in his written Will to the contrary And now if it be found also that he hath not made it known to our Reasons that 't was not his will to do so we may conclude this first particular That no one can say that the Doctrine of Praeexistence is a falshhood Therefore let us call to Account the most momentous reasons that can be laid against it and we shall find that they all have not weight enough in the least to move so rational and solid an opinion 1. Then 't is likely to be urged that had we lived and acted in a former state * we should doubtless have retain'd some remembrance of that condition But we having no memory of any thing backwards before our appearance upon this present stage it will be thought to be a considerable praesumption that Praeexistence is but a phancy But I would desire such kind of reasoners to tell me how much they remember of their state and condition in the womb or of the Actions of their first infancy And I could wish they would consider that not one passage in an hundred is remembred of their grown and riper age Nor doth there scarce a night pass but we dream of many things which our waking Memories can give us no Account of yea old age and some kinds of diseases blot out all the images of things past and even in this state cause a total oblivion * Now if the Reasons why we should lose the remembrance of our former life be greater than are the causes of forgetfulness in the instances we have produced I think it will be clear that this Argument hath but little force against the opinion we are inquiring into Therefore if we do but reflect upon that long state of silence and inactivity that we emerged from when we came into these bodies and the vast change we under-went by our sinking into this new and unwonted habitation it will appear to the considerate that there is greater reason why we should have forgotten our former Life than any thing in this And if a disease or old age can rase out the memory of past actions even while we are in one and the same condition of Life certainly so long and deep a swoon as is absolute insensibility and inertness may much more reasonably be thought to blot out the memory of an other Life whose passages probably were nothing like the transactions of this And this also might be given as an other Reason of our forgetting our former state since usually things are brought to our remembrance by some like occurrences But 2. Some will argue If this be a state of punishment for former miscarriages how comes it about then that 't is a better condition than that we last came from viz. the state of silence and insensibility I answer That if we look upon our present terrestrial condition as an effect of our defection from the higher Life and in reference to our former happiness lost by our own default 't is then a misery and a punishment But if we compare our now-being with the state of inactivity we were delivered from it may then be called an After-Game of the divine Goodness and a Mercy As a Malefactor that is at first put into a dark and disconsolate dungeon and afterwards is remov'd to a more comfortable and lightsome prison may acknowledge his remove to be a favour and deliverance compared with the place he was last consined to though with respect to his fault and former liberty even this condition is both a mulct and a misery It is just thus in the present caâ—e and any one may make the application But it will be said 3 If our Souls liv'd in a former state did they act in bodies or without them The former they 'l say is absurd and the latter incongruous and unlikely since then all the powers the Soul hath to exert in a body would have been idle and to no purpose But 1 the most that can be argued from such like objections is that we know not the manner of the thing and are no Arguments against the assertion it self And were it granted that the paticular state of the Soul before it came hither is inconceivable yet this makes no more against it than it doth against it's after-condition which these very objectors hold to be so as to the particular modus But 2 Why is it so absurd that the Soul should have actuated another kind of body before it came into this Even here 't is immediately united to a purer vehicle moves and acts the grosser body by it And why then might it not in its former and purer state of Life have been joyn'd only to such a refined body which should have been suitable to its own perfection and purity I 'me sure many if not the most of the Antient Fathers thought Angels themselves to be embodied and therefore they reputed not this such a gross absurdity But an occasion hereafter will draw our pen this way again and therefore I pass it to a third return to this objection 3. Therefore though it were granted that the Soul lived afore-times without a body what greater incongruity is there in such a supposition than that it should live and act after death without any union with matter or any body whatsoever as the objectors themselves conceive it doth But all such objections as these will fly away as mists before the Sun when we shall come particularly to state the Hypothesis And therefore I may be excused from further troubling my self and the Reader about them here Especially since as hath been intimated they prove nothing at all but that the objectors cannot conceive what manner of state that of Praeexistence was which is no prejudice to the opinion it self that our Souls were extant before these earthly bodies Thus then I hope I have clearly enough made good that all Souls might have been Created from the beginning for ought any thing that is made known either in the Scriptures or our reasons to the contrary * And thereby have removed those prejudices that Would have stood in the way of our conclusion Wherefore we may now without controul from our proof of That it may be so pass on to enquire whether indeed it is so and see whether it may as well be asserted as defended And truly considering that both the other ways are impossible and this third not at all unreasonable it may be thought needless to bring more forces into the field to gain it the victory after its enemies are quite scattered and defeated Yet however for the pomp and triumph of truth though it need not their service we shall add some positive Arguments whereby it may appear that not only all other ways are dangerous and unpassable and this irreproveable but also that there is direct evidence enough to prove it solid and rational And I make my first consideration of this kind a second Argument CHAP. VI. A second Argument for
degree of exercise of one faculty are seldom if ever as well provided in the rest 'T is a common and daily observation that those that are of most heightned and strong Imaginations are defective in Judgment and the faculty of close reasoning And your very larg and capacious Memories have seldom or never any great share of either of the other perfections Nor do the deepest Judgments use to have any thing considerable either of Memory or Phancy And as there are fair instances even in this state of the inconsistence of the faculties in the highest exercise so also are there others that suggest untous 3 That by the same degrees that some Faculties fail in their strength and vigour others gain and are improved We know that the shutting up of the senses is the letting loose and inlarging of the Phancy And we seldom have such strong imaginations waking as in our dreams in the silence of our other saculties As the Sun recedes the Moon and Stars discover themselves and when it returns they draw in their baffled beams and hide their heads in obscurity But to urge what is more close and pressing It is an unerring remarque that those that want the use of some one natural part or faculty are wont to have very liberal amends made them by an excellency in some others Thus those that nature hath deprived of sight use to have wonderfully tenacious memories And the deaf and dumb have many times a strange kind of sagacity and very remarkable mechanical ingenies Not to mention other instances for I 'le say no more than I must needs Thus then experience gives us incouraging probability of the truth of the Theorem asserted And in its self 't is very reasonable for as we have seen the Soul being an active nature is always propending to the exercising of one faculty or other and that to the utmost it is able and yet being of a limited capacity it can imploy but one in hight of exercise at once which when it loseth and abates of its strength and supream vigour some other whose improvement was all this while hindred by this its ingrossing Rival must by consequence begin now to display it self and awaken into a more vigorous actuation so that as the former loseth the latter proportionably gaineth And indeed 't is a great instance of the divine wisdom that our faculties are made in so regular and equilibrious an order For were the same powers still uppermost in the greatest hight of activity and so unalterably constituted there would want the beauty of variety and the other faculties would never act to that pitch of perfection that they are capable of There would be no Liberty of Will and consequently no Humane Nature Or if the Higher Powers might have lessen'd and fail'd without a proportionable increase of the lower and they likewise have been remitted without any advantage to the other faculties the Soul might then at length fall into an irrecoverable recess and inactivity But all these inconveniences are avoided by supposing the principle we have here insisted on And it is the last that I shall mention Briefly then and if it may be more plainly the higher faculties are those where by the Soul acts towards spiritual and immaterial objects and the lower whereby it acts towards the Body Now it cannot with equal vigour exercise it self both ways together and consequently the more it is taken up in the higher operations the more prompt and vigorous it will be in these exercises and less so about those that concern the body è Converso Thus when we are very deeply ingaged in intellectual contemplations our outward senses are in a manner shrunk up and cramped And when our senses are highly exercised and gratified those operations monopolize and imploy us Nor is this less observable in relation to the Plastick For frequent and severe Meditations do much mortifie and weaken the body And we are most nourisht in our sleep in the silence of our senses Now what is thus true in respect of acts and particular exercises is as much so in states and habits Moreover 't is apparent that the Plastick is then most strong and vigorous when our other faculties are wholly unimployed from the state of the womb For nature when she is at her Plastick work ceaseth all other operations The same we may take notice of in Silk-worms and other Insects which lie as if they were dead and insensible while their lower powers are forming them into another appearance All which things put together give good evidence to the truth of our Axiom I 'le conclude this with one Remark more to prevent mistake Therefore briefly As the Soul always acts by the Body so in its highest exercises it useth some of the inferiour powers which therefore must operate also So that some senses as sight and somewhat analagous to hearing may be imployed in considerable