Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	life_n	raise_v	sin_n	7,721	5	4.8181	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65798	Notes on Mr. F.D.'s Result of a dialogue concerning the middle state of souls in a letter from Thomas White.	White, Thomas, 1593-1676.	1660 (1660)	Wing W1838; ESTC R27876	31,093	81

be better both for the living and the dead even in the way of impetration though particulars were never thought on Nevertheless since the world is the world this Article of praying for the dead is as necessary as our imperfection which is not like to leave us must needs make it both in common and in particular as we see it used The rest of your Chapter is so speculative that I could willingly have omitted it but because you recommend it to be weighed I cannot neglect it I pray then take notice that in Saint Thomas his way the composition of spirits is not of materiality and spirituality but of essence and existence a composition whose separability or conjunction belongs purely to the activity of God and is not a potentia but a non repugnantia and so can have no cause under God whose essence is in the order of existence or rather the order it self no other substance reaching to that order Out of which is inferr'd that as to create and annihilate that is to change existence per se belongs only to God so likewise doth any change in a pure spirit which cannot have its source in a conjoyned body Those who put a kind of materiality which they do not explicate whether they speak consequently or no I cannot judge but I know Tully makes sport with the Epicureans for giving their gods quasi carnem and quasi sanguinem without being able to explicate them further Besides that a demonstration could be grounded upon propositions whose sense was not comprehended and explained I never read in Aristotle Saint Bonaventure if his ordinary citers do him no wrong makes duration to be truly divisible in infinitum which that it should agree to any thing but either quantity or by quantity Peripateticks or any other solid Logician think to imply as much as being divisible without divisibility To his Reason and the two following inconveniences St. Thomas's Scholars use the distinction of infinit in its particular kind and infinit simply or in all kinds and say this later onely belongs to God Almighty and that if there were an infinit quantity it would not therefore be God nor that if an Angel know all specieses of numbers or figures therefore he knows all things Nay that because the intellect is but a passive faculty of it self is there any infinit vigor required to knowledge though infinit so it be purely infused as likewise that the vigor of infinit duration is in the Conserver not in the thing conserved so that I doubt much how valuable these arguments can be made though you seem confident of them even more then of the Demonstration of Euclid and Archimedes whom you think apt to swallow suppositions without proof which is mistaken unless you speak of some self-known Axioms which I think you also will admit By the way I would intreat you to quote me some place of Scripture in which any Angel is recorded to have had a new internall act for I know no such though externall actions they have manifold and so I end this Chapter noting that whereas you cite my Peripateticall Institutions for my opinion of Purgatory that their testimony is not sufficient to declare my opinion in Divinity matters the necessity of good method forcing me to abstain from Theologicall resolution in a Philosophical Treatise I could rather have wisht you had taken more notice of the little book I wrote expresly concerning this very question where the whole business is largely treated the Objections rais'd and Answers offer'd many authorities produc'd and many Reasons to none of which can I any way conceive you have much applied your thoughts and so if they perhaps deserve no answer I am sure they have none Notes on the eighth and ninth Chapters IN your eighth Chapter you trouble your self whether it be possible for the souls in purgatory to see the humanity of Christ which I am so far from disputing with you that I willingly acknowledge it and withall that it raises a great heighth of charity in him so that their state in Purgatory is far beyond the state of this life for charity but yet that it takes not away the dregs of sin left in them at their death Not that I think Saint Paul speaks of any such matter in the place you cite but the meaning of those words In corpore an extra corpus nescio is that he knew not whether his body was truly carry'd locally into the third heaven or only that he had a sight of it as Saint Stephen had of Christ in the place where he stood and so the sense may be whether the rapture was in his body or only in his mind For else we must conceive him dead in the mean while which I know not that any affirm and otherwise these be two species of the three which Divines make of Visions To enquire then why the sins are not taken away in Purgatory though I could answer you that it is because they are in termino and you Divines tell us they cannot merit nor demerit Yet both I and you may ask how this is proved and whither we go consequently I could answer again that it is for want of fancy or of an intellectus agens But you would reply God supernaturally supplies that and I should think God doth not nor cannot prudently change his setled order of causes meerly by favour and because he will without the profit of the world Therefore I must briefly say it is the result of nature and that the coexistence of compossible desires impeaches not the duration of these weak affections since God acts not but by infusion of new existence as in the resurrection He that will assert miracles without proof plays not the Divine but puts all in confusion For this Interrogation Cannot God do it carries such an awfull aspect that it seems to lay the imputation of Atheism on him who dares so much as doubt it yet you and all good Divines know it signifies no more then whether the effect implies contradiction which may be disputed without horror nay peradventure not so much for if God cannot do in particular but what is best he that can shew a thing to be not best how possible so ever it be exempts it from the force of that Interrogation And although I could largely discourse of this later part even by your own occasion who grant the course of nature to be for me yet to make this speculative part as short as I can I will only insist upon contradiction how ever I fear few more then your self will be capable of the discourse I pray therefore reflect that when Philosophers agree Identity of Time is necessary to contradiction it is not out of the nature of Time it self which being an extrinsecall accident hath not power to make any thing compossible or incompossible in the subject where they imply contradiction but it must be the nature of the subject it self which being susceptive