that of these four Places none speak Provingly But Phil. 1.23 viz. His desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ I say the Question made thereupon is concerning the Meaning or Sense of the Expression of being with Christ It intends a State more desireable than that which at that time he enjoyed I take a sleeping in Jesus to be so viz. a more desireable State than that which at that time he enjoyed That this is a Blessed State we read Revel 14.13 after mentioning the Patience and Faith of the Saints under Persecutions the Text says Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord that they may rest from their Labours and their Works do follow them And that it is a State cared for by God and under his Protection appears Rom. 14.7 None of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself Ver. 8. For whether we live we live unto the Lord and whether we die we die unto the Lord Whether we live therefore or die we are the Lord 's Verse 9. For Christ died rose and revived that he might be Lord both of the dead and living Ver. 10. We shall all stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ So Chap. 4.17 God who quickneth the dead and calleth those things that be not as though they were and so he is the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob for all live unto him though the Body turn to dust and the Soul expire yet neither of then are lost Joh. 11.23 Our Lord says to Martha Thy Brother shall rise again She Answers I know that he shall rise again at the Resurrection of the Last Day He Replies I am the Resurrection and the Life he that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live and whoso liveth and believeth in me shall never die Viz. So as to fall out of my Care or Protection or Knowledge thy Brother shall rise again speedily and for others Joh. 6.39 Of that which my Father hath given me I will lose nothing but will raise it up at the Last Day Ver. 40. All who believe in me shall have Everlasting Life and I will raise them up at the Last Day Which Paul to Tim. calls That Day So Ver. 44. 54. All speak of raising Believers up at the Last Day to receive Blessings and Rewards whereas the rising of the Wicked shall be attended with a Second Death This intends an Answer additional to Paul's Desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ And touching the whole Course of this Apostle's Writings concerning a State of Mankind after Death my Quotations make it appear That either he knew of no Intermediate State betwixt Death and the Resurrection or else he did not Acknowledge or Believe it For his Knowledge that there was an Opinion in the World of Souls Subsisting in a Separate State from their Bodies there are great Probabilities as that Solomon's Text The Spirit returns to God And St. Matthew's Text of Cannot kill the Soul And both Heathen and Jewish Opinions to that purpose it seems could hardly escape his Knowledge But most likely it is that he did not acknowledge or believe the Truth of that Opinion for that in any of his Writings upon that Subject he doth neither relate to it nor mention it much less doth he confirm or approve it but puts all Expectation of Rewards or Punishments Future to this World upon the Score and Account of the Resurrection And upon the foot of that Account I leave it with this Apostle intending to Examine what other Apostles have written to the same Purpose I proceed to the Epistle of St. James and quote out of it Chap. 1.12 Blessed is the Man that endureth Temptation for when he is tried he shall receive the Crown of Life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him In Words very like 2 Tim. 4.8 and of the same Import and that applies the receiving of the Crown to that Day or the Last Day So Chap. 5.7 Be patient Brethren unto the coming of the Lord. Ver. 8. Again Be patient for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh Gives no Expectatation of Recompences till the coming of the Lord. I go on to St. Peter 1 Pet. 1.4 You are begotten to an Inheritance incorruptible reserved in Heaven for you Ver. 5. Who are kept by the power of God through Faith unto Salvation ready to be revealed in the last time Does not say to be revealed at the times of your Death So Chap. 5.4 When the chief Shepherd shall appear ye shall receive a Crown of Glory that fadeth not away Agreeing with Paul and James just before Chap. 4.5 Those who speak evil of you shall give account to him who is ready to judge the quick and the dead This must intend the Resurrection for that no Judgment shall pass of the quick and the dead together till that time Ver. 13. Rejoyce in as much as ye are Partakers of Christ's Sufferings that when his Glory shall be revealed you may be glad also with exceeding Joy This proves to my understanding that the Ravishing Joys of a newly departed Soul were unknown to this Prime Apostle 2 Pet. 2.9 The Lord knows to deliver the Godly and to reserve the Vnjust unto the day of Judgment to be punished So Ver. 4. Evil Angels are delivered into Chains of Darkness to be reserved unto Judgment Jude Ver. 6. Those Angels are reserved in everlasting Chains under darkness unto the Judgment of the Great Day This shews what sort of Judgment was before intended Chap. 3.12 What manner of Persons ought ye to be in all holy Conversation and Godliness looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God wherein all shall be burnt up but we look for new Heavens and Earth and seeing ye look for such things be diligent that ye may be found of him in Peace without spot and blameless Thus he exhorts to a Holy Life from the expectation of the Great Day of Judgment and Dissolution of the Earth Sky and Elements about it without a word of Separated Souls or a particular Judgment or an Intermediate State between Death and Judgment
will not suffer his faithful Servants to go unrewarded and therefore hath promised the Resurrection inserted into all our Creeds Now though I be not certain of my immediate departing to Christ at my dissolution yet I have an end intended which will make me Godly Charitable Just and Happy so far as I am made for Happiness supposing that to please God is the right end of all To this he replies We must desire to please God better then we can do in this Life This I do not grant for neither Nature nor Scripture do teach or require such desires Secondly He says It s own Felicity is so necessary to the Soul of Man as a desire to please God cannot stand without it This is denied but yet we do believe God to be a beatifying Rewarder of them who diligently seek him yet not of Debt but of Grace and so the Articles of the Resurrection do prove being assurances of future rewards and punishments Pag. 4. He says If a man have not his aim level'd at the reward he can have no certain end of his endeavour as if a design and intention to please God and serve to his Glory were to little or no purpose without a profitable consequent reward Pag. 5. He says Men use not to serve God for nought and specially not to their loss and yet I say it is the duty of all Creatures so to do to please God and serve to his Glory without other reward or intention to obtain it and yet the Resurrection is for reward and punishment and they are Lawful but neither the only nor the principal Considerations of Mans obedience to God And says If sin overspread the World notwithstanding the hopes and fears of a Life to come what would it do if there were no such things in that case I say Still it could but overspread the World and yet I do agree that hopes and fears are well grounded upon the Article of our Resurrection Pag. 6. He says No Blessing of God can be rightly esteemed and used but by him who sees it leads to a better Life I say Divers Blessings may be rightly esteemed and used without farther references than the thankful receiving them as Gods Favours beneficial to Men in this Life He says No wonder if Unbelievers be unthankful no nor that Believers are so too nor that he and his Proselites take every Blessing and prosperous Success here for an assurance of Gods Love and Acceptance and that their ways and doings are pleasing to him and an earnest penny of Eternal Glory which they earnestly covet and for which they slavishly serve as their Teachers direct them and without which hopes neither he nor they pretend to serve or honour God or to perform any other Duties of their Christian Religion And he exclaims against the Miseries of this Life not to be abidd'n but for the hopes of a future Glorious Life not considering that this later Life was not revealed to the World 'till our Lord Discovered it not 1700 Years ago and yet Men lived as happily in the World before that time as they have done since and submitted to their several Conditions and Circumstances with as much quietness and content of mind as Christians do at this Day serving God under enjoyment and expectation of Temporal rewards propounded by Moses and many other Law-givers of the World But he it seems found himself apt to murmur against God upon account of Cares and Worldly Griefs and the fears of Death and future Events but that was his infirmity at the best and perhaps a perverse humour in him for he might remember that Moses Laws revealed from Heaven Propounded no Rewards beyond the Happiness of this World nor Punishments but of the same nature and yet that People lived often very Happily under them and might always have done so by being Obedient to them Pag. 7. But to his Proposal Concerning the Behaviour of his good Old Women I say the part which they Acted upon the Stage of this World was very convenient for their Circumstances which require of them to take upon Trust and the Credit of their Teachers and other Informers the Rules both of their Faith and Manners and likely it is no more will be required of them at the Day of the Great Audit But their constancy in their Opinions and the sure expectation of Heaven and Happiness at their Deaths Creates no manner of Assurance that they were in the Right or were not deceived in their most assured expectations for Ages and the present World abound with Evidences that false Tenets and very Gross Errors are believed and maintained by misguided and deceived People with as much assurance and establish'd Confidence as the very Truth it self can by any means be Men Women and Children have died bravely in maintenance of gross mistakes and evident untruths And few Turks are found at this Day who will not rather part with Life and all other Worldly Comforts then renounce their Mahomet and his Alchoran Arrians were Anciently and some of them in our times so resolute in their Opinion as to submit to Death rather than to recant it Indian Idolaters daily offer their Lives in honour of their Idols as the most assured means of obtaining a Blessed and Happy State immediately upon their Dissolution with as little doubt as any of our Authors Old Women could possibly attain unto Hence the Author may perswade himself that seing the Old Womens Confidence is no certain Evidence that they were not in an Error and that their Ignorance was more excusable than his would be it becomes him better to enquire after the direct and attainable truth of things and particularly concerning Souls and whether they have a separate subsistance after Death of the Body or not than to sit down contented with his own present conceit or apprehensions concerning the same without making such farther search as he is able into the truth and certainty of such Opinions Pag. 8. He says well That a Faith not upheld by such Evidence of Truth as reason can discern and justifie is joyned with such doubting as though Men dare not open yet they do not therefore overcome and this doubting may likely prove prejudicial both to their Faith and Performance Pag. 10. And things it too much trouble to consider how Souls out of the Body do Subsist and Act But that the Soul of Man doth subsist seperately from the Body and Act in that State he takes upon him to prove Pag. 11. To that intent he undertakes to define what a Humane Soul is and says It is a Spiritual Pure Invisible Substance naturally endowed with the Power Virtue or Faculty of Vital Action Intellection and Volition not destroyed by seperation of Parts or loss of Power Species Individuation or Action and therefore it is an Immortal Spirit He says in proof that it is a Substance that which is nothing can do nothing but the Soul doth move understand and will for that is done
