him Intellectually though not actually Divisible That is the Intellect may conceive of God as partly in the Sun and partly on Earth c. or else you must ask pardon of your opposed Holenmerians as you name them and say as they that God is totus in toto totus in qualibet parte If in the 2d sense then you make the matter only to be Substance and God to be but the Form of that Substance or as some dreams a Quality And then I confess your Notions of Indiscerpible and Penetrable are very easily intelligible as agreeing to the meer Form Vitality Active-power Wisdom and Love But how either of these notions will stand either with Gods Existence ut spatium infinitum beyond all Matter which you sometime hint or the Infiniteness of Matter but with intermixt Vacuities which pag. 44. Metaph. you seem to suppose to be communi naturae voce confirmatum I know not For then the vacuum is Deus extra materiam and so all Spirit is not in matter I think that all matter and Spirit is in God and that he is much more than Anima Mundi omnium animarum Ad SECT IX § 1. TO your Indiscerpibility I further say I distinguish 1. Between Actual and Intellectual dividing 2. Between what God can do and what a Creature can do and 3. Between the Father of Spirits and created Spirits And so I say 1. That if you had spoken of the meer Virtus Vitalis of a Spirit I think it is a contradiction to say that it is Discerpible or impenetrable But seeing you ascribe Amplitude Quantity and Dimensions and Logical Materiality to the Substantiality of Spirits I see not but that you make them Intellectually divisible that is that one may think of one part as here and another there 2. And if so though man cannot separate or divide them if it be no contradiction God can Various Elements vary in divisibility Earth is most divisible Water more hardly the parts more inclining to the closest contact Air yet more hardly And if as you think the Substance of Fire be material no doubt the Discerpibility is yet harder And if God have made a Creture so strongly inclin'd to the Unity of all the parts that no other Creture can separate them but God only as if a Soul were such it 's plain that such a Being need not fear a Dissolution by separation of parts For it s own Nature hath no tendency to it but to the contrary and no fellow Creature hath power to do it and God will not do it God maketh all things apt for their use and useth things as he hath made them He made not Marble and Sand alike nor useth them alike And if he should make a Spirit e. g. an Anima hujus Vorticis Solis Stellae c. Such as he only can divide but hath no natural tendency to division but so much Indiscerpibility as no Creature can overcome this besides Scripture intimateth Gods purpose about it 3. But doubtless God and Creatures are both called Spirits equivocally or analogically and not univocally And it is the vilest Contradiction to say that God is capable of Division But whether it be so with created Spirits I know not They have passivity and God hath none It 's no great Wisdom to confess ones Ignorance But not to confess it is very great folly I am scarce of your mind that a man may be in the like puzzle in another World as he was in this if he methodize not his Thoughts aright But if it be so you are best think again § 2. For Penetrability you say that one Spirit may have a greater Amplitude than another and that the parts as I may so call them of the same Spirit may in the Contraction of it self penetrate one another so that there may be a Reduplication of Essence through the whole Spirit Ans You tempt me to doubt lest you talk so much against materiality of Spirits to hide the name of your own Opinion for that which others call materiality If Spirits have parts which may be extended and contracted you 'l hardly so easily prove as say that God cannot divide them And when in your Writings shall I find satisfaction into how much space one Spirit may be extended and into how little it may be contracted And whether the whole Spirit of the World may be contracted into a Nut-shell or a Box and the Spirit of a Flea may be extended to the Convexe of all the World Ad SECT X. § 1. I Said We grant that Spirits have a Quantitas discreta they are numerous individuate and Formae se multiplicant Generation is the work of Spirits and not of Bodies And how can I tell that that God that can make many out of one cannot make many into one and unite and divide them as well as Matter You say This passage is worth our attentive consideration And 1. You hence infer Amplitude and Dimension of Spirits Answ I meddle not for you nor against you What 's this to me § 2. You ask what are the Formae quae se multiplicant Ans Sensitive and Rational as well as Vegetative Spirits You say That must be Creation or Self-division Ans No it is but Generation And