degree even when the highest life is most predominant but then it is at the command and in the services of those nobler powers wherefore the sensitive life cannot for this cause be said to be invigorated since 't is under servitude and subjection and its gusts and pleasures are very weak and flaccid And this is the reason of that clause in the Principle as to their proper exercises Having thus laid the Foundation and fixt the Pillars of our building I now come to advance the Superstructure CHAP. XIV A Philosophical Hypothesis of the Souls Praeexistence THE Eternal and Almighty Goodness the blessed spring and root of all things made all his creatures in the best happiest and most perfect condition that their respective natures rendred them capable of By Axiom the first and therefore they were then constituted in the inactuation and exercise of their noblest and most perfect powers Consequently the souls of men a considerable part of the divine workmanship were at first made in the highest invigoration of the spiritual and intellective faculties which were exercised in vertue and in blisful contemplation of the supream Deity wherefore now by Axiom 6 and 7 * the ignobler and lower powers or the life of the body were languid and remiss So that the most tenuious pure and simple matter being the fittest instrument for the most vigorous and spiritual faculties according to Principle 2 4 and 5. The Soul in this condition was united with the most subtile and aethereal matter that it was capable of inacting and the inferior powers those relating to the body being at a very low ebb of exercise were wholly subservient to the superiour and imployed in nothing but what was serviceable to that higher life So that the senses did but present occasions for divine love and objects for contemplation * and the plastick had nothing to do but to move this passive and easie body accordingly as the concerns of the higher faculties required Thus then did we at first live and act in a pure and aethereal body and consequently in a
again to their condition of primigenial innocence But we must leave them to their felicity and go on with the History of our own descent Therefore after we are detruded from our aethereal condition we next descend into the Aereal The Aereal State NOw our bodies are more or less pure in this condition proportionably to the degrees of our apostacy So that we are not absolutely miserable in our first step of descent but indeed happy in comparison of our now condition As yet there may be very considerable remains of vertue and divine love though indeed the lower life that of the body be grown very strong and rampant So that as yet we may be supposed to have lapst no lower than the best and purest Regions of the Air by Axiom 2 and 3. And doubtless there are some who by striving against the inordinacy of their Appetites may at length get the victory again over their bodies and so by the assistance of the Divine Spirit who is always ready to promote and assist good beginnings may re-enkindle the higher life and so be translated again to their old celestial habitations without descending lower But others irreclaimably persisting in their Rebellion and sinking more and more into the body and the relish of its joys and pleasures these are still verging to a lower and more degenerate state so that at the last the higher powers of the Soul being almost quite laid asleep and consopited and the sensitive also by long and tedious exercises being much tired and abated in their vigour * the plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken so that a body of thin and subtile air will not suffice its now so highly exalted energy no more than the subtile Aether can suffice us terrestrial animals for respiration wherefore the aereal-congruity of life expires also and thus are we ready for an earthly body But now since a soul cannot unite with any body but with such only as is fitly prepared for it by Principle 3. and there being in all likelyhood more expirations in the Air than there are prepared bodies upon earth it must needs be that for some time it must be destitute of any congruous matter that might be joyned with it And consequently by Principle 4. 't will lye in a state of inactivity and silence Not that it will for ever be lost in that forgotten recess and solitude * for it hath an aptness and propeâ—sity to act in a terrestrial body which will be reduced into actual exercise when fit matter is prepared The Souls therefore that are now laid up in the black night of stupidity and inertness will in their proper seasons be awakened into life and operation in such bodies and places of the earth as by their dispositions they are fitted for So that no sooner is there any matter of due vital temper afforded by generation but immediately a soul that is suitable to such a body * either by meer natural congruity the disposition of the soul of the world or some more spontaneous agent is attracted or sent into this so befitting tenement according to Axiom 2 and 3. Terrestrial State NOw because in this state too we use our sensitive faculties and have some though very small reliques of the higher life also therefore the soul first makes it self a vehicle out of the most spiritous and yielding parts of this spumous terrestrial matter which hath some analogy both with its aethereal and aereal state This is as it were its inward vest and immediate instrument in all its operations By the help of this it understands reasons and remembers yea forms and moves the body And that we have such a subtile aery vehicle within this terrestrial our manifest sympathizing with that element and the necessity