AEthereal for ever 8. But this makes little to the clearing of the manner of their descent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which cannot be better understood then by considering their Union with the Body generated or indeed with any kinde of Body whatever where the Soul is held captive and cannot quit her self thereof by the free imperium of her own Imagination and Will For what can be the cause of this cohaesion the very essence of the Soul being so easily penetrative of Matter and the dimensions of all Matter being alike penetrable every where For there being no more Body or Matter in a Vessel filled with Lead then when it is full of Water nor when full with Water then when with Aire or what other subtiler Body soever that can be imagined in the Universe it is manifest that the Crassities of Matter is every where alike and alike penetrable and passable to the Soul And therefore it is unconceivable how her Union should be so with any of it as that she should not be able at any time to glide freely from one part thereof to another as she pleases It is plain therefore that this Union of the Soul with Matter does not arise from any such gross Mechanical way as when two Bodies stick one in another by reason of any toughness and viscosity or straight commissure of parts but from a congruity of another nature which I know not better how to term then Vital which Vital Congruity is chiefly in the Soul it self it being the noblest Principle of Life but is also in the Matter and is there nothing but such modification thereof as fits the Plastick part of the Soul and tempts out that Faculty into act 9. Not that there is any Life in the Matter with which this in the Soul should sympathize and unite but it is termed Vital because it makes the Matter a congruous Subject for the Soul to reside in and exercise the functions of life For that which has no life it self may tie to it that which has As some men are said to be tied by the teeth or tied by the ear when they are detained by the pleasure they are struck with from good Musick or delicious Viands But neither is that which they eat alive nor that which makes the Musick neither the Instrument nor the Air that conveys the sound For there is nothing in all this but meer Matter and corporeal motion and yet our vital functions are affected thereby Now as we see that the Perceptive part of the Soul is thus vitally affected with that which has no life in it so it is reasonable that the Plastick part thereof may be so too That there may be an Harmony betwixt Matter thus and thus modified and that Power that we call Plastick that is utterly devoid of all Perception And in this alone consists that which we call Vital Congruity in the prepared Matter either to be organized or already shaped into the perfect form of an Animal 10. And that Vital Congruity which is in the Soul I mean in the Plastick part thereof is analogous to that Pleasure that is perceived by the Sense or rather to the capacity of receiving it when the Sense is by agreeable motions from without or in the Body it self very much gratified and that whether the Minde will or no. For there are some Touches that will in their Perception seem pleasant whether our Judgement would have them so or not What this is to the Perceptive part of the Soul that other Congruity of Matter is to the Plastick And therefore that which ties the Soul and this or that Matter together is an unresistible and unperceptible pleasure if I may so call it arising from the congruity of Matter to the Plastick faculty of the Soul which Congruity in the Matter not failing nor that in the Soul the Union is at least as necessary as the continuation of eating and drinking so long as Hunger and Thirst continues and the Meat and Drink proves good But either satiety in the Stomack or some ill tast in the Meat may break the congruity on either side and then the action will cease with the pleasure thereof And upon this very account may a Soul be conceived to quit her aiery Vehicle within a certain period of Ages as the Platonists hold she does without any violent precipitation of her self out of it 11. What are the strings or cords that tie the Soul to the Body or to what Vehicle else soever I have declared as clearly as I can From which it will be easy to understand the manner of her descent For assuredly the same cords or strings that tie her there may draw her thither Where the carcass is there will the Eagles be gathered Not that she need use her Perceptive faculty in her descent as Hawks and Kites by their sight or smelling fly directly to the lure or the prey but she being within the Atmosphear as I may so call it of Generation and so her Plastick power being reached and toucht by such an invisible reek as Birds of prey are that smell out their food at a distance she may be fatally carried all Perceptions ceasing in her to that Matter that is so fit a receptacle for her to exercise her efformative power upon For this Magick-sphere as I may so term it that has this power of conjuring down Souls into earthly Bodies the nearer the Centre the vertue is the stronger and therefore the Soul will never cease till she has slided into the very Matter that sent out those rays or subtile reek to allure her From whence it is easy to conceive that the Souls of Brutes also though they be not able to exercise their Perceptive faculty out of a terrestrial body yet they may infallibly finde the way again into the world as often as Matter is fitly prepared for generation And this is one Hypothesis and most intelligible to those that are pleased so much with the opinion of those large Sphears they conceive of emissary Atomes There is also another which is the Power and Activity of the Spirit of Nature or Inferiour Soul of the World who is as fit an Agent to transmit particular Souls as she is to move the parts of Matter But of this hereafter 12. What has been said is enough for the present to illustrate the pretended obscurity and unconceivableness of this Mystery So that I have fully made good all the four parts of my Answer to that Objection that would have supplanted the force of my strongest Arguments for the Souls Immortality and have clearly proved that though this sequel did necessarily result from them That the Souls both of Men and Beasts did Prae-exist yet to unprejudiced reason there is no Absurdity nor Inconvenience at all in the Opinion And therefore this Obstacle being removed I shall the more chearfully proceed to the demonstrating of the Souls actual Separation from the Body CHAP. XV. 1. What is meant by
living in these several Vehicles because that Divine Nemesis which is supposed to rule in the world would seem defective without this contrivance But without controversy Eternall Wisdome and Justice has forecast that which is the best and unless we will say nothing at all we having nothing to judge by but our own Faculties we must say that the Forecast is according to what we upon our most accurate search doe conceive to be the best For there being no Envy in the Deity as Plato somewhere has noted it is not to be thought but that He has framed our Faculties so that when we have rightly prepared our selves for the use of them they will have a right correspondency with those things that are offered to them to contemplate in the world And truly if we had here time to consider I doe not doubt but it might be made to appear a very rationall thing that there should be such an Amphibion as the Soule of man that had a capacity as some Creatures have to live either in the Water or on the Earth to change her Element and after her abode here in this Terrestrial Vehicle amongst Men and Beasts to ascend into the company of the AEreal Genii in a Vehicle answerable to their nature 5. Supposing then this triple capacity of Vital Congruity in the Soule of Man the manner how she may leave this Body is very intelligible For the Bodies fitness of temper to retain the Soule being lost in Death the lower Vitall Congruity in the Soule looseth its Object and consequently its Operation And therefore as the letting goe one thought in the Perceptive part of the Soule is the bringing up another so the ceasing of one Vitall Congruity is the wakening of another if there be an Object or Subject ready to entertain it as certainly there is partly in the Body but mainly without it For there is a vitall Aire that pervades all this lower world which is continued with the life of all things and is the chiefest Principle thereof Whence Theon in his Scholia upon Aratus interprets that Hemistich 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a secondary meaning as spoken of the Aire which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the naturall Jupiter in whom in an inferiour sense we may be said to live and move and have our Being for without Aire neither Fishes Fowls nor Beasts can subsist it administring the most immediate matter of life unto them by feeding refreshing their Animal Spirits Wherefore upon the cessation of the lowest Vitall Congruity that AEreal capacity awakening into Act and finding so fit Matter every where to employ her self upon the Soule will not faile to leave the Body either upon choice by the power of her own Imagination Will or else supposing the very worst that can happen by a naturall kinde of Attraction or Transvection she being her self in that stound and confusion that accompanies Death utterly unsensible of all things For the Aire without being more whole some and vitall then in the corrupt caverns of the dead Body and yet there being a continuation thereof with that without it is as easy to understand how that Principle of joyning therewith in the Plastick part of the Soule being once excited she will naturally glide out of the Body into the free Aire as how the Fire will ascend upwards or a Stone fall downwards for neither are the motions of these meerly Mechanicall but vitall or Magicall that cannot be resolved into meer Matter as I shall demonstrate in my Third Book 6. And being once recovered into this vast Ocean of Life and sensible Spirit of the world so full of enlivening Balsame it will be no wonder if the Soule suddainly regain the use of her Perceptive faculty being as it were in a moment regenerate into a naturall power of Life and Motion by so happy a concurse of rightly-prepared Matter for her Plastick part vitally to unite withall For grosser generations are performed in almost as inconsiderable a space of time if those Histories be true of extemporary Sallads sowne and gathered not many hours before the meale they are eaten at and of the suddain ingendring of Frogs upon the fall of rain whole swarms whereof that had no Being before have appeared with perfect shape and liveliness in the space of half an houre after some more unctuous droppings upon the dry ground as I find not onely recited out of Fallopius Scaliger and others but have been certainly my self informed of it by them that have been eye-witnesses thereof as Vaninus also professes himself to have been by his friend Johannes Ginochius who told him for a certain that in the month of July he saw with his own eyes a drop of rain suddenly turned into a Frog By such examples as these it is evident that the reason why Life is so long a compleating in Terrestrial generations is onely the sluggishness of the Matter the Plastick power works upon Wherefore a Soule once united with Aire cannot miss of being able in a manner in the twinckling of an eye to exercise all Perceptive functions again if there was ever any intercessation of them in the astonishments of Death 7. How the Soule may live and act separate from the Body may be easily understood out of what has been spoken But that she does so de facto there are but two wayes to prove it the one by the testimony of History the other by Reason That of History is either of persons perfectly dead or of those that have been subject to Ecstasies or rather to that height thereof which is more properly called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when the Soule does really leave the Body and yet return again Of this latter sort is that example that Pliny recites of Hermotimus Clazomenius whose Soule would often quit her Body and wander up and down and after her return tell many true stories of what she had seen during the time of her disjunction The same Maximus Tyrius and Herodotus report of Aristaeus Proconnesius Marsilius Ficinus adjoyns to this rank that narration in Aulus Gellius concerning one Cornelius a Priest who in an Ecstasie saw the Battel fought betwixt Caesar and Pompey in Thessalie his Body being then at Padua and yet could after his return to himself punctually declare the Time Order and Success of the Fight That in Wierus of the Weasell coming out of the Souldiers mouth when he was asleep is a more plain example which if it were true would make Aristaeus his Pigeon not so much suspected of fabulosity as Pliny would have it Severall Relations there are in the world to this effect that cannot but be loudly laughed at by them that think the Soule inseparable from the Body and ordinarily they seem very ridiculous also to those that think it is separable but as firmly believe that it is never nor ever can be separate but in Death 8. Bodinus has a very great desire notwithstanding
The winding up of those severall circuits of vitall congruity may indeed pass for an ingenious invention as of a thing possible in the Soules of Brutes but as the Schools say well A posse ad esse non valet consequentia As for that Argument from Divine Goodness it not excluding his Wisdom which attempers it self to the natures of things we not knowing the nature of the Soules of Brutes so perfectly as we doe our own we cannot so easily be assured from thence what will be in this case A Musitian strikes not all strings at once neither is it to be expected that every thing in Nature at every time should act but when it is its turn then touched upon it will give its sound in the interim it lies silent And so it may be with the Soules of Brutes for a time especially when the vitall temper of Earth and Aire and Sea shall fail yea and at other times too if none but Intellectual Spirits be fit to manage AEreall Vehicles I confess indeed that Salvation can no more belong to the Soules of Brutes then Conversion but that is as true of the Soules of Plants if they have any distinct from the Universall Spirit of Nature but yet it does not prove that the Soules of Vegetables shall live and act in Aiery Vehicles after an Herbe or Tree is dead and rotten here To that of conveniency of variety of Objects for the aiery Inhabitants I have answered already And for the Apparitions of Horses Doggs and the like they may be the transformation of the aerial Genii into these shapes Which though it be a sign that they would not abhor from the use and society of such aeriall Animals if they had them yet they may the better want them they being able so well themselves to supply their places We will briefly therefore conclude that from the meer light of Reason it cannot be infallibly demonstrated that the Soules of Brutes doe not live after death nor that it is any Incongruity in Nature to say they do Which is sufficient to enervate the present Objection 8. But for the life and activity of the Soules of Men out of this Body all things goe on hand-smooth for it without any check or stop For we finding the aerial Genii so exceeding near-a-kin to us in their Faculties we being both intellectuall Creatures and both using the same immediate instrument of Sense and Perception to wit aeriall Spirits insomuch that we can scarce discover any other difference betwixt us then there is betwixt a man that is naked and one clad in gross thick cloathing it is the most easy and naturall inference that can be to conclude that when we are separate from the Body and are invested onely in Aire that we shall be just like them and have the same life and activity they have For though a Brute fall short of this Priviledge it ought to be no disheartning to us because there is a greater cognation betwixt the Intellectual Faculties and the aiery or aethereal Vehicle then there is betwixt such Vehicles and those more low and sensuall powers common to us with Beasts And we finde in taking the fresh aire that the more fine and pure our Spirits are our thoughts become the more noble divine and the more purely intellectuall Nor is the step greater upwards then downwards For seeing that what in us is so Divine and Angelicall may be united with the body of a Brute for such is this Earthly cloathing why may not the Soule notwithstanding her terrestriall Congruity of life which upon new occasions may be easily conceived to surcease from acting be united with the Vehicle of an Angel So that there is no puzzle at all concerning the Soul of Man but that immediately upon Death she may associate her self with those aeriall Inhabitants the Genii or Angels 9. Which we may still be the better assured of if we consider how we have such Faculties in us as the Soul finds hoppled and fettered clouded and obscured by her fatal residence in this prison of the Body In so much that so far as it is lawful she falls out with it for those incommodations that the most confirmed brutish health brings usually upon her How her Will tuggs against the impurity of the Spirits that stir up bestial Passions that are notwithstanding the height and flower of other Creatures enjoyments and how many times her whole life upon Earth is nothing else but a perpetual warfare against the results of her union with this lump of Earth that is so much like to other terrestrial Animals Whence it is plain she finds her self in a wrong condition and that she was created for a better and purer state which she could not attain to unless she lived out of the Body which she does in some sort in divine Ecstasies and Dreams in which case she making no use of the Bodies Organs but of the purer Spirits in the fourth Ventricle of the Brain she acts as it were by her self and performs some preludious Exercises conformable to those in her aiery Vehicle 10. Adde unto all this that the Immortality of the Soul is the common and therefore naturall hope and expectation of all Nations there being very few so barbarous as not to hold it for a Truth though it may be as in other things they may be something ridiculous in the manner of expressing themselves about it as that they shall retire after Death to such a Grove or Wood or beyond such a Hill or unto such an Island such as was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Island where Achilles Ghost was conceived to wander or the Insulae Fortunatae the noted Elysium of the Ancients And yet it may be if we should tell these of the Coelum Empyreum and compute the height of it and distance from the Earth and how many solid Orbs must be glided through before a Soul can come thither these simple Barbarians would think as odly of the Scholastick Opinion as we do of theirs and it may be some more judicious and sagacious Wit will laugh at us both alike It is sufficient that in the main all Nations in a manner are agreed that there is an Immortality to be expected as well as that there is a Deity to be worshipped though ignorance of circumstances makes Religion vary even to Monstrosity in many parts of the world But both Religion and the belief of the Reward of it which is a blessed state after Death being so generally acknowledged by all the Inhabitants of the Earth it is a plain Argument that it is true according to the Light of Nature And not onely because they believe so but because they do so seriously either desire it or are so horribly afraid of it if they offend much against their Consciences which properties would not be in men so universally if there were no Objects in Nature answering to these Faculties as I have elsewhere argued in the like case CHAP.