upon an undertaking to row against the Stream and general Opinion as well of past Ages as the present time 1 Sam. 30.6 When David was in very evil case he incouraged himself in the Lord his God he it is who hath required that Men should be Valiant for the Truth upon the Earth And Esdras 4.35 Great is the Truth and stronger then all things those who know that their aim and design is no other but the bringing the Truth in this Point to Light to the end that Gods Truth viz. the very Truth thereby may be exhibited and discovered may it seems go on in it without being terrified or bearing an astonishing regard to the censures of Men. We shall proceed therefore to Execution of what hath been declared to be intended Also where two or more Texts are cited unto which one same Answer may well be applied such Texts are designed to be quoted together or at once that the same Answers may not be often repeated And whereas heretofore those Texts intended to prove Recompences in a State future to this Life have been often applied to prove the Self-subsistence of a Separated Soul Here will be care taken to detect and avoid that Point of Misapplication We begin then from the Beginning of the Creation and the History of it viz. Gen. 1.26 God said let us make Man in our image after our likeness Ver. 27. So God Created Man in his own Image Chap. 2.7 God breathed into Mans Nostrils the Breath of Life and Man became a living Soul We have before proved it the ordinary Use of Scripture to express the Person by Name or Term of the Soul and here Man became a living Soul intends a living Person both Soul and Body Zanchius puts a very great Stress and weight upon Gods breathing into Mans Nostrils the Breath of Life for the Proof of a Separately Subsisting Soul in Man To this we say there is not that clear Sense in the Text which seems to import no more but that God gave to Man his Breath and Life and so he did to the Beasts of the Earth and kindled in their Bodies their first flames of Life Propagated from those Originals to all future Generations each Generating its like both amongst Men and Beasts And as concerning the Image of God in Man what and where it is we leave to be disputed as it hath been from those Ancient times till this time without being able to attain a clear Determination That Text Gen. 7.22 All Terrestial Creatures in whose Nostrils was the Breath of the Spirit of Life died in the Flood seems to Paraphrase the Breath of Life breathed into Mans Nostrils and to expound it in the sense before given of it 1 Kings 17.21 The Prophet Elijah Prays My God I pray thee let this Childs Soul come into him again Thus it may be Paraphrased Lord kindle again in this Child the Flame of Life which is now extinguishable restore him to Life again but the mode of speaking here used by the Prophet was agreeable to the common Opinion of his time which was long after that of Saul A like thing we Read 1 Sam. 30.12 concerning the Egyptian found at Ziklag When he had eaten his Spirit came again to him viz. the Flame of Life almost extinguished for want of Fewel was again revived and inabled for action by fresh Food and Nourishment and as the Childs Soul came into him again and he revived so this Aegyptian's Spirit came again to him when he had eaten and he revived And 2 Kings 13.21 a Dead Man let down into Elisha's Grave at the touch of Elisha's Bones the Dead Man revived whether his Soul returned or his Flame of Life was rekindled there is no Ground here to dispute or need to do it Job 12.10 In God's hand is the Soul of every living thing and the breath of all Mankind Here man is ranked with every living thing as to his Soul and Soul and Breath are taken for the same things and of a like Subsistence Chap. 34.14 If God gather to himself Mans Spirit and his Breath he shall turn to his Dust here Spirit and Breath pass for the same thing Chap. 33.30 Bring back his Soul from the pit to the light of the living viz. save his Life or revive him Psal 49.8 It cost more to redeem their Souls viz. their Lives or Persons their Riches could not do it Ver. 15. but God hath delivered my Soul from the place of Hell for he shall receive me viz. he shall deliver me yet from Death and the Grave and hide me as in the secret place of his Dwelling receive me under his Protection Psal 56.13 Thou hast delivered my Soul from Death viz. hast saved my Life so my Soul trusteth in thee and my Soul is among Lions and my Soul thirsteth for thee and my Soul followeth hard after thee he holdeth my Soul in Life and my Soul which thou hast redeemed and 72.14 He shall redeem their Soul from deceipt and violence 73.19 Deliver not the Soul of thy Turtle Dove to the Enemy 86.2 Preserve my Soul for I am holy ver 13. Thou hast delivered my Soul from the lowest Hell and my Soul is full of troubles and Lord why casteth thou out my Soul 89.48 What Man is he that liveth and shall not see Death shall he deliver his Soul from the hand of the Grave and bless the Lord O my Soul And he satisfieth the empty Soul and filleth the hungry Soul with goodness and their Soul abhorred all manner of Meat and those who speak evil against my Soul All these and abundance more places of the Psalms do under the Word or Term Soul intend and signifie the Person the Life the Affection of the Party Praise the Lord O my Soul These and many other Texts sound to common Readers as Proofs of a Separately Subsisting Soul of Man but that Opinion may be past for a clear mistake and an apparent mis-conception Prov. 11.25 The liberal Soul shall be made fat viz. the liberal Person Chap. 13.4 The Soul of the sluggard desireth and hath nothing but the Soul of the diligent shall be made fat viz. the diligent Person 14.25 A true Witness delivereth Souls People Men. Chap. 16.24 Pleasant words are sweet to the Soul 19.2 That the Soul he without knowledge it is not good viz. the Person Chasten thy Son and let not thy Soul spare for his crying Do not thou spare The full Soul loaths the Honey-comb Thus far we have added to our former proofs that Soul is very often put for Person and we now expect that shall pass for a granted Truth and it may still be confirm'd by more Testimonies than all that have yet been Cited Eccles 8.8 There is no man that hath Power over the Spirit to retain the Spirit neither hath he power in the day of Death Here Spirit seems to intend Breath or Life Chap. 10.4 If the Spirit of the ruler rise up against thee viz. his
and therefore we are willing rather to be absent from this Body to have it changed into a Spiritual Body and therein to be present with the Lord And however in the one Body or in the other we labour present or absent to be accepted of God for we must all appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ sooner or later that every Man Body and Soul may receive the Things done in his Body viz. when he was alive according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad And this seems to apply all that he had before spoken as designed a Relation to the Resurrection and the Last Judgment and not to make or afford any Proof of the Separate Subsistence of a Soul after Death of the Body Philip. 1.21 For me to live is Christ and to die is Gain what I shall chuse I wot not for I am in a strait between two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Nevertheless to abide in the Flesh is more needful for you This sounds as if upon Death of the Body something were still left in such a State and Being as should immediately thereupon go to be with Christ and this can be no other but the Man's Soul subsisting in a State of Separation We read Rev. 14.13 Blessed are the Dead which die in the Lord for they rest from their Labours and their Works do follow them 2 Tim. 1.10 Christ abolished Death and brought Life and Immortality to Light through the Gospel Whence Death now to the Godly is but a Sleep or Resting in Christ Acts 7.60 Stephen cried Lord lay not this sin to their charge and when he said this he fell asleep 1 Cor. 15.6 Christ risen was seen of five hundred Brethren of whom then some were fallen asleep Ver. 18. If there be no Resurrection then they who are fallen asleep in Christ are perished Ver. 51. We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed 1 Thess 4.15 We who are alive at our Lord 's coming shall not prevent them who are asleep Ver. 14. But those who sleep in Jesus shall God bring with him 2 Thess 1.6 It is righteous with God to recompence Tribulation to them that trouble you and to you who are troubled Rest with us when Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels seems this Rest with us must be future to this World and most likely in Death Heb. 4.3 We who have believed do enter into Rest Ver. 9. There remains a Rest to the People of God Ver. 10. A ceasing from our own Works as God did from his and we must labour to enter into this Rest seems properly a Dying in the Lord. And Job testifies There the weary are at Rest Upon the Evidences thus quoted by us it seems our Proving Text may be construed in this manner I know that to die is Gain and for me to depart out of this world and to be at rest in Christ and in expectation of a joyful Resurrection is far better but for me to abide in the Flesh is more needful for you And this Consideration puts me into a Strait between two Things so as what I shall chuse I wot not and doubtless it is better and far more easie and desirable for a godly Man to sleep and be at rest in Christ than to be in the Troubles Temptations and Persecutions of this World as S. Paul was when he was in it Daniel 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 this hath been the Lot of the Godly in all Ages and the Wisdom of the World hath been able to teach that the Day of a Man's Death is better than that of his Birth and if generally how much better then must it needs be for a good Christian to depart and be at rest in Christ Lying down in a sure Faith and stedfast Hope of a joyful Resurrection when the Lord himself shall defend from Hevean with a shout with the voice of the Archangel and the Trump of God for then the Dead in Christ shall rise first and be caught up into the Clouds to meet the Lord in the Air and so shall they ever be with the Lord. What Earthly Thing can be compared with such a State so much Joy and so great an Assuranee No wonder then that our Apostle calls his Death a Gain being then in a Condition so to die and so he continued as he says 2 Tim. 4.7 I have kept the Faith henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness which the Lord the righteous Judge shall give me at that Day and not to me only but unto them also that love his Appearing But it seems he did not expect it before that Day the Day of Christ's Second Coming to reward every Man according to his Works And we conclude the Apostle in our Proving Text intended rather a going to rest in Christ than a going into Heaven to him in the State of a Separated Soul Heb. 12.22 Ye are come to an innumerable Company of Angels and to the Spirits of just Men made Perfect to God the Judge and to Jesus the Mediator and to the heavenly Jerusalem Some have raised an Argument of the Souls Separate Subsistence from this Text. The Words Ye are come in the present Tense spoken unto living People cannot be literally intended unless the Words be intended of the Doctrine viz. You are come to a Gospel or Doctrine which teaches to believe and expect such Things in future Times or you are come to such Things in Faith which is the Evidence of Things not seen better things than appeared at Mount Sinay So 2 Pet. 3.12 Look for and haste unto the Coming of the Day of God wherein all shall be burnt up as in Noah 's Time it was drowned But we look for new Heavens and a new Earth wherein dwells Righteousness And seeing ye look for such Things what manner of Persons ought ye to be in all holy Conversation and Godliness without spot and blameless This expounds how we come to the Heavenly Jerusalem viz. to that Doctrine Faith and Expectation to be fulfilled and enjoyed at the Coming of the Day of God without any mention at all of a Soul in the State of a Separate Subsistence or discoverable Intention concerning it 1 Pet. 3.19 Christ was quickned in the Spirit by which also he went and preached unto the Spirits in Prison when Noah prepared the Ark. To this we say the Text is very mystical and obscure and so every Part and Sentence of it And what is here meant by the Spirits in Prison or the Preaching to them we humbly confess Ignorance and that we do not know Therefore the Text and Consequences of it shall be left to Consideration of the more Learned better versed in the Writings of Fathers and Commentators but till the Meaning of it
of the Law not known to bare Nature And finally Rom. 4.15 Where no Law is there is not transgression so no Conscience accusing or approving And all this proves That Conscience in Man is not an Act purely Natural but a Complex Act of and Educated Nature under the Direction of some sort of Rules You say That Man hath a kind of Natural Expectation of receiving Rewards or Punishments as soon as he departs this Life I grant only Such a kind of Natural as Education and Custom can make Men expect to receive what they are taught and therefore do believe will be given them if taught to believe receiving as soon as they are dead their Expectation will be sutable if taught to defer their Expectations till the Resurrection and Christ's Second Coming to Judgement it will be as easie and natural to expect the Rewards and Punishments at that time as to do it at the time of our Deaths Either of them is enough effective in us to create an Endeavour of Obtaining the Future Rewards and Avoiding such Punishments by the greatest Endeavours that in this Life can be used Knowing that there is no Work nor Device in the Grave whither we go But as the Tree falls so it is like to lie and as Death leaves Men so Judgment shall find them And we are therefore as much concerned to provide for a good departure out of this World in respect to the time of our Resurrection as if we expected an immediate Reward or Punishment from the time of our Death For that once dead in my Sense we are not are no more concerned in time nor the passing of it but shall rise again as if we had lain down but the hour before You say You cannot believe that the Primitive Martyrs would have died so cheerfully had they not thought that they exchanged this life for a better immediately But I believe they might do it in expectation of a Crown to be given them at that day the Great Day of General Doom or Judgement and so says Peter Martyr in his Common Places This is the consolation of the godly afflicted in this world they have an eye to the Resurrection and thereupon quiet themselves And again Martyrs in death were comforted by belief of the Resurrection And Heb. 11.35 Martyrs were tortured not accepting Deliverance that they might obtain a better Resurrection So 1 Thess 4.15 Paul comforts them is sorrow for their dead Friends not by giving them assurance of their being gone to Heaven but by assurance of the Resurrection the manner