we have of it to all the functions of life as is palpable in respiration is me thinks good ground for conjecture And 't is not improbable but even within this it may have a purer fire and aether to which it is united being some little remain of what it had of old In this state we grow up merly into the life of sense having little left of the higher life * but some apish shews and imitations of reason vertue and religion By which alone with speech we seem to be distinguisht from Beasts while in reality the brutish nature is predominant and the concernments of the body are our great end our only God and happiness this is the condition of our now degenerate lost natures However that ever over-flowing goodness that always aims at the happiness of his creatures hath not left us without all means of recovery but by the gracious and benign dispensations which he hath afforded us hath provided for our restauration which some though but very few make so good use of that being assisted in their well meant and sincere indeavours by the divine spirit they in good degree mortifie and subdue the body conquer self-will unruly appetites and disorderly passions and so in some measure by Principle 7. awaken the higher life which still directs them upwards to vertue and divine love which where they are perfectly kindled carry the Soul when dismist from this prison * to it s old celestial abode For the spirit and noblest faculties being so recovered to life and exercise require an aethereal body to be united to and that an aethereal place of residence both which the divine Nemesis that is wrought into the very nature of things bestoweth on them by Principle the second But they are very few that are thus immediately restored to the celestial paradise upon the quitting of their earthly bodies For others that are but in the way of recovery and dye imperfectly vertuous meer Philosophy and natural reason within the bounds of which we are now discoursing can determin no more * but that they step forth again into aery vehicles that congruity of life immediately awakening in them after this is expired In this state their happiness will be more or less proportionably to their vertues in which if they persevere we shall see anon how they will be recover'd But for the present we must not break off the clue of our account by going backwards before we have arriv'd to the utmost verge of descent in this Philosophical Romance or History the Reader is at his choice to call it which he pleaseth Wherefore let us cast our eyes upon the Most in whom their life on earth hath but confirmed and strengthened their degenerate sensual and brutish propensions And see what is like to become of them when they take their leave of these terrestrial bodies Only first a word of the state of dying Infants and I come immediately to the next step of descent * Those therefore that pass out of these bodies before the terrestrial congruity be spoil'd weakened or orderly unwound according to the tenour of this Hypothesis must return into the state of inactivity For the Plastick in them is too highly awakened to inactuate
creatures will at length so consume and destroy that insensible pleasure and congruity that unites Soul and Body that the thus miserably cruciated Spirit must needs quit it's unfit habitation and there being no other body within its reach that is capable of a vital union according to the tenor of this Hypothesis it must become senseless and unactive by Axiom 4. And so be buried in a state of silence and inertness At length when these greedy flames shall have devoured what ever was combustible and converted into a smoak and vapour all grosser concretions that great orb of fire that the Cartesian Philosophy supposeth to constitute the center of this Globe shall perfectly have recovered its pristine nature * and so following the Laws of its proper motion shall fly away out of this vortex and become a wandring Comet till it settle in some other But if the next Conflagration reach not so low as the inmost regions of the Earth * so that the central fire remains unconcern'd and unimploy'd in this combustion this Globe will then retain its wonted place among the Planets And that so it may happen is not improbable since there is plenty enough both of fiery principles and materials in those Regions that are nearer to the surface to set the Earth into a Lightsome flame and to do all that execution that we have spoken of Some conceive therefore that the conflagration will not be so deep and universal as this opinion supposeth it But that it may take beginning from a less distance and spend it self upwards And to this purpose they represent the sequel of their Hypothesis The General Restitution THose thick and clammy vapours which erstwhile ascended in such vast measures and had fill'd the vault of Heaven with smoak and darkness must at length obey the Laws of their nature and gravity and so descend again in abundant showres and mingle with the subsiding ashes which will constitute a mudd vegetative and fertile For those warm and benign beams that now again begin to visit the desolate Earth will excite those seminal principles into action which the Divine Wisdom and goodness hath mingled with all things Wherefore they operating according to their natures and the dispositions which they find in the restored matter will shoot forth in all sorts of flowers herbs and trees making the whole Earth a Garden of delight and pleasure And erecting all the Phaenomena proper to this Element By this time the Air will be grown vital again and far more pure and pleasant than before the fiery purgation Wherefore they conceive that the