them then to any terrestrial animal 13. And yet they need not be so cautious to keep out of danger they having a power to grapple with the greatest of it which is their Statick faculty which arises from the power of directing the motion of the particles of their Vehicle For they having this power of directing the motion of these particles which way they please by Axiome 31. it necessarily followes that they can determinate their course inwards or toward the Centre by which direction they will be all kept close together firm and tight which ability I call the Statick power of the Soule Which if it can direct the whole agitation of the particles of the Vehicle as well those of the first and second Element as those of the Aire and that partly towards the Centre and partly in a countertendency against the storme this force and firmness will be far above the strongest windes that she can possibly meet with 14. Wherefore the Soules Vehicle is in no danger from the boisterousness of the Winds and if it were yet there is no fear of cessation of Life For as the Wind blowes off one part of Aire it brings on another which may be immediately actuated by the presence of the Soule though there be no need to take refuge in so large an Hypothesis And it is more probable that she is more peculiarly united to one part of the Aire then another and that she dismisses her Vehicle but by degrees as our Spirits leasurely pass away by insensible Perspiration 15. We see how little the Souls Vehicle can be incommodated by storms of Winde And yet Rain Haile Snow and Thunder will incommodate her still less For they pass as they doe through other parts of the Aire which close again immediately and leave neither wound nor scarre behinde them Wherefore all these Meteors in their Mediocrity may be a pleasure to her and refreshment and in their excess no long pain nor in their highest rage any destruction of life at all From whence we may safely conclude that not onely the Upper Region but this Lower also may be inhabited both by the deceased Souls of Men and by Daemons CHAP. IV. 1. That the Soule once having quitted this earthly Body becomes a Daemon 2. Of the Externall Senses of the Soule separate their number and limits in the Vehicle 3. Of Sight in a Vehicle organized and unorganized 4. How Daemons and separate Souls hear and see at a vast Distance and whence it is that though they may so easily hear or see us we may neither see nor hear them 5. That they have Hearing as well as Sight 6. Of the Touch Smell Tast and Nourishment of Daemons 7. The external employment that the Genii and Souls deceased may have out of the Body 8. That the actions of Separate Souls in reference to us are most-what conformable to their life here on Earth 9. What their entertainments are in reference to themselves 10. The distinction of orders of Daemons from the places they most frequent 1. THE next thing we are to enquire into is the Employment of the Soul after Death how she can entertain her self and pass away the time and that either in Solitude in Company or as she is a Political member of some Kingdome or Empire Concerning all which in the general we may conclude that it is with her as with the rest of the AErial Genii 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the Soul having once put off this terrestrial Body becomes a Genius her self as Maximus Tyrius Xenocrates Philo and others expresly affirm But we shall consider these things more particularly 2. As for those employments wherewith she may entertain her self in solitude they are either Objects of the External Senses or of the Inward Minde Concerning the former whereof it is more easie to move Questions then satisfy them as Whether she have the same number of Senses she had in this life That she is endued with Hearing Sight and Touch I think there can be no scruple because these will fall to her share necessarily whether her Vehicle be organized or not and that of Seeing and Touch is the most uncontrovertible of all For the sense of visible Objects being discovered to us by transmission of Motion through those Spherical particles that are continued along from the Object through the Aire to our very Organ of Sight which sees meerly by reason of these particles vitally united with the Soul the same particles pervading all the Souls Vehicle it is impossible but that she should see But the Question is whether she sees in every part thereof To which I must answer No partly from what I have already declared concerning the Heterogeneity of her Plastick part and partly from a gross inconvenience that would follow this Supposition For if we should grant that the Soul saw in every part of her Vehicle every Object that is near would not onely seem double but centuple or millecuple which would be a very ugly enormity and defacement of Sight Wherefore we have with very good reason restrained the Visive faculty of the Soul in this state of Separation as well as it was in the Terrestrial Body 3. But this hinders nothing but that the Soul when she lies in one Homogeneal orb of Aire devoid of organization may see round about her behinde before above beneath and every way But if she organize her Vehicle Sight may haply be restrain'd as in us who cannot see behinde us Which Consideration we toucht upon before 4. It is plain therefore that these AErial Spirits though we cannot see them cannot miss of seeing us and that it may be from a mighty distance if they can transform their Vehicle or the Organ of Sight into some such advantageous Figure as is wrought in Dioptrick Glasses Which power will infinitely exceed the contracting and dilating of the pupil of our Eye which yet is a weaker and more defectuous attempt towards so high a Priviledge as we speak of which notwithstanding may seem very possible in Spirits from 31. and 34. Axiomes The same also may be said of their Hearing For the same principle may enable them to shape themselves Organs for the receiving of Sounds of greater art and excellency then the most accurate Acoustick we read of or can excogitate Wherefore it is a very childish mistake to think that because we neither see the shape nor hear the discourse of Spirits that they neither hear nor see us For soft Bodies are impressible by hard ones but not on the contrary as melted Wax will receive the Signature of the Seal but the Seal is not at all impressed upon by the Wax And so a solid Body will stop the course of the Aire but the Aire will not stop the course of a solid Body and every inconsiderable terrestrial consistency will reflect Light but Light scarce moves any terrestrial Body out of its place but is rebounded back by it That therefore that is most
from what has been alledged That the Common Sensorium is to be placed in the midst of these purer Spirits of the fourth Ventricle of the Brain CHAP. X. 1. That the Soule is not confined to the Common Sensorium 2. The first Argument from the Plastick power of the Soule 3. Which is confirmed from the graduall dignity of the Soules Faculties of which this Plastick is the lowest 4. Externall Sensation the next 5. After that Imagination and then Reason 6. The second Argument from Passions and Sympathies in Animals 7. An illustration of the manner of naturall Magick 8. The third Argument from the Perception of Pain in the exteriour parts of the Body 9. The fourth and last from the nature of Sight 1. WE are now at leisure to resume the two remaining Enquiries the former whereof is whether the Soule be so in this fourth Ventricle that it is essentially no where else in the Body or whether it be spread out into all the Members Regius would coup it up in the Conarion which he believes to be the Common Sensorium and so by consequence it should be confined to the fourth Ventricle and not expatiate at all thence supposing that the Seat of Common Sense The reason of this conceit of his is this That whatever is in the rest of the Body may come to pass by powers meerly Mechanical wherein he does very superstitiously tread in the footsteps of his Master Des-Cartes But for my own part I cannot but dissent I finding in neither any sufficient grounds of so novell an Opinion but rather apparent reasons to the contrary 2. As first the Frame of the Body of which I think most reasonable to conclude the Soule her self to be the more particular Architect for I will not wholly reject Plotinus his opinion and that the Plastick power resides in her as also in the Soules of Brute animals as very learned and worthy Writers have determined That the Fabrick of the Body is out of the concurse of Atomes is a meer precarious Opinion without any ground or reason For Sense does not discover any such thing the first rudiments of life being out of some liquid homogeneall Matter and it is against reason that the tumbling of Atomes or corporeall particles should produce such exquisite frames of creatures wherein the acutest wit is not able to find any thing inept but all done exquisitely wel everywhere where the foulness and courseness of Matter has not been in fault That God is not the immediate Maker of these Bodyes the particular miscarriages demonstrate For there is no Matter so perverse and stubborn but his Omnipotency could tame whence there would be no Defects nor Monstrosities in the generation of Animals Nor is it so congruous to admit that the Plastick faculty of the Soul of the World is the sole contriver of these Fabricks of particular creatures though I will not deny but she may give some rude preparative stroaks towards Efformation but that in every particular world such as Man is especially his own Soule is the peculiar and most perfective Architect thereof as the Soule of the World is of it For this vitall Fabrication is not as in artificiall Architecture when an external person acts upon Matter but implies a more particular and near union with that Matter it thus intrinsecally shapes out and organizes And what ought to have a more particular and close union with our Bodies then our Souls themselves My opinion is therefore That the Soule which is a Spirit and therefore contractible and dilatable begins within less compass at first in Organizing the fitly-prepared Matter and so bears it self on in the same tenour of work till the Body has attained its full growth and that the Soule dilates it self in the dilating of the Body and so possesses it through all the members thereof 3. The congruity of this Truth will further discover it self if we consider the nature of the faculties of the Soule of which you may read more fully in Enthusiasmus Triumphatus Artic. 3 4 5. in what a natural graduality they arise till they come to the most free of all The deepest or lowest is this Plastick power we have already spoke of in virtue whereof is continued that perpetuall Systole and Diastole of the Heart as I am more prone to think then that it is meerly Mechanical as also that Respiration that is performed without the command of our Will For the Libration or Reciprocation of the Spirits in the Tensility of the Muscles would not be so perpetuall but cease in a small time did not some more mysticall Principle then what is meerly Mechanical give Assistance as any one may understand by observing the insufficiency of those devices that Henricus Regius propounds for adaequate causes of such motions in the Body These I look upon as the First Faculties of the Soule which may be bounded by this generall character That the exercise of them does not at all imply so much as our Perception 4. Next to these is the Sensation of any externall Object such as Hearing Seeing Feeling c. All which include Perception in an unresistible necessity thereof the Object being present before us and no externall Obstacle interposing 5. Imagination is more free we being able to avoid its representations for the most part without any externall help but it is a degree on this side Will and Reason by which we correct and silence unallowable fancies Thus we see how the Faculties of the Soule rise by Degrees which makes it still the more easy and credible that the lowest of all is competible to her as well as the highest 6. Moreover Passions and Sympathies in my judgment are more easily to be resolved into this Hypothesis of the Souls pervading the whole Body then in restraining its essentiall presence to one part thereof For to believe that such an horrible Object as suppose a Bear or Tiger by transmission of Motion from it through the eyes of an Animal to the Conarion shall so reflect thence as to determine the Spirits into such Nerves as will streighten the Orifice of the Heart and lessen the Pulse and cause all other symptomes of Fear seems to me little better then a meer piece of Mechanical Credulity Those Motions that represent the Species of things being turned this way or the other way without any such impetus of Matter as should doe such feats as Des-Cartes speaks of in his Book of Passions And that which he would give us as a pledg of this Truth is so false that it does the more animate me to dis-believe the Theorem Artic. 13. For the wafting of one's hand neare the Eye of a mans friend is no sufficient proof That externall Objects will necessarily and Mechanically determine the Spirits into the Muscles no Faculty of the Soule intermedling For if one be fully assured or rather can keep himself from the fear of any hurt by the wafting of his friends Hand before his Eye he
may easily abstain from winking But if fear surprise him the Soule is to be entitled to the action and not the meer Mechanisme of the Body Wherefore this is no proof that the Phaenomena of Passions with their consequences may be salved in brute Beasts by pure Mechanicks and therefore neither in Men but it is evident that they arise in us against both our Will and Appetite For who would bear the tortures of Fears and Jealousies if he could avoid it And therefore the Soule sends not nor determines the Spirits thus to her own Torture as she resides in the Head Whence it is plain that it is the effect of her as she resides in the Heart and Stomack which sympathize with the horrid representation in the Common Sensorium by reason of the exquisite unity of the Soul with her self of the continuity of Spirits in the Body the necessary instrument of all her Functions And there is good reason the Heart Stomack should be so much affected they being the chief Seats of those Faculties that maintain the life of the Body the danger whereof is the most eminent Object of Fear in any Animal 7. From this Principle I conceive that not onely the Sympathy of parts in one particular Subject but of different and distant Subjects may be understood such as is betwixt the party wounded and the Knife or Sword that wounded him besmeared with the Weapon-salve and kept in a due temper Which certainly is not purely Mechanical but Magical though not in an unlawful sense that is to say it is not to be resolved into meer Matter of what thinness or subtilty soever you please but into the Unity of the Soul of the Universe and Continuity of the subtile Matter which answers to our Animal Spirits And in this sense it is that Plotinus sayes that the World is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the grand Magus or Enchanter And I doe not question but that upon this score meerly without the association of any Familiar Spirit several odde things may be done for evil as well as good For this Spirit of the World has Faculties that work not by Election but fatally or naturally as several Gamaitus we meet withall in Nature seem somewhat obscurely to subindicate Of this Principle we shall speak more fully in its due place 8. But we have yet a more clear discovery that our Soul is not confined to any one part of the Head but possesses the whole Body from the Perception of Pain in the parts thereof For it is plainly impossible that so high a torture as is felt but in the pricking of a Pin can be communicated to the Centre of Perception upon a meer Mechanical account For whether the immediate Instrument of Sense be the Pith of the Nerves as Des-Cartes would have it or whether it be the Spirits as is most true it is ridiculous to think that by the forcible parting of what was joyned together at ease when this case is not communicated to either the Spirits or Pith of the Nerves from the place of the Puncture to the very seat of Common Sense that the Soul there seated should feel so smart a torment unless that her very Essence did reach to the part where the pain is felt to be For then the reason of this is plain that it is the Unity of Soul possessing the whole Body and the Continuity of Spirits that is the cause thereof And it is no wonder if the continuation and natural composure of the Spirits be Rest and Ease to the Soul that a violent disjoyning and bruising of them and baring the Soul of them as I may so speak should cause a very harsh and torturous sense in the Centre of Perception This Argument bears undeniable Evidence with it if we doe but consider the fuzziness of the Pith of the Nerves and the fluidity of the Spirits and what little stress or crouding so small a thing as a Pin or Needle can make in such soft and liquid Matter CHAP. XI 1. That neither the Soul without the Spirits nor the Spirits without the presence of the Soul in the Organ are sufficient causes of Sensation 2. A brief declaration how Sensation is made 3. How Imagination 4. Of Reason and Memory and whether there be any Marks in the Brain 5. That the Spirits are the immediate Instrument of the Soul in Memory also and how Memory arises 6. As also Forgetfulness 7. How spontaneous Motion is performed 8. How we walk sing and play though thinking of something else 9. That though the Spirits be not alike fine every where yet the Sensiferous Impression will pass to the Common Sensorium 10. That there is an Heterogeneity in the very Soul her self and what it is in her we call the Root the Centre and the Eye and what the Rayes and Branches 11. That the sober and allowable Distribution of her into Parts is into Perceptive and Plastick 1. AFter our evincing that the Soul is not confined to the Common Sensorium but does essentially reach all the Organs of the Body it will be more easy to determine the Nature of Sensation and other Operations we mentioned For we have already demonstrated these two things of main consequence That the Spirits are not sufficient of themselves for these Functions nor the Soul of her self without the assistance of the Spirits as is plain in the interception or disjunction of the Spirits by Ligature or Obstruction whence it is that Blindness sometimes happens meerly for that the Optick Nerve is obstructed 2. Wherefore briefly to dispatch our third Querie I say in general That Sensation is made by the arrival of motion from the Object to the Organ where it is received in all the circumstances we perceive it in and conveyed by vertue of the Souls presence there assisted by her immediate Instrument the Spirits by vertue of whose continuity to those in the Common Sensorium the Image or Impress of every Object is faithfully transmitted thither 3. As for Imagination there is no question but that Function is mainly exercised in the chief seat of the Soul those purer Animal Spirits in the fourth Ventricle of the Brain I speak especially of that Imagination which is most free such as we use in Romantick Inventions or such as accompany the more severe Meditations and Disquisitions in Philosophy or any other Intellectuall entertainments For Fasting fresh Aire moderate Wine and all things that tend to an handsome supply and depuration of the Spirits make our thoughts more free subtile and clear 4. Reason is so involved together with Imagination that we need say nothing of it apart by it self Memory is a Faculty of a more peculiar consideration and if the Pith of the Brain contribute to the Functions of any power of the mind more then by conserving the Animal Spirits it is to this But that the Brain should be stored with distinct images whether they consist of the Flexures of the supposed Fibrillae or the orderly
very question of the Praeexistency of Soules of the Sensitive and Rationall especially 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whether both kindes doe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is praeexist before they come into the Body or whether the Rationall onely and he concludes thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. It remains that the rationall or intellectual Soule onely enter from without as being onely of a nature purely divine with whose actions the actions of this gross Body have no communication Concerning which point he concludes like an Orthodox Scholar of his excellent Master Plato to whose footsteps the closer he keeps the less he ever wanders from the truth For in this very place he does plainly profess what many would not have him so apertly guilty of that the Soule of man is immortall and can perform her proper Functions without the help of this terrestriall Body And thus I think I have made good the two first parts of my answer to the proposed Objection and have clearly proved that the Praeexistence of the Soule is an opinion both in it self the most rationall that can be maintained and has had the suffrage of the renownedst Philosophers in all Ages of the World and that therefore this sequel from our arguments for the Immortality of the Soule is no discovery of any fallacy in them CHAP. XIII 1. The third part of the second Answer That the forgetting of the former state is no good argument against the Soules Praeexistence 2. What are the chief causes of Forgetfulness 3. That they all conspire and that in the highest degree to destroy the memory of the other state 4. That mischances and Diseases have quite taken away the Memory of things here in this life 5. That it is impossble for the Soule to remember her former condition without a Miracle 6. The fourth part of the second Answer That the entrance of a Praeexistent Soule into a Body is as intelligible as either Creation or Traduction 1. AS for the two last Difficulties concerning the Soules Memory of her former state and the manner of her coming into the Body I hope I shall with as much ease extricate my self here also especially in the former For if we consider what things they are that either quite take away or exceedingly diminish our Memory in this life we shall find the concurse of them all and that in a higher degree or from stronger causes contained in our descent into this earthly Body then we can meet with here they none of them being so violent as to dislodge us out of it 2. Now the things that take away our Memory here are chiefly these either the want of opportunity of being reminded of a thing as it happens with many who rise confident they slept without dreaming such a night and yet before they goe to bed again recover a whole Series of representations they had in their last sleep by something that sell out in the day without which it had been impossible for them to recall to minde their Dream Or else in the second place Desuetude of thinking of a Matter whereby it comes to pass that what we have earnestly meditated laboured for and pen'd down with our own hands when we were at Schoole were it not that we saw our names written under the Exercise we could not acknowledg for ours when we are grown men Or lastly some considerable change in the frame and temper of our Body whether from some externall mischance or from some violent Disease or else from old age which is disease enough of it self which often doe exceedingly impaire if not quite take away the Memory though the Soule be still in the same Body 3. Now all these Principles of Forgetfulness namely the want of something to reminde us Desuetude of thinking and an Extraordinary change in the Body are more eminently to be found in the Descent of the Soule into these Earthly prisons then can happen to her for any time of her abode therein For there is a greater difference in all probability betwixt that Scene of things the Soule sees out of the Body and in it then betwixt what shee sees sleeping and waking and the perpetuall occursions of this present life continue a long Desuetude of thinking on the former Besides that their descent hither in all likelihood scarce befalls them but in their state of Silence and Inactivity in which myriads of Soules may haply be for many Ages as the maintainers of this Opinion may pretend by reason of the innumerable expirations of the aëreal periods of life and the more narrow Lawes of preparing terrestrial Matter And lastly her coming into this Earthly Body is a greater and more disadvantageous change for the utter spoiling of the memory of things she was acquainted with before then any Mischance or Disease can be for the bringing upon her a forgetfulness of what she has known in this life 4. And yet that Diseases and Casualties have even utterly taken away all memory is amply recorded in History As that Messala Corvinus forgot his own name that one by a blow with a stone forgot all his learning another by a fall from an Horse the name of his Mother and kinsfolks A young Student of Montpelier by a wound lost his Memory so that he was fain to be taught the letters of the Alphabet again The like befell a Franciscan after a Feaver And Thucydides writes of some who after their recovery from that great Pestilence at Athens did not onely forget the names and persons of their friends but themselves too not knowing who themselves were nor by what name they were called Atque etiam quosdam cepisse oblivia rerum Cunctarum neque se possent cognoscere ut ipsi as the Poet Lucretius sadly sets down in his description of that devouring Plague out of the fore-named Historian 5. Wherefore without a miracle it is impossible the Soule should remember any particular circumstance of her former condition though she did really praeexist and was in a capacity of acting before she came into this Body as Aristotle plainly acknowledges she was her change being far greater by coming into the Body then can ever be made while she staies in it Which we haply shall be yet more assured of after we have considered the manner of her descent which is the last Difficulty objected 6. I might easily decline this Controversie by pleading onely that the entrance of the Soule into the Body supposing her Praeexistence is as intelligible as in those other two wayes of Creation and Traduction For how this newly-created Soule is infused by God no man knowes nor how if it be traducted from the Parents both their Soules contribute to the making up a new one For if there be decision of part of the Soule of the Male in the injection of his seed into the matrix of the Female and part of the Female Soule to joyn with that of the Males besides that the decision of these parts of their