of which he there describes to them You say You have known some die with great chearfulness and in full expectation of an immediate transportation to Heaven by the ministry of Angels And I doubt not but your Assertion may be true for Men learn to believe and practise as they are taught And I doubt not but the Jews Turks Hereticks and the Old Women before-mentioned may be found dying some of all sorts with great Constancy and a good Assurance and Expectation of Future Felicity each of them in their own Way but my Opinion is that God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the World by the Man whom he hath ordained and that it is appointed for Men once to die and after that the Judgment at which all must appear and give account for their own Works The happiness which I desire before that day is that it may be said to me as to Daniel Go thy way Leave this life and wait till the end be for thou shalt rest and stand in the Lot at the end of the days the assured hope of a joyful Resurrection Paragraph 8. You grant that there do not occur in the Scriptures the Terms or Words of a Separately subsisting or Immaterial Soul I had said also not that of Immortal Soul and you might as well have granted that too for that neither you nor I can find it there You say I take the word Soul in Scripture very often to signifie Life or Person and you grant that in Hebrew it doth so But say I we find the like in Greek also for in St. Paul's Shipwrack there were in the Ship two hundred seventy six Souls alias Persons You say That in my Opinion I follow my friend Mr. Hobbs I say I follow nothing but Common Sense and Reason in it and that if Mr. Hobbs have said the same things I see no reason to think that strange but proceeding in both from one Common Principle which makes our Construction obvious to the Reason of Mankind If I had ever had the knowledge of Mr. Hobbs his Opinion or Writings I know no cause to reject or refuse the owning of it but for Truth 's sake I tell you that I never saw the Man but once and that without changing one word nor did I ever peruse any of his Writings to my remembrance nor have I received any light proceeding from him and you are the first Discoverer to me and the only that his Sense and mine agree in it Paragraph 9. You examine Solomon's Expression The dust shall return to the earth as it was and the spirit to God who gave it Concerning this Expression my Treatise shews That Spirit and Breath are often used in the same signification and may pass for Synonyma's Gen. 2.7 God made Man of the dust and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and Man became a living soul viz. a living person Ante. Roccius in his Book De Anima page 20. says The Souls of Animals or Brutes had a like beginning to those of Men quamvis per Emphasin ob majorem Animae Humanae dignitatem de ipsa id exactius exprimitur Very probable it seems that God gave to Brutes the Breath of Life as well as to Men Although as he says Moses hath not exprest it that by Spirit here may be intended the Breath and Life or the Breath of Life seems to me not unlikely And whatsoever the Sense may be or whether spoken by Solomon according to common conception or that he spake it as you take it for the last result of his Judgment I mean thereupon to follow Sir Walter Raleigh's Direction viz. In all dark and hard Questions the most easie and best end of them is to say I will not dispute that So I will not farther dispute the intent of Solomon in this place but willingly leave you and all men at liberty to think thereof as their Reason or Phancy shall direct and I hope for a like permission from other Men. Paragraph 10. You quote St. Matthew Fear not them who can only kill the Body but not the Soul Also St. Luke's Text in the same point which names not the Soul at all And you say We may perceive that the substance and intent of Christ's Doctrine was the same in both places viz. That the Body being mortal may be killed but the Soul not so Whether this your Assertion be true or
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
that terriculamentum only and of no force at all upon the Understanding of a Man It seems Solomon had another sort of apprehension concerning Death Eccles 7.1 he says The day of a mans death is better than that of his birth speaking generally and Chap. 4. when he considers worldly oppressions and miseries he says I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive He liked the dead state better Yea better is he than both of them who hath not yet been and so hath not seen nor felt or been partaker of the evils that are done or suffered under the Sun Chap. 6.3 he prefers the state of an untimely birth before the long life of a man in a miserable or suffering condition Our Lord says of the man who should betray him It had been better for that man not to have been born It seems a vain Scholastick Invention That a state of being or living though in very great Misery is better or more eligible than a State of Death or not being A true and full sense of Suffering will fully convince Men concerning the error of that Apprehension We find Job frequently desiring Death as a period to his Afflictions and wishing to have died from the Womb and so earnest for Death as that he would dig for it more than other Men would do for hid Treasures Death is the Universal Port and remedy for the Afflicted And upon this Argument it seems reasonable to think that one in St. Paul's condition might very wisely desire to depart this life and to be with Christ is much the better state for him though taken in the sense of a resting or sleeping in Jesus till the times of refreshing and Resurrection shall come It seems an Appendix to this Paragraph That you have given me your pains upon this Treatise but you will not go on in that course any farther I do acknowledge my self very much obliged to you for what you have done and that it is more than any Peruser hath done before you And I take it as a real effect of your Zeal and Kindness St. James tells us That he who converts a Sinner from the error of his way shall save a Soul from Death and hide a multitude of Sins And I am ready to believe that you had that Prospect in the eye of your mind when you bestowed the pains for the Conviction of me and others who might happen to have the Perusal of what you have Written why you should refuse to go forwards and to the Accomplishment of so worthy a Design I do not enough apprehend You have indeed many other good Works and needful Imployments upon your hands but perhaps you ought so to do them as not to leave this undone if really and in your own Conscience you are convinced and fully perswaded that you are able to do the thing substantially or by rational and somewhat evident Deductions from Nature Reason or Scripture I declare my self willing to hearken to all and any of these Evidences and to your Proposal of them as soon as to any mans You have entred the Lists and how you can now forsake them without trying the uttermost of the Combate I leave to you to consider In the last place of this Paragraph you reflect upon what I said concerning Preaching in Trading Towns you say you are such a Preacher and I grant it and that you are reached and within the bounds of the Expression but yet you are not within the intent of it for those words are amongst my Observations upon Mr. Baxter's Book and the intent went primely if not only to those who preached according to the Direction and Rules of that Book You have discovered to me the indiscretion of that general Expression for which I crave pardon and do acknowledge there may be errour in the general sense of the words there used and that they may and do exceed the intent of the Writer But your Conclusion That you will more insist upon the Separate Subsistance of Souls and their Immortality in your Sermons than formerly you used to do I do not fully approve the word more is capable of divers applications viz. more frequently or more positively or more provingly If your more be applied to the third sense I grant you have reason in it but if to either of the other two senses I think you have not sufficient reason for that intent or practice Rules of Self-denial teach men to correct the inveterate inclination of Nature Qua nitimur invetitum I will not multiply words upon this Subject knowing I speak sapienti Paragraph 14. You observe the inconvenient Consequences of my Opinion i. e. It offers indignity to Man's Nature in debasing it to that of the Beasts To the Term of equalling it with the Beasts I do not agree for thorowout my Treatise there are ascribed to Man many higher Degrees of Reason Memory Judgment and Will than Beasts are allowed to be capable of A like Nature is supposed in all but an apparently great difference in the Degrees as we may plainly see is betwixt Elephants and Mice Camels and Moles a like or greater difference is agreed to be betwixt Men and Brutes both in their Bodies and Minds The Elephant and Mouse have great differences and clear likenesses yet greater differences are allowed betwixt Men and Brutes but there are still great likenesses amongst them and this I hold to be no disparagement to Mans Nature And in Judgement Men are not permitted to decline to the right hand or to the left but ought to follow Truth to the best of their Knowledge and give honour to whom honour is due not give it where it is not due nor more than is due Secondly You say The Opinion contradicts the common apprehension of Mankind hitherto accepted You say It contradicts the Vniversal Tradition of the Christian Church But this I do not agree having cited some Fathers and Divines to the contrary You say The Opinion is bold singular and heretical That there is a degree of boldness and singularity in it I do not deny but I say it is not so great a degree of either as I took it to be when I writ my Treatise witness the many Quotations reported in this Writing It fared with me as it did with Elijah who thought he was the only true Servant which God had in Israel but it was revealed to him that there were Seven thousand such left in Israel although he knew nothing of them To the word heretical I read in King James the First his Apology Fol. 302. of his Works That he thought himself acquitted from that Charge by his professing to believe the Scripture and the three most Ancient Creeds his submission to the Four First Great or General Councils and to what the Fathers of the First Five hundred years did agree upon as necessary to salvation Here are your Rules for Examination of Heresie and none of these Trials
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
which St. Matthew delivers Chap. 10.28 Luke delivers Chap. 12.4 in Words which do not import a Separate Subsistence of Souls In the main Doctrine of fearing God more than Men because Men can punish but in this Life but God can cast into Hell in a Future State they both fully agree and therein it seems Our Lord might have respect to the Words of Isa Chap. 51. Vers 12. and 13. Who art thou that thou shouldst be afraid of a Man that shall die and forgetest the Lord thy Maker and who hath made Heaven and Earth and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of the Oppressor And where is the fury of the Oppressor Viz. It is but for a short time in comparison the Death of either Party will determine it These Things were Inducements to Christians to accept and follow the Old Opinions Rooted in the World concerning the Subsistence of Souls in a State of Separation from their Bodies Having thus traced the Original of the Opinion of the Immateriality amongst Christians I come to consider our Authors Argument Says he The Notion or Opinion of the Souls Separate Subsistence hath been thus Vniversal and Continuing therefore it is agreeable to Nature and Truth and ought to be accepted and acknowledged by all Men upon that Account I answer This I hold to be a Matter of great incertainty for the Proof of which I intend to produce Two Instances wherein Old and Universal Opinions have been changed upon Grounds of Truth and with Commendations of those who have acted in those Alterations One of them lies in the Theory and the other in the Practick That in the Theory concerns Nature and that in the Practick Religion The Theory concerning Nature lies in the Scheme or Nature of the World The Old Universal Opinion continuing divers Thousands of Years was is That our Earth was the real and true Center of the whole World that all the Heavenly Bodies or Bright Globes moved about it and particularly that the Sun as big as it is and at as great distance as it is from the Earth yet that every 24 hours this Vast Body at that Vast Distance made a Journey about the Earth and that his so doing was the true and only cause and occasion of Day and Night amongst us But later even late Times and Persons have found good and sufficient Reasons to alter this Theory or Scheme of the World and to place the Sun in the Center of it and to assign a Planetary Motion to the Earth as moving about the Sun like Mars and Venus and that it shines to those Planets and to the Stars and whatsoever Inhabitants may be in them as those inlightned or Inlightning Globes do to us and particularly that the Sun doth not compass the Earth in the foresaid 24 hours so to become the cause of our Day and Night but that the Earth it self suffers a Rotation every 24 hours being towards the Sun for one part of that time and from it for another part of that time and where one part of the Earth obstructs the Sun's Light from falling upon another part of it that Obstruction makes Night in the place from which the Sun's Light is so obstructed This Theory I say hath been quite altered what was formerly conceived concerning the World by the Universal Opinion