in Append. to the Reas of Christian Religion I have partly shewed that Generation is from God as the Prime Cause and yet the Parents Souls as a Second Cause so that somewhat of a sort of Creation and Traduction concur which having further opened in Method Theol. I here pretermit § 3. But to my Question Why God cannot make two of one or one of two you put me off with this lean Answer that we be not bound to puzzle our selves about it Ans I think that Answer might serve to much of your Philosophical Disputes But if you will puzzle us with a naked Assertion of Indiscerpibility we must ask your proof of it why God cannot divide and unite extended ample quantitative Spirits and if he can how you know that he doth not or that Indivisibility is the Form of a Spirit when as if Water be divided into drops every drop is Water still Ad SECT XI § 1. IN your further thoughts of this Sect. 11. you do first mis-suppose that my Question intimateth such a Divisibility of Souls as of terrene Bodies into Atoms or a contrary Union Terrene Atoms have the most imperfect Union All the Sands on the shoar are not only divisible but partly divided I cannot say that all the parts of the Air are so much less of the Fire There is a far closer Union of all the Substance of that Lucid Calefactive Element than of Earth Water or Air. § 2. And here I must insert that after long thoughts I doubt not but all things Created are truly one and truly many No one particle of the Universe is independent on the rest Parts they are as every part of a Clock or Watch Every Leaf and Grape and
Apple on the Tree hath a certain individuate or numerical Being and yet every one is a part of the Tree And every Herb and Tree is a part of the Garden or Orchard and that a part of England c. and all a part of the Earth in which they grow and no doubt the Earth is as dependant on other parts of the Universe and all on God We dream of no total separation of any Creature from the rest much less Spirits But all the Illuminated Air is more one flamma tenuis though compound of Air and Fire and called by us Light than the Sands are one Earth And I doubt not but that Fire which is the Motive Illuminative and Calefactive Substance in all the Air and elsewhere is yet much less divisible than the Air and Souls than it So that should God make many into one they would be many Individuals no more but one again Divisible by God himself § 3. And you mis-suppose me to suppose that the whole Substance of all Humane Souls are but the same which once in Adam was but one and from him divided Writing is a tedious work because it so hardly causeth men to understand us I suppose that a continued Creative Emanation from the Father of Spirits giveth out all that Spiritual Substantiality which becometh new Souls but that God hath ordained that the Generating Souls shall first receive this Divine Emanation and be organical ☞ in communicating it to the Semen and so to new organical Bodies not that the Parents Souls only dispose the seminal recipient Matter but are themselves partly receptive and then active in the communication It will be a defective similitude if I say as a Burning-glass by a receptive contraction of the Sun Beams is instrumental in kindling combustible matter Rather as one Candle kindleth a thousand and yet the substance of the Lucid and Calid Being is communicated from the Ignite Air by the means of that one Candle For that it is only Motus a Motu I believe not That you have drawn me thus effutire quae circa generationem opinor must help you to be patient with my tediousness And the rather because to avoid offending you I will now pass by any further Answer to your Queries Whether Adam 's Soul was a Legion which else was Adam 's Soul How come they to be Male and Female was that number of Souls expanded or contracted what a change by Venery what becomes of the many Souls in the Chast and the rest I would not by a particular Answer disgrace your Questions or the jocular urgent amplifications No doubt Lights are too low Illustrations but the highest within the reach of sense There was not a Legion of Candles in that which lighted a Legion nor need I tell you which of the lighted Candles was that which lighted it nor why lighting more consumed not the first nor why it kindled a Wax-Candle and a Tallow-Candle c. I knew not till now that you thought Souls differed in Sex because the Persons do But I will not strive against your Conceit The Soul of a Male and Female I better understand than a Male and Female Soul § 4. But you tell me I must consider the Nature of Light throughly and I shall find it nothing but a certain motion of a Medium whose particles are so or so qualified some such way as Cartesianism drives at But here 's not Substances but Motion communicated c. Ans I had as willingly have heard