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
Indivisibility though perhaps thâ—se also may be useful Sir I crave your pardon of these curt expressions of the thoughts which you desired concerning the description of a Spirit If God make us truly holy we shall quickly know more to our satisfaction I rest Nov. 17. 1681. Your obliged Servant Rich. Baxter You make a Spirit to be Ens ideoque Unum Verum and that True denotes the answerableness of the thing to its proper Idea and implies right matter and form duly conjoined Q. Do you not here make Spirits material But no doubt whether to be called Material or Substantial the form is not an Adjoyned thing but the form of a simple essence is but an inadequate conceptus making no composition OF THE NATURE OF SPIRITS A Placid Collation with the Learned Dr Henry More upon his Answer to à private Letter published in the second Edition of Mr. Glanviles Sadduceismus Triumphatus Reverend Sir § 1. THat my hasty Letter should occasion you to benefit the World with more of your Information in so considerable a point as is the nature of a Spirit was more than I thought of or could hope for Had I imagined that you would have so far honoured it I should have so written it as might have drawn out more of your Instruction and made your Animadversions yet more edifying § 2. I desired you to have forborn the title of Psychopyrist for these Reasons 1. Because it tendeth plainly to misinform the Reader as if I held that Souls or Spirits are Fire whereas in my Books and Letters I still say otherwise And that they may be so called not formaliter or univoce but only eminenter and analogice And when a name on the Title page through the whole and a supposition in much of your arguing implyeth that I hold what I renounce it may wrong your Reader 's understanding though I am below the capacity of being wronged 2. And the fastning of Nick-names on one another in Controversies of Religion hath so much caused Schisms and other mischiefs that I confess I the less like it about Philosophy But I must submit § 3. My understanding is grown so suspicious of ambiguity in almost all words that I must confess that what you say also against those whom you call Holenmerians and Nullibists satisfieth me not unless many terms used in the controversies were farther explained than I find them here or in your Metaphysicks your Books against Judge Hale I have not seen But I may take it for granted that you know that they who use the saying of Tota in toto tota in qualibet parte ordinarily tell us 1. That they use the word Tota relatively and improperly seeing that which hath no parts is improperly called Tota 2. That they mean it but negatively viz. That the Soul is not in the parts of the body per partes part in one part and part in another but indivisibly And one would think this should suit with your own hypothesis And when I better know in what sense Locus is used I shall be fitter to enquire whether Spirits be in loco When some take it for a circumscribing body and some for a subjective body on which it operateth and some for a meer room possest in vacuo and some for God himself in whom are all things the name of a Nullibist is as ambiguous to me § 4. You tell your Reader that All created Spirits are Souls in all probability and actuate some Matter or other Sir Philosophers freedom is usually taken easilyer than Divines I will therefore presume that our mutual freedom shall not be in the least distastful to either of us And so I must tell you that I have long taken it for a matter of very great use to distinguish unknown things from known and to bridle my understanding from presuming to enquire into unrevealed things And I take that holdness of Philosophers to have had a great hand in corrupting Divinity Secret things are for God and things revealed for us and our Children saith Moses And when I presume most I do but most lose my self and misuse my understanding nothing is good for that which it was not made for Our understandings as our Eyes are made only for things revealed In many of your Books I take this to be an excess And I have oft wondred at your Friend and sometime mine Mr. Glanvile that after his Scepsis scientifica he could talk and write of doubtful things with that strange degree of confidence and censuring of Dissenters as he did I am accused of overdoing and curiosity my self But I endeavour to confine my enquiries to things revealed This premised I say undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed either as to any certainty or probability that all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter Alass how should we come to know it Neither Nature nor Scripture tells it us But 1. If this be so the difference between you and the Psychopyrists must be opened as it is much like that of Mammertus and Faustus whether the Soul or a Spirit have Matter by composition or simply uncompounded for a body you suppose it still to have Is it separable from a Body or not If it be why should you think that it is never separated If it can subsist without a Body who can say that it doth not If it cannot but be inseparable it is a strange composition that God cannot dissolve And if it perish upon the dissolution then it was but an Accident of the body and not a compounding Substance Dr. Glissons and Campanella's way is as probable as this And I marvel that when you have dealt with so many sorts of Dessenters you meddle not with so subtile a piece as that old Doctor 's de Vita Naturae I have talkt with divers high pretenders to Philosophy here of the new strain and askt them their judgment of Dr. Glissons Book and I found that none of them understood it but neglected it as too hard for them and yet contemned it He supposeth all Matter to be animated without composition the Matter and Form being but conceptus inadequati of an uncompounded being however that Matter as such be divisible into atomes every atome still being uncompounded living Matter You suppose all Spirit to be in Matter but by way of composition as distinct substances I go the middle way and suppose that substance simple is Active or Passive that the three Passive Elements Earth Water and Air are animated only by composition or operation of the active But that the active substances have no composition but intellectual but Substance and Form are conceptus ejusdem inadequati So that what Dr. Glisson saith of every clod and stone I say only of Spirits of fire I shall speak after 2. And do you think that the Soul carrieth a body out of the body inseparable with it or only that it receiveth a new body when it passeth out of the old If the latter is there any instant of time