disbodyed Souls shall return from their unactive and silent recess and be joyned again to bodies of purified and duly prepared Air. For their radical aptitude to matter still remained though they fell asleep for want of bodies of fit temper to unite with This is the summ of the Hypothesis as it is represented by the profoundly Learned Dr. H. More with a copious and pompous eloquence Now supposing such a recess of any Souls into a state of inactivity such a Restitution of them to life and action is very reasonable since it is much better for them to live and operate again than to be useless in the universe and as it were nothing for ever And we have seen above that the Divine goodness doth always what is best and his wisdom is not so shallow as to make his Creatures so as that he should be fain to banish them into a state that is next to non-entity there to remain through all duration Thus then will those lately tormented Souls having smarted for their past iniquities be recovered both from their state of wretchedness and insensibility and by the unspeakable benignity of their Maker placed once more in such conditions wherein by their own endeavours and the divine assistance they may amend what was formerly amiss in them and pursue any good Resolutions that they took while under the lash of the fiery tortures Which those that do when their good inclinations are perfected and the Divine Life again enkindled they shall in due time re-ascend the Thrones they so unhappily fell from and be circled about with unexpressible felicity But those that for all this follow the same ways of sensuality and rebellion against their merciful deliverer they shall be sure to be met with by the same methods of punishment and at length be as miserable as ever Thus we see the Air will be re-peopled after the conflagration but how the Earth will so soon be restored to Inhabitants is a matter of some difficulty to determine since it useth to be furnisht from the Aereal regions which now will have none left that are fit to plant it For the good were delivered thence before the conflagration And those that are newly come from under the â—iery lash and latter state of silence are in a hopeful way of recovery At least their aereal congruity cannot be so soon expired as to fit them for an early return to their terrestrial prisons Wherefore to help our selves in this rencounter we must remember that there are continually multitudes of souls in a state of inactivity for want of suitable bodies to unite with there being more that dye to the aery state than are born into this terrestrial In this condition were myriads when the general Fever seiz'd this great destemper'd body who therefore were unconcern'd in the conflagration and are now as ready to return into life and action upon the Earth's happy restauration as if no such thing had hapned Wherefore they will not fail to descend into fitly prepared matter and to exercise all the functions proper to this condition Nor will they alone be inhabitants of the Earth For all the variety of other Animals shall â—â—ve and act upon this stage with them all sorts of souls insinuating themselves into those bodies which are â—it for their respective natures Thus then supposing habitable congruous bodies there is no doubt but there will be humane Souls to actuate and inform them but all the difficulty is to conceive how the matter shall be prepared For who shall be the common Seeds-man of succeeding Humanity when all mankind is swept away by the fiery deluge And to take Sanctuary in a Miracle is unphilosophical and desperate I think therefore it is not improbable I mean according to the duct of this Hypothesis but that in this renewed youth of the so lately calcined and purified Earth there may be some pure efflorescences of balmy matter not to be found now in its exhausted and decrepit Age that may be proper vehicles of life into which souls may descend without further preparation And so orderly shape and form them as we see to this day several sorts of other creatures do without the help of generation For doubtless there will be great plenty of unctuous spirituous matter when the most inward and recondite spirits of all things shall be dislodg'd from their old close residences and
conceptions and Ideas of these natures and their relations can be only so far true * as they conform and agree with the things themselves and the harmony which they have one to another FINIS THE CONTENTS OF THE DISCOURSE of TRUTH Sect. 1. THAT Truth is twofold In the Object and in the Subject That in the Object what it is And that it is antecedent to and independent of any Will or Vnderstanding whatever p. 165 Sect. 2. The necessity of there being certain Arguments Means and Objects for certain Conclusions Ends and Faculties And that every thing will not suit every thing p. 166 Sect. 3. An Instance or two of the gross and horrid Absurdities consequent to the denying the mutual respects and relations of things to be eternal and indispensible p. 167 Sect. 4. The Entrance into the first part of the Discourse which is of Truth in the Object That the Divine Understanding does not make the Respects and Relations of its Objects but finds them or observes them p. 168 Sect. 5. That the Divine Will does not determine the References and Dependences of things because that would subvert his other Attributes p. 169 Sect. 6. The avoidance of the foregoing ill consequences by making God immutable with an Answer thereto p. 172 Sect. 7. An hideous but genuine Inference of a Pamphleteer from this principle That absolute and Sovereign Will is the Spring and Fountain of all Gods actions p. 173 Sect. 8. That