Cartesius tell me any Dream else that ever came into his Brain For this I greatly despise And wonder not that any man is ignorant of the nature of Spirits who is so grosly ignorant of the igneous analogical Nature as he was I have said so much in divers Books against it that I will not here in transitu any further touch so noble a Subject than to tell you that if you have studied the old Stoicks Platonists c. and Patricius Telesius Campanella Lud. le Grand c. as much as Cartesius I pitty you for believing him I doubt not the Substance of Fire hath a Virtus motiva as well as illuminativa catefactiva And consequently that Light and Heat are neither of them without Motion But that they are a tripple operation of the Vna-trina forma ignea I am past doubt after as hard study as you can advise me to But your terms certain motion and an unnamed Medium and particles so and so qualified and some way c. are not notifying terms to me That Lumen is ipse motus methinks a man of half Cartesius's Age should never dream That it 's an effect of Motion many say and think it so as much as Intellection is an effect of mental-Vitality and Volition of Intellection But to lay no stress on Sir Ken. Digby's Arguments I make no doubt Ignis lucens is as truly a Substance as a Spirit is If Light be an Act or Quality it hath some immediate Agent or Subject It doth not exist separated from them It is in the Air but as the Recipient as it is in the Oil of the Candle The Air shineth not of itself as the Night informeth us It is therefore a Substance that moveth and illuminateth the Air And if Cartes will call that Substance Glâ—buli aetherei or mat eria subtilis I need not a game at such toyish words As Motus causeth Sensation and Intellection which yet by meer motion would never have been caused without the conjunct Acts of the Sensitive and Intellective Faculties as such so is it of Light Really when I read how far you have escaped the delusions of Cartesianism I am sorry that you yet stick in so gross a part of it as this is when he that knoweth no more than motion in the Nature of Fire which is the active Principle by which mental and sensitive Nature operateth on Man and Bruits and Vegetables and all the passive Elements if it be not ipsa forma telluris and all the visible actions in this lower World are performed what can that mans Philosophy be worth I therefore return your Counsel study more throughly the Nature of Aethereal Fire I find cause to imagine by your Writings that you are as Mr. Glanvile for the pre-existence of Souls before Generation And when do you think they were all made And what Bodies did all the Souls that have ever since been in the World animate when there was no human Body but Adam's and Eve's Can you conjecture what Animal's they were before they were men's If you on the one extream thinking that God made as many Souls yea Animals the first week as ever are in Being to the end of the World and the Averrhoists on the other extream who think all Souls are but one individuated by receptive Matter as one Sun lighteth many Candles by a Burning-Glass and all return as Candles put out into one again were to dispute it out by meer Philosophy without the
sortioris You think I suppose that which you call the Spirit of the World or Nature bigger in amplitude than the Spirit of a Wren § 8. Ad Sect. 16. You that say Spirits have Extension and Spissitude say that spissitude signifieth more substance in less compass And these Phrases sound liker to Corporeity than any that I have used More substance and less substance spissitude by Contraction signifie much change and signifie that which the Intellect may distinguish into partes extra partes though undivided which would increase a mans doubt whether God be not able to make a bigger Spirit less and a less bigger and to separate the parts that are so distinguishable in amplitude and to make one into two or two into one § 9. Whether Aether or Fire be material methinks you should be as uncertain at least as I. For you say Light is but motus of somwhat exciting the Spirit of the World If it be the Spirit of the world that is the nearest cause of Illumination by way of Natural activity than that which you call the Spirit of the World I call Fire and so we differ but de nomine But I have oft profest my Ignorance whether Fire and the Vegetative Nature be all one which I encline to think or whether Fire be a middle active Nature between the Spiritual and the meer passive by which Spirits work on Bodies I think I shall quickly know all this better than you do Ad SECT XVII XVIII XIX § 1. OF your Doctrine of Atomes I spake before I have no mind to examine the weight of your Reasons publickly § 2. I thought you that so extol the Atomists Doctrine would have deigned to read at least some of the Leaders of the