of Mankind held for divers Thousands of Years together Held in Joshua's time in David's Psalms in Hezekiah's time asserted to by the Words or Expressions of Scripture continuing down to our own Time and in it so that it is still the Vulgar Opinion which passes amongst common People who for want of Leasure Capacity or Curiosity make no deep Inquiry into such Things It is true There have been some Men of the more Learned in divers Ages who did oppose the Old Theory in their times and so there have been a like or a greater Number of Learned Men in most Ages who have denied the Souls Separate Subsistence but the Universality of Opinion hath stood for the Old Theory of the World and for the Immaterialty of Souls But we see the New Theory now prevailing amongst the Learned of our Age and I believe the Change hath been made upon sufficient and convincing Reasons and that there are such for changing the Old Opinion of the Immateriality for that of the Materiality of Souls and that we are not therefore obliged to hold still the Opinion of the Immateriality because the same is very Ancient and in a manner Universally accepted but that rather we may and ought upon sufficient Reasons appearing change the Belief of the Immateriality of Souls for that of the Materiality My Second Instance intended to prove the Weak Coercion of our Authors Argument I take from one of the most Antient and Universal Practices of Religion that have been used amongst Men viz. the pacifying God's Wrath and obtaining his Favour and Blessing by shedding the Blood of Bulls and Goats and his other Creatures offered in Sacrifice to him sprinkling their Blood and burning their Flesh and Bones upon Altars Erected for such Purposes though this Fact was not Grounded upon any Consonancy of Reason To which it doth not agree That such shedding the Blood of God's Creatures should be pleasing to him nor that the Fumes of such Offerings should be as Moses calls them A sweet Savour of an Offering made by Fire This Practice seems not to have grown from Rules of Reason nor hath as I have said any great Consonancy thereunto and yet the Practice of it seems as early as any thing pertaining to Religion in the World For Abel brought an Offering to the Lord the Firstlings of his Flock and of the Fat thereof And this Practice it seems continued to the Flood after which Noah made a great Sacrifice of every clean Beast and Fowle and the Lord smelled a sweet Savour and the Lord said in his Heart I will no more Curse the Ground And this Practice was used by Abraham and Jacob and came thence to Moses who Established a great Number of Laws concerning Sacrifices And these were observed by the Jews and practised in all Ages even till the utter Destruction of their Temple by Titus about Anno Christi 74 And for the Gentiles all Countries had their Sacrifices in very abundant manner Noah's Sacrifice was a Lecture to them all both to his Sons and their Posterities We find the Assirians Egyptians Cananites the Chaldeans Persians Graecians Romans Celts Cimbers Gauls Britain Saxons and all other known Nations offering Sacrifices and Blood to God some of Beasts and Fowles and some of Men and Children according as the Devil directed or perswaded them Nor know we of any Nation or even Person that refused or condemned the shedding of Blood in Sacrificing and Offerings made to their several sorts of gods And this Practice held Universal in the World till about the 20th Year of Constantine the Great Emperor about Anno Christi 330. He first discouraged Sacrificing
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
final And hence it seems St. Peter believed them not nor liked to build any thing upon them Some have Alledged 1 Pet. 3.19 to Prove the Separate Subsistence of Souls viz. That Christ was quickned by the Spirit by which also he went and preached to the Spirits in Prison c. Concerning this Text I have said before that I do not understand it If I should offer to prove by this Text it would be to prove what I know not by what I do not understand and what I would not offer I cannot agree to accept My desire is to have the Immateriality or Separate Subsistence of Souls proved by some Texts that I do understand and because I do not understand this Text I refuse to accept it as a Proof of the Separate Subsistence of Souls And proceed to observe in the Writings of St. John 1 Joh. 2.28 Little Children abide in him that when he shall appear we may have confidence and not he ashamed before him at his coming And Chap. 3.2 Beloved now we are the Sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is Both these Texts put all our Expectations after Death to the future Appearing or Coming of Christ and still without notice of any State or Thing Intermediate between Death and the Resurrection Jude Ver. 14. Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his Saints to execute Judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds and speeches spoken against him Referring all Judgment future to Life unto that of the Great or Last Day as we have found it done before by all the Apostles whose Writings are come to our hands with a Consent and Agreement amongst them much above ordinary and which Testifies they were leâ— by the same Spirit promised to lead them into all Truth We see this Promise actually and compleatly fulfilled in the Texts alledged out of all their Writings and wherein they all say the same things We now go on to the Search of the Four Evangelists according to our Lord's Direction Search the Scriptures Mat. 13.36 Christ Expounds his Parable of the Tares he will not have them weeded or rooted up in this World but suffered to grow here But Ver. 40. At the end of the world the Angels shall gather them and cast them into a Furnace of Fire Ver. 43. and then shall the Righteous shine forth as the Sun in the Kingdom of their Father Without Mention or Notice of an Intermediate Judgment or State Chap. 19.28 Ye who have followed me in the Regeneration when the Son of Man shall fit in the Throne of his Glory ye shall sit on Twelve Thrones judging the Twelve Tribes of Israel and every one who hath suffered for my sake shall receive an Hundred Fold and shall inherit Everlasting Life Observe Peter Ver. 27. had asked our Lord what Rewards they who had forsaken all for his Sake should have therefore Christ gives the abovesaid Answer But if he had intended or known of an Immediate going to Heaven of Souls upon Death of Parties it seems that in this place he could not reasonably have omitted the Mention of it Whence likely he neither intended it nor knew of it Chap. 16.27 The Son of shall come in the Glory of his Father with his Angels and then he shall reward every Man according to his Works The Words And then he shall reward seem to import That this Second Coming of our Lord is the only known Time appointed for the distribution of Recompences future to this Life Mark 8.38 Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and my Words of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he cometh in the Glory of his Father with the Holy Angels Without notice taking of any Intermediate Time or State Luk. 12.8 He that confesses me before men I will confess him before the Angels of God and he that denies me before men shall be denied before the Angels of God Chap. 13.25 When the Master of the House hath shut the door those knocking without cannot come in but the workers of Iniquity shall go to the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth This seems the Effect of a General Judgment Chap. 10.14 It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the Day of Judgment than for you Ver. 12. More tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that City Chap. 14.14 Call to thy Feast the Poor Lame and Blind and thou shalt be blessed for they cannot recompence thee for thou shalt be recompensed at the Resurrecteon of the Just This seems plainly proving the Resurrection to be the Time and even the only Time for Expectation of Recompences and that deliver'd by our Lord 's own Mouth the highest Authority that Christians can expect or desire Job 5.28 All that are in the Graves shall hear his Voice and shad come forth they that have done good unto the Resurrection of Life and they that have done evil unto the Resurrection of Damnation Who shall hear his Voice in the Graves Not the Bodies or Souls but the dead Persons and they shall come forth at that Time only and be doomed and judged to Life or Damnation Chap. 6.39 My Father's Will is that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the Last Day Ver. 40. He that believeth on the Son shall have Everlasting Life and I will raise him up at the Last Day Ver. 44. He that comes to me I will raise him up at the Last Day Ver. 54. He that eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood I will raise him up at the Last Day In the 2d 3d. of the Revelations there are a great Variety of Rewards promised to him that overcometh but here the only Reward in our four Places is to be raised up at the Last Day to Life Everlasting as an abundant Recompence for all Faith Performances and Sufferings and shews that to be the only Time future to this World when they are to be warrantably and upon good grounds expected and hoped for by all true Believers Chap. 12.48 The Word that I have spoken the same shall judge a Man at the Last Day As Mat. 12.36 Of every idle Word that Men shall speak they shall give account at the day of Judgment If they had given such an Account of a Particular Judgment soon after Death What need can there be of bringing idle Words to Account over again at the General Judgment There seems no Probability in it Chap. 14.1 Let not your Hearts be troubled ye believe in God believe also in Me in my Fathers House are many Mansions and I go to prepare a Place for you and 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 shews when
A Search after Souls and Spiritual Operations in Man SOLOMON was a great Searcher after Knowledge a Power or Faculty in Man capable of being imployed about all Created Beings and Things and of making Enquiries into their Natures and Actions and the Qualities Modes and Orders of them Eccles 7.25 He says That he applied his heart to know and to search and to seek out Wisdom and the Reason of Things and there is everlasting Imployment for all People in this Design Chap. 8.17 For Man cannot find out the Work that is done under the Sun and though a Wise Man intend to make the Search yet shall he not be able to find it But men are not to be thereby totally discouraged from making Enquiries into the Works and Natures amongst which they converse for he tells us Prov. 2. That men ought to seek Knowledge as Silver and search for her as for hid Treasures and that shall lead thee to understand the Fear of the Lord and to find the Knowledge of God viz. As that is discovered in the Greatness Exactness Order and Variety of his Works And though a General Search into Nature and an Enquiry into Omne Scibile be a task over large for any Humane Nature perhaps a Single Search stinted to a particular Subject however sublime the same may be will not be taken for a hopeless or impossible Project But that by Divine Assistance without which nothing comes to pass there may be something found out concerning our present Subject which may open more fully or more clearly the Genuine Nature of its Being and Working amongst us and help to clear up Doubts thereupon depending by propounding them in the World and giving occasions to Men who are able or think they are so for the clearing and maintaining of that which concerning the same appears to their Judgments most reasonable and most true In all Material Searches there seem to be three Degrees of Application requisite First That it be diligent whence the Woman in who lost one of her ten pieces lighted up a candle swept the house and searched diligently and she found and rejoyced accordingly Seondly The Search must be with a great desire to find Luke 22.15 Our Lord says With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you He grealy desired and obtained it and so did the Prodigal Son return to his Father with unexpected Success Thirdly The Search ought to be importunate and solicitous the Syrophenician Woman searched eagerly and found our Lord and prevailed by crying after him and pleading to him so did the importunate Widow upon an unjust Judge who neither feared God nor regarded Man We would not have it seem strange if our Search have a participation with all these Qualifications although the over diligence may prove tedious the over great desire to find be offensive and the importunate pressure somewhat unmannerly and injurious and it seems most of these inconveniencies or even all of them are incident to such Enquiries and they cannot likely be prosecuted without them to any great degree of Satisfaction And as in the Search so in the Subject of it there are three special Requisites First That certainly there be the thing in Rerum Natura or else it can never be found but there never was doubt concerning the Being of a Soul in Man therefore we may be certain that such a Soul there is and then our Labour in the Search after it is not likely to be in vain Secondly The Subject of our Inquiry ought to be of such worth and value as the finding it may be a convenient satisfaction and recompence for all the Study Time and other Expences and Troubles which may likely be undergone in the Prosecution of a difficult Search and made more so by a complication with Worldly Interests and the power and prejudices of former and radicated Opinions thereupon Thirdly That the Subject of our Search be placed at such a convenient distance as we may not have cause to demand Who shall bring it to us from Heaven or