Soules makes the Soule a Discerpible essence it is unconceivable how these two parts should make up one Soule for the Infant a thing ridiculous at first view But if there be no decision of any parts of the Soule and yet the Soule of the Parent be the cause of the Soule of the Childe it is perfectly an act of Creation a thing that all sober men conclude incompetible to any particular Creature It is therfore plainly unintelligible how any Soul should pass from the Parents into the Body of the seed of the Foetus to actuate and inform it which might be sufficient to stop the mouth of the Opposer that pretends such great obscurities concerning the entrance of Praeexistent Souls into their Bodies CHAP. XIV 1. The knowledge of the difference of Vehicles and the Soules Union with them necessary for the understanding how she enters into this Earthly Body 2. That though the name of Vehicle be not in Aristotle yet the thing is there 3. A clearing of Aristotles notion of the Vehicle out of the Philosophy of Des-Cartes 4. A full interpretation of his Text. 5. That Aristotle makes onely two Vehicles Terrestriall and AEthereall which is more then sufficient to prove the Soul's Oblivion of her former state 6. That the ordinary Vehicle of the Soule after death is Aire 7. The duration of the Soule in her severall Vehicles 8. That the Union of the Soule with her Vehicle does not consist in Mechanicall Congruity but Vitall 9. In what Vitall congruity of the Matter consists 10. In what Vital congruity of the Soule consists and how it changing the Soule may be free from her aiery Vehicle without violent precipitation out of it 11. Of the manner of the descent of Souls into Earthly Bodies 12. That there is so little Absurdity in the Praeexistence of Soules that the concession thereof can be but a very small prejudice to our Demonstrations of her Immortality 1. BUT I shall spend my time better in clearing the Opinion I here defend then in perplexing that other that is so gross of it self that none that throughly understand the nature of the Soule can so much as allow the possibility thereof wherefore for the better conceiving how a Praeexistent Soule may enter this Terrestriall Body there are two things to be enquired into the difference of the Vehicles of Soules and the cause of their union with them The Platonists doe chiefly take notice of Three kindes of Vehicles AEthereal AEreal and Terrestrial in every one whereof there may be several degrees of purity and impurity which yet need not amount to a new Species 2. This notion of Vehicles though it be discoursed of most in the School of Plato yet is not altogether neglected by Aristotle as appears in his De Generat Animal Lib. 2. Cap. 3. where though he does not use the Name yet he does expresly acknowledge the Thing it self For he does plainly affirm that every Soule partakes of a Body distinct from this organized terrestriall Body and of a more divine nature then the Elements so called and that as one Soule is more noble then another so is the difference of this diviner Body which yet is nothing else with him then that warmth or heat in the seed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is not fire but a Spirit contained in the spumeous seed and in this Spirit a nature analogous to the element of the Stars 3. Of which neither Aristotle himself had nor any one else can have so explicite an apprehension as those that understand the first and second Element of Des-Cartes which is the most subtill and active Body that is in the World is of the very same nature that the Heaven and Stars are that is to say is the very Body of Light which is to be understood chiefly of the first Element though so mingled with other Matter here below that it does not shine but is the Basis of all that naturall warmth in all generations and the immediate instrument of the Soule when it organizeth any Matter into the figure or shape of an Animall as I have also intimated elsewhere when I proved that the Spirits are the immediate instrument of the Soule in all Vital and Animal functions In which Spirits of necessity is contained this Coelestiall Substance which keeps them from congealing as it does also all other liquid bodies and must needs be in the Pores of them there being no Vacuum in the whole comprehension of Nature 4. The full and express meaning therefore of Aristotles text must be this that in the spumeous and watry or terrene moisture of the seed is contained a Body of a more spirituous or aëreal consistency and in this aëreal or spirituous consistency is comprehended 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a nature that is analogous or like to the Element of the stars namely that is of it self aethereal and lucid 5. And it is this Vehicle that Aristotle seems to assert that the Soule does act in separate from the Body as if she were ever either in this terrestrial Body or in her aethereal one which if it were true so vast a change must needs obliterate all Memory of her former condition when she is once plunged into this earthly prison But it seems not so probable to me that Nature admits of so great a Chasme nor is it necessary to suppose it for this purpose the descent of the Soule out of her aiery Vehicle into this terrestrial Body and besmearing moisture of the first rudiments of life being sufficient to lull her into an eternall oblivion of whatever hapned to her in that other condition to say nothing of her long state of Silence and Inactivity before her turn come to revive in an earthly body 6. Wherefore not letting go that more orderly conceit of the Platonists I shall make bold to assert that the Soule may live and act in an aëreal Vehicle as well as in the aethereal and that there are very few that arrive to that high happiness as to acquire a Coelestial Vehicle immediatly upon their quitting the terrestrial one that heavenly Chariot necessarily carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the Soule of man is capable of which would arrive to all men indifferently good and bad if the parting with this earthly Body would suddainly mount us into the heavenly Wherefore by a just Nemesis the Soules of Men that are not very Heroically vertuous will finde themselves restrained within the compass of this caliginous Aire as both Reason it self will suggest and the Platonists have unanimously determined 7. We have competently described the difference of those three kinds of Vehicles for their purity and consistency The Platonists adde to this the difference of duration making some of them of that nature as to entertain the Soule a longer time in them others a shorter The shortest of all is that of the Terrestrial Vehicle In the Aëreal the Soule may inhabit as they define many Ages and in the
the Separation of the Soul with a confutation of Regius who would stop her in the dead Corps 2. An Answer to those that profess themselves puzled how the Soul can get out of the Body 3. That there is a threefold Vital Congruity to be found in three several Subjects 4. That this triple Congruity is also competible to one Subject viz. the Soul of Man 5. That upon this Hypothesis it is very intelligible how the Soul may leave the Body 6. That her Union with the aereal Vehicle may be very suddain and as it were in a moment 7. That the Soul is actually separate from the Body is to be proved either by History or Reason Examples of the former kinde out of Pliny Herodotus Ficinus 8. Whether the Exstasie of Witches prove an actual separation of the Soul from the Body 9. That this real separation of the Soul in Exstasie is very possible 10. How the Soul may be loosned and leave the Body and yet return thither again 11. That though Reason and Will cannot in this life release the Soul from the Body yet Passion may and yet so that she may return again 12. The peculiar power of Desire for this purpose 13. Of Cardans Exstasies and the Ointment of Witches and what truth there may be in their confessions 1. COncerning the actual and local Separation of the Soul from the Body it is manifest that it is to be understood of this Terrestrial Body For to be in such a separate state as to be where no Body or Matter is is to be out of the World the whole Universe being so thick set with Matter or Body that there is not to be found the least vacuity therein The question therefore is onely whether upon death the Soul can pass from the Corps into some other place Henricus Regius seems to arrest her there by that general law of Nature termed the law of Immutability whereby every thing is to continue in the same condition it once is in till something else change it But the application of this law is very grosly injust in this case For as I have above intimated the Union of the Soul with the Body is upon certain terms neither is every peece of Matter fit for every Soul to unite with as Aristotle of old has very solidly concluded Wherefore that condition of the Matter being not kept the Soul is no longer engaged to the Body What he here says for the justifying of himself is so arbitrarious so childish and ridiculous that according to the merit thereof I shall utterly neglect it and pass it by not vouchsafing of it any Answer 2. Others are much puzled in their imagination how the Soul can get out of the Body being imprisoned and lockt up in so close a Castle But these seem to forget both the nature of the Soul with the tenuity of her Vehicle and also the Anatomy of the Body For considering the nature of the Soul her self and of Matter which is alike penetrable every where the Soul can pass through solid Iron and Marble as well as through the soft Air and AEther so that the thickness of the Body is no impediment to her Besides her Astral Vehicle is of that tenuity that it self can as easily pass the smallest pores of the Body as the Light does Glass or the Lightning the Scabbard of a Sword without tearing or scorching of it And lastly whether we look upon that principal seat of the Plastick power the Heart or that of Perception the Brain when a man dies the Soul may collect her self and the small residue of Spirits that may haply serve her in the inchoation of her new Vehicle either into the Heart whence is an easy passage into the Lungs and so out at the Mouth or else into the Head out of which there are more doors open then I will stand to number These things are very easily imaginable though as invisible as the Air in whose element they are transacted 3. But that they may still be more perfectly understood I shall resume again the consideration of that Faculty in the Plastick part of the Soul which we call Vital Congruity Which according to the number of Vehicles we will define to be threefold Terrestrial AEreal and AEthereal or Coelestial That these Vital Congruities are found some in some kinde of Spirits and others in othersome is very plain For that the Terrestrial is in the Soul of Brutes and in our own is without controversie as also that the AEreal in that kinde of Beings which the Ancients called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and lastly that the Heavenly and AEthereal in those Spirits that Antiquity more properly called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as being Inhabitants of the Heavens For that there are such AEreal and AEthereal Beings that are analogous to Terrestrial Animals if we compare the nature of God with the Phaenomena of the world it cannot prove less then a Demonstration For this Earth that is replenisht with living Creatures nay put in all the Planets too that are in the world and fancy them inhabited they all joyned together bear not so great a proportion to the rest of the liquid Matter of the Universe that is in a nearer capacity of being the Vehicle of Life as a single Cumin-seed to the Globe of the Earth But how ridiculous a thing would it be that all the Earth beside being neglected onely one peece thereof no better then the rest nor bigger then the smallest seed should be inhabited The same may be said also of the compass of the Aire and therefore it is necessary to enlarge their Territories and confidently to pronounce there are AEthereal Animals as well as Terrestrial and AEreal 4. It is plain therefore that these three Congruities are to be found in severall Subjects but that which makes most to our purpose is to finde them in one and that in the Soule of Man And there will be an easy intimation thereof if we consider the vast difference of those Faculties that we are sure are in her Perceptive part and how they occasionally emerge and how upon the laying asleep of one others will spring up Neither can there be any greater difference betwixt the highest and lowest of these Vitall congruities in the Plastick part then there is betwixt the highest and lowest of those Faculties that result from the Perceptive For some Perceptions are the very same with those of Beasts others little inferiour to those that belong to Angels as we ordinarily call them some perfectly brutish others purely divine why therefore may there not reside so great a Latitude of capacities in the Plastick part of the Soule as that she may have in her all those three Vitall Congruities whereby she may be able livingly to unite as well with the Coelestial and AEreal Body as with this Terrestrial one Nay our nature being so free and multifarious as it is it would seem a reproach to Providence to deny this capacity of
it is so incredible to others that the thing should be true it being so evincing an argument for the Soules Immortality And he thinks this Truth is evident from innumerable examples of the Ecstasies of Witches which we must confess with him not to be natural but that they amount to a perfect 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or carrying away the Soule out of the Body the lively sense of their meeting and dancing and adoring the Devill and the mutuall remembrance of the persons that meet one another there at such a time will be no infallible Demonstration that they were there indeed while their Bodies lay at home in Bed Conformity of their Confessions concerning the same Conventicle is onely a shrewd probability if it once could be made good that this leaving their Bodies were a thing possible For when they are out of them they are much-what in the same condition that other Spirits are and can imitate what shape they please so that many of these Transformations into Wolves and Cats may be as likely of the Soule having left thus the Body as by the Devils possessing the Body and transfiguring it himself And what these aiery Cats or Wolves suffer whether cuttings of their limbs or breaking the Back or any such like mischief that the Witch in her Bed suffers the like may very well arise from that Magick Sympathy that is seated in the Unity of the Spirit of the World and the continuity of the subtill Matter dispersed throughout The Universe in some sense being as the Stoicks and Platonists define it one vast entire Animal 9. Now that this reall Separation of the Soule may happen in some Ecstasies will be easily admitted if we consider that the Soule in her own Nature is separable from the Body as being a Substance really distinct therefrom and that all Bodies are alike penetrable and passable to her she being devoid of that corporeall property which they ordinarily call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and therefore can freely slide through any Matter whatsoever without any knocking or resistance and lastly that she does not so properly impart Heat and Motion to the Body as Organization and therefore when the Body is well organized and there be that due temper of the Blood the Heart and Pulse will in some measure beat and the Brain will be replenish't with Spirits and therewith the whole Body though the Soule were out of it In which case saving that the Spirit of Nature cannot be excluded thence it would be perfectly Cartesius his Machina without Sense though seemingly as much alive as any animate Creature in a deep sleep Whence it appears that if the Soule could leave the Body that she might doe it for a certain time without any detriment thereto that is so long as she might well live without Repast Which fully answers their fears who conceit that if the Soule was but once out of the Body perfect Death must necessarily ensue and all possible return thither be precluded 10. But all the difficulty is to understand how the Soul may be loosned from the Body while the Body is in a fit condition to retain her That is a very great Difficulty indeed and in a manner impossible for any power but what is supernatural But it is not hard to conceive that this vital fitness in the Body may be changed either by way of natural Disease or by Art For why may not some certain Fermentation in the Body so alter the Blood and Spirits that the powers of the Plastick part of the Soul may cease to operate as well as sometimes the Perceptive faculties doe as in Catalepsies Apoplexies and the like Wherefore this passing of the Soul out of the Body in Sleep or Ecstasie may be sometime a certain Disease as well as that of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those that walk in their sleep Now if it should happen that some such distemper should arise in the Body as would very much change the Vital Congruity thereof for a time and in this Paroxysm that other Disease of the Noctambuli should surprise the party his Imagination driving him to walk to this or that place his Soul may very easily be conceived in this loosned condition it lies in to be able to leave the Body and pass in the Aire as other Inhabitants of that Element doe and act the part of separate Spirits and exercise such Functions of the perceptive faculty as they do that are quite released from Terrestrial Matter Onely here is the difference That that damp in the Body that loosned the Union of the Soul being spent the Soul by that natural Magick I have more then once intimated will certainly return to the Body and unite with it again as firm as ever But no man can when he pleases pass out of his Body thus by the Imperium of his Will no more then he can walk in his Sleep For this capacity is pressed down more deep into the lower life of the Soul whither neither the Liberty of Will nor free Imagination can reach 11. Passion is more likely to take effect in this case then either of the other two Powers the seat of Passions being originally in the Heart which is the chief Fort of these lower Faculties and therefore by their propinquity can more easily act upon the first Principles of Vital Union The effect of these has been so great that they have quite carried the Soul out of the Body as appears in sundry Histories of that kinde For both Sophocles and Dionysius the Sicilian Tyrant died suddainly upon the news of a Tragick Victory as Polycrita also a Noble-Woman of the Isle of Naxus the Poet Philippides and Diagoras of Rhodes upon the like excess of Joy We might adde examples of sudden Fear and Grief but it is needless It is a known and granted Truth that Passion has so much power over the vital temper of the Body as to make it an unfit mansion for the Soul from whence will necessarily follow her disunion from it Now if Passion will so utterly change the Harmony of the Blood and Spirits as quite to release the Soul from the Body by a perfect Death why may it not sometime act on this side that degree and onely bring a present intemperies out of which the Body may recover and consequently regain the Soul back again by virtue of that Mundane Sympathy I have so often spoke of 12. Now of all Passions whatever excess of Desire is fittest for this more harmless and momentany ablegation of the Soul from the Body because the great strength thereof is so closely assisted with the imagination of departing to the place where the party would be that upon disunion not amounting to perfect Death the power of Fancy may carry the Soul to the place intended and being satisfied and returned may rekindle life in the Body to the same degree it had before it was infested by this excess of Desire This is that if any thing that has
to their Paramours after they had left their Bodies taking all opportunities to meet them in Solitude whether by day or by night 3. There be also other more fortuitous occursions of these deceased Spirits of which one can give no account unless it be because they find themselves in a more easy capacity to appear As haply it may be in Fields after great slaughters of Armies and in publick Buriall-places Though some would ridiculously put off these Apparitions by making them nothing but the reek or vapour of the Bodies of the dead which they fancy will fall into the like stature and shape with the man it comes from Which yet Cardan playes the fool in as well as Vaninus and others as he does also in his account of those Spectra that appear so ordinarily in Iseland where the Inhabitants meet their deceased friends in so lively an Image that they salute them and embrace them for the same persons not knowing of their death unless by their suddain disappearing or by after-information that they were then dead This he imputes partly to the Thickness of the Aire and partly to the foule food and gross spirits of the Islanders and yet implies that their fancies are so strong as to convert the thick vaporous aire into the compleat shape of their absent and deceased acquaintance and so perswade themselves that they see them and talk with them whenas it is nothing else but an aiery Image made by the power of their own Fancy But certainly it had been better flatly to have denied the Narration then to give so slight and unprobable reason of the Phaenomenon 4. That the Spissitude of the Aire in that place may contribute something to the frequency of these Spectra is rationall enough For it being more thick it is the more easily reduced to a visible consistency but must be shaped not by the fancy of the Spectatour for that were a monstrous power but by the Imagination of the Spirit that actuates its own Vehicle of that gross Aire For the same reason also in other places these Apparitions haply appear oftner in the Night then in the Day the Aire being more clammy and thick after the Sun has been some while down then before To which also that custome of the Lappians a people of Scandia seems something to agree who as Caspar Peucerus relates are very much haunted with Apparitions of their deceased friends For which trouble they have no remedy but burying them under their Hearth Which Ceremony can have no naturall influence upon these Lemures unless they should hereby be engaged to keep in a warmer aire consequently more rarified then if they were interred elsewhere Or rather because their Bodies will sooner putrify by the warmth of the hearth whenas otherwise the coldness of that Clime would permit them to be sound a longer time and consequently be fit for the Souls of the deceased to have recourse to and replenish their Vehicle with such a Cambium or gluish moisture as will make it far easier to be commanded into a visible consistence 5. That this facilitates their condition of appearing is evident from that known recourse these infestant Spirits have to their dead Bodies As is notorious in the History of Cuntius which I have set down at large in my Antidote Lib. 3. Cap. 9. and of the Silesian Shoomaker and his Maid in the foregoing Chapter To which you may adde what Agrippa writes out of the Cretian Annals How there the Catechanes that is the Spirits of the deceased Husbands would be very troublesome to their Wives endeavour to lye with them while they could have any recourse to their dead Bodies Which mischief therefore was prevented by a Law that if any Woman was thus infested the Body of her Husband should be burnt and his Heart struck through with a stake Which also put a speedy end to those stirs and tragedies the Ghost of Cuntius and those others caused at Pentsch and Breslan in Silesia The like disquietnesses are reported to have hapned in the year 1567. at Trawtenaw a city of Bohemia by one Stephanus Hubener who was to admiration grown rich as Cuntius of Pentsch and when he died did as much mischief to his fellow-Citizens For he would ordinarily appear in the very shape he was when he was alive and such as he met would salute them with so close embraces that he caused many to fall sick and several to die by the unkinde huggs he gave them But burning his Body rid the Town of the perilous occursations of this malicious Gobling All which instances doe prove not onely the appearing of Souls after they have left this life but also that some thickning Matter such as may be got either from Bodies alive or lately dead or as fresh as those that are but newly dead as the Body of this Hubener was though it had lyen 20 weeks in the Grave or lastly from thick vaporous Air may facilitate much their appearing and so invite them to play tricks when they can doe it at so cheap a rate though they have little or no end in doing them but the pleasing of their own either ludicrous or boisterous and domineering humour 6. But of any private person that ever appeared upon design after his death there is none did upon a more noble one then that eximious Platonist Marsilius Ficinus who having as Baronius relates made a solemn vow with his fellow-Platonist Michael Mercatus after they had been pretty warmly disputing of the Immortality of the Soul out of the Principles of their Master Plato that whether of them two died first should appear to his friend and give him certain information of that Truth it being Ficinus his fate to die first and indeed not long after this mutual resolution he was mindful of his promise when he had left the Body For Michael Mercatus being very intent at his Studies betimes on a morning heard an horse riding by with all speed and observed that he stopped at his window and therewith heard the voice of his friend Ficinus crying out aloud O Michael Michael vera vera sunt illa Whereupon he suddenly opened the window and espying Marsilius on a white Steed called after him but he vanisht in his sight He sent therefore presently to Florence to know how Marsilius did and understood that he died about that hour he called at his window to assure him of his own and other mens Immortalities 7. The Examples I have produced of the appearing of the Souls of men after death considering how clearly I have demonstrated the separability of them from the Body and their capacity of Vital Union with an aiery Vehicle cannot but have their due weight of Argument with them that are unprejudiced But as for those that have their minds enveloped in the dark mist of Atheism that lazy and Melancholy saying which has dropt from the careless pen of that uncertain Writer Cardan Orbis magnus est aevum longum