the Denial of the mutual Respects and Relations of things unto one another to be eternal and unchangeable despoils God of that universal Rectitude of his Nature p. 174 Sect. 9. That the Denial of the unchangeableness of the said mutual Respects and Relations of things to one another takes away the Knowledge of God and of our own Happiness and lays a foundation of the most incurable Scepticism imaginable p. 176 Sect. 10. That the denying the Eternal and Immutable Respects of things frustrates all the noble Essays of the mind or understanding of man p. 180 Sect. 11. That in the abovesaid Denial are laid the Foundations of Rantism Debauchery and of all Dissoluteness of Life p. 181 Sect. 12. That our Assurance of future Happiness is quite â—ut off by the denying of the Eternal and Immutable Respects of Things p. 182 Sect. 13. Several Objections propounded against the scope of this Discourse hitherto from the Independency of the Divine Understanding and Will. p. 184 Sect. 14. A main Objection more fully insisted upon namely How well the Advancement of Gods Justice in the Damnation of the greatest part of Mankind consists with the scope of this Discourse especially it being so stated as is here set down p. 186 Sect. 15. An Answer to that Objection that concerns the Understanding of God shewing hat the Divine Vnderstanding does not depend upon the natures and mutual Respects of things though they be its Objects p. 187 Sect. 16. An Answer to that Objection which concerns the Will of God shewing That Liberty in the Power or Principle is no where a Perfection where there is not an Indifferency in the things or actions about which it is conversant p. 189 Sect. 17. That the Discourse hitherto does not infer any Dependency of God upon any thing without himself But only occasions are offered to him of acting according to his own intimate Nature and Essence p. 191 Sect. 18. The second part of the Discourse which briefly treats of Truth in the Subject What it is What in God and what in the Creature And that in both it is A representation or conception in the mind conformable to the unchangeable natures and mutual Respects of things p. 193 Annotations UPON THE Two foregoing TREATISES LVX ORIENTALIS OR An Enquiry into the OPINION OF THE EASTERN SAGES Concerning the Prae-existence of Souls AND THE Discourse of TRUTH Written for the more fully clearing and further confirming the main DOCTRINES in each TREATISE By one not unexercized in these kinds of SPECULATION LONDON Printed for J. Collins and S. Lounds over against Exeter-Change in the Strand 1682. Annotations UPON LVX ORIENTALIS THese two Books Lux Orientalis and the Discourse of Truth are luckily put together by the Publisher there being that suitableness between them and mutual support of one another And the Arguments they treat of being of the greatest importance that the Mind of man can entertain herself with the consideration thereof has excited so sluggish a Genius as mine to bestow some few Annotations thereon not very anxious or operose but such as the places easily suggest and may serve either to rectifie what may seem any how oblique or illustrate what may seem less clear or make a supply or adde strength where there may seem any further need In which I would not be so understood as that I had such an anxiety and fondness for the Opinions they maintain as if all were gone if they should fail but that the Dogmata being more fully clearly and precisely propounded men may more safely and considerately give their Judgments thereon but with that modesty as to admit nothing that is contrary to the Judgment of the truly Catholick and Apostolick Church Chap. 2. p. 4. That he made us pure and innocent c. This is plainly signified in the general Mosaick History of the Creation that all that God made he saw it was good and it is particularly declared of Adam and Eve that they were created or made in a state of Innocency Pag. 4. Matter can do nothing but by motion and what relation hath that to a moral Contagion We must either grant that the figures of the particles of Matter and their motion have a power to affect the Soul united with the Body and I remember Josephus somewhere speaking of Wine says it does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 regenerate as it were the Soul into another life and sense of things or else we must acknowledge that the parts of Matter are alterable into qualifications that cannot be resolved into mere mechanical motion and figure whether they be thus altered by the vital power of the Spirit of Nature or however it comes to pass But that Matter has a considerable influence upon a Soul united thereto the Author himself does copiously acknowledge in his fourth Chapter of this Book where he tells us that according to the disposition of the Body our Wits are either more quick free and sparkling or more obtuse weak and sluggish and our Mind more chearful and contented or else more morose melancholick or dogged c. Wherefore that he may appear the more consistent with himself it is likely he understands by this Moral Contagion the very venome and malignity of vitious Inclinations how that can be derived from Matter especially its power consisting in mere motion and figuration of parts The Psalmist's description is very apposite to this purpose Psal 58. The ungodly are froward even from their mothers womb as soon as they are born they go astray and