Hell or from beyond the Sea But our Subject is near us in our Mouth and in our Heart in our Hand and in our Head Having in mind revolvendo some Thoughts concerning the State of Souls as arrived to Davids Period of Mans Age or very near it there happened to come to hand a Book entituled Richard Baxter's Dying Thoughts a second Edition in 8 vo printed Lond. 1688. There in his Contents the very first line he resolves That Souls departed go immediately to Christ then the necessity of believing this It seemed an over great morsel to swallow all this together totidem verbis without such a rumination as might comminute and separate every part of it from the other that being so used it might be made of easier concoction and of sounder nourishment I found the Author speaking himself of 67 years of Age at the writing it and that for the space of above 43 years he had been a Practical Minister of the Gospel much followed and applauded though he says it who perhaps should not then in the very first page of his Book he stumbles upon a block which Solomon had long since cast in the way to his Tenet Eccles 3.19 he desires Gods manifestation to Men that they may see that they themselves are Beasts that things fall out alike to Men and Bests as the one dies so dies the other yea they have all one breath all go to one place all are of the Dust and all turn to Dust again Who knoweth the Spirit of a Man that goeth upward and the Spirit of a Beast that goeth downward to the Earth Our Author is too deliver and active to stumble at this Block but passeth as lightly over it as if were but a Straw by saying that Solomon here speaks only of the Time and Things of this World There are no words in the Text that mention or that it seems do intend the Authors Sense for the Text mentions the Spirits departed both of the one and of the other with a Query upon the places to which they go and that cannot pass for a matter of this Life only this Text therefore stands still in his way as much as at first it did and as if he had said nothing against it because his allegation upon it may not pass for true but for an Answer feigned out of his own Brain and with some impeachment to the credit of his Word for the future Pag. 2. The Author tells us If our immediate going to Christ upon out Deaths be not soundly seems fully believed a Man must Live besides or below the end of Life and must have a false end and yet says he knows it may be objected That if I make it my end to please God to Love Serve Worship and Obey him and to do all the good I can for my Neighbour and that I trust God with my Soul and future Estate as a faithful Creator who
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
the Divines as was the most safe for them to do He names on this Page 21 Authors who maintain the Separate State and Immortality of Souls and I confess I never met yet with any Writer who did not profess and maintain that Opinion and therefore do easily grant that this Opinion is undoubtedly Catholick in the plain and full Sense of that Word qualified as the Broad Way and the Wide Gate which is the general Passage appointed for the World not intending it to be of that dangerous consequence or effect but to shew that the general acceptation of an Opinion is not an undoubted Security against its possibility of being an Error and that is delivered 1 Esdras 4.38 is still effectual viz. That Truth endureth and is always strong it liveth and conquereth for evermore P. 3. He confesses That at the Resurrection a compleat recompence may be made both to Soul and Body though they both should be extinguished for a time P. 34. Cites Aureolus The Souls Immortality is to be held as a common conception of the Mind evident in it self though to give a reason for it is no easie thing is it possible to give one that is convincing or sufficient P. 35. says Generation procreates the Man or the Compositum but not all his parts viz. not his Soul I say then neither the Compositum nor the Man whose Chief Constituent Part the Soul is Well says he but if all the parts must be generated whether are these parts simple or compound Entities If simple they cannot be generated but must be created If compound then if they must be generated the parts also of which those parts are made must in like sort be generated and so in infinitum or till we come to some parts which are simple and so ingenerable Whence say he it follows that no parts at all Corporeal nor Spiritual neither in Man nor Beasts do receive their Being by Generation To this I say the absurdity of this Consequence shews his Argument to be a Fallacy And we do not demand more than what he cannot deny and therefore grants That the Whole Man is generated and so for the Beasts and they are a Compound of Parts both Essential and Integral and if either of the Essential Parts be wanting viz. Soul or Body the Man or Beast is not generated nor can be and the Charge given Gen. 1.28 Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth should be utterly void and of no effect at all P. 36. He insists A Man producing another like himself by only composing and uniting his two Essential parts viz. Soul and Body makes that a Man which before was none and doth truly generate though he no more produce the Soul then he doth the Matter of which the Body is made This I grant no more the one then the other and he doth not deny the one to be generated as much as the other Thus we are at Agreement viz. Something is generated a Man is generated that cannot be without a Soul and the Soul as much generated as the Matter of the Body but that it is Radically in the Seed as both in Plants and Beasts the Vegetative and Sensitive Soul as well as Body He nor any other do shew when nor how nor even why or whence the Superior or more Intense Degree of Rationality in a Soul or a Compositum should so alter the Nature or Power of Generation and the very Intent and Design of it as to make it Ineffectual for the Production of a Man and the Continuance of that Species of Creatures in the World contrary to the Design of Generation which Aristotle hath observed to be Ordained for Immortalising the several Species of Creatures in the World and which God took care to continue by a Miraculous Provision for them in the Ark The Species were intended to be continued by a Natural Means viz. that of Generation and Men have by that Means been continued from the Creation till this day naturally and without needless and even Frivolous Multiplication of Miracles by the Creation of new Souls every hour and perhaps every moment viz. upon every Fruitful Coition though never so unlawful wicked or bestial Pag. 37. He says That which is not wholly Mortal doth not wholly Generate and therefore neither Man nor Beast doth generate wholly yet a Beast more wholly then a Man My Answer to this is That I do not wholly understand him and for as much as I do understand I am wholly of another opinion But he insists you say whole Man is generated by Man therefore all his Parts both Soul and Body And he grants Whole Man is generated by Man and that both Soul and Body are made Parts of Man by Generation and so Man generates his like But that Soul and Body have their Entities or Beings given them by Procreation he denies not only as false but as absurd Pag. 38. Well but how doth he prove this Even by an Example He says A Whole Horse is generated both Matter and Form and yet his Matter did not receive any Being by Generation I Answer There was in the Seed a Vigorous Principle of Vegetation Impregnated with a Nutrative Power Effective of Augmentation till the Creature arrive to its full Perfection of Parts and after of Degrees the same which we evidently perceive in Plants and Trees whose vast Boles and Branches Rise and Grow from a very small Principle in their Seeds and thus the Matter of the Horse did receive a Commencement or Principle of Being from Generation though not a present Perfection of Being which future Nutriment will bring it unto The Form of the Horse He grants is as truly and as much generated as his Matter and both go on and Increase together to their full Perfection of Age and of Degrees Now says he Why should the Form be more necessarily Generated then the Matter I say so too and therefore that it is not more necessary but both alike and that he says true viz. that the Form is not more generated then the Matter the Soul then the Body but that the Principles of them both are in the Seed Which David tells us day by day are Formed out of that which at the first was none of them It seems they take Life together and so Increase and Grow they rejoyce and suffer together are grieved with Pains and Sickness and are so released and extinguished by Death for any thing that our Writer hath said to the contrary Pag. 39. He says That Men do Receive their Souls by force of Generation although they be not generated and so might the Soul of Christ be the Seed of the Woman although not Procreated from her These are his Affirmative Sayings but hath more wit then to offer at Proof of either of them and others more then to believe him upon his bare word He says That before Infusion of the Soul there is Life in the Embrion by sole Vertue of the Seed and
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
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
Humane Powers and Faculties have done I say they are all acted alike viz. by the Natural Contexture of Soul and Body And I thence infer that if the Humane Soul were Intelligent she would not act these Affections and Passions with the Force and Violence with which oft-times we find them to be acted but would rather chuse to act them moderately and no farther than might stand with Terms of Discretion and so as to restrain and keep them ever under Power of her own Government and Regality And because she doth not and I think cannot do this I conclude she seems to me not Intelligent but Material 6. Paragraph In the Matter of the Fathers Opinions concerning the going of Souls to Heaven upon Death of their Bodies I undertake not to speak upon my own perusal of the Fathers but as I find them Cited by other Writers I have from Peter Martyr quoted to you Irenaeus denying Souls passing to God or Heaven before the Resurrection and there Tertullian is quoted to the same purpose viz. that Heaven shall not be opened till the Resurrection Dr. Willet in his Synopsis Papismi Fol. 402. He says We confess most part of the Fathers especially the later sort of them to have been in this error Fol. 403. He says Bellarmine Cites 14 Fathers to this purpose Nay and Our Lord Joh. 14.2 3. says I go to prepare a place for you and I will come again and receive you unto my self that where I am there ye may be also Seeming to infer a Rest till Christ's Second Coming As Revel 14.13 Blessed are the Dead which die in the Lord that they may rest from their Labours and their Works do follow them 1 Pet. 4.13 Rejoyce as being Partakers of Christ's Sufferings that when his Glory shall be revealed ye may be also glad with exceeding joy So 2 Pet. 3.11 Seeing all the Earth and the Heaven about it shall be Burnt up what Holy Persons ought ye to be looking for and hasting to the day of God 1 Cor. 4.5 Judge nothing before the time until the Lord come who both will bring to Light the hidden things of Darkness and then shall every deserving Man have Praise of God 1 Cor. 1. Vers 7 8. Waiting for the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Joh. 2.28 Abide in him that when he appears you may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his Coming Chap. 3.2 We know not yet what we shall be but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him Joh. 6. Our Lord promises four times over to raise his Servants up at the last Day And he tells Martha her Brother shall rise again She Answers I know he shall rise again at the Resurrection of the last day All these places refer to and rest upon the Judgment of the last day or Christ's Second Coming without taking notice of any Intermediate State Nor do I meet with any Scripture asserting any Intermediate State Place or Judgment between Death and the Resurrection of the last day True it is That those who believed the Subsistence of Souls in a State of Separation from their Bodies were forced to invent some places and modes of that Subsistence Whence Heathen Divines or Poets framed their Elisiums and Fortunate Islands their Habitations of Dis and Tartarums And so have the Mahometans done and so a great part of Christians maintain their Limbus's patrum puerorum Purgatory sinum Abrahae from the Parable of Lazarus and places of other Tortures for wicked Souls but without being able to make out or prove such places or such things either from Reason Scripture or other solid and credible or faithful Ocular Testimony or Relations whatsoever And if you know of any such Proofs of those or the like places I shall be very glad to receive the Communication thereof from you You say The Fathers did not think that Souls go not to Heaven before the Resurrection You avoid saying They did think Souls went to Heaven before that time I have named to you Irenaeus and Tertullian who thought they went not to Heaven before the Resurrection And your own Second Paper Parag. 7. say The Fathers owned a middle State which was neither Heaven nor Hell and that good Souls were in a State of Rest and Happiness but not in Heaven or the full Fruition of it The Fathers owned an Intermediate State for good Souls between Death and Heaven Our Church or the greatest part of it say They go presently upon Death to Heaven I desire to know a Reason of this Difference in Opinion viz. why we differ from the Fathers in it To this you Answer These Opinions agree well enough This gives me little Satisfaction in the Point viz. your telling me they agree well enough because I see plainly there is a wide Difference between them and still I want a Reason of that Difference 7. Paragraph You had quoted to me Solomon's Saying The Spirit returns to God who gave it as the strongest Text you could find for the Soul 's Separate Subsistence To that Text as proving this Point I sent you Three Objections never propounded to you nor Answered by you before They appear to me very Material and such as you will with great difficulty be able to make a reasonable and substantial Answer unto and therefore I desired you to bestow an Answer upon them instead of which you tell me you have said enough upon that Text before approved by the Learned of your Town as a true and Unanswerable Explication of that Text. To this I reply Those Learned were Men agreeing in Judgment with your self in our disputed Point and apt to approve what was said by you in the Confirmation of it But now if you please to Communicate these Objections to those Persons and make such Answer to them as they shall approve it will oblige me much and add great strength to the force of your Argument from that Text which I think my Objections do overthrow so long as they stand in force and remain unanswered And I allow you to think as the Jebusites expressed 2 Sam. 5.6 They challenged David conceiving as in the last clause of that Verse 8. Paragraph You say You have lately had occasion to consider a Text of Scripture which you think directly contradicts and overthrows my Opinion viz. 2 Cor. 5. Vers 6. and 8. Knowing that whilst we are at home in the Body we are absent from the Lord and are willing therefore to be absent from the Body and present with the Lord And I grant That these Words absent from the Body and present with the Lord taken singly as recited in these Two Verses seem strongly to import that a Man hath something which being absent from the Body may be present with the Lord But it is a granted and well tried and approved Rule that for the Understanding and sound Exposition of