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
And I have long thought that so much selfishness as is our sin or imperfection is a potent cause of making all men more regardful of Individuation and fearful of losing it by Union of Spirits than they ought and that holy Souls will be nearlier one with Christ and one another than we can here desire or conceive and yet Individuation secundum quid at least shall be continued But yet I say while there is numerus animarum and it is uncertain whether also each Orb hath not one and you plead for Amplitude and Minority Quantity and the Bodies animated may as vastly differ as a Flea or a Wren or a Pigmy and the Sun it is quite above my reach to know that a change of Individuals by making one many or many one is a contradiction and so impossible And as to Penetrability I repeat that seeing by Penetration I suppose you mean not piercing inter partes but possessing the same place with other things and contraction of itself into less amplitude as I know not how a thing that hath no parts and that extra partes can contract itself into less space which is to contract parts that are no parts so I cannot see but such Contraction and Colocality must needs be limited so as that all the World cannot be deserted and mortified by all Spirits Contraction to one narrow space nor yet that at once every Spirit is every where and when the Contraction and Colocality is come to the narrowest possible in that state Spirits must needs be further impenetrable that is no more can be in that space So that while I am past doubt that God hath made Spirits of no kind of parts but what do naturally abhor separation and so are inseparable unless God will separate them and so there is no fear of altering the Individuation much less the species of Souls I there stop and will put no more into my definitions of Souls or Spirits than I know at least as strongly probable much less by laying the formal Essence on a Composition of hard doubtful words tempt all to believe tkat the very Being of Spirits is as doubtful as those words are Ad SECT XXIII § 1. YOu said That a Spirit is Ens ideoque verum and that True implieth a right matter and form duly conjoined To which I said Do you not here make Spirits material You answered I do not make Spirits material in any sense derogatory to their Nature and Perfections Reply Nor do those that I excused so then after all these Sections you make Spirits consist of Matter and form in a sense agreeable to their nature and perfection And so de nomine you come nearer those that you accuse than I do § 2. But you say That Matter and Form I there speak of is a Matter and Form that belongs to Ens quatenus Ens in a most general notion prescinded from all kinds of Being whatever and therefore belongs to Beings Immaterial Ans If you may say Quidvis de quovis lay not too great stress on words Ens quatenus Ens hath no Form nor proper Matter Ens is that terminus incomplexus to whose Conception all other are resolved Therefore every other conception incomplex or complex must add somwhat to it It can be no Genu◠or Species If it have any kind of Matter and Form it is more than Ens quatenus Ens And sure that which is prescinded from all particular kinds of Being is prescinded from Material and Immaterial unless the word particular be a Cothurnus To say that Ens hath Matter and Form is to say more than Ens a most general notion as you call it But if Ens as the most general notion have Matter and Form then so hath Spirits and every subordinate for the general is in them all § 3. But you say It 's only materia forma logica To which I answered before That 's but to say It is notio secunda which if it be not fitted ad primam or ut signum ad rem significandam it is false And we suppose you to mean to speak truly and aptly If you should mean neither materia ex qua nor in qua but circa quam so Form may be Matter § 4. You say Nor is the Form adjoined in a Physical Sense to the Matter unless where the Form and Matter are Substances really distinct Ans 1. I believe not this to be true If it be then only Compounds have Form and Matter but I think Simples have Matter and Form that are not two Substances but one As I have oft said Dr. Glisson after others most subtilly laboureth to prove it of every simple Substance that its Matter and Form are not compounding parts but Conceptus inadaequati If the Intellect compound and divide its own Conceptions that maketh not a real Composition of two Substances in the objects but as the Scotists call it of two Formalities or Conceptus objectivi which if you will call a Logical Composition or Intellectual if you explain it the matter is small But besides that Earth Water and Air have their Matter and differencing Forms which are not two Substances so hath Fire in a more noble sense if it be material And by your Application of the word Physical you seem to extend it to Spirits And if so I am past doubt that the Substance and Form of Spirits are not two distinct conjoined Substances Too many Logicians have hitherto taken the Potentia naturalis or Faculties of the Soul to be accidents in the Predicament of Quality Let them call them Qualities if they please but the Scotists have fully prov'd them to be no Accidents but the formal Essence of the Soul and I have answered all Zabarell's Arguments ubi sup And this Virtus formalis vel facultas vel potentia activa is not a Substance joined to a Substance but the form of a simple Substance But I perceive by your next words that you approve all this and speak only of mental Composition as to Spirits And I say that the Mind should conceive and the Tongue speak of things as they are and not at once deny Materiality to Spirits and call them Logically material or at least bear with others that say but the same If Logical Matter speak not Substantiality at least it is delusive Your Interminata amplitudo sounds so like Infinita that I am not willing to say that no Spirit hath any Terminos Substantiae Ad SECT XXXIII XXXIV The Conclusion § 1. YOu say that I wrote not so curtly but that I have sufficiently conveyed my mind to you ans I would have done so had I dream'd of your Printing it But that I did not appeareth by your grand Mistake as if I 〈◊〉 asserted that materiality of Spirits which is proper to Bodies § 2. As in all our difference lieth in a much smaller matter than you thought so in your great design of convincing the blinded Sadduces of this Age and in
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