various Sects And my undervaluing them is no excuse to you for as you knew not my judgment so I suppose you do not much esteem it That which I blame them for is that Lud. le Grand over-magnifieth Fire Telesius and Campanella over-magnifie Heat Patricius over-magnifieth Light as Cartesius doth Motion But if the one Principle of Motion Light and Heat had been better handled as one as it is it had been sounder § 3. I need not your hydrostatical experiment of the rising Rundle to convince me of the Motion of the matter of the World by a spiritual power I doubt as little of Spirits as of Bodies But I understand not what greater wonder there is in the rising of your Rundle than in the rising of a piece of Timber from the bottom of the Sea or that the heaviest body should sink lowest if it have way Whether Water consist of oblong flexible Bodies I am not much regardful to know Each of those oblong ones are divisible into Atomes § 4. But as to what hence you infer of Fire I make no doubt but the Flames and the red hot Iron are compouud things and that the oily or sulphureous matter moved and heated is the Substance which we see But I believe not that bare motion as motion were it never so swift wo'd cause this But that these effects are caused in the capable matter by the special action of a permeant Substance in itself invisible as Substance whose form is the Active Virtue of moving illuminating and heating and so is sensible only in this triple Effect And if you call this a Spirit I leave you to your Liberty Ad SECT XX. XXI § 1. THE seven Propositions which you find in my words I own save that the fourth should be thus formed That the Substantiae dispositio in fire distinct from the form beareth some such Analogy to a Spirit if it be not one viz. Vegetative that may somewhat serve us to conceive of it thereby and they that from this Analogy call it Ignis non formaliter sed eminenter are excusable though it can be no strict proper name that cometh not a forma § 2. Ad sect 21. But you ask Whether by Active power I mean a power alwaies exerting itself into act so that this fire is alwaies moving enlightning and hot formaliter else why should it be called Ignis Ans Answer your self when you speak of a power of Sensation and Intellection and Volition in a Soul do you mean a power alwaies exerting itself into sensation Intellection and Volition else why is it called a Soul Ans 2. I mean a power which hath alwaies an inclination to Act hath its own secret immanent act alwaies acts ad extra when it hath fit recipient objects As to your oft mentioned Confutation of Judge Hale having not read it I am no Judge of your performance You Question what is this new igneous substance never heard of before while in all Ages it hath been so famous a controversy when not only the Stoicks but most old Philosophers gave to it so much more than meet when Lud. Le Grand would make us believe that it was almost the only God of all the Heathen World under various names and while so many new Sects have written so many volumes of it who would have believed that even Dr. Henry More had never heard of it before To your question Is it material or immaterial I still answer material is a word of larger or narrower sense ambiguous I know that it hath the aforesaid Actions And by them I know that it hath the Power so to act and by both I know it is a substance capable of such power Acts And I know that the substance is invisible in se but seen in its Effects And my brain is too dark to be confident of more Let him that knoweth more boast of it § 3. You say A material Fire distinct from the flame of a Candle or Fire-stick or red hot Iron there is no more ground for than material Water distinct from Wells Rivers Seas c. Ans Do you not take Cartesius materia subtilis if not globuli aetherei to be invisible not alwaies appearing in Candles or Fire-sticks If a Soul may be a sensitive and intellective Substance and yet not be alwaies feeling or understanding why may there not be Fire where it shineth not It seemeth you take not the illuminated Air to be Ignite because it is not a Candle or Fire-stick I doubt not but Fire is a Substance permeant and existent in all mixt Bodies on Earth in ipsa tellure in Minerals in your Blood it is the prime part of that called the Spirits which are nothing but the Igneous Principle in a pure aerial Vehicle and is the Organ of the Sensitive Faculties of the Soul And if the Soul carry away any Vehicle with it it 's like to be some of this I doubt you take the same thing to be the Spirit of the world while you seem to vilifie it § 4. It 's strange when I tell you that I conceive of a Spirit but as Ignis eminenter and not formaliter that you should still ask whether I take it not for