in the Body cannot enjoy any better Spirits in which all her life and comfort consists then the constitution of the Body after such circuits of concoction can administer to her But those Genii of the Aire who possess their Vehicles upon no such hard terms if themselves be not in fault may by the power of their minds accommodate themselves with more pure and impolluted Matter and such as will more easily conspire with the noblest and divinest functions of their Spirit In brief therefore if we consider things aright we cannot abstain from strongly surmising that there is no more difference betwixt a Soule and an aëreal Genius then there is betwixt a Sword in the scabbard and one out of it and that a Soule is but a Genius in the Body and a Genius a Soule out of the Body as the Antients also have defined giving the same name as well as nature promiscuously to them both by calling them both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as I have elsewhere noted 5. This is very consonant to what Michael Psellus sets down from the singular knowledge and experience of Marcus the Eremite in these matters who describes the nature of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as being throughout Spirit and Aire whence they heare and see and feel in every part of their Body Which he makes good by this reason and wonders at the ignorance of men that doe not take notice of it viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it is neither Bones nor Nerves nor any gross or visible part of the Body or of any Organ thereof whereby the Soule immediately exercises the functions of Sense but that it is the Spirits that are her nearest and inmost instrument of these operations Of which when the Body is deprived there is found no Sense in it though the gross Organs and parts are in their usuall consistency as we see in Syncopes and Apoplexies Which plainly shewes that the immediate Vehicle of Life are the Spirits and that the Soules connexion with the Body is by these as the most learned Physicians doe conclude with one consent Whence it will follow that this Vinculum being broke the Soule will be free from the Body and will as naturally be carried out of the corrupt carkass that now has no harmony with the Soule into that Element that is more congenerous to her the vital Aire as the Fire will mount upwards as I have already noted And so Principles of Life being fully kindled in this thinner Vehicle she becomes as compleat for Sense and Action as any other Inhabitants of these aiery regions 6. There is onely one perverse Objection against this so easy and naturall Conclusion which is this That by this manner of reasoning the Soules of Brutes especially those of the perfecter sort will also not onely subsist for that difficulty is concocted pretty well already but also live and enjoy themselves after death To which I dare boldly answer That it is a thousand times more reasonable that they doe then that the Soules of Men doe not Yet I will not confidently assert that they doe or doe not but will lightly examine each Hypothesis And first by way of feigned concession we will say They doe and take notice of the Reasons that may induce one to think so Amongst which two prime ones are those involved in the Objection That they doe subsist after death and That the immediate instrument of their Vitall Functions is their Spirits as well as in Man To which we may adde That for the present we are fellow-inhabitants of one and the same Element the Earth subject to the same fate of Fire Deluges and Earthquakes That it is improbable that the vast space of Aire and AEther that must be inhabited by living creatures should have none but of one sort that is the Angels or Genii good or bad For it would seem as great a solitude as if Men alone were the Inhabitants of the Earth or Mermaids of the Sea That the periods of vitall congruity wound up in the Nature of their Soules by that eternall Wisdome that is the Creatress of all things may be shorter or longer according as the property of their essence and relation to the Universe requires and that so their Descents and Returns may be accordingly swifter or slower That it is more conformable to the Divine goodness to be so then otherwise if their natures will permit it And that their existence would be in vain while they were deprived of vital operation when they may conveniently have it That they would be no more capable of Salvation in the other state then they are here of Conversion That the intellectual Inhabitants of the Aire having also externall and corporeall Sense variety of Objects would doe as well there as here amongst us on Earth Besides that Historyes seem to imply as if there were such kind of aereal Animals amongst them as Dogs Horses and the like And therefore to be short that the Soules of Brutes cease to be alive after they are separate from this Body can have no other reason then Immorality the Mother of Ignorance that is nothing but narrowness of spirit out of over-much self-love and contempt of other Creatures to embolden us so confidently to adhere to so groundless a Conclusion 7. This Position makes indeed a plausible shew insomuch that if the Objection drove one to acknowledge it for Truth he might seem to have very little reason to be ashamed of it But this Controversy is not so easily decided For though it be plain that the Soules of Beasts be Substances really separable from their Bodies yet if they have but one Vital congruity namely the Terrestriall one they cannot recover life in the Aire But their having one or two or more Vital congruities wholy depends upon his wisdome counsel that has made all things Besides the Souls of Brutes seem to have a more passive nature then to be able to manage or enjoy this escape of Death that free and commanding Imagination belonging onely to us as also Reminiscency But Brutes have onely a passive Imagination and bare Memory which failing them in all likelyhood in the shipwrack of their Body if they could live in the Aire they would begin the World perfectly on a new score which is little better then Death so that they might in this sense be rightly deemed mortall Our being Co-inhabitants of the same element the Earth proves nothing for by the same reason Worms and Fleas should live out of their Bodies and Fishes should not who notwithstanding their shape it may be a little changed for there is no necessity that these creatures in their aiery Vehicles should be exactly like themselves in their terrestriall ones might act and live in the more moist tracts of the Aire As for the supposed solitude that would be in the Aire it reaches not this Matter For in the lower Regions thereof the various Objects of the Earth and Sea will serve the turn
fancy proceeding from the same inequality of temper that made him surmise that the most degenerate Soules did at last sleep in the bodies of Trees and grew up meerly into Plantal life Such fictions as these of fancyfull men have much depraved the ancient Cabbala and sacred Doctrine which the Platonists themselves doe profess to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a holy Tradition received from the mouth of God or Angels But however Plotinus himself does not deny but till the Soule arrive to such an exceeding height of purification that she acts in either an aiery or celestial Body But that she is never released so perfectly from all Matter how pure soever and tenuious her condition of operating here in this life is a greater presumption then can be fetcht from any thing else that she ever is For we finde plainly that her most subtil and most intellectual operations depend upon the fitness of temper in the Spirits and that it is the fineness and purity of them that invites her and enables her to love and look after divine and intellectual Objects Which kind of Motions if she could exert immediately by her own proper power and essence what should hinder her but that having a will she should bring it to effect which yet we finde she cannot if the Spirits be indisposed Nor can the Soule well be hindred by the undue temper of the Spirits in these Acts if they be of that nature that they belong to the bare essence of the Soule quite praescinded from all Union with Matter For then as to these Acts it is all one where the Soule is that is in what Matter she is and she must be in some because the Universe is every where thick-set with Matter whether she be raised into the purest regions of the Aire or plunged down into the foulest Receptacles of Earth or Water for her intellectual actings would be alike in both What then is there imaginable in the Body that can hinder her in these Operations Wherefore it is plain that the nature of the Soule is such as that she cannot act but in dependence on Matter and that her Operations are some way or other alwaies modified thereby And therefore if the Soule act at all after death which we have demonstrated she does it is evident that she is not released from all vitall union with all kind of Matter whatsoever Which is not onely the Opinion of the Platonists but of Aristotle also as may be easily gathered out of what we have above cited out of him Lib. 2. Cap. 14. 3. Besides it seems a very wilde leap in nature that the Soul of Man from being so deeply and muddily immersed into Matter as to keep company with Beasts by vitall union with gross flesh and bones should so on a suddain be changed that she should not adhere to any Matter whatsoever but ascend into an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 competible haply to none but God himself unless there be such Creatures as the Platonists call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or pure Intellects This must seem to any indifferent man very harsh and incongruous especially if we consider what noble Beings there are on this side the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that all the Philosophers that ever treated of them acknowledge to be vitally united with either aerial or aethereal Vehicles For of this condition are all the Genii or Angels It is sufficient therefore that the Soule never exceed the immateriality of those orders of Beings the lower sort whereof that they are vitally united to Vehicles of Aire their ignorance in Nature seems manifestly to bewray For it had been an easy thing and more for their credit to have informed their followers better in the Mysteries of Nature but that themselves were ignorant of these things which they could not but know if they were not thus bound to their aiery bodies For then they were not engaged to move with the whole course of the Aire but keeping themselves steddy as being disunited from all Matter they might in a moment have perceived both the diurnal and annual motion of the Earth and so have saved the Credit of their followers by communicating this Theory to them the want of the knowledge whereof spoiles their repute with them that understand the Systeme of the world better then themselves for all they boast of their Philosophy so as if it were the Dictate of the highest Angels AXIOME XXVIII There is a Triple Vitall Congruity in the Soule namely AEthereall AEriall and Terrestriall 4. THat this is the common Opinion of the Platonists I have above intimated That this Opinion is also true in it self appears from the foregoing Axiome Of the Terrestrial Congruity there can be no doubt and as little can there be but that at least one of the other two is to be granted else the Soule would be released from all vital union with Matter after Death Wherefore she has a vital aptitude at least to unite with Aire But Aire is a common Receptacle of bad and good Spirits as the Earth is of all sorts of men and beasts nay indeed rather of those that are in some sort or other bad then of good as it is upon Earth But the Soule of Man is capable of very high refinements even to a condition purely Angelicall Whence Reason will judge it fit and all Antiquity has voted it That the Souls of men arrived to such a due pitch of purification must at last obtain celestial Vehicles AXIOME XXIX According to the usual custome of Nature the Soul awakes orderly into these Vital Congruities not passing from one Extreme to another without any stay in the middle 5. THis Truth besides that at first sight it cannot but seem very reasonable according to that known Aphorism Natura non facit saltum so if it be further examined the solidity thereof will more fully appear For considering how small degrees of purification the Souls of almost all men get in this life even theirs who pass vulgarly for honest and good men it will plainly follow that very few arrive to their AEthereal Vehicle immediately upon quitting their Terrestrial Body that being a priviledge that has appertained to none but very Noble and Heroical Spirits indeed of which History records but very few But that there may be degrees of purity and excellency in the AErial Bodies is a thing that is not to be denied so that a just Nemesis will finde out every one after death AXIOME XXX The Soul in her AErial Vehicle is capable of Sense properly so called and consequently of Pleasure and Pain 6. THIS plainly appears from the 27. and 28. Axiomes For there is a necessity of the resulting of Sense from Vital Union of the Soul with any Body whatsoever and we may remember that the immediate instrument of Sense even in this earthly Body are the Spirits so that there can be no doubt of this Truth And Pleasure and Pain being
misunderstood Experiments have made some very confident that there is a Vacuum in Nature and that every Body by how much more light it is so much less substance it has in it self A thing very fond and irrational at the first sight to such as are but indifferently well versed in the incomparable Philosophy of Renatus Des-Cartes whose dexterous wit and through insight into the nature and lawes of Matter has so perfected the reasons of those Phaenomena that Demooritus Epicurus Lucretius and others have puzzled themselves about that there seems nothing now wanting as concerning that way of Philosophizing but patience and an unprejudiced judgment to peruse what he has writ 7. According therefore to his Philosophy and the Truth there is ever as much Matter or Body in one consistency as another as for example there is as much Matter in a Cup of Aire as in the same Cup filled with Water and as much in this Cup of Water as if it were filled with Lead or Quicksilver Which I take notice of here that I may free the imagination of men from that ordinary and idiotick misapprehension which they entertain of Spirits that appear as if they were as evanid and devoid of Substance as the very shadowes of our Bodies cast against a Wall or our Images reflected from a River or Looking-glass and therefore from this errour have given them names accordingly calling the Ghosts of men that present themselves to them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Umbrae Images and Shades The which the more visible they are they think them the more substantial fancying that the Aire is so condensed that there is not onely more of it but also that simply there is more Matter or Substance when it appears thus visible then there was in the same space before And therefore they must needs conceit that Death reduces us to a pittifull thin pittance of Being that our Substance is in a manner lost and nothing but a tenuious reek remains no more in proportion to us then what a sweating horse leaves behind him as he gallops by in a frosty morning Which certainly must be a very lamentable consideration to such as love this thick and plump Body they beare about with them and are pleased to consider how many pounds they outweighed their Neighbour the last time they were put in the ballance together 8. But if a kinde of dubious Transparency will demonstrate the deficiency of Corporeal Substance a Pillar of Crystal will have less thereof then one of Tobacco-smoak which though it may be so doubtful and evanid an Object to the Eye if we try it by the Hand it will prove exceeding solid as also these Ghosts that are said to appear in this manner have proved to them that have touched them or have been touched by them For it is a thing ridiculous and unworthy of a Philosopher to judge the measure of corporeal Matter by what it seems to our sight for so Air would be nothing at all or what it is to our handing or weighing of it for so indeed a Cup of Quick-silver would seem to have infinitely more Matter in it then one fill'd with Air onely and a vessel of Water less when it is plung'd under the water in the River then when it is carried in the Air. But we are to remember that let Matter be of what consistency it will as thin and pure as the flame of a candle there is not less of corporeal Substance therein then there is in the same dimensions of Silver Lead or Gold 9. So that we need not bemoan the shrivell'd condition of the deceased as if they were stript almost of all Substance corporeal and were too thinly clad to enjoy themselves as to any Object of Sense For they have no less Body then we our selves have onely this Body is far more active then ours being more spiritualized that is to say having greater degrees of Motion communicated unto it which the whole Matter of the world receives from some spiritual Being or other and therefore in this regard may be said the more to symbolize with that immaterial Being the more Motion is communicated to it As it does also in that which is the effect of Motion to wit the tenuity and subtilty of its particles whereby it is enabled to imitate in some sort the proper priviledge of Spirits that pass through all Bodies whatsoever And these Vehicles of the Soul by reason of the tenuity of their parts may well pass through such Matter as seems to us impervious though it be not really so to them For Matter reduced to such fluid subtilty of particles as are invisible may well have entrance through Pores unperceptible Whence it is manifest that the Soul speaking in a natural sense loseth nothing by Death but is a very considerable gainer thereby For she does not onely possess as much Body as before with as full and solid dimensions but has that accession cast in of having this Body more invigorated with Life and Motion then it was formerly Which consideration I could not but take notice of that I might thereby expunge that false conceit that adheres to most mens fancies of that evanid and starved condition of the other state CHAP. III. 1. That the natural abode of the Soul after death is the Air. 2. That she cannot quit the AErial Regions till the AEthereal Congruity of life be awakened in her 3. That all Souls are not in the same Region of the Aire 4. Cardans conceit of placing all Daemons in the upper Region 5. The use of this conceit for the shewing the reason of their seldome appearing 6. That this Phaenomenon is salved by a more rational Hypothesis 7. A further confutation of Cardans Opinion 8. More tending to the same scope 9. The Original of Cardans errour concerning the remote operations of Daemons 10. An Objection how Daemons and Souls separate can be in this lower Region where Winds and Tempests are so frequent 11. A preparation to an Answer from the consideration of the nature of the Winds 12. Particular Answers to the Objection 13. A further Answer from the nature of the Statick Faculty of the Soul 14. Another from the suddain power of actuating her Vehicle 15. What incommodations she suffers from haile rain c. 1. THose more particular Enquiries we intend to fall upon may be reduced to these few Heads viz. The place of the Souls abode Her employment and Her moral condition after Death That the place of Her abode is the Aire is the constant opinion of the ancient Philosophers and natural Theologers who doe unanimously make that Element the Receptacle of Souls departed which therefore they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because men deceased are in a state of invisibility as the place they are confined to is an Element utterly invisible of its own nature and is accloy'd also with caliginous mists and enveloped by vicissitudes with the dark shadow of
tenuious and thin is most passive and therefore if it be once the Vehicle of Sense is most sensible Whence it will follow that the reflexion of Light from Objects being able to move our Organs that are not so fine they will more necessarily move those of the Genii and at a greater distance But their Bodies being of diaphanous Aire it is impossible for us to see them unless they will give themselves the trouble of reducing them to a more terrestrial consistency whereby they may reflect light Nor can we easily hear their ordinary speech partly because a very gentle motion of the Aire will act upon their Vehicles and partly because they may haply use the finer and purer part of that Element in this exercise which is not so fit to move our Sense And therefore unless they will be heard datâ operâ naturally that impress of the Aire in their usual discourse can never strike our Organ 5. And that we may not seem to say all this for nought that they will have Hearing as well as Seeing appears from what I have intimated above that this Faculty is ranged near the Common Sensorium in the Vehicle as well as that of Sight and therefore the Vehicle being all Aire such percussions of it as cause the sense of Sound in us will necessarily doe the like in them but more accurately haply if they organize their Vehicle for the purpose which will answer to the arrection of the Ears of Animals for the better taking in the Sound 6. That they have the sense of Touch is inevitably true else how could they feel resistance which is necessary in the bearing of one Body against another because they are impenetrable And to speak freely my mind it will be a very hard thing to disprove that they have not something analogical to Smell and Tast which are very near a-kin to Touch properly so called For Fumes and Odours passing so easily through the Aire will very naturally insinuate into their Vehicles also which Fumes if they be grosser and humectant may raise that diversification of Touch which we Mortals call Tasting if more subtile and dry that which we call Smelling Which if we should admit we are within modest bounds as yet in comparison of others as Cardan who affirms downright that the AErial Genii are nourished and that some of them get into the Bodies of Animals to batten themselves there in their Blood and Spirits Which is also averred by Marcus the Mesopotamian Eremite in Psellus who tells us that the purer sort of the Genii are nourished by drawing in the Aire as our Spirits are in the Nerves and Arteries and that other Genii of a courser kinde suck in moisture not with the Mouth as we doe but as a Sponge does water And Moses AEgyptius writes concerning the Zabii that they eat of the blood of their Sacrifice because they thought it was the food of the Daemons they worshipped and that by eating thereof they were in a better capacity to communicate with them Which things if they could be believed that would be no such hard Probleme concerning the Familiars of Witches why they suck them But such curiosities being not much to our purpose I willingly omit 7. The conclusion of what has been said is this That it is certain that the Genii and consequently the Souls of men departed who ipso facto are of the same rank with them have the sense of Seeing Hearing and Touching and not improbably of Smelling and Tasting Which Faculties being granted they need not be much at a loss how to spend their time though it were but upon external Objects all the furniture of Heaven and Earth being fairly exposed to their view They see the same Sun and Moon that we doe behold the persons and converse of all men and if no special Law inhibit them may pass from Town to Town and from City to City as Hesiod also intimates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is nothing that we enjoy but they may have their fees out of it fair Fields large and invious Woods pleasant Gardens high and healthful Mountains where the purest gusts of Aire are to be met with Crystal Rivers mossy Springs solemnity of Entertainments Theatrick Pomps and Shews publick and private Discourses the exercises of Religion whether in Temples Families or hidden Cells They may be also and haply not uninteressed Spectators of the glorious and mischievous hazards of War whether Sea-fights or Land-fights besides those soft and silent though sometimes no less dangerous Combats in the Camps of Cupid and a thousand more particularities that it would be too long to reckon up where they haply are not men Spectators but Abettors as Plutarch writes Like old men that are past Wrestling Pitching the Barre or playing at Cudgels themselves yet will assist and abet the young men of the Parish at those Exercises So the Souls of men departed though they have put off with the Body the capacity of the ordinary functions of humane Life yet they may assist and abet them as pursuing some design in them and that either for evil or good according as they were affected themselves when they were in the Body 8. In brief whatever is the custome and desire of the Soul in this life that sticks and adheres to her in that which is to come and she will be sure so farre as she is capable either to act it or to be at least a Spectator and Abettor of such kinde of actions Quae gratia currûm Armorumque fuit vivis quae cura nitentes Pascere equos eadē sequitur tellure repostos Which rightly understood is no poetical fiction but a professed Truth in Plato's Philosophy And Maximus Tyrius speaks expresly even of the better sort of Soules who having left the Body and so becoming 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. being made ipso facto Genii in stead of men that beside the peculiar happiness they reap thereby to themselves they are appointed by God and have a mission from him to be Overseers of humane affairs but that every Genius does not perform every office but as their naturall Inclinations and Customes were in this life they exercise the like in some manner in the other And therefore he will have AEsculapius to practise Physick still and Hercules to exercise his strength Amphilochus to prophesy Castor and Pollux to navigate Minos to hear causes and Achilles to war Which opinion is as likely to hold true in Bad Souls as in Good and then it will follow that the Souls of the wicked make it their business to assist and abet the exercise of such Vices as themselves were most addicted to in this life and to animate and tempt men to them From whence it would follow that they being thus by their separate state Daemons as has been said already if they be also tempters to evil they will very little differ from meer Devils 9. But besides this employment in reference to us they