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
therefore this Expression shall be past here but for a Quibble fit to serve the turn of this indiscerptible or undividable Soul as our Author here calls it And the same may be said for the Creando infunditur Infundendo creatur it may pass for a Riddle and both of them for Mystical Expressions concerning a Mysterious Imaginary Soul and both intended rather to amuse than to instruct the Auditors Here again he recites Solomon's Text The Spirit returns to God who gave it I have shewed before that by far the greatest part of Humane Souls go to the Devil and this he doth not deny Pag. 17. But says That before going to the Devil it goes first to God to give an account of it self to him and receive its Judgment from him This Assertion say I is meerly arbitrary and precarious but very necessary for the maintenance of that sense which he would put upon Solomon's Text He adds The Soul must appear before the God of the Spirits of all Flesh as Arbiter and final Judge intended before it go to the Devil or Hell It seems strange to me that our Author should be so positive and certain in this Assertion as he is without offering any sort of Proof concerning the truth of it If this were true it would put a period to all farther dispute upon the Difference now in Discourse amongst us That this may be done there must be a Separate Subsistence of Souls first granted or supposed and this methinks should have minded him of the great need there was of making the best and strongest Proof that was possible for the maintenance of it but of that sort there is not a word here neither from Scripture Reason nor Experience but a bare supposal of our Author drawn for ought appears out of his own Imagination and let him prove such a going of the Soul to God as he hath here asserted or that there is any Intermediate Judgment given upon Souls between Death and the day of General Doom or Judgment or let any other Man make Proof of either of these Points convincing or somewhat clear and I am ready to submit and confess my present Opinion to be an Error Whence it seems our Author did not enough consider the Importation of what he pretends here to impose upon the meer Credit and Power of his ipse dixit Pag. 18. Says The Ingress of the Soul is obscure and so the Egress And I grant it so much as the one and other are hardly credible He says That the Radical Moisture or Balsam is the Oyl that maintains the Natural Heat or the Bridle which restrains the Flame of Life from departing and such departure is the Cause of Natural Death And this I grant having before said the same thing and very near the Words viz. That the Radical Moisture maintains the Flame of Life this Moisture must be maintained by Food and the Flame in the Blood fanned by Breath and the Extinguishment of this Flame is Death What he says more of the Soul here is suppositis non supponendis Pag. 17. He had said The Soul is a Created Rational Spirit conscious to it self of Moral Good and Evil I say it is not the Soul alone but the Man together that is so conscious to himself and that not from bare and uncultivated Nature but assisted by Rules derived from God Education Precepts or Opinions Pag. 19. He calls Vnderstanding a Faculty of the Reasonable Soul I call it a Faculty of the Man who is a Contexture of Soul and Body The Soul cannot understand without the Brain and if that be crazed or spoiled the Soul cannot understand And hence all here said is answerable by applying what he says of the Soul to the Rational Faculty in Man Pag. 20. He allows that Humane Discretion or Judgment is the Guide of the Soul and of the Will and that the Will follows the Dictates of the Judgment as I have before said and attributes all to the Soul which belongs to the Rational Faculty in Man and cannot be acted without the Brain and but according to the condition and temper of that Organ Pag. 21. Says The Power of Cogitation is in the Soul I say in the Brain acted by the Soul He sets out the great Power of Conscience which he says Is the Judgment of a Man upon himself And I agree it and that it belongs to the Understanding Part or Faculty He says It is potent and terrible And I grant it and say that terror is Grounded in fear of Suffering and the Erroneus Conscience as potent and terrible as the best Grounded when the Memory Judgment and Passions fail as in Death they all do perishing with their proper Organs Conscience fails with them when all Mans thoughts and his very Faculty of thinking perishes none of them ever to return till the time of our Resurrection and then they shall all return and be revived as formerly He Pag. 20. called the Discretion the Guide of the Soul and Will but here Pag. 23. He makes it but a Counceller to the Will I hold with the former and say The Will follows the Guidance of the Judgment in all Deliberate Acts yet acts freely viz. with such a freedom as is natural to it a Promptitude and Inclination to that compliance is led and yet runs freely as he says who words it is drawn and runs freely I say guided or directed and runs freely Pag. 25. He says The Will can Command the Body absolutely I say no otherwise than as the Judgment guides the Will viz. by a Natural and Easie Compliance Pag. 27. He magnifies the Power of the Will which I say cannot act deliberately but by Direction of the Judgment and that must naturally act by chusing bonum apparens magis bonum and cannot naturally chuse or direct the Will to act that which is malum apparens to the state or benefit of the Party acting Pag. 28. That which he calls here a Struggle of the Soul is a Struggle of the Rational Faculty against the Sensual desires Pag. 29. His Pondus or Inclination of his sort of Soul to the Body is but Invention and hath neither Ground nor Proof Pag. 30. Says Angels have Assumed Bodies I say not of Flesh and Blood which shews not any Affection in them to be im-bodied as he seems to pretend He says He hath proved the Soul Immortal and hath as such an Inclination to the Body I say such Inclination of an Immaterial Spirit to a Body himself Pag. 7. calls an Astonishing Mystery and I think it very incongruous to Reason and common Sense yet he says he hath proved the Soul to be Immortal and that as such it hath an Inclination to the Body I say proved both alike viz. neither the one nor the other except his saying may pass for proving Pag. 31. He calls God's breathing into Man the Breath of Life the Infusion of a Newly Created Soul into him This I have denied and
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 then condemned it His Son Constantius forbad it in places where he was or had full Power whence in that Empire this Practice fell to decay and in time became quite abolished The Christian Religion hath opposed and overcome it in all places of its Plantation and finally it is now come to be rooted out of all the known World And we know of no Nation in Europe Asia or Africa where shedding of Blood is used in Sacrifice to their gods Here is a great and evident Change of the most Antient and Universal Practice that ever was in the World concerning Religion and no Man will pretend to say that this Change was for the worse but for the better although it had God's Approbation by Moses and is not positively forbidden in any part of the New Testament The Apostles after Our Lords Death used it Acts 21.20 Thousands of Believing Jews were yet Zealous of the Law verse 26. Paul went to the Temple with the Four Men that had a Vow and attended till an Offering should be offered for every one of them And yet we see this Practice now utterly abolished and we give God thanks for the performance of it as I think there is great reason and by the change of this most Antient Universal Practice in Religion I pretend to have raised an eminent Impeachment to the force of our Authors Argument from the Antiquity and the Universality of the Immaterial Opinion We know the Papists Plead in like manner against the Reformation intended to be put upon their Errors though Antient and very generally received heretofore into the Christian Churches of the Dark Ages passing from Anno 600 even down to the Times of Luther and other Reformers then arising but we do not accept their Plea of Antiquity and Universality as sufficient for the Justification of their Errors I will but nominate Dr. Comber's Plea for a Divine Right of Titles by force of the same Argument because I have answered it in a particular Treatise not yet Published But upon the whole Matter I think it reasonable to conclude that an Argument drawn from the Antiquity and Universality of an Opinion is but an Argument to that Favour viz. that it ought to be well Weighed and throughly Considered before it be changed and not at all to be changed except there appear sufficient and convincing Proofs that the same ought to be done but not to be reputed of such Force or Power as to silence all Arguments which may be made against it or to stop all manner of Proceedings towards a Conviction thereupon To stop the Press from Publishing such Arguments I do not allow but the way fully to stop silence them is to make Rational and Substantial Answers to them which I profess my self now and ever willing to receive and embrace with all Sincerity according to the Merit which to my Understanding shall appear in them Thus far I have gone out of my ordinary Way of making Strictures upon our Authors Pages that I might make the more full Answer to this grand Argument of Antiquity and Universality offered on behalf of the Souls Immateriality Pag. 105. Says One Man is of more worth than all the Inferior Creatures This I do not grant Pag. 106. His Discourse here imports That there is no means of a Future State but by the Souls Immortality an Error which hath generally misled the World before him Pag. 107. I say to this The Resurrection will satisfie Mens Desires of Immortality if they be rightly Grounded Pag. 108. To it I say The return of Souls into Bodies once Dead seems the re-kindling of the Flame of Life by an Act of Divine Power He confesses That when Bodies have been restored to Life in this World as he here cites divers that there was no Sense or Apprehension in such Souls returned of the place or state they were in during their Separation but that there is a perfect forgetfulness of all that they saw and felt in a State of Separation He gives a Reason for this both Foreign to the purpose and weak but to me this seems a very likely Proof that in such their Separation they neither saw nor felt any thing at all but that rather they were in Death Extinguishable and in Life again re-kindled From hence to Page 117. is all answered by the Resurrection Pag. 117. He says He cannot But I suppose he will not imagine how there can be a Resurrection without a Soul once Separated entering into the same Body that died I say one shall be as much the same as the other shall be 1 Cor. 15.37 As Wheat growing out of Wheat sown so shall the Body be with a Flame of Life kindled in it sutable to its Powers and to that Flame which before was born with it He says If it be so the Sins of the Old Man cannot be put to the New Mans Account I say they may justly be so and the rising Person is so much the same with the dying Person as to be accountable for his Actions viz. effectually the same Body Members Flame of Life Senses Affections Phancy Understanding Memory and Judgment and shall so awake and rise as if he had fallen asleep but a few hours before And his Supposition is but the proper Effect of his own mistaken Doctrine concerning the Creation of Souls for if that were true and the Old Soul did not subsist Separately there must be another viz. a New One be Created but my sort of Soul requires no such thing Pag. 119. Says There are Acts performed by the Soul whilst it is in the Body in which it makes no use at all of the Body He instances in Self-Intuition and Self-Reflection I say These Acts cannot be done without the Brain Phancy and Memory and for Raptures they are but Impressions upon and Revelations unto the common Sense Understanding or Phancy recorded upon the Memory Also that Phancy may be Transported to things without the Body and the limits of Reason yet act by the assistance of proper Organs without which the Soul cannot act any thing Life it self cannot be acted but by the Vital Organs and yet without Life there can be no Apprehension Self-Intuition or Reflection but all Mens Thoughts perish Pag 189. Cites Heb. 12.29 We are come to Angels and to God the Judge of all and to the Spirits of just Men made perfect and to Jesus the Mediator He bids us note these Words They are not says he shall come after the Resurrection or General Judgment I say not after our Deaths but intends we are come to them in Faith and Expectation to a Doctrine which declares such things to us and which we may believe and expect as surely as if we were now in the Possession of them but not a word of coming to them presently after our Deaths as he not only endeavours to Insinuate but expresly affirms And Pag. 192. He says These Enjoyments will not be deferred till the Resurrection but