it shall go hard but that those whom their education or prejudice have engaged against this Hypothesis will light on some obscure pieces of texts and broken sentences or other that shall seem to condemn what they disapprove of But I am securely confident that there is not a sentence in the sacred volume from end to end that ever was intended to teach that all Souls were not made of old or that by a legitimate consequence would inferr it And if any there be that seem to look another way I dare say they are collateral and were never designed by the divine Authors for the purpose they are made to serve by the enemies of Praeexistence Wherefore not to conceal any thing that with the least shew of probability can be pretended from the sacred volume in discountenance of the Doctrine of Praeexistence I 'le bring into view whatever I know to have the least face of a Testimony to the contrary in the divine Revelations That so when it shall appear that the most specious Texts that can be alledg'd have nothing at all in them to disprove the souls praeexistence we may be secure that God hath not discovered to us in his written will that 't was not his pleasure to create all souls together Therefore 1. It may be pretended that the Doctrine of Praeexistence comports not with that innocence and integrity in which the Scripture determines Adam to have been made Since it supposeth the descent into these bodies to be a culpable lapse from an higher and better state of Life and this to be a state of incarceration for former delinquencies To this I answer 1 No one can object any thing to purpose against Praeexistence from the unconceiveableness of it until he know the particular frame of the Hypothesis without which all impugnations relating to the manner of the thing will be wide of the mark and but little to the business Therefore if the Objector would have patience to wait till we come to that part of our undertaking he would find that there was but little ground for such a scruple But however to prevent all cavillings in this place I 'le shew the invalidity of this objection Wherefore 2 There is no necessity from the Doctrine of Praeexistence to suppose Adam a Delinquent before his noted transgression in a terrestrial body for considering that his body had vast advantages above ours in point of Beauty Purity and Serviceableness to the Soul what harshness is there in conceiving that God might send one of those immaculate Spirits that he had made into such a Tenement that he might be his steward in the affairs of this lower Family and an overseer and ruler of those other Creatures that he had ordered to have their dwelling upon earth I am sure there is no more contrariety to any of the Divine Attributes in this supposition than there is in that which makes God to have sent a pure spirit which he had just made into such a body Yea 3 Supposing that some Souls fell when the Angels did which the process of our discourse will shew to be no unreasonable supposition this was a merciful provision of our Maker and a generous undertaking for a Seraphick and untainted Spirit For by this means fit and congruous matter is prepared for those Souls to reside and act in who had rendred themselves unfit to live and enjoy themselves in more refined bodies And so those Spirits that had sinned themselves into a state of silence and inactivity are by this seasonable means which the divine Wisdom and Goodness hath contrived for them put once more into a capacity of acting their parts anew and coming into play again Now if it seem hard to any to conceive how so noble a Spirit in such an advantagious body should have been imposed upon by so gross a delusion and submit so impotently to the first temptation He may please to consider that the difficulty is the same supposing him just then to have been made if we grant him but that purity and those great perfections both of will and understanding which orthodox theology allows him Yea again 4 I might ask What inconvenience there is in supposing that Adam himself was one of those delinquent Souls * which the divine pity and compassion had thus set up again that so so many of his excellent Creatures might not be lost and undone irrecoverably but might act anew though upon a lower stage in the universe A due consideration of the infinite foecundity and fulness of the divine goodness will if not warrant yet excuse such a supposition But now if it be demanded What advantage Adam's standing had been to his posterity had he continued in the state of innocence and how sin and misery is brought upon us by his Fall according to this Hypothesis I answer that then among many other great priviledges he had transmitted downwards by way of natural generation that excellent and blessed temper of body which should have been like his own happy crasis So that our apprehensions should have been more large and free our affections more regular and governable and our inclinations to what is good and vertuous strong and vigorous For we cannot but observe in this state how vast an influence the temper of our bodies hath upon our minds both in reference to intellectual and moral dispositions Thus daily experience teacheth us how that according to the ebb or flow of certain humours in our bodies our wits are either more quick free and sparkling or else more obtuse weak and sluggish And we find that there are certain clean and healthy dispositions of body which make us cheerful and contented others on the contrary morose melancholy and dogged And 't is easie to observes how age or sickness sowers and crabbs our natures I might instance in almost all other qualities of the mind which are strangely influenc't and modifyed according to the bodies constitution But none will deny so plain a truth and therefore I forbear to insist further on it Nor need I mention any more advantages so many and such great ones being consequent upon this But our great Protoplast and representative falling through his unhappy disobedience besides the integrity and rectitude of his mind he lost also that blessed constitution of Body which would have been so great a priviledg to his off-spring so that it became now corrupt weak and indisposed for the nobler exercises of the Soul and he could transmit no better to us than himself was owner of Thus we sell in him and were made miserable by his transgression We have bodies conveyed to us which strangely do bewitch and betray us And thus we all bear about us the marks of the first apostacy There are other sad effects of his defection but this may suffice for my present purpose Thus we see how that the derivation of original depravity from Adam is as clear in this Hypothesis as can be pretended in either of the