here And I know not why you might not as well have named divers other Accidents or Modes especially Quantity and the trina dimensio and called them all the Form of Matter as well as your two Indeed when we have from sense a true notion of Matter we must know that it hath Quantity and is somewhere and therefore that one part of it and another part cannot possess just the same place and so we grant you the Impenetrability And how far you prove Spirits to be such substances as are extended and have Amplitude as you say pag. 105. and spissitude and be in loco and in more or less space variously and yet that they have no dimensions which the Divine Intellect or Power itself can measure and whether all the Spirits in the universe can be in eodem puncto and all that are finite contracted into that one point I leave this to Wits more subtil than mine to judge of For to tell you the truth I know nothing at all without the mediation of sense except the immediate sensation it self the acts of Intellection Volition or Nolition what the Intellect inferreth of the like by the perception of these I have seen felt how Water differeth from Earth and from that sensation my Intellect hath that Idea of the difference which it hath But without that seeing and feeling it all the definitions in the world and all the names of hard and soft and dry and moist would have given me no true notice of the formal difference Now hence I infer that I have no sense at all of the difference of a Spirits Substantiality in such modes and accidents from that of Matter and therefore how can I know it I know by knowing what knowing is and by willing what willing is And I know that these Acts prove a power for nothing doth that which it cannot do and that Act and Power prove a Substance for nothing hath nothing and can do nothing ab est tertii adjecti ad est secundi valet argumentum And I know that unless Light might be called Spirit Spirits are to me invisible And so I can knowingly say 1. What they do 2. What they can do 3. What they are in the genus of Substantiality 4. And what they are not as to many Attributes proper to Visible Substances or Bodies 5. And I have elsewhere fully proved in a special Dispute in Methodo Theol. that the Power of Vital Action Intellection and Volition is not a meer Accident of them but their very essential form But as to that Modification of their Substance which is contrary to Impenetrability and Divisibility I may grope but I cannot know it positively for want of sensation § 2. Is an Atom Matter or is it not If one Atom be no matter then two is none and then there is none If an Atom be matter is it Discerpible or not If not how is this the Form of Matter If it be divisible it is not an Atom that 's a contradiction And if every Atom be divisible in infinitum it is as great or greater than the world and then there are as many Infinites as Atoms That three Atoms united cannot be divided just in the middle etiam per Divinam Potentiam is because it implieth a contradiction viz. that an Atom is divisible so that by you an Atom is a Spirit Do you take the word Penetrable actively or passively or both If actively according to you Matter is penetrable for it can penetrate a Spirit that is possess the same place But I perceive you mean that Spirits can penetrate Bodies also that they can penetrate one another And I suppose that by Penetration you mean not that which separateth parts of the Matter cometh in between these parts but you mean possessing the same place as is said And if so do you put no limitation or what I ask before can all the Created Spirits in Heaven and Earth be in the same Atom of matter If so are they then absent from all other place or is every Spirit ubiquitary You confute the Nullibists by the operation of the Soul on the Body Ibi operatur ergo ibi est And do you think that all the Angels in Heaven and all Created Souls may be in one Body by Penetration If so Are they one Soul there or innumerable in one man And if they may be all in one point and so be all one may they not be divided again I confess my ignorance of the Consistence of spiritual Substance is so great that I am not able to say that God who hath given Souls quantitatem discretam and made them innumerable is not able to make one of two or many and to turn that one into two or many again I am not sure that it is a contradiction especially if it be true that Sennertus and many more say of the multiplication of Forms by Generation But if you take Penetrability passively then you mean that Spirits may be penetrated by Bodies or by one another or both No doubt you mean both and so as I said Bodies also are penetrable both actively and passively that is Bodies can penetrate Spirits and be penetrated by Spirits Whether any Bodies penetrate each other viz. whether Light or its vehicle at least be a Body and whether it penetrate the body