Government of Men does on several sorts of brute Beasts and the AEthereal Powers also have a Right and Exercise of Rule over the AErial Whence nothing can be committed in the World against the more indispensable Laws thereof but a most severe and inevitable punishment will follow every Nation City Family and Person being in some manner the Peculium and therefore in the tutelage of some invisible Power or other as I have above intimated 4. And such Transgressions as are against those Laws without whose observance the Creation could not subsist we may be assured are punished with Torture intolerable and infinitely above any Pleasure imaginable the evil Genii can take in doing of those of their own Order or us Mortals any mischief Whence it is manifest that we are as secure from their gross outrages such as the firing of our houses the stealing away our jewels or more necessary Utensils murdering our selves or children destroying our cattel corn and other things of the like sort as if they were not in rerum natura Unless they have some special permission to act or we our selves enable them by our rash and indiscreet tampering with them or suffer from the malice of some person that is in league with them For their greatest liberty of doing mischief is upon that account which yet is very much limited in that all these Actions must pass the consent of a visible person not hard to be discovered in these unlawful practices and easy to be punished by the Law of Men. 5. And the AErial Genii can with as much ease inflict punishment on one another as we Mortals can apprehend imprison and punish such as transgress against our Laws For though these Daemons be invisible to us yet they are not so to their own Tribe nor can the activity and subtilty of the Bad over-master the Good Commonwealths-men there that uphold the Laws better then they are amongst us Nor may the various Transfiguration of their shapes conceal their persons no more then the disguises that are used by fraudulent men For they are as able to discern what is fictitious from what is true and natural amongst themselves as we are amongst our selves And every AErial Spirit being part of some Political subdivision upon any outrage committed it will be an easy matter to hunt out the Malefactor No Daemon being able so to transfigure himself but upon command he will be forced to appear in his natural and usual form not daring to deny upon examination to what particular Subdivision he belongs Whence the easy discovery of their miscarriages and certainty of insupportable torment will secure the World from all the disorder that some scrupulous wits suspect would arise from this kinde of Creatures if they were in Being 6. To which we may adde also That what we have is useless to them and that it is very hard to conceive that there are many Rational Beings so degenerate as to take pleasure in ill when it is no good to themselves That Socrates his Aphorism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be in no small measure true in the other World as well as in this That all that these evil Spirits desire may be onely our lapse into as great a degree of Apostasy from God as themselves and to be full partakers with them of their false Liberty as debauched persons in this life love to make Proselytes and to have respect from their Nurslings in wickedness And several other Considerations there are that serve for the taking away this Panick fear of the incursations and molestations of these aerial Inhabitants and might further silence the suspicious Atheist which I willingly omit having said more then enough of this Subject already See Cap. 3. Sect. 7 8. 7. If any be so curious as to demand what kinde of Punishment this People of the Aire inflict upon their Malefactors I had rather referre them to the Fancies of Cornelius Agrippa De Occult. Philosoph Lib. 3. Cap. 41. then be laught at my self for venturing to descend to such particularities Amongst other things he names their Incarceration or confinement to most vile and squalid Habitations His own words are very significant Accedunt etiam vilissimorum ac teterrimorum locorum habitacula ubi AEtnaei ignes aquarum ingluvies fulgurum tonitruorum concussus terrarum voragines ubi Regio lucis inops nec radiorum Solis capax ignaráque splendoris syderum perpetuis tenebris noctis specie caligat Whence he would make us believe that the subterraneous caverns of the Earth are made use of for Dungeons for the wicked Daemons to be punished in as if the several Volcano's such as AEtna Vesuvius Hecla and many others especially in America were so many Prisons or houses of Correction for the unruly Genii That there is a tedious restraint upon them upon villanies committed and that intolerable is without all question they being endued with corporeal Sense and that more quick and passive then ours and therefore more subject to the highest degrees of torment So that not onely by incarcerating them keeping them in by a watch in the caverns of burning Mountains where the heat of those infernal Chambers and the steam of Brimstone cannot but excruciate them exceedingly but also by commanding them into sundry other Hollows of the ground noysome by several fumes and vapours they may torture them in several fashions and degrees fully proportionable to the greatest crime that is in their power to commit and farre above what the cruellest Tyranny has inflicted here either upon the guilty or innocent But how these Confinements and Torments are inflicted on them and by what Degrees and Relaxations is a thing neither easy to determine nor needful to understand Wherefore we will surcease from pursuing any further so unprofitable a Subject and come to the Third general Head we mentioned which is What the Moral condition of the Soul is when she has left this Body CHAP. XI 1. Three things to be considered before we come to the moral condition of the Soul after death namely her Memory of transactions in this life 2. The peculiar feature and individual Character of her AErial Vehicle 3. The Retainment of the same Name 4. How her ill deportment here lays the train of her Misery hereafter 5. The unspeakable torments of Conscience worse then Death and not to be avoided by dying 6. Of the hideous tortures of external sense on them whose searedness of Conscience may seem to make them uncapable of her Lashes 7. Of the state of the Souls of the more innocent and conscientious Pagans 8. Of the natural accruments of After-happiness to the morally good in this life 9. How the Soul enjoys her actings or sufferings in this Life for an indispensable Cause when she has passed to the other 10. That the reason is proportionably the same in things of less consequence 11. What mischief men may create to themselves in the other world by their Zealous mistakes in this
Nature and sufficiently proved its Existence Out of what has been said may be easily conceived why I give it this name it being a Principle that is of so great influence and activity in the Nascency as I may so call it Coalescency of things And this not onely in the production of Plants with all other Concretions of an inferiour nature and yet above the meer Mechanical lawes of Matter but also in respect of the birth of Animals whereunto it is preparatory and assistent I know not whether I may entitle it also to the guidance of Animals in the chiefest of those actions which we usually impute to natural Instinct Amongst which none so famous as the Birds making their Nests and particularly the artificial structure of the Martins nests under the arches of Church-windowes In which there being so notable a design unknown to themselves and so small a pleasure to present Sense it looks as if they were actuated by another inspired and carried away in a natural rapture by this Spirit of Nature to doe they know not what though it be really a necessary provision and accommodation for laying their Eggs and hatching their young in the efformation whereof this Inferiour Soule of the World is so rationally conceived to assist and intermeddle and therefore may the better be supposed to over-power the Fancy and make use of the members of the Birds to build these convenient Receptacles as certain shops to lay up the Matter whereon she intends to work namely the Eggs of these Birds whom she thus guides in making of their nests 9. But this argument being too lubricous I will not much insist upon it The most notable of those offices that can be assigned to the Spirit of Nature and that sutably to his name is the Translocation of the Souls of Beasts into such Matter as is most fitting for them he being the common Proxenet or Contractor of all natural Matches and Marriages betwixt forms and matter if we may also speak Metaphors as well as Aristotle whose Aphorisme it is that Materia appetit formam ut foemina virum This Spirit therefore may have not onely the power of directing the motion of Matter at hand but also of transporting of particular Souls and Spirits in their state of Silence and Inactivity to such Matter as they are in a fitness to catch life in again Which Transportation or Transmission may very well be at immense distances the effect of this Sympathy and Coactivity being so great in the working of Wines as has been above noted though a thing of less concernment Whence to conclude we may look upon this Spirit of Nature as the great Quarter-master-General of divine Providence but able alone without any under-Officers to lodge every Soule according to her rank and merit whenever she leaves the Body And would prove a very serviceable Hypothesis for those that fancy the praeexistence of humane Souls to declare how they may be conveighed into Bodies here be they at what distance they will before and how Matter haply may be so fitted that the best of them may be fetcht from the purest aethereal Regions into an humane Body without serving any long Apprentiship in the intermediate Aire as also how the Souls of Brutes though the Earth were made perfectly inept for the life of any Animal need not lye for ever useless in the Universe But such speculations as these are of so vast a comprehension and impenetrable obscurity that I cannot have the confidence to dwell any longer thereon especially they not touching so essentially our present designe and being more fit to fill a volume themseves then to be comprised within the narrow limits of my now almost-finish'd Discourse CHAP. XIV 1. Objections against the Souls Immortality from her condition in Infancy Old age Sleep and Sicknesses 2. Other Objections taken from Experiments that seem to prove her Discerpibility 3. As also from the seldome appearing of the Souls of the deceased 4. And from our natural fear of Death 5. A Subterfuge of the adverso party in supposing but one Soule common to all Creatures 6. An Answer concerning the Littleness of the Soule in Infancy 7. As also concerning the weakness of her Intellectuals then and in Old age 8. That Sleep does not at all argue the Souls Mortality but rather illustrate her Immortality 9. An Answer to the Objection from Apoplexies and Catalepsies 10. As also to that from Madness 11. That the various depravations of her Intellectual Faculties doe no more argue her Mortality then the worser Modifications of Matter its natural Annihilability And why God created Souls sympathizing with Matter 1. AS for the Objections that are usually made against the Immortality of the Soule to propound them all were both tedious and useless there being scarce above one in twenty that can appear of any moment to but an indifferent Wit and Judgment But the greatest difficulties that can be urged I shall bring into play that the Truth we doe maintain may be the more fully cleared and the more firmly believed The most material Objections that I know against the Souls Immortality are these five The First is from the consideration of the condition of the Soule in Infancy and Old age as also in Madness Sleep and Apoplexies For if we doe but observe the great difference of our Intellectual operations in Infancy and Dotage from what they are when we are in the prime of our years and how that our Wit grows up by degrees flourishes for a time and at last decayes keeping the same pace with the changes that Age and Years bring into our Body which observes the same lawes that Flowers and Plants what can we suspect but that the Soule of Man which is so magnificently spoken of amongst the learned is nothing else but a Temperature of Body and that it growes and spreads with it both in bigness and virtues and withers and dies as the Body does or at least that it does wholly depend on the Body in its Operations and therefore that there is no sense nor perception of any thing after death And when the Soule has the best advantage of years she is not then exempted from those Eclipses of the powers of the Minde that proceed from Sleep Madness Apoplexies and other Diseases of that nature All which shew her condition whatever more exalted Wits surmise of her that she is but a poor mortal and corporeal thing 2. The Second Objection is taken from such Experiments as are thought to prove the Soule divisible in the grossest sense that is to say discerpible into pieces And it seems a clear case in those more contemptible Animals which are called Insects especially the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle describes them and doth acknowledge that being cut into pieces each segment will have its motion and sense apart to it self The most notable Instance of this kind is in the Scolopendra whose parts Aristotle Histor. Animal Lib. 4. Cap. 7.
affirmes to live a long time divided and to run backwards and forwards and therefore he will have it to look like many living Creatures growing together rather then one single one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 De Juvent Senect Cap. 2. But yet he will not afford them the priviledge of Plants whose Slips will live and grow being set in the Earth But the instances that belong to this Objection ascend higher for they pretend that the parts of perfect Animals will also live asunder There are two main instances thereof The one that of the Eagle Fromondus mentions whose head being chopt off by an angry Clown for quarrelling with his dog the Body flew over the barn near the place of this rude execution This was done at Fromondus his fathers house nor is the story improbable if we consider what ordinarily happens in Pigeons and Ducks when their heads are cut off The other instance is of a Malefactour beheaded at Antwerp whose head when it had given some few jumps into the crowd and a Dog fell a licking the blood caught the Dogs eare in its teeth and held it so fast that he being frighted ran away with the mans head hanging at his eare to the great astonishment and confusion of the people This was told Fromondus by an eye-witness of the fact From which two examples they think may be safely inferred that the Souls of Men as well as of the more perfect kinde of Brutes are also discerpible That example in the same Authour out of Josephus Acosta if true yet is finally to this purpose For the speaking of the sacrificed Captive when his Heart was cut out may be a further confirmation indeed that the Brain is the Seat of the Common Sense but no argument of the Divisibility of the Soule she remaining at that time entire in the Body after the cutting out of the Heart whose office it is to afford Spirits which were not so far yet dissipated but that they sufficed for that suddain operation of life 3. The Third Objection is from the seldome appearāce of the Souls of the deceased For if they can at all appear why do they not oftner if they never appear it is a strong suspicion that they are not at all in Being 4. The Fourth is from the Fear of Death and an inward down-bearing sense in us at some times that we are utterly mortal and that there is nothing to be expected after this life 5. The Fifth and last is rather a Subterfuge then an Objection That there is but One Common Soul in all Men and Beasts that operates according to the variety of Animals and Persons it does actuate and vivificate bearing a seeming particularity according to the particular pieces of Matter it enforms but is one in all and that this particularity of Body being lost this particular Man or Beast is lost and so every living creature is properly and intirely mortal These are the reallest and most pertinent Objections I could ever meet withall or can excogitate concerning the Souls Immortality to which I shall answer in order 6. And to the First which seems to be the shrewdest I say that neither the Contractedness of the Soule in Infancy nor the Weakness of her Intellectual Operations either then or in extream Old age are sufficient proofs of her Corporeity or Mortality For what wonder is it that the Soule faln into this low and fatal condition where she must submit to the course of Nature and the lawes of other Animals that are generated here on Earth should display her self by degrees from smaller dimensions to the ordinary size of men whenas this faculty of contracting and dilating of themselves is in the very essence and notion of all Spirits as I have noted already Lib. 1. Cap. 5. So she does but that leisurely and naturally now being subjected to the lawes of this terrestrial Fate which she does exempt from this condition suddainly and freely not growing by Juxta-position of parts or Intromission of Matter but inlarging of her self with the Body meerly by the dilatation of her own Substance which is one and the same alwaies 7. As for the Debility of her Intellectuals in Infancy and Old age this consideration has less force to evince her a meer corporeal essence then the former and touches not our Principles at all who have provided for the very worst surmise concerning the operations of the Minde in acknowledging them of my own accord to depend very intimately on the temper and tenour of the Souls immediate instrument the Spirits which being more torpid and watry in Children and Old men must needs hinder her in such operations as require another constitution of Spirits then is usually in Age and Childhood though I will not profess my self absolutely confident that the Soule cannot act without all dependence on Matter But if it does not which is most probable it must needs follow that its Operations will keep the lawes of the Body it is united with Whence it is demonstrable how necessary Purity and Temperance is to preserve and advance a mans Parts 8. As for Sleep which the dying Philosopher called the Brother of Death I doe not see how it argues the Souls Mortality more then a mans inability to wake again but rather helps us to conceive how that though the stounds and agonies of Death seem utterly to take away all the hopes of the Souls living after them yet upon a recovery of a quicker Vehicle of Aire she may suddainly awake into fuller and fresher participation of life then before But I may answer also that Sleep being onely the ligation of the outward Senses and the interception of motion from the external world argues no more any radical defect of Life and Immortality in the Soul then the having a mans Sight bounded within the walls of his chamber by Shuts does argue any blindness in the immured party who haply is busy reading by candle-light and that with ease so small a print as would trouble an ordinary Sight to read it by day And that the Soule is not perpetually employed in sleep is very hard for any to demonstrate we so often remembring our dreams meerly by occasions which if they had not occurred we had never suspected we had dreamed that night 9. Which Answer as also the former is applicable to Apoplexies Catalepsies and whatever other Diseases partake of their nature and witness how nimble the Soule is to act upon the suppeditation of due Matter and how Life and Sense and Memory and Reason and all return upon return of the fitting temper of the Spirits suitable to that vital Congruity that then is predominant in the Soule 10. And as for Madness there are no Apprehensions so frantick but are arguments of the Souls Immortality not as they are frantick but as Apprehensions For Matter cannot apprehend any thing either wildly or soberly as I have already sufficiently demonstrated And it is as irrational for a man to conclude