Praeexistence drawn from the consideration of the Divine Goodness which always doth what is best 2 THen whoever conceives rightly of God apprehends him to be infinite and immense Goodness who is alwayes shedding abroad of his own exuberant â—ulness There is no straitness in the Deity no bounds to the ocean of Love Now the divine Goodness referrs not to himself as ours extends not unto him He acts nothing for any self-accomplishment being essentially and absolutely compleat and perfect But the object and term of his goodness is his creatures good and happiness in their respective capacities He is that infinite fountain that is continually overflowing and can no more cease to shed his influences upon his indigent dependents than the sun to shine at noon * Now as the infinite Goodness of the deity obligeth him always to do good so by the same reason to do that which is best since to omit any degrees of good would argue a defect in goodness supposing wisdom to order and power to execute He therefore that supposeth God not always to do what is best and best for his Creatures for he cannot act for his own Good apprehends him to be less good than can be conceived and consequently not infinitely so For what is infinite is beyond measure and apprehension Therefore to direct this to our purpose God being infinitely good and that to his Creatures and therefore doing always what is best for them methinks it roundly follows that our souls lived and ' njoy'd themselves of old before they came into these bodies For since they were capable of living and that in a much better and happier state long before they descended into this region of death and misery and since that condition of life and self-enjoyment would have been better than absolute not-being may we not safely conclude from a due consideration of the divine goodness that it was so What was it that gave us our being but the immense goodness of our Maker And why were we drawn out of our nothings but because it was better for us to be than not to be Why were our souls put into these bodies and not into some more squalid and ugly but because we are capable of such and 't is better for us to live in these than in those that are less sutable to our natures And had it not been better for us to have injoy'd our selves and the bounty and favours of our Maker of old as did the other order of intellectual creatures than to have layn in the comfortless night of nothing till t'other day Had we not been better on 't to have lived and acted in the joyful regions of light and blessedness with those Spirits that at first had being than just now to jump into this sad plight and state of sin and wretchedness Insinite Power could as well have made us all at once as the Angels and with as good congruity to our natures we might have liv'd and been happy without these bodies as we shall be in the state of separation since therefore it was best for us and as easie for our Creator so to have effected it where was the defect if it was not so Is not this to â—lurr his goodness and to strait-lace the divine beneficence And doth not the contrary Hypothesis to what I am pleading for represent the God of Love as less good and bountiful than a charitable Mortal who would neglect no opportunity within his reach of doing what good he could to those that want his help and assistance I confess the world generally have such Narrow and unbecoming apprehensions of God and draw his picture in their imaginations so like themselves that few I doubt will feel the force of this Argument and mine own observation makes me enter the same suspicion of its success that some others have who have used it 'T is only a very deep sense of the divine goodness can give it any perswasive energy And this noble sentiment there are very few that are possest of However to lend it what strength I can I shall endeavour to remove some prejudices that hinder it's force and efficacy And when those spots and scum are wiped away that mistake and inadvertency have fastned on it 't will be illustrious by its own brightness CHAP. VII This first Evasion that God acts freely and his meer will is reason enough for his doing or forbearing any thing overthrown by four Considerations Some incident Evasions viz. that Gods Wisdom or his glory may be contrary to this display of the divine goodness in our being made of old clearly taken off 1. THerefore will some say God worketh freely nor can he be obliged to act but when he pleaseth And this will and pleasure of his is the reason of our beings and of the determinate time of our beginning Therefore if God would not that we should have been made sooner and in a better state of life his will is reason enough and we need look no further To this evasion I thus Reply 1. 'T is true indeed God is the most Free Agent because none can compel him to act none can hinder