of Glass or Chrystal with more about these matters I have heretofore spoken in my Reasons of the Christian Religion Append. Obj. 2. p. 525. and forward § 3. To conclude this as in natural mixt Bodies there are three principles Materia Materiae Dispositio for that I think is a fitter expression than Privatio Forma so in simple Beings there are three not parts but conceptus inadaequati answerable hereto viz. I. In the three passive Elements Earth Water and Air there is in each 1. The Matter 2. The Disposition of that matter by contexture and various modes of which Impenetrability and Divisibility are parts 3. The passive Form resulting from all these which consisteth in their various aptitude to their uses especially their Receptivity of the Influx of the Active Natures Here you put two Attributes together which are both but parts of the Materiae Dispositio and call them two the Form II. In the Active Natures there is 1. The Substantiality 2. The Substantiae Dispositio 3. The Form Of the first not part but inadequate Conceptus Substantiality we agree of the second Conceptus we differ That such Substances have an incomprehensible Purity of which we can have no distinct Idea for want of Sensation but a General Conception only and that this Purity whatever it be is not the Form of Spirits but the Substantiae Dispositio is that which I say And you say that Penetrability and Indivisibility are the Form which at most are but the Dispositio Substantiae and yet you joyn the Vital Virtue as part of the formal Conception too which is quite of another conception
to you as a Teacher But whereas you say that these make three no more than Animal Homo and Brutum or Cupiditas Desiderium and Fuga you silence me for it beseemeth me not to speak to you in a Teaching Language and there is no other to convince you And if all that I have said in Method Theol. will not do it I confess it will not easily be done Animal Homo and Brutum are three words containing only a Generical and specifick nature in two distinct species of Subjects If you think that in the Sun Virtus-motiva illuminativa calefactiva or in mans Soul a vegetative sensitive and Intellective power or in the latter mentally-active Intellective and Volitive Virtue are no other I will not persuade you to change your mind much less give you any Answer to your simile of cupiditas desiderium fuga save that you might almost as well have named any three Words § 3. But you say The Omission of Immaterial in your Conceptus formalis or which is all one of Penetrability and Indiscerpibility is not only a mistake but a mischief it implying that the Virtus Appetitiva perceptiva may be in a Substance though material which betrays much of the succours which Philosophy affords to Religion c. Ans Melancholy may cause fears by seeming Apparitions I hope no body will be damned for using or not using the Word Material or Immaterial It 's easie to use either to prevent such danger And I am not willing again to examine the sense of these words every time you use them You know I said not that Spirits are Material And you say they are Substances of Extension Amplitude Spissitude Locality and Subtilty as opposite to Crassitude And what if another think just so of them or not so grosly and yet call them Matter will the word undoe him But you say I omitt Immaterial Ans See my Append. to Reas of Christ Rel. whether I omit it But is a bare Negative Essential to a just definition here Why then not many Negatives more as invisible insensible c. To say that Air is not Water or Water is not Earth was never taken for defining nor any mischief to omit it But that the positive term Purissima doth not include Immaterial and is not as good you have not as yet proved Is Substantia purissima material Do not you by that intimation do more to assert the Materiality of Spirits than ever I did Have you read what I have answered to 20 Objections of the Somatists in the aforesaid Append. But you say It implyeth that Virtus perceptiva c. may be in a substance material Ans Negatur If I leave out 20 Negatives in my Definition it followeth not that the form may be with their positives But can you excuse your self from what you call a Mischief when you intimate that Substantia purissima may be material Because I only called it purissima you say I imply it may be material But I confess I am too dull to be sure that God cannot endue matter itself with the formal Virtue of Perception That you say the Cartesians hold the contrary and that your Writings prove it certifieth me not O the marvellous difference of mens Conceptions Such great Wits as Campanella Dr. Glisson c. were confident that no Matter in the world was without the una-trina Virtus viz. Perceptive Appetitive and Motive I agree not with them But you on the contrary say that Materia