in the World he must be forc'd to vaunt himself to be the Soul of the World But this boasting must suddainly fall again if he but consider that the Soul of the World will be every mans personal Ipseity as well as his whence every one man will be all men and all men but one Individual man which is a perfect contradiction to all the Laws of Metaphysicks and Logick 6. But reminded of these inconveniences he will pronounce more cautiously and affirm that he is not the Soul of the World at large but onely so far forth as she expedites or exerts her self into the Sense and Remembrance of all those Notions or Impresses that happen to her whereever she is joyned with his Body but that so soon as this Body of his is dissipated and dissolved that she will no longer raise any such determinate Thoughts or Senses that referre to that Union and that so the Memory of such Actions Notions and Impressions that were held together in relation to a particular Body being lost and laid aside upon the failing of the Body to which they did referre this Ipseity or Personality which consisted mainly in this does necessarily perish in death This certainly is that if they know their own meaning which many Libertines would have who are afraid to meet themselves in the other World for fear they should quarrel with themselves there for their transactions in this And it is the handsomest Hypothesis that they can frame in favour of themselves and farre beyond that dull conceit That there is nothing but meer Matter in the World which is infinitely more lyable to confutation 7. And yet this is too scant a covering to shelter them and secure them from the sad after-claps they may justly suspect in the other life For first it is necessary for them to confess that they have in this life as particular and proper sense of Torment of Pleasure of Peace and Pangs of Conscience and of other impressions as if they had an individual Soul of their own distinct from that of the World and from every ones else and that if there be any Daemons or Genii as certainly there are that it is so with them too We have also demonstrated that all Sense and Perception is immediately excited in the Soul by the Spirits wherefore with what confidence can they promise themselves that the death of this earthly Body will quite obliterate all the tracts of their Being here on earth whenas the subtiler ruines thereof in all likelihood may determine the Thoughts of the Soul of the World to the same tenour as before and draw from her the memory of all the Transactions of this life and make her exercise her judgement upon them and cause her to contrive the most vital exhalations of the terrestrial Body into an aerial Vehicle of like nature with the ferment of these material rudiments of life saved out of the ruines of death For any slight touch is enough to engage her to perfect the whole Scene and so a man shall be represented to himself and others in the other state whether he will or no and have as distinct a personal Ipseity there as he had in this life Whence it is plain that this false Hypothesis That we are nothing but the Soul of the World acting in our Bodies will not serve their turns at all that would have it so nor secure them from future danger though it were admitted to be true But I have demonstrated it false already from the notion of the Unity of a Soul Of the truth of which Demonstration we shall be the better assured if we consider that the subtile Elements which are the immediate conveyers of Perceptions in our Souls are continued throughout in the Soul of the World and insinuate into all living Creatures So that the Soul of the World will be necessarily informed in every one what she thinks or feels every where if she be the onely Soul that actuates every Animal upon Earth 8. That other conceit of our Souls being a Vital Ray of the Soul of the World may gain much countenance by expressions in ancient Authors that seem to favour the Opinion as that of Epictetus who saith that the Souls of men are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And Philo calls the Minde of Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Trismegist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All which expressions make the Soul of man a Ray or Beam of the Soul of the World or of God But we are to take notice that they are but Metaphorical phrases and that what is understood thereby is that there is an emanation of a secondary substance from the several parts of the Soul of the World resembling the Rayes of the Sun Which way of conception though it be more easy then the other yet it has difficulties enough For this Vital Ray must have some head from whence it is stretched and so the Body would be like a Bird in a string which would be drawn to a great length when one takes long voyages suppose to the East or West Indies Or if you will not have it a linear Ray but an Orb of particular life every such particular Orb must be hugely vast that the Body may not travel out of the reach of the Soul Besides this Orb will strike through other Bodies as well as its own and its own be in several parts of it which are such incongruities and inconcinnities as are very harsh and unpleasing to our Rational faculties Wherefore that notion is infinitely more neat and safe that proportions the Soul to the dimensions of the Body and makes her independent on any thing but the Will of her Creator in which respect of dependence she may be said to be a Ray of him as the rest of the Creation also but in no other sense that I know of unless of likeness and similitude she being the Image of God as the Rays of Light are of the Sun 9. But let every particular Soul be so many Rayes of the Soul of the World what gain they by this whenas these Rayes may be as capable of all the several congruities of life as the Soul is in that sense we have described and therefore Personality Memory and Conscience will as surely return or continue in the other state according to this Hypothesis as the other more usual one Which also discovers the great folly of Pomponatius and of as many as are of the same leven with him who indeed is so modest and judicious as not to deny Apparitions but attributes all to the influence of the Stars or rather the Intelligencies of the Celestial Orbs. For they giving life and animation to brute Animals why may they not also upon occasion animate and actuate the Aire into shape and form even to the making of them speak and discourse one shape with another For so Pomponatius argues in his Book of the Immortality of the Soul from Aquinas his concession that Angels and Souls
separate may figure the Aire into shape and speak through it Quare igitur Intelligentiae moventes corpora coelestia haec facere non possunt cum suis instrumentis quae tot ac tanta possunt quae faciunt Psittacos Picos Corvos Merulas loqui And a little after he plainly reasons from the power the Intelligencies have of generating Animals that it is not at all strange that they should raise such kinde of Apparitions as are recorded in History But if these Celestial Intelligencies be confined to their own Orbs so as that no secondary Essence reach these inferiour Regions it is impossible to conceive how they can actuate the Matter here below But if there be any such essential emanations from them whereby they actuate the Matter into these living Species we see in the World of Men and Brutes nothing hinders but the same emanations remaining may actuate the Aire when this earthly fabrick fails and retain the memory of things transacted in this life and that still our Personality will be conserved as perfect and distinct as it was here 10. But this conceit of Pomponatius is farre more foolish then theirs that make onely one Anima Mundi that passes through all the Matter of the World and is present in every place to doe all feats that there are to be done But to acknowledge so many several Intellectual Beings as there be fancied Celestial Orbs and to scruple or rather to seem confident that there are not so many particular Souls as there be Men here on Earth is nothing but Humour and Madness For it is as rational to acknowledge eight hundred thousand Myriads of Intellectual and Immaterial Beings really distinct from one another as eight and an infinite number as but one that could not create the Matter of the World For then two Substances wholly independent on one another would be granted as also the Infinite parts of Matter that have no dependence one on the other Why may not there be therefore infinite numbers of Spirits or Souls that have as little dependence one on another as well as there should be eight Intelligencies whenas the motions and operations of every Animal are a more certain argument of an Immaterial Being residing there then the motions of the Heavens of any distinct Intelligencies in their Orbs if they could be granted to have any And it is no stranger a thing to conceive an Infinite multitude of Immaterial as well as Material Essences independent on one another then but two namely the Matter and the Soule of the World But if there be so excellent a principle existent as can create Beings as certainly there is we are still the more assured that there are such multitudes of spiritual Essences surviving all the chances of this present life as the most sober and knowing men in all Ages have professed there are CHAP. XVII 1. That the Authour having safely conducted the Soule into her AErial condition through the dangers of Death might well be excused from attending her any further 2. What reasons urge him to consider what fates may befall her afterwards 3. Three hazzards the Soule runs after this life whereby she may again become obnoxious to death according to the opinion of some 4. That the aerial Genii are mortal confirmed by three testimonies 5. The one from the Vision of Facius Cardanus in which the Spirits that appeared to him profest themselves mortal 6. The time they stayed with him and the matters they disputed of 7. What credit Hieronymus Cardanus gives to his Fathers Vision 8. The other testimony out of Plutarch concerning the Death of the great God Pan. 9. The third and last of Hesiod whose opinion Plutarch has polisht and refined 10. An Enumeration of the several Paradoxes contained in Facius Cardanus his Vision 11. What must be the sense of the third Paradox if those AErial Speculatours spake as they thought 12. Another Hypothesis to the same purpose 13. The craft of these Daemons in shuffling in poysonous errour amongst solid Truths 14. What makes the story of the death of Pan less to the present matter with an addition of Demetrius his observations touching the Sacred Islands neare Britain 15. That Hesiod his opinion is the most unexceptionable and that the harshness therein is but seeming not real 16. That the AEthereal Vehicle instates the Soule in a condition of perfect Immortality 17. That there is no internal impediment to those that are Heroically good but that they may attain an everlasting happiness after Death 1. WE have now maugre all the oppositions and Objections made to the contrary safely conducted the Soule into the other state and installed her into the same condition with the AErial Genii I might be very well excused if I took leave of her here and committed her to that fortune that attends those of the Invisible World it being more seasonable for them that are there to meditate and prefigure in their mindes all futurities belonging to them then for us that are on this side the passage It is enough that I have demonstrated that neither the Essence nor Operations of the Soule are extinct by Death but that they either not intermit or suddainly revive upon the recovery of her aiery Body 2. But seeing that those that take any pleasure at all in thinking of these things can seldome command the ranging of their thoughts within what compass they please and that it is obvious for them to doubt whether the Soule can be secure of her permanency in life in the other world it implying no contradiction That her Vital Congruity appropriate to this or that Element may either of it self expire or that she may by some carelesness debilitate one Congruity and awaken another in some measure and so make her self obnoxious to Fate we cannot but think it in a manner necessary to extricate such difficulties as these that we may not seem in this after-game to loose all we won in the former and make men suspect that the Soule is not at all immortal if her Immortality will not secure her against all future fates 3. To which she seems liable upon three accounts The one we have named already and respects an intrinsecal Principle the Periodical terms of her Vital Congruity or else the Levity and Miscarriage of her own Will Which obnoxiousness of hers is still more fully argued from what is affirmed of the AErial Genii whose companion and fellow-Citizen she is whom sundry Philosophers assert to be Mortal The other two hazards she runs are from without to wit the Conflagration of the World and the Extinction of the Sun 4. That the AErial Genii are mortal three main Testimonies are alledged for it The Vision of Facius Cardanus the Death of the great God Pan in Plutarch and the Opinion of Hesiod I will set them all down fully as I finde them and then answer to them The Vision of Facius Cardanus is punctually recited by his son Hieronymus in his
of the Platonists unless they should speak of that particular Order themselves were of for it is likely there may be as much difference in their ages as there is in the ages of several kinds of Birds and Beasts Thirdly That our Souls are so farre mortal as that there is nothing proper to us remaining after death Fourthly That they were nearer allied to the Gods then we by farre and that there was as much difference betwixt them and us as there is betwixt us and Beasts Which they must understand then concerning the excellency of their Vehicles and the natural activity of them not the preeminency of their Intellectual Faculties Or if they doe they must be understood of the better sort of those AErial Spirits Or if they mean it of all their Orders it may be a mistake out of pride as those that are rich and powerful as well as speculative amongst us take it for granted that they are more judicious and discerning then the poor and despicable let them be never so wise Fifthly That they know all secret things whether hidden Books or Monies which men might doe too if they could stand by concealedly from them that hide them Sixthly That the lowest sort of them were the Genii of the Noblest men as the baser sort of Men are the Keepers and Educators of the better kinde of Dogs and Horses This clause of the Vision also is inveloped with obscurity they having not defined whether this meanness of condition of the Tutelar Genii be to be understood in a Political or Physical sense whether the meanness of rank and power or of natural wit and sagacity in which many times the Groom exceeds the young Gallant who assigns him to keep his Dogs and Horses Seventhly That such is the thinness and lightness of their Bodies that they can doe neither good nor hurt thereby though they may send strange Sights and Terrors and communicate Knowledge which then must be chiefly of such things as belong to their aerial Region For concerning matters in the Sea the Fishes if they could speak might inform men better then they And for their corporeal debility it is uncertain whether they may not pretend it to animate their Confabulators to a more secure converse or whether the thing be really true in some kindes of them For that it is not in all may be evinced by that Narration that Cardan a little after recites out of Erasmus of the Devil that carried a Witch into the Aire and set her on the top of a Chimney giving her a Pot and bidding her turn the mouth downwards which done the whole Town was fired and burnt down within the space of an hour This hapned April the 10. Anno 1533. The Towns name was Schiltach eight German miles distant from Friburg The Story is so well attested and guarded with such unexceptionable circumstances that though Cardan love to shew his wit in cavilling at most he recites yet he finds nothing at all to quarrel at in his Eighthly That there are Students and Professors of Philosophy in the AErial World and are divided into Sects and Opinions there as well as we are here Which cannot possibly be true unless they set some value upon knowledge and are at an eager loss how to finde it and are fain to hew out their way by arguing and reasoning as we doe Ninthly and lastly That they are reduced under a Political Government and are afraid of the infliction of punishment 11. These are the main matters comprehended in Facius his Vision which how true they all are would be too much trouble to determine But one clause which is the third I cannot let pass it so nearly concerning the present Subject and seeming to intercept all hopes of the Souls Immortality To speak therefore to the summe of the whole business we must either conceive these aerial Philosophers to instruct Facius Cardanus as well as they could they being guilty of nothing but a forward pride to offer themselves as dictating Oracles to that doubtful Exorcist for his son Cardan acknowledges that his Father had a form of Conjuration that a Spaniard gave him at his death or else we must suppose them to take the liberty of equivocating if not of downright lying Now if they had a minde to inform Facius Cardanus of these things directly as they themselves thought of them it being altogether unlikely but that there appeared to them in their aerial Regions such sights as represented the persons of men here deceased it is impossible that they should think otherwise then as we have described their Opinion in the fore-going Chapter that hold there is but one Soul in the World by which all living Creatures are actuated Which though but a meer possibility if so much yet some or other of these aerial Speculators may as well hold to it as some doe amongst us For Pomponatius and others of the Avenroists are as ridiculously pertinacious as they And therefore these Avenroistical Daemons answered punctually according to the Conclusions of their own School Nihil proprium cuiquam superesse post mortem For the Minde or Soul being a Substance common to all and now disunited from those Terrestrial Bodies which it actuated in Plato suppose or Socrates and these Bodies dead and dissipated and onely the common Soul of the World surviving there being nothing but this Soul and these Bodies to make up Socrates and Plato they conclude it is a plain case that nothing that is proper survives after death And therefore though they see the representation of Socrates and Plato in the other World owning also their own personalities with all the actions they did and accidents that befell them in this life yet according to the sullen subtilties and curiosities of their School they may think and profess that to speak accurately and Philosophically it is none of them there being no Substance proper to them remaining after death but onely the Soul of the World renewing the thoughts to her self of what appertained to those parties in this life 12. This is one Hypothesis consistent enough with the veracity of these Daemons but there is also another not at all impossible viz. That the Vehicles of the Souls of men departed are as invisible to this Order of the Genii that confabulated with Facius Cardanus as that Order is to us and that therefore though there be the appearances of the Ghosts of Men deceased to them as well as to us yet it being but for a time it moves them no more then our confirmed Epicureans in this world are moved thereby especially it being prone for them to think that they are nothing but some ludicrous spectacles that the universal Soule of the World represents to her self and other Spectatours when and how long a time she pleases and the vaporous reliques of the dead body administer occasion Now that the Vehicles of the Souls of men departed this life after they are come to a setled condition may be
of all Philosophers in all Ages that held it Incorporeal 10. That the Gymnosophists of AEgypt the Indian Brachmans the Persian Magi and all the learned of the Jews were of this Opinion 11. A Catalogue of particular famous persons that held the same 12. That Aristotle was also of the same minde 13. Another more clear place in Aristotle to this purpose with Sennertus his Interpretation 14. An Answer to an Evasion of that Interpretation 15. The last and clearest place of all out of Aristotles Writings 237 Chap. 13. 1. The third part of the second Answer That the forgetting of the former state is no good argument against the Souls Praeexistence 2. What are the chief causes of Forgetfulness 3. That they all conspire and that in the highest degree to destroy the memory of the other state 4. That Mischances and Diseases have quite taken away the Memory of things here in this life 5. That it is impossible for the Soul to remember her former condition without a Miracle 6. The fourth part of the second Answer That the entrance of a Praeexistent Soul into a Body is as intelligible as either Creation or Traduction 252 Chap. 14. 1. The knowledge of the difference of Vehicles and the Souls Union with them necessary for the understanding how she enters into this Earthly Body 2. That though the name of Vehicle be not in Aristotle yet the thing is there 3. A clearing of Aristotles notion of the Vehicle out of the Philosophy of Des-Cartes 4 A full interpretation of his Text. 5. That Aristotle makes onely two Vehicles Terrestrial and AEthereal which is more then sufficient to prove the Souls Oblivion of her former state 6 That the ordinary Vehicle of the Soul after death is Aire 7. The duration of the Soul in her several Vehicles 8. That the Union of the Soul with her Vehicle does not consist in Mechanical Congruity but Vital 9. In what Vital congruity of the Matter consists 10. In what Vital congruity of the Soul consists and how it changing the Soul may be free from her aiery Vehicle without violent precipitation out of it 11. Of the manner of the descent of Souls into Earthly Bodies 12. That there is so little absurdity in the Praeexistence of Souls that the concession thereof can be but a very small prejudice to our Demonstrations of her Immortality 257 Chap. 15. 1. What is meant by the Separation of the Soul with a confutation of Regius who would stop her in the dead Corps 2. An answer to those that profess themselves puzled how the Soul can get out of the Body 3. That there is a threefold Vital Congruity to be found in three several Subjects 4. That this triple Congruity is also competible to one Subject viz. the Soul of Man 5. That upon this Hypothesis it is very intelligible how the Soul may leave the Body 6. That her Union with the aerial Vehicle may be very suddain and as it were in a moment 7. That the Soul is actually separate from the Body is to be proved either by History or Reason Examples of the former kinde out of Pliny Herodotus Ficinus 8. Whether the Ecstasie of Witches prove an actual separation of the Soul from the Body 9. That this real separation of the Soul in Ecstasie is very possible 10. How the Soul may be loosned and leave the Body and yet return thither again 11. That though Reason and Will cannot in this life release the Soul from the Body yet Passion may and yet so that she may return again 12. The peculiar power of Desire for this purpose 13. Of Cardans Ecstasies and the Ointment of Witches and what truth there may be in their Confessions 267 Chap. 16. 1. That Souls departed communicate Dreams 2. Examples of Apparitions of Souls deceased 3. Of Apparitions in fields where pitcht Battels have been fought as also of those in Church-yards and other vaporous places 4. That the Spissitude of the Aire may well contribute to the easiness of the appearing of Ghosts and Spectres 5. A further proof thereof from sundry examples 6. Of Marsilius Ficinus his appearing after death 7. With what sort of people such examples as these avail little 8. Reasons to perswade the unprejudiced that ordinarily those Apparitions that bear the shape and person of the deceased are indeed the Souls of them 286 Chap. 17. 1. The praeeminence of Arguments drawn from Reason above those from Story 2. The first step towards a Demonstration of Reason that the Soul acts out of her Body for that she is an immaterial Substance separable therefrom 3. The second That the immediate instruments for Sense Motion and Organization of the Body are certain subtile and tenuious Spirits 4. A comparison betwixt the Soul in the Body and the AErial Genii 5. Of the nature of Daemons from the account of Marcus the Eremite and how the Soul is presently such having once left this Body 6. An Objection concerning the Souls of Brutes to which is answered First by way of concesson 7. Secondly by confuting the Arguments for the former concession 8. That there is no rational doubt at all of the Humane Soul acting after death 9. A further Argument of her activity out of this Body from her conflicts with it while she is in it 10. As also from the general hope and belief of all Nations that they shall live after death 297 Chap. 18. 1. That the Faculties of our Souls and the nature of the immediate instrument of them the Spirits doe so nearly symbolize with those of Daemons that it seems reasonable if God did not on purpose hinder it that they would not fail to act out of this earthly Body 2. Or if they would his power and wisdome could easily implant in their essence a double or triple Vital Congruity to make all sure 3. A further demonstration of the present Truth from the Veracity of God 4. An Answer to an Objection against the foregoing Argument 5. Another Demonstration from His Justice 6. An Answer to an Objection 7. An Answer to another Objection 8. Another Argument from the Justice of God 9. An Objection answered 10. An invincible Demonstration of the Souls Immortality from the Divine Goodness 11. A more particular enforcement of that Argument and who they are upon whom it will work least 12. That the noblest and most vertuous Spirit is the most assurable of the Souls Immortality 311 BOOK III. Chap. 1. 1. WHY the Author treats of the state of the Soul after Death and in what Method 2. Arguments to prove that the Soul is ever united vitally with some Matter or other 3. Further Reasons to evince the same 4. That the Soul is capable of an aiery and aethereal Body as well as a terrestrial 5. That she ordinarily passes out of an earthly into an aerial Vehicle first 6. That in her aiery Vehicle she is capable of Sense Pleasure and Pain 7. That the main power of the Soul over her aerial