accrue in defence by overthrowing or weakning of the Opposite Tenet I shall here begin to sharpen the point and turn the edge of Argument against the Opposite not so much Party as Opinion I begin this Argument Arguendo Negativis and I say First That Humane Souls Immateriality is not taught in the Catechism publickly used authoriz'd by our Church Secondly It is not imposed by any of our Thirty nine Articles Thirdly It is not expresly required to be delivered by any of our Three most ancient Creeds Fourthly We meet not with any Canons of the Four First General Councils that recommend it Fifthly In the whole Bible there is not one plain positive Affirmation That a Humane Soul doth separately subsist after Death of the Body Nor That it is Immaterial or Immortal nor so much That it is Intelligent Sixthly There are no Sentences in the Bible no nor Words which Doctrinally do teach the Immateriality viz. Whos 's Principal Intent at their Delivery was to teach the matter of the Immateriality For Proof of this last Assertion there seems requisite an Examination of the most Important Particulars alledged for Proof of this Tenet Matth. 10.28 Fear not them who kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul I take the Doctrine principally intended in this Text to be A teaching of the Apostles then newly instituted to be bold in their Promulgation of the Gospel and in their so doing to fear more the Power and Wrath of God than of Men and with this concurs Luke 12.4 both Evangelists testifie this and agree fully in it If Matthew's Text had intended to teach the Immateriality this short Expression seems a very transient or even a superficial manner of doing it had that therefore been the intent of this Text it seems some farther Declaration would here have been made of it In Verses 32. and 33. pursuing the same Discourse or Doctrine our Lord says Those who confess him he will confess before his Father which is in Heaven and those who deny him he will so deny which to my apprehension intimates and intends the Judgment of the Last Day where Christ shall be the Judge and own and disown as he pleases We find Luke's words in the delivery of this Doctrine do not mention a Separate Subsistence or Killing the Body without Killing the Soul In the main intent of the Doctrine viz. Fearing God more than Men they agree and say the same thing but in words importing the Separate State they differ ergo The main intent of this Text was to teach the fearing of God more than man and the words importing a Separate State of the Soul are but collateral and St. Luke deliversng the main Doctrine without these words or others of like import it seems St. Matthew's words which are of that import may pass for a way of wording this Doctrine in Expressions sutable to his Opinion of the thing Another Text alledg'd for Proof of Immateriality is Luk. 23.43 Our Lord to the Thief To day shalt thou be with me in Paradise Such Proof of the Immateriality as arises from hence seems clearly no more but a Collection upon Inferences for there appears no Intent in this Text to teach that Doctrine viz. of the Immateriality Vers 46. of the same Chap. Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit and St. Stephen's Lord Jesus receive my Spirit it seems were not spoken with intent to teach the Souls Immateriality or Separate Subsistence but as a recommending of themselves to God and Christ in the uttermost Extremities of their Conditions The Parable of Dives Luk. 16.19 seems to me spoken principally upon this Occasion Ver. 14. Our Lord's Discourse was derided by the Pharisees He answers them God knows your hearts for that which is highly esteemed amongst men is abomination in the sight of God This Vers 15. and Ver. 19. begins the Parable of Dives perfectly proper for the Illustration of this Assertion for what more highly esteemed amongst Men than the Condition of Dives And what more miserable than that of Lazarus And yet in the sight of God the Case was quite contrary I say the main Design and Intent of this Parable seems to have been the Illustration of this Doctrine and not to teach any thing concerning the Separate Subsistence of Souls of which it speaks according to the common conception of that time Phil. 1.21 To me to live is Christ and to die is gain I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better but to abide in the Flesh is more needful for you Here doth not appear to my understanding any Intent to teach the Souls Immateriality but that the state of the Dead in CHRIST is more to be desired and more happy than a state of Life in this World ' specially one like that of St. PAVL then being Paul the Aged and a Prisoner Chap. 2.17 ready to be offered upon the Service and Sacrifice of Faith Who would not choose a Death in Christ rather than such a Life and would not abide in the Flesh but for the Good of other People and Service of the Gospel Here appears no Intent of St. Paul's to teach the Soul's Immateriality Mat. 16.26 Of gaining the World and losing Mens Souls I hold evidently unproving So 2 Cor. 5.8 Of being absent from the Body and present with the Lord hath very little appearance of Proof and no semblance of Intent to teach the Immateriality These Eight Texts I take for the most alledged and the most proving the Immateriality of a Humane Soul in which I have pretended to shew That they intend not as their prime Design to Prove or Maintain the Immateriality of an Humane Soul And I think this goes far in the Proof of my Assertion viz. That there are no Sentences or Words in the Bible whose principal Intent at their Delivery was to assert or teach the Soul's Immateriality And here I finish my Proof ex Negativis The Belief of the Immateriality is not required at our hands nor to be exacted of any Man I now proceed to Positive Proofs importing a greater Probability of the Humane Soul's being Material and Extinguishable then Immaterial and Separately Subsisting Intending which I say if after Death a Man's Soul obtain a Separate Subsistence and be at greater Liberty than it was living in the Man and in a full State and Capacity of Acting Enjoying and Suffering Then the calling Man's Death a Sleep and a Rest appears a very improper and even a misleading sort of Expression but the Scripture in very many places calls Death a Sleep and a Rest Ergo If the Soul so subsist after Death as before is said the Scripture in its Terming Death a Sleep and a Rest speaks very improperly and somewhat misleading in very many Places In Proof of the Major Proposition I say Those who do sensibly perceive and actually understand remember believe and will cannot properly be said to be in a
dead sleep nor can those who act freely and fully and enjoy or suffer in a high degree be properly said to be at Rest Ergo If the Soul do subsist in this manner after Death of the Man the calling of Death a Sleep and a Rest appears at least a very improper sort of Expression To Prove the Minor viz. That the Scripture calls Death a Sleep and a Rest in very many Places seems to my self a needless Trouble or Undertaking for that all who are conversant in Scripture know this thing to be true But deploringly I again consider that a great part or a greatest part of People are not so well verss'd in this Book as to be without need of Proof in this Matter And for their sakes I take upon my self the Labour of somewhat a troublesome Induction of Particulars In Proof of this Truth therefore I quote Job 3.13 Why died I not from the Womb For if so I had now been still and quiet I should have slept then had I been at rest Ecclesiast 11.8 If a Man lives many years and rejoyce in them all yet let him remember the days of darkness for they shall be many Add to this Those who sleep sleep in the Night and then this Text seems to Prove a long Sleep Job 14.12 Man lieth down and riseth not till the Heavens be no more they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep Dan. 12.2 Many of them that sleep in the Dust of the Earth shall awake some to Life and some to Contempt Mat. 27.52 Many Bodies of Saints which slept arose and came out of the Graves after his Resurrection Amongst which say I supponendo was the Crucified Thief Joh. 5.28 The hour is coming in which all that are in the Graves shall hear his Voice and shall come forth Chap. 11.11 He saith unto them Our Friend Lazarus sleepeth but I go that I may awake him out of sleep Ver. 13. Jesus spake of his Death and then told them plainly Lazarus is dead Act. 13.36 David after he had served his Generation by the will of God fell on sleep and saw Corruption 1 King 2.10 So David slept with his Fathers and was buried in the City of David So Chap. 11.43 The same for Solomon 1 Cor. 11.30 For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep Chap. 15.6 Christ was seen of above 500 Brethren at once of whom some are fallen asleep 1 Thes 4.14 Those also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with him Ver. 15. And we which are alive shall not prevent them that are asleep Ver. 16. And the dead in Christ shall rise first These are a Proof That Death and Dying are in Scripture very often termed a Sleep and Sleeping As to Deaths being there called and counted a Rest I quote Job 3.17 There the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary be at rest Dan. 12.13 Thou shalt rest and stand in the Lot at the end of the days 2 Thes 1.7 God will recompence Tribulation to them who trouble you and to you who are troubled Rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with his Mighty Angels Heb. 4.1 There is a Promise of entring into his Rest. Ver. 3. We who have believed do enter into his Rest as he said Ver. 6. And some must enter therein Ver. 9. There remaineth therefore a Rest for the People of God Ver. 10. And those that enter into Rest cease from their Works Revel 14.13 Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord that they may rest from their Labours and their Works do follow them And thus appears That Death in Scripture is often called a Rest and accounted so The Scripture speaks thus of Death in very many Places and even of ordinary Custom and Course and either the thing so delivered is proper and true or the Speeches are improper and misleading If the Soul subsist act and suffer after Death as before is said the Scripture speaks improperly of Death But if there be no Separate Subsistence of the Soul after Death of the Man then these Scriptural Expressions concerning Death are proper and true I have a great Inclination to believe that the Scripture speaks properly and truly than otherwise And therefore do conclude these Expressions are proper and true and that the Soul hath not such a Separate Subsistence as above is described but rather that it is Material and Extinguishes with Death of the Man My Second Argument for positive Proof of this Tenet rises from many particular Places of Scripture to be alledg'd and produced in nature of a Sorites each proving by its self and all fortifying the Tenet intended to be Defended In which I begin from a Scripture which discourses most copiously upon the State of Man after Death above any other Text whatsoever Part of the Works and Doctrine of the Apostle St. Paul viz. his 1 Cor. 15. he begins there Ver. 13. and says If there be no Resurrection of the Dead then is Christ not risen and then viz. consequently if no Resurrection our Preaching is vain and your Faith is also vain and we are false Witnesses and you are yet in your sins and they who are fallen asleep in Christ are perished Upon this I Argue If the Soul enjoy a Separate State and go to Heaven at the Man's Death then How could these dreadful Consequences follow upon the Failure of Truth in the Doctrine of the Resurrection For if the Soul go to Heaven at the Death that would enjoy Bliss and Happiness in an high degree though there were no Resurrection at all But our Apostle here concludes all Christianity to be in vain without a Resurrection And the next Verse viz. 19th he says If in this Life only we have Hope in Christ we are of all Men the most miserable but Christ is risen and by him came also the Resurrection of the Dead Which seems plainly inferring That if there be no Resurrection then our Hope in Christ can extend only to this World and the things of it and then we should be more miserable than other Men who give themselves more liberty in the Enjoyment of them He goes on through this long Chapter to Treat of the Resurrection and the Manner and Benefits of it Ver. 58. He concludes Abound in the Work of the Lord forasmuch as you know by this my Discourse of the Resurrection that your Labour is not in vain in the Lord. Thus he discourses fully and largely upon the Resurrection without a Word speaking or a Hint giving concerning a Separate Subsistence of Souls or a particular Judgment or any Appertenant to a State intermediate between Death and Judgment final I proceed in the Works of this Apostle and quote him again 1 Thes 4.13 He would not have them sorrow for their dead Friends as others who had no Hope did For says he We believe that Jesus died and rose again and even so also those who sleep in