qualitercunque modificata is uncapable of Perception I doubt not materia qua materia or yet qua mere modificata hath no LIfe But that it is uncapable of it and that Almighty God cannot make perceptive living Matter and that by informing it without mixture I cannot prove nor I think you Where is the Contradiction that makes it impossible Nor do I believe that it giveth a man any more cause to doubt as you add of the Existence of God or the Immortality of the Soul than your Opinion that saith God cannot do this To pass by many other I will but recite the words of Micraelius Ethnophron li. 1. c. 13. p. 23 24. instancing in many that held the Soul to be Pure Matter Eam Sententiam inter veteres probavit apud Macrobium Heraclitus Physicus cui anima est Essentiae Stellaris scintilla Et Hipparchus apud Plinium cui est coeli pars Et Africanus apud Ciceronem qui detrahit animum ex illis sempiternis ignibus quae Sidera vocamus quaeque globosae rotundae divinis animatae mentibus circules suos orbesque conficiunt celeritate mirabili Et Seneca qui descendisse eam ex illo coelesti Spiritu ait Et Plato ipse qui alicubi animam vocat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 radians splendidum vehiculum Et Epictetus qui Astra vocat nobis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amica cognata elementa Ipseque cum Peripateticis Aristoteles qui eam quinta essentia constare 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in animabus inesse dicit Inter nostrates quoque Scaliger vocat animam Naturam coelestem quintam essentiam alia quidem à quatuor Elementis naturâ praeditam sed non sine omni materia Eadem Opinio arridet Roherto de Fluctibus c. And what many Fathers say I have elsewhere shewed And yet on condition you will not make the name Substance to signifie no real Being but a meer Relation or Quality I think you and I shall scarce differ in sense § 4. But you magnifie our difference saying In this you and I fundamentally differ in that you omit but I include Penetrability and Indiscerpibility in the Conceptus formalis of a Spirit Ans I think you mean better than you speak and err not fundamentally 1. I do not think that your two hard words are fundamentals nor that one or both are Synonyma to Immaterial 2. I do not think but Purissima includeth all that is true in them and so leaveth them not out 3. I do not leave them out of the Dispositio vel modus Substantiae though I leave them out of the Conceptus formalis 4. Your self affirm the vital Virtue to be the Conceptus formalis And hath a Spirit more forms than one You know of no existent Spirit in the World that hath not its proper specifick form And if your two words had been a Generical Form that 's no form to the species but a Substantiae dispositio Doth he fundamentally err that saith Corpus humanum organicum is not forma hominis Or that the puritas vel subtilitas materiae is not forma â—gnis vel solis but only the materiae dispositio If our little self made words were so dangerous on either side I should fear more hurt by making the form of a Spirit 1. To be but the Consistence or mode of the Substance 2. And that to consist in divers accidents conjunct 3. And those uncertain in part or unintelligible 4. And Spirits
must needs know every Ingredient in his Physick and the Nature and Reason of it before he will take it when he should implicitly trust his Physician Man should have waited on God for all his Notices and sought to know no more than he revealed But a distrustful and a selfish knowledg and busy enquiring into unrevealed things is become our sin and misery § 36. You say Suppose all this answered what will it avail as to a life of Retribution if all return to one element and be there immerged as Brooks and Rivers in the Sea and we lose our individuation Ans I answer'd this in the Appendix to the Reas of the Christian Religion I add 1. Do you believe that each one hath now one individual Soul or not If not how can we lose that which we never had If we have but all one universal mover which moveth us as Engines as the Wind and Water move Mills how come some motions to be so swift as a Swallow and others so slow or none at all in as mobile a body Yea how cometh motion to be so much in our Power that we can sit still when we will and rise and go and run and speak when we will and cease or change it when we will A stone that falls or an arrow that is shot cannot do so Sure it is some inward formal Principle and not a material Mechanical mobility of the matter which can cause this difference Indeed if we have all but one Soul it 's easie to love our Neighbours as our selves because our Neighbours are our selves But it 's as easie to hate our selves as our Enemies and the good as the bad if all be one for forma dat nomen esse But it 's strange that either God or the Soul of