Vehicle is the direction of Motion in the particles thereof 8. That she may also adde or diminish Motion in her aethereal 9. How the purity of the Vehicle confers to the quickness of Sense and Knowledge 10. Of the Souls power of changing the temper of her aerial Vehicle 11. As also the shape thereof 12. The plainness of the last Axiome 326 Chap. 2. 1. Of the Dimensions of the Soul considered barely in her self 2. Of the Figure of the Souls Dimensions 3. Of the Heterogeneity of her Essence 4. That there is an Heterogeneity in her Plastick part distinct from the Perceptive 5. Of the acting of this Plastick part in her framing of the Vehicle 6. The excellency of Des-Cartes his Philosophy 7. That the Vehicles of Ghosts have as much of solid corporeal Substance in them as the Bodies of Men. 8. The folly of the contrary Opinion evinced 9. The advantage of the Soul for matter of Body in the other state above this 340 Chap. 3. 1. That the natural abode of the Soul after death is the Aire 2. That she cannot quit the AErial Regions till the AEthereal Congruity of life be awakened in her 3. That all Souls are not in the same Region of the Aire 4. Cardans conceit of placing all Daemons in the upper Region 5. The use of this conceit for the shewing the reason of their seldome appearing 6. That this Phaenomenon is salved by a more rational Hypothesis 7. A further confutation of Cardans Opinion 8. More tending to the same scope 9. The Original of Cardans errour concerning the remote operations of Daemons 10. An Objection how Daemons and Souls separate can be in this lower Region where Winds and Tempests are so frequent 11. A preparation to an Answer from the consideration of the nature of the winds 12. Particular Answers to the Objection 13. A further Answer from the nature of the Statick Faculty of the Soul 14. Another from the suddain power of actuating her Vehicle 15. What incommodations she suffers from hail rain c. 350 Chap. 4. 1. That the Soul once having quitted this earthly Body becomes a Daemon 2. Of the External Senses of the Soul separate their number and limits in the Vehicle 3. Of Sight in a Vehicle organized and unorganized 4. How Daemons and separate Souls hear and see at a vast Distance and whence it is that though they may so easily hear or see us we may neither see nor hear them 5. That they have Hearing as well as Sight 6. Of the Touch Smell Tast and Nourishment of Daemons 7. The external employment that the Genii and Souls deceased may have out of the Body 8. That the actions of Separate Souls in reference to us are most-what conformable to their life here on Earth 9. What their entertainments are in reference to themselves 10. The distinction of orders of Daemons from the places they most frequent 364 Chap. 5. 1. That the Separate Soul spends not all her time in Solitude 2. That her converse with us seems more intelligible then that with the Genii 3. How the Genii may be visible one to another though they be to us invisible 4. Of their approaches and of the limits of their swiftness of motion 5. And how they farre exceed us in celerity 6. Of the figure or shape of their Vehicles and of their privacy when they would be invisible 7. That they cannot well converse in a meer simple Orbicular form 8. That they converse in humane shape at least the better sort of them 9. Whether the shape they be in proceed meerly from the Imperium of their Will and Fancy or is regulated by a natural Character of the Plastick part of the Soul 10. That the personal shape of a Soul or Genius is partly from the Will and partly from the Plastick power 11. That considering how the Soul organizes the Foetus in the Womb and moves our limbs at pleasure it were a wonder if Spirits should not have such command over their Vehicles as is believed 12. A further Argument from an excessive vertue some have given to Imagination 376 Chap. 6. 1. More credible Instances of the effects of Imagination 2. A special and peculiar Instance in Signatures of the Foetus 3. That what Fienus grants who has so cautiously bounded the power of Fancy is sufficient for the present purpose 4. Examples approved of by Fienus 5. Certain Examples rejected by him and yet approved of by Fernelius and Sennertus 6. Three not orious Stories of the power of the Mothers Imagination on the Foetus out of Helmont 7. A conjectural inference from those Stories what influence the Spirit of Nature has in all Plastick operations 8. A further confirmation of the Conjecture from Signatures on the Foetus 9. An application thereof to the transfiguration of the Vehicles of Daemons 387 Chap. 7. 1. Three notable Examples of Signatures rejected by Fienus 2. And yet so farre allowed for possible as will fit our design 3. That Helmonts Cherry and Licetus his Crab-fish are shrewd Arguments that the Soul of the World has to doe with all Efformations of both Animals and Plants 4. An Example of a most exact and lively Signature out of Kircher 5. With his judgement thereupon 6. Another Example out of him of a Child with gray hairs 7. An application of what has been said hitherto concerning the Signatures of the Foetus to the transfiguration of the aiery Vehicles of separate Souls and Daemons 8. Of their personal transformation visible to us 398 Chap. 8. 1. That the Better sort of Genii converse in Humane shape the Baser sometimes in Bestial 2. How they are disposed to turn themselves into several Bestial forms 3. Of Psellus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Igneous splendours of Daemons how they are made 4. That the external beauty of the Genii is according to the degree of the inward vertue of their minds 5. That their aerial form need not be purely transparent but more finely opake and coloured 6. That there is a distinction of Masculine and Feminine Beauty in their personal figurations 407 Chap. 9. 1. A general account of the mutual entertains of the Genii in the other world 2. Of their Philosophical and Political Conferences 3. Of their Religious Exercises 4. Of the innocent Pastimes and Recreations of the better sort of them 5. A confirmation thereof from the Conventicles of Witches 6. Whether the purer Daemons have their times of repast or no. 7. Whence the bad Genii have their food 8. Of the food and feastings of the better sort of Genii 414 Chap. 10. 1. How hard it is to define any thing concerning the AErial or AEthereal Elysiums 2. That there is Political Order and Laws amongst these aiery Daemons 3. That this Chain of Government reaches down from the highest AEthereal Powers through the Aerial to the very Inhabitants of the Earth 4. The great security we live in thereby 5. How easily detectible and punishable wicked Spirits are
can be given of any thing then that it implyes a contradiction to be otherwise 5. That power also of creating things of nothing there is a very close connexion betwixt it and the Idea of God or of a Being absolutely perfect For this Being would not be what it is conceived to be if it were destitute of the power of Creation and therefore this Attribute has no less cohaerence with the Subject then that it is a contradiction it should not be in it as was observed of the foregoing Attribute of Indiscerpibilitie in God But to alledge that a man cannot imagine how God should create something of nothing or how the Divine Essence holds so closely and invincibly together is to transgress against the 3. 4. and 5. Axiomes and to appeal to a Faculty that has no right to determine the case CHAP. V. 1. The Definition belonging to all Finite and Created Spirits 2. Of Indiscerpibility a symbolical representation thereof 3. An Objection answered against that representation 1. WE have done with the notion of that Infinite and Uncreated Spirit we usually call God we come now to those that are Created and Finite as the Spirits of Angels Men and Brutes we will cast in the Seminal Forms also or Archei as the Chymists call them though haply the world stands in no need of them The Properties of a Spirit as it is a notion common to all these I have already enumerated in my Antidote Lib. 1. cap. 4. Self-motion Self-penetration Self-contraction and dilatation and Indivisibility by which I mean Indiscerpibility to which I added Penetrating Moving and Altering the matter We may therefore define this kind of Spirit we speak of to be A substance Indiscerpible that can move it self that can penetrate contract and dilate it self and can also penetrate move and alter the matter We will now examine every term of this Definition from whence it shall appear that it is as congruous and intelligible as those Definitions that are made of such things as all men without any scruple acknowledg to exist 2. Of the Indiscerpibility of a Spirit we have already given rational grounds to evince it not impossible it being an Immediate attribute thereof as Impenetrability is of a Body and as conceivable or imaginable that one Substance of it's own nature may invincibly hold its parts together so that they cannot be disunited nor dissevered as that another may keep out so stoutly and irresistibly another Substance from entring into the same space or place with it self For this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Impenetrability is not at all contained in the precise conception of a Substance as Substance as I have already signified But besides that Reason may thus easily apprehend that it may be so I shall a little gratifie Imagination and it may be Reason too in offering the manner how it is so in this kind of Spirit we now speak of That ancient notion of Light and Intentional species is so far from a plain impossibility that it has been heretofore generally and is still by very many persons looked upon as a Truth that is That Light and Colour doe ray in such sort as they are described in the Peripatetical Philosophie Now it is observable in Light that it is most vigorous towards its fountain and fainter by degrees But we will reduce the matter to one lucid point which according to the acknowledged Principles of Opticks will fill a distance of space with its rays of light Which rayes may indeed be reverberated back towards their center by interposing some opake body and so this Orbe of light contracted but according to the Aristotelean Hypothesis it was alwayes accounted impossible that they should be clipt off or cut from this lucid point and be kept apart by themselves Those whom dry Reason will not satisfy may if they please entertain their Fancy with such a representation as this which may a little ease the anxious importunity of their mind when it too eagerly would comprehend the manner how this Spirit we speak of may be said to be Indiscerpible For think of any ray of this orbe of light it does sufficiently set out to the imagination how Extension and Indiscerpibility may consist together See further in my Antidote Lib. 1. cap. 4. as also the Appendix cap. 3. and 10. 3. But if any object That the lucid Center of this orbe or the Primary substance as I call it in the forecited places is either divisible or absolutely indivisible and if it be divisible that as concerning that Inmost of a Spirit this representation is not at all serviceable to set off the nature thereof by shewing how the parts there may hold together so indiscerpibly but if absolutely indivisible that it seems to be nothing To this I answer what Scaliger somewhere has noted That what is infinitely great or infinitely small the imagination of man is at a loss to conceive it Which certainly is the ground of the perplexedness of that Probleme concerning Matter whether it consists of points or onely of particles divisible in infinitum But to come more closely to the business I say that though we should acknowledg the Inmost Center of life or the very first point as I may so call it of the primary Substance for this primary Substance is in some sort gradual to be purely indivisible it does not at all follow no not according to Imagination it self that it must be nothing For let us imagine a Perfect Plain and on this Plain a perfect Globe we cannot conceive but this Globe touches the Plain and that in what we ordinarily call a point else the one would not be a Globe or the other not a Plain Now it is impossible that one body should touch another and yet touch one another in nothing Wherefore this inmost Center of life is something and something so full of essential vigour and virtue that though gradually it diminish yet can fill a certain Sphere of Space with its own presence and activity as a spark of light illuminates the duskish aire Wherefore there being no greater perplexity nor subtilty in the consideration of this Center of life or Inmost of a Spirit then there is in the Atomes of Matter we may by Axiome 7. rightly conclude That Indiscerpibility has nothing in the notion thereof but what may well consist with the possibility of the existence of the Subject whereunto it belongs CHAP. VI. 1. Axiomes that tend to the demonstrating how the Center or First point of the Primary Substance of a Spirit may be Indiscerpible 2. Several others that demonstrate how the Secondary Substance of a Spirit may be Indiscerpible 3. An application of these Principles 4. Of the union of the Secondary Substance considered transversly 5. That the notion of a Spirit has less difficulty then that of Matter 6. An answer to an Objection from the Rational faculty 7. Answers to Objections suggested from Fancy 8. A more compendious satisfaction concerning the
made dying men visit their friends before their departure at many miles distance their Bodies still keeping their sick bed and those that have been well give a visit to their sick friends of whose health they have been over-desirous and solicitous For this Ecstasie is really of the Soul and not of the Blood or Animal Spirits neither of which have any Sense or Perception in them at all And therefore into this Principle is to be resolved that Story which Martinus Del-Rio reports of a Lad who through the strength of Imagination and Desire of seeing his Father fell into an Ecstasie and after he came to himself confidently affirmed he had seen him and told infallible circumstances of his being present with him 13. That Cardan and others could fall into an Ecstasie when they pleased by force of Imagination and Desire to fall into it is recorded and believed by very grave and sober Writers but whether they could ever doe it to a compleat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or local disjunction of the Soul from the Body I know none that dare affirm such events being rather the chances of Nature and Complexion as in the Noctambuli then the effects of our Will But we cannot assuredly conclude but that Art may bring into our own power and ordering that which natural causes put upon us sometimes without our leaves But whether those Oyntments of Witches have any such effect or whether those unclean Spirits they deal with by their immediate presence in their Bodies cannot for a time so suppress or alter their Vital fitness to such a degree as will loosen the Soul I leave to more curious Inquisitors to search after It is sufficient that I have demonstrated a very intelligible possibility of this actual separation without Death properly so called From whence the peremptory Confessions of Witches and the agreement of the story which they tell in several as well those that are there bodily as they that leave their Bodies behinde them especially when at their return they bring something home with them as a permanent sign of their being at the place is though it may be all the delusion of their Familiars no contemptible probability of their being there indeed where they declare they have been For these are the greatest evidences that can be had in humane affairs And nothing so much as the supposed Impossibility thereof has deterred men from believing the thing to be true CHAP. XVI 1. That Souls departed communicate Dreams 2. Examples of Apparitions of Souls deceased 3. Of Apparitions in fields where pitcht Battels have been fought as also of those in Churchyards and other vaporous places 4. That the Spissitude of the Air may well contribute to the easiness of the appearing of Ghosts and Spectres 5. A further proof thereof from sundry examples 6. Of Marsilius Ficinus his appearing after death 7. With what sort of people such examples as these avail little 8. Reasons to perswade the unprejudiced that ordinarily those Apparitions that bear the shape and person of the deceased are indeed the Souls of them 1. THE Examples of the other sort viz. of the appearing of the Ghosts of men after death are so numerous and frequent in all mens mouths that it may seem superfluous to particularize in any This appearing is either by Dreams or open Vision In Dreams as that which hapned to Avenzoar Albumaron an Arabian Physitian to whom his lately-deceased friend suggested in his sleep a very soverain Medicine for his sore Eyes Like to this is that in Diodorus concerning Isis Queen of AEgypt whom he reports to have communicated remedies to the AEgyptians in their sleep after her death as well as she did when she was alive Of this kinde is also that memorable story of Posidonius the Stoick concerning two young men of Arcadia who being come to Megara and lying the one at a Victuallers the other in an Inne he in the Inne while he was asleep dream'd that his Fellow-traveller earnestly desired him to come and help him as being assaulted by the Victualler and in danger to be killed by him But he after he was perfectly awake finding it but a Dream neglected it But faln asleep again his murdered friend appeared to him the second time beseeching him that though he did not help him alive yet he would see his Death revenged telling him how the Victualler had cast his Body into a Dung-cart and that if he would get up timely in the morning and watch at the Town-gate he might thereby discover the murder which he did accordingly and so saw Justice done on the Murderer Nor does the first Dream make the second impertinent to our purpose For as that might be from the strength of Imagination and desire of help in the distressed Arcadian impressed on the Spirit of the World and so transmitted to his friend asleep a condition fittest for such communications so it is plain that this after his Death must fail if his Soul did either cease to be or to act And therefore it is manifest that she both was and did act and suggested this Dream in revenge of the Murder Of which kinde there be infinite examples I mean of Murders discovered by Dreams the Soul of the person murdered seeming to appear to some or other asleep and to make his complaint to them But I will content my self onely to adde an Example of Gratitude to this of Revenge As that of Simonides who lighting by chance on a dead Body by the Sea side and out of the sense of Humanity bestowing Burial upon it was requited with a Dream that saved his life For he was admonisht to desist from his Voyage he intended by Sea which the Soul of the deceased told him would be so perillous that it would hazard the lives of the Passengers He believed the Vision and abstaining was safe those others that went suffered Shipwrack 2. We will adjoyn onely an Example or two of that other kind of Visions which are ordinarily called the Apparitions of the dead And such is that which Pliny relates at large in his Epistle to Sura of an house haunted at Athens and freed by Athenodorus the Philosopher after the Body of that person that appeared to him was digged up and interred with due solemnity It is not a thing unlikely that most houses that are haunted are so chiefly from the Soules of the deceased who have either been murdered or some way injured or have some hid treasure to discover or the like And persons are haunted for the like causes as well as houses as Nero was after the murdering of his Mother Otho pull'd out of his bed in the night by the Ghost of Galba Such instances are infinite as also those wherein the Soule of ones friend suppose Father Mother or Husband have appeared to give them good counsell and to instruct them of the event of the greatest affairs of their life The Ghosts also of deceased Lovers have been reported to adhere
XVIII 1. That the Faculties of our Souls and the nature of the immediate instrument of them the Spirits doe so nearly symbolize with those of Daemons that it seems reasonable if God did not on purpose hinder it that they would not fail to act out of this earthly Body 2. Or if they would his power and wisdome could easily implant in their essence a double or triple Vital Congruity to make all sure 3. A further demonstration of the present Truth from the Veracity of God 4. An Answer to an Objection against the foregoing Argument 5. Another Demonstration from His Justice 6. An Answer to an Objection 7. An Answer to another Objection 8. Another Argument from the Justice of God 9. An Objection answered 10. An invincible Demonstration of the Souls Immortality from the Divine Goodness 11. A more particular enforcement of that Argument and who they are upon whom it will work least 12. That the noblest and most vertuous Spirit is the most assurable of the Souls Immortality 1. BUT finally to make all sure let us contemplate the Nature of God who is the Author and Maker of all things according to whose Goodness Wisdome and Power all things were created and are ever ordered and let us take special notice how many steps towards this Immortality we now treat of are impressed upon the very nature of the Soul already and then seriously consider if it be possible that the Soveraign Deity should stop there and goe no further when there are so great reasons if we understand any thing that He perfect our expectations For we have already clearly demonstrated That the Soul of man is a Substance actually separable from the Body and that all her Operations Functions are immediately performed not by those parts of the Body that are of an earthly and gross consistency but by what is more aeriall or aethereall the Vitall and Animall Spirits which are very congenerous to the Vehicles of the Angels or Genii Insomuch that if the Divine power did but leave Nature to work of it self it might seem very strange considering those Divine and Intellectuall Faculties in us as conformable to the essences or Soules of Angels as our Animal Spirits are to their Vehicles if it would not be an immediate sequel of this Priviledge that our Soules once separate from the Body should act and inform the Aire they are in with like facility that other Genii doe there being so very little difference betwixt both their natures 2. Or if one single Plastick power in a Subject so near a-kin to these aerial people will not necessarily suffice for both states certainly it must be a very little addition that will help out and how easy is it for that Eternall Wisdome to contrive a double or triple Vitall Congruity to wit aeriall and aethereal as well as terrestrial in such an Essence whose Faculties and properties doe so plainly symbolize with those purer Inhabitants of both the AEther and Aire 3. But this is not all we have to say For if there be one thing more precious in the Deity then another we shall have it all as a sure and infallible pledge of this present Truth That our Souls will not fail to prove Immortall And for my own part I know nothing more precious in the Godhead then his Veracity Justice and Goodness and all these three will assure us and secure us that we shall sustain no loss or damage by our departure out of these Earthly Bodies in either Life or Essence For it were a very high reproach to that Attribute of God which we call his Veracity he so plainly and universally promising to all the Nations of the World where there is any Religion at all a happy state after this life if there should in reality be no such thing to be expected For he does not onely connive it the Errour if it be one by not declaring himself against it as any upright person would if another should take upon him in his presence or hearing to tell others that he intended to bestow such and such gifts and revenues upon them when there was no such matter but he has as a man may say on set purpose indued men with extraordinary parts and powers to set this Opinion on foot in the Earth all Prophets and Workers of Miracles that have appeared in the world having one way or other assured to Man-kind this so weighty Truth And the most Noble Vertuous Spirits in all Ages have been the most prone to believe it And this not onely out of a sense of their own Interest but any one that ever had the happiness to experience these things may observe That that Clearness Purity of temper that most consists with the Love and admiration of God and Vertue and all those divine Accomplishments that even those that never could attain to them give their highest approbation of I say that this more refined temper of Minde does of it self beget a wonderful proneness if not a necessity of presuming of the Truth of this Opinion we plead for And therefore if it be not true God has laid a train in Nature that the most vertuous and pious men shall be the most sure to be deceived Which is a contradiction to his Attribute of Veracity 4. Nor can the strength of this Argument be evaded by replying that God may deceive men for their good as Parents doe their Children and therefore His Wisdome may contrive such a naturall Errour as this to be serviceable for States and Polities to keep the people in awe and so render them more faithfull and governable I must confess that there does result from this divine Truth such an usefulness by the by for the better holding together of Common-weals but to think that this is the main use thereof and that there is nothing more in it then so is as Idioticall and Childish as to conclude that because the Stars those vast lights doe some small offices for us by Night that therefore that is all the meaning of them and that they serve for nothing else Besides there is no Father would tell a Lye to his Child if he were furnisht with truth as effectual for his purpose and if he told any thing really good as well as desirable to his Childe to induce him to Obedience if it lay in his power he would be sure to perform his promise But it is in the power of God to make good whatever he has propounded for reward nor need he make use of any falshood in this matter Wherefore if he doe he has less Veracity then an ordinary honest man which is blasphemous and contradictious to the nature of the Deity 5. Again upon point of Justice God was engaged to contrive the Nature and Order of things so that the Soules of Men may live after death and that they may fare according to their behaviour here upon earth For the Godhead as the Philosopher calls him is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