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
Second Observation concerns an Objection which hath been and may be made against my pretence of the Souls Extinguishment at the Death of the Party It is demanded If the Old Flame of Life be extinguished in Death and a-new kindled at the Resurrection how can that which riseth be the same with that which died And if not so the new must be rather taken for a Creation than a Resurrection To this I answer by another Question concerning the Body How can that Body whose Flesh and Bones are eaten by Wolves or Dogs as Jezabel's was or burnt to Ashes and those scattered in the Wind or upon the Water rise the same again at the Last Day To this Query St. Paul 1 Cor. 15. gives an Answer which it seems will serve both Cases alike ver 35. How are the dead raised and with what Body do they come He answers That which thou sowest is not quickned except it die and thou sowest not that which shall be For Example Wheat the Grain sown first corrupts then fructifies and God makes the New grow out of the Old and God gives it a Body viz. to every seed it s own Body and thence Wheat rises from Wheat and Barly from Barly plainly declaring that in the Resurrection the New Body shall be the same with the Old in Substance Flesh and Blood Skin and Bone Head and Heart Brain and Breath Limbs Members Muscles and all Organs proportionable to the Old as one Grain of Wheat or like as one Egge to another This I take for the Sameness of Body which the Apostle here describes to us and such a Sameness will the Soul easily obtain viz. a Flame of Life as much the same with the former As a Flame in one part of a Fire kindles and produces a Flame in another part of the Fire singly there are so many Flames and yet all are but the Flame of the same Fire and may well enough be called the same Flame full as well as the Ear of Wheat and all the Corns of it may be called Wheat and the same Wheat with that which was sown And this Solution it seems may serve for the Souls as well as St. Paul's Wheat for the Body and one of them shall be as much the same as the other But to my Apprehension the Sameness intended in the Resurrection is not so much or properly applicable to the Soul or the Body as to the Person The Body suitable to the former and like it as one Grain of Wheat like and proportionable to that from which it springs So a Flame of Life of suitable force brightness and activity to the former and fit for that Body where it is kindled these will in the Person produce the same Faculties that were in the former Person viz. The same Vital Powers Sensitive Powers same Inclinations Affections Desires Natural the same Rational Powers Perception Understanding Phancy Judgment Memory Will Conscience And these will make the rising Person altogether the very self and same Person with that which died more the same than an Old Man is the same with what he was when Young or a Child Compare a Child of four years to a Man of fourscore they are known really to be the same Person by Collateral Evidences but none by having known the Child can expect by his Senses to discover the Old Man to be the same Person nor can the Old Man himself evidently know or make Proof by any thing in himself that he is the same Person so great Differences grow in time between the one Age the other But the Person rising at the Last Day may likely be as much the same with him that died as the Man waking after a long Sleep is the same with him that lay down to take his Rest There will be Body Soul and Person without difference and the same Powers Vital Sensitive Rational Inclinations Affections Cogitations and Knowledge all which make effectually and really the same Person and more the same than the Old Man is with the Young and yet those are really the same Person also 3. My Third Observation shall be concerning such Texts as those who maintain the Immateriality and Separate Subsistence of Souls do Alledge both out of the Evangelists and the Apostolick Writings for the Proof and Support of that Opinion Viz. Mat. 10.28 Are not able to kill the Soul Chap. 16.26 Gain the whole World and lose his own Soul Luk. 16.19 The Parable of Dives Chap. 23.43 To day shalt thou be with me in Paradise Ver. 46. Jesus cried Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit And Acts 7.59 Stephen's Saying Lord Jesus receive my Spirit 2 Cor. 5. Ver. 6. 8. Absent from the Body and present with the Lord. Phil. 1.23 To depart and be with Christ is better but to abide in the Flesh is more needful for you Heb. 12.9 Ye have been obedient to your fleshly Fathers and shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of Spirits Ver. 22. Ye are come to Mount Sion God Christ and the Spirits of Just Men made Perfect 1 Pet. 3.19 He went and preached to the Spirits in Prison Rev. 6.9 The Souls under the Altar Here are 11 Quotations Alledged to Prove the Separate Subsistence of Souls and their Immateriality And some add to these Mat. 17. Moses and Elias appearing at the Transfiguration which makes them up a Dozen I have made and do make one General Observation upon them all viz. That they are all spoken or delivered in a transient manner not principally intending to teach the Immateriality or Separate Subsistence of Souls not in Places where the Contexts before lead to a Discourse concerning the Nature or State of Souls or what becomes of them after Death or between that and the Resurrection so as there is not a Design in any of these Texts principally to teach that Doctrine Nor any clear Intention apparent to teach at all this Belief For Instance The Absent from the Body and present with the Lord or the To day shalt thou be with me in Paradise Or the Receive my Spirit Or the Be Obedient to the Father of Spirits Or the We are come to God Christ and his Church Or the Preaching to the Spirits in Prison Or the Souls under the Altar Or the Appearing of Moses and Elias at Tabor I demand what do these Texts of themselves teach concerning a Separate State or Subsistence of Souls There is no previous Discourse in their Contexts leading to speak of the State of Souls or inducing to teach concerning them nor apparent Intent in any of these Texts so to do But Men possest with an Opinion of the Separate Subsistence do draw and beat out of these Texts that which doth not naturally flow from them nor that they ever intended to teach so as the Doctrine squeezed out of these Texts for the Nourishment and Support of their Opinion tastes strongly of the Husk and Skins of them and are rather violently forced
than freely and fairly flowing from the Words and Intent of these Scriptures Well but still there are Four Texts not instanced in and which seem to make appear an Intent to teach this Doctrine concerning them I say that Mat. 10. Phil. 1. shew not a principal Intent so to teach That of Mat. teaches principally to fear God more than men the Philip. intends principally to shew That Paul would have Christ magnified by his Life or by his Death and that it was indifferent to him by whether of these means that end should be attained By Death would be easier and a more Gain to him but by Life he thought might be more profitable and beneficial to them and the Church This seems the principal Intent and Scope of this Text and not to teach a Separate Subsistence or Immateriality of Soul Mat. 16. About Gaining the World and losing the Soul seems to shew an Intent of teaching concerning Souls and the Hinge of its Meaning turns upon the Signification of the Word Soul in this Place Our Lord previously Exhorts his Disciples to take up the Cross and follow him Expect Tribulation in his Doctrine For whosoever will save his Life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his Life for my sake shall find it For 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 My Sense of this Text is That the Words Soul and Life are consignificant as if it had been said He that saves his Life shall lose it and he that loses it shall find it For What is a Man profited if he shall gain the whole World and lose his own Life Or What can a Man give in Exchange for his Life If one lose his Life the gain of the whole World can do him no good nor make him a Recompence for it And the Devil could say All that a Man hath would he give for his Life Nor would any Man of Sense take the World in Exchange for his Life for that the World is of no Use or Value to the Dead So as there is nothing in this Text of the Soul but the Word or Term which I have before plentifully proved to signifie and intend very often the Person the Affection the Intellect and the Life And I take it here to intend the Life of the Person and not the Soul which is the Forma Informans of the Man To the Parable of Dives Luk. 16. I have fully spoken and observed That it is but a Parable not Explained or Expounded by our Lord that we know of I take it spoken in Illustration of our Lord's Doctrine delivered but three Verses before viz. That which is highly esteemed amongst men is abomination in the sight of God as being very proper for that purpose and that the Discourse held in it between Dives and Lazarus is suited to the common Opinion of the People to whom he spake and doth not intend a true Relation of the State of Souls after Death I conceive the Text 10. Mat. and this Parable to be like the Two Pillars of Dagon's House the main Props of the Immaterial Opinion upon which the whole Weight of it leaneth propped also by the other Texts before rehearsed but weakly And I leave the Consideration to such as shall happen to peruse what hath here been Collected and put together intending singly the Search and Manifestation of the Truth in this Point Our Author Flavel lays the Foundation for Proof of the Separate Subsistence of Souls upon Moses his Text quoted Pag. 1. of his Book viz. Gen. 2.7 God formed Man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his Nostrils the Breath of Life and Man became a Living Soul And the Words of this Text he takes upon him to Interpret and by his so doing verefies the Old Saying Mala Interpretatio corrumpit Textum for thus he Interprets This Text says he proves and intends that God did then Create a Spirit or Soul out of nothing for Man viz. an Immaterial Intelligent Substance or Spirit and that was either first Created and then Infused or Infundendo was Created in the very Act of Infusion I will raise no Dispute with him about the Mode or Manner of his intended Creation be it Created and Infused or Infundendo Created But I say that either way taken it is not warranted by the Letter or Words of the Text for therein is no Mention of Spirit or Creation out of nothing or any sort of Creation whatsoever So his Interpretation is not warranted by the Words or Letter of the Text and that it is more opposed by the Sense and Meaning of the Text than it is by the Letter of it For if the Text or Moses had intended or meant that the Breath of Life breathed into Adam should be taken for such a Spirit it would have been more plainly expressed in the Text or at least the propriety of speaking would have required to have had it express'd after another manner viz. God breathed into Adam the Breath of Life and it or that viz. that Breath became a Living Soul But the Text is otherwise Worded it neither says nor intends that the Breath became a Living Soul but that the Man did so And I say farther that by the Man's becoming a Living Soul is not intended that he became a Soul meerly or singly called by Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Expounded by Actus primus Corporis Organici Not such a bare Soul without a Body a thing never yet known in Rerum Natura but a Living Soul in Composito viz. a Living Person Man became a Living Person Heb. 10.39 We are of them that believe to the Salvation of the Soul viz. of the Person For all Agree the Body shall have a Salvation as well as he Soul I perceive that the Term of Soul very oft in Scripture intended to signifie the Person is a great occasion of misleading the Apprehension of the Readers inducing them to apply to the single and bare Soul those Sayings which are intended of or for the Person So is the Case now Cited Heb. 10. and so in our Text now Examined and because the Correcting and Emendation of this Mistake seems to be of very great Importance I have before given many Instances of the Usage in Scripture Expressions in a multitude of Places and yet not in half of those that I might have done And because this Truth cannot be made too apparent and with great difficulty plain enough I will touch a few Instances of it again in this Place Gen 46.26 All the Souls that came out of Jacob's Loins into Aegypt were 66 and Joseph's Sons were two Souls so all the Souls of Jacob's House were 70 counting Jacob and Joseph Here Souls can intend nothing but Persons Acts 27.37 In Paul's Voyage towards Rome and Shipwrack at Malta there were in all in the Ship 276 Souls viz. Persons Isa
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
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