the World shall hate it self and put it self to pain and fight against it self as in Wars c. But if you think still That there is nothing but God and dead matter actuated by him I would beg your Answer to these few Questions 1. Do you really believe that there is a God that is an eternal infinite self-being who hath all that power knowledg and goodness of will in transcendent Eminency which any Creature hath formally and is the efficient Governor of all else that is If not all the world condemneth you for it is not an uncaused Being and can have nothing but from its Cause who can give nothing greater than it self 2. Do you think this God can make a Creature that hath a subordinate Soul or Spirit to be the Principle of its own Vital Action Intellection and Volition or not Cannot God make a Spirit If not it is either because it is a Contradiction which none can pretend or because God is not Omnipotent that is is not God and so there is no God and so you deny what you granted But if God can make a Spirit 3. Why should you think he would not Some of your mind say That he doth all the good that he can or else he were not perfectly good Certainly his goodness is equal to his greatness and is commmunicative 4. Hath he not imprinted his Perfections in some measure in his Works Do they not shew his glory Judg of his Greatness by the Sun Stars and Heavens and of his Wisdom by the wonderful Order Contexture and Goverument of all things Even the Fabrick of a Fly or any Animal poseth us And do you think that his love and goodness hath no answerable effect 5. Do you think that passive matter doth as much manifest Gods Perfection and honour the Efficient as vital and Intellectual Spirits If it be a far nobler Work for God to make a free vital mental Spirit to act under him freely mentally and vitally than to make meer atomes why should you think that God will not do it 6. And do you not dishonour or blaspheme the prime Cause by such dishonouring of his Work as to say he never made any thing more noble than Atomes and Compositions of them 7. Is there not in the Creature a communicative disposition to cause their like Animals generate their like Fire kindleth fire Wise men would make others wise God is essential infinite Life Wisdom and Love and can he or would he make nothing liker to himself than dead Atomes Yea you feign him to make nothing but by Composition while you say That matter it self is eternal 8. But when the matter of Fact is evident and we see by the actions that there is a difference between things moved by God some having a created Life and mind and some none what needs then any further proof § 31. But if you hold That we have now distinct Spirits which are individual Substances why should you fear the loss of our individuation any more than our annihilation or specifick alteration If God made as many substantial individual Souls as men is there any thing in Nature or Scripture which thteatneth the loss of Individuation I have shewed you and shall further shew you enough against it § 32. You say page 7. Every thing returneth to its element and loseth its individuation Earth to Earth Water to the Sea the Spirit to God that gave it What happiness then can we hope for more than deliverance from the present calamity or what misery are we capable of more than is common to all Ans 1. Bodies lose but their Composition and Spiritual forms Do you think that any Atome loseth its individuation If it be still divisible in partes infinitas it is infinite And if every Atome be infinite it is as much or more than all the world and so is no part of the world and so there would be as many Worlds or Infinites as Atomes It is but an aggregative motion which you mention Birds of a Feather will flock together and yet are Individuals still Do you think any dust or drop any Atome of Earth or Water loseth any thing of it self by its union with the rest Is any Substance lost Is the simple Nature changed Is it not Earth and Water still Is not the Haecceity as they call it continued Doth not God know every dust and every drop from the rest Can he not separate them when he will And if Nature in all things tend to aggregation or union it is then the Perfection of every thing And why should we fear Perfection 2. But Earth and Water and Air are partible matter Earth is easily separable The parts of Water more hardly by the means of some terrene Separaror The parts of Air yet more hardly and the Sun-beams or substance of fire yet harder than that tho it's contraction and effects are very different And Spirits either yet harder or not at all Some make it essential to them to be indiscerptible and all must say That there is nothing in the Nature of them tending to division or separation And therefore tho God who can annihilate them can divide them into parts if it