De Subtilitate Lib. 19. in this manner 5. That his Father Facius Cardanus who confessed that he had the society of a familiar Spirit for about thirty years together told him this following Story often when he was alive and after his death he found the exact relation of it committed to writing which was this The 13. day of August 1491. after I had done my holy things at the 20. houre of the day there appeared to me after their usual manner seven men cloathed in silk garments with cloaks after the Greek mode with purple stockins and crimson Cassocks red and shining on their breasts nor were they all thus clad but onely two of them who were the chief On the ruddier and taller of these two other two waited but the less and paler had three attendants so that they made up seven in all They were about fourty years of age but lookt as if they had not reacht thirty When they were asked who they were they answered that they were Homines aerii AErial Men who are born and die as we but that their life is much longer then ours as reaching to 300. years Being asked concerning the Immortality of our Souls they answered Nihil quod cuique proprium esset superesse That they were of a nearer affinity with the Divi then we but yet infinitely different from them and that their happiness or misery as much transcended ours as ours does the brute Beasts That they knew all things that are hid whether Monies or Books And that the lowest sort of them were the Genii of the best and noblest men as the basest men are the trainers up of the best sort of Dogs That the tenuity of their Bodies was such that they can doe us neither good nor hurt saving in what they may be able to doe by Spectres and Terrours and impartment of Knowledge That they were both publick Professors in an Academy and that he of the lesser stature had 300. disciples the other 200. Cardan's Father further asking them why they would not reveal such treasures as they knew unto men they answered that there was a special law against it upon a very grievous penalty 6. These aerial Inhabitants stai'd at least three hours with Facius Cardanus disputing and arguing of sundry things amongst which one was the Original of the World The taller denied that God made the world ab aeterno the lesser affirmed that he so created it every moment that if he should desist but one moment it would perish Whereupon the othèr cited some things out of the Disputations of Avenroes which Book was not yet extant and named several other Treatises part whereof are known part not which were all of Avenroes his writing and withall did openly profess himself to be an Avenroist 7. The record of this Apparition Cardan found amongst his Fathers Papers but seems unwilling to determine whether it be a true history or a Fable but disputes against it in such a shuffling manner as if he was perswaded it were true and had a mind that others should think it so I am sure he most-what steers his course in his Metaphysical adventures according to this Cynosura which is no obscure indication of his assent and belief 8. That of the Death of the great God Pan you may read in Plutarch in his De defectu Oraculorum where Philippus for the proof of the Mortality of Daemons recites a Story which he heard from one AEmilianus a Roman one that was remov'd far enough from all either stupidity or vanity How his Father Epitherses being shipt for Italy in the evening near the Echinades the winde failed them and their Ship being carried by an uncertain course upon the Island Paxae that most of the Passengers being waken many of them drinking merrily after Supper there was a voice suddainly heard from the Island which called to Thamus by name who was an AEgyptian by birth and the Pilot of the Ship which the Passengers much wondred at few of them having taken notice of the Pilots name before He was twice called to before he gave any sign that he attended to the voice but after giving express attention a clear and distinct voice was heard from the Island uttering these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The company was much astonisht at the hearing of the voice and after much debate amongst themselves Thamus resolved that if the wind blew fair he would sail by and say nothing but if they were becalmed there he would doe his Message and therefore they being becalmed when they came to Palodes neither winde nor tide carrying them on Thamus looking out of the poop of the Ship toward the shore delivered his Message telling them that the great Pan was dead Upon which was suddainly heard as it were a joynt groaning of a multitude together mingled with a murmurous admiration 9. The opinion of Hesiod also is that the Genii or Daemons within a certain period of years doe die but he attributes a considerable Longaevity to them to wit of nine thousand seven hundred and twenty years which is the utmost that any allow them most men less Plutarch under the person of others has polisht this Opinion into a more curious and distinct dress for out of the mortality of the Daemons and the several ranks which Hesiod mentions of Rational Beings viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he has affixed a certain manner and law of their passing out of one state into another making them to change their Elements as well as Dignities 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But other he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not having sufficient command of themselves are again wrought down into humane Bodies to live there an evanid and obscure life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he phrases it 10. These are the most notable Testimonies for the Mortality of Daemons that I have met withall and therefore the more worth our reviewing That Vision of Facius Cardanus if it be not a Fable contains many Paradoxes As first That these AErial Genii are born at set times as well as we Not that any she Daemons are brought to bed of them but that they seem to have a beginning of their Existence from which they may be reckoned to have continued some more years and some less A thing unconceivable unless we should imagine that there is still a lapse or descent of Souls out of the higher Regions of the Aire into these lower or that these that leave these earthly Bodies pass into the number of the aiery Daemons As neither their death can so well be understood unless we should fancy that their Souls pass into more pure Vehicles or else descend into Terrestrial Bodies For Cardan himself acknowledges they perish not which also is agreeable with his Opinion of the Praeexistence of our Souls Secondly That these AErial Genii live but about 300. years which is against He siod and the greatest number
farre thinner and more invisible then those of the fore-named Daemons without committing any inconcinnity in Nature may appear from hence For the excellency of the inward Spirit is not alwaies according to the consistency of the Element with which it does incorporate otherwise those Fishes that are of humane shape and are at set times taken in the Indian Sea should have an◠higher degree of Reason and Religion then we that live upon Earth and have bodies made of that Element Whence nothing hinders but that the Spirit of Man may be more noble then the Spirit of some of the aerial Daemons And Nature not alwaies running in Arithmetical but also it Geometrical Progression one Remove it one may reach far above what is before it for the present in the other degrees of Progression As a creeping worm is above a cad-worm and any four-footed beasts above the birds till they can use their leggs as well as they but they are no sooner even with them but they are straight far above them and cannot onely goe but fly As a Peasant is above an imprison'd Prince and has more command but this Prince can be no sooner set free and become even with the Peasant in his liberty but he is infinitely above him And so it may be naturally with the Souls of men when they are freed from this prison of the Body their steps being made in Geometrical Progression as soon as they seem equal to that Order of Daemons we speak of they may mount far above them in tenuity and subtilty of Body and so become invisible to them and therefore leave them in a capacity of falsly surmising that they are not at all because they cannot see them 13. But if they thought that there is either some particular Ray of the Soule of the World that belongs peculiarly suppose to Socrates or Plato or that they had proper Souls really distinct then it is evident that they did either equivocate or lye Which their pride and scorn of mankinde they looking upon us but as Beasts in comparison of themselves might easily permit they making no more conscience to deceive us then we doe to put a dodge upon a dog to make our selves merry But if they had a design to winde us into some dangerous errour it is very likely that they would shuffle it in amongst many Truths that those Truths being examined and found solid at the bottome we might not suspect any one of their dictates to be false Wherefore this Vision being ill meant the poison intended was that of the Souls Mortality the dangerous falseness of which opinion was to be covered by the mixture of others that are true 14. As for that Relation of AEmilianus which he heard from his Father Epitherses it would come still more home to the purpose if the conclusion of the Philologers at Rome after Thamus had been sent for and averred the truth thereof to Tiberius Caesar could be thought authentick namely that this Pan the news of whose death Thamus told to the Daemons at Palodes was the Son of Mercury and Penelope for then 't is plain that Pan was an humane Soule and therefore concerns the present question more nearly But this Narration being applicable to a more sacred and venerable Subject it looses so much of its force and fitness for the present use That which Demetrius adds concerning certain Holy Islands neare Britain had been more fit in this regard Whither when Demetrius came suddainly upon his arrival there happened a great commotion of the air mighty tempests prodigious whirlwinds After the ceasing whereof the Inhabitants pronounced 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That some of a nature more then humane was dead Upon which Plutarch according to his usual Rhetorick descants after this manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. As the lightning of a lamp brings no grievance with it but the extinction of it is offensive to many sogreat Souls while they remain kindled into life shine forth harmlesly and benignly but their extinction or corruption often stirs up windes and tempests as in this present example and often infects the aire with pestilential annoiances 15. But the last Testimony is the most unexceptionable though the least pretending to be infallible and seems to strike dead both waies For whether the Souls of men that goe out of these earthly bodies be vertuous or vitious they must die to their AErial Vehicles Which seems a sad story at first sight and as if Righteousness could not deliver from Death But if it be more carefully perused the terrour will be found onely to concern the Wicked For the profoundest pitch of Death is the Descent into this Terrestrial Body in which besides that we necessarily forget whatever is past we doe for the present lead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a dark and obscure life as Plutarch speaks dragging this weight of Earth along with us as Prisoners and Malefactours doe their heavy shackles in their sordid and secluse confinements But in our return back from this state Life is naturally more large to them that are prepared to make good use of that advantage they have of their Aiery Vehicle But if they be not masters of themselves in that state they will be fatally remanded back to their former Prison in process of time which is the most gross Death imaginable But for the Good and vertuous Souls that after many Ages change their AErial Vehicle for an AEthereal one that is no Death to them but an higher ascent into life And a man may as well say of an Infant that has left the dark Wombe of his Mother that this change of his is Death as that a Genius dies by leaving the gross Aire and emerging into that Vehicle of Light which they ordinarily call AEthereal or Coelestial 16. There may be therefore by Axiome 36. a dangerous relapse out of the AErial Vehicle into the Terrestrial which is properly the Death of the Soule that is thus retrograde But for those that ever reach the AEthereal state the periods of life there are infinite though they may have their Perige's as well as Apoge's yet these Circuits being of so vast a compass and their Perige's so rare and short and their return as certain to their former Apsis as that of the Coelestial Bodies and their athereal sense never leaving them in their lowest touches towards the Earth it is manifest that they have arrived to that life that is justly styled Eternal 17. Whence it is plain that perseverance in Vertue if no external Fate hinder will carry Man to an Immortal life But whether those that be thus Heroically good be so by discipline and endeavour or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a special favour and irresistible design of God is not to be disputed in this place though it be at large discussed somewhere in the Dialogues of Plato But in the mean time we will not doubt to conclude that there is no Internal impediment to those that
the Nymphs to whom though they allot a long Series of years yet they doe not exempt them from mortality and fate And Demetrius in Plutarch pronounces expresly out of Hesiod that their life will be terminated with the Conflagration of the World from what the Poet intimates AEnigmatically 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 7. But to leave these Poetical Riddles and take a more serious and distinct view of the condition of the Soul after the Conflagration of the Earth we shall finde five several sorts of Opinions concerning it The first hold That this unmerciful heat and fire will at last destroy and consume the Soul as well as the Body But this seems to me impossible that any created Substance should utterly destroy another Substance so as to reduce it to nothing For no part of Matter acting the most furiously upon another part thereof does effect that It can onely attenuate dissipate and disperse the parts and make them invisible But the Substance of the Soul is indissipable and indiscerpible and therefore remains entire whatever becomes of the Body or Vehicle 8. The second Opinion is That after long and tedious torture in these flames the Soul by a special act of Omnipotency is annihilated But me thinks this is to put Providence too much to her shifts as if God were so brought to a plunge in his creating a Creature of it self immortal that he must be fain to uncreate it again that is to say to annihilate it Besides that that divine Nemesis that lies within the compass of Philosophy never supposes any such forcible eruptions of the Deity into extraordinary effects but that all things are brought about by a wise and infallible or inevitable train of secondary Causes whether natural or free Agents 9. The third therefor â—â— to avoid these absurdities denies both absumption by Fire and annihilation but conceives That tediousness and extremity of pain makes the Soul at last of her self shrink from all commerce with Matter the immediate Principle of Union which we call Vital Congruity consisting of a certain modification of the Body or Vehicle as well as of the Soul which being spoiled and lost and the Soul thereby quite loosned from all sympathy with Body or Matter she becomes perfectly dead and sensless to all things by Axiome 36. and as they say will so remain for ever But this seems not so rational for as Aristotle somewhere has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Wherefore so many entire immaterial Substances would be continued in being to all Eternity to no end nor purpose notwithstanding they may be made use of and actuate Matter again as well as ever 10. A fourth sort therefore of Speculators there is who conceive that after this solution of the Souls or Spirits of Wicked Men and Daemons from their Vehicles That their pain is continued to them even in that separate state they falling into an unquiet sleep full of furious tormenting Dreams that act as fiercely upon their Spirits as the external Fire did upon their Bodies But others except against this Opinion as a very uncertain Conjecture it supposing that which to them seems not so sound viz. That the Soul can act when it has lost all vital Union with the Matter which seems repugnant with that so intimate and essential aptitude it has to be united therewith And the Dreams of the Soul in the Body are not transacted without the help of the Animal Spirits in the Brain they usually symbolizing with their temper Whence they conclude that there is no certain ground to establish this Opinion upon 11. The last therefore to make all sure that there may be no inconvenience in admitting that the Souls or Spirits as well of evil Daemons as wicked Men disjoyned from their Vehicles by the force of that fatal Conflagration may subsist have excogitated an odde and unexpected Hypothesis That when this firing of the World has done due execution upon that unfortunate Crue and tedious and direful torture has we aried their afficted Ghosts into an utter recess from all Matter and thereby into a profound sleep or death that after a long Series of years when not onely the fury of the Fire is utterly slaked but that vast Atmosphere of smoak and vapours which was sent up during the time of the Earths Conflagration has returned back in copious showres of rain which will again make Seas and Rivers will binde and consolidate the ground and falling exceeding plentifully all over make the soil pleasant and fruitful and the Aire cool and wholsome that Nature recovering thus to her advantage and becoming youthful again and full of genital salt and moisture the Souls of all living Creatures belonging to these lower Regions of the Earth and Aire will awaken orderly in their proper places The Seas and Rivers will be again replenished with Fish the Earth will send forth all manner of Fowls four-footed Beasts and creeping things and the Souls of Men also shall then catch life from the more pure and balsamick parts of the Earth and be clothed again in terrestrial Bodies and lastly the AErial Genii that Element becoming again wholsome and vital shall in due order and time awaken and revive in the cool rorid Aire Which Expergeraction into life is accompanied say they with propensions answerable to those resolutions they made with themselves in those fiery torments and with which they fell into their long sleep 12. But the whole Hypothesis seems to be framed out of that dream of the Stoicks concerning the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the World after the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thereof As if that of Seneca belonged to this case Epist. 36. Mors quam pertimescimus ac recusamus intermittit vitam non eripit Veniet iterum qui nos in lucem reponet dies quem multi recusarent nisi oblitos reduceret But how coursly the Stoicks Philosophize when they are once turned out of their rode-way of moral Sentences any one but moderately skilled in Nature and Metaphysicks may easily discern For what Errors can be more gross then those that they entertain of God of the Soul and of the Stars they making the two former Corporeal Substances and feeding the latter with the Vapours of the Earth affirming that the Sun sups up the water of the great Ocean to quench his thirst but that the Moon drinks off the lesser Rivers and Brooks which is as true as that the Ass drunk up the Moon Such conceits are more fit for Anacreon in a drunken fit to stumble upon who to invite his Companions to tipple composed that Catch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then for to be either found out or owned by a serious and sober Philosopher And yet Seneca mightily triumphs in this notion of foddering the Stars with the thick foggs of the Earth and declares his opinion with no mean
strains of eloquence but I loving solid sense better then fine words shall not take the pains to recite them 13. At what a pitch his understanding was set may be easily discerned by my last quotation wherein there seems a palpable contradiction Veniet iterum qui nos in lucem reponet dies quem multi recusarent nisi oblitos reduceret If nos how oblitos If oblitos how nos For we are not we unless we remember that we are so And if mad-men may be said and that truly to be besides themselves or not to be themselves because they have lost their wits certainly they will be far from being themselves that have quite lost the Memory of themselves but must be as if they had never been before As Lucretius has excellently well declared himself De rerum naturâ Lib. 3. Nee si materiam nostram conlegerit aetas Post obitū rursumque redegerit ut sita nunc est Atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitae Pertineat quicquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum Interrupta semel cum sit retinentia nostri Where the Poet seems industriously to explode all the hopes of any benefit of this Stoical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and to profess that he is as if he had never been that cannot remember he has ever been before From whence it would follow that though the Souls of men should revive after the Conflagration of the World yet they have not escaped a perpetual and permanent death 14. We see therefore how desperately undemonstrable the condition of the Soule is after the Conflagration of the Earth all these five Opinions being accompanied with so much lubricity and uncertainty And therefore they are to be looked upon rather as some Night-landskap to feed our amused Melancholy then a clear and distinct draught of comprehensible Truth to inform our Judgment 15. All that we can be assured of is that those Souls that have obtained their aethereal Vehicles are out of the reach of that sad fate that followes this Conflagration and that the wicked Souls of Men and Daemons will be involved in it But there are a middle sort betwixt these concerning whom not onely curiosity but good will would make a man sollicitous For it is possible that the Conflagration of the World may surprise many thousands of Souls that neither the course of Time nor Nature nor any higher Principle has wrought up into an AEthereal Congruity of life but yet may be very holy innocent and vertuous Which we may easily believe if we consider that these very Earthly Bodies are not so great impediments to the goodness and sincerity of the Minde but that many even in this life have given great examples thereof Nor can that AErial state be less capable of nor wel be without the good Genii no more then the Earth without good men who are the most immediate Ministers of the Goodness and Justice of God But exemption from certain fates in the world is not alwaies entailed upon Innocency but most ordinarily upon natural power And therefore there may be numbers of the good Genii and of very holy and innocuous Spirits of men departed the consistency of whose Vehicles may be such that they can no more quit these aerial Regions then we can fly into them that have heavy bodies without wings To say nothing of those vertuous and pious men that may haply be then found alive and so be liable to be overtaken by this storm of fire Undoubtedly unless there appear before the approach of this fate some visible 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Jupiter Sospitator as the heathens would call him they must necessarily be involved in the ruine of the wicked Which would be a great eye-sore in that exact and irreprehensible frame of Providence that all men promise to themselves who acknowledge that there is a God Wherefore according to the light of Reason there must be some supernatural means to rescue those innocuous and benign Spirits out of this common calamity But to describe the manner of it here how it must be done would be to entitle natural Light and Philosophy to greater abilities then they are guilty of and therefore that Subject must be reserved for its proper place CHAP. XIX 1. That the Extinction of the Sun is no Panick feare but may be rationally suspected from the Records of History and grounds of Natural Philosophy 2. The sad Influence of this Extinction upon Man and Beast and all the aerial Daemons imprison'd within their several Atmospheres in our Vortex 3. That it will doe little or no damage to the AEthereal Inhabitants in reference to heat or warmth 4. Nor will they find much want of his light 5. And if they did they may pass out of one Vortex into another by the Priviledge of their AEthereal Vehicles 6. And that without any labour or toile and as maturely as they please 7. The vast incomprehensibleness of the tracts and compasses of the waies of Providence 8. A short Recapitulation of the whole Discourse 9. An Explication of the Persians two Principles of Light and Darkness which they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and when and where the Principle of Light gets the full victory 10. That Philosophy or something more sacred then Philosophy is the onely Guide to a true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. THE last danger that threatens the separate Soule is the Extinction of the Sun which though it may seem a meer Panick fear at first sight yet if the matter be examined there will appear no contemptible reasons that may induce men to suspect that it may at last fall out there been at certain times such near offers in Nature towards this sad accident already Pliny though he instances but in one example yet speaks of it as a thing that several times comes to pass Fiunt saith he prodigiosi longiores solis defectus qualis occiso Dictatore Caesare Antoniano bello totius anni pallore continuo The like happened in Justinians time as Cedrenus writes when for a whole year together the Sun was of a very dim and duskish hue as if he had been in a perpetuall Eclipse And in the time of Irene the Empress it was so dark for seventeen dayes together that the ships lost their way on the sea and were ready to run against one another as Theophanes relates But the late accurate discovery of the spots of the Sun by Shiner and the appearing and disappearing of fixt Stars and the excursions of Comets into the remoter parts of our Vortex as also the very intrinsecal contexture of that admirable Philosophy of Des-Cartes doe argue it more then possible that after some vast periods of time the Sun may be so inextricably inveloped by the Maculae that he is never free from that he may quite loose his light 2. The Preambles of which Extinction will be very hideous and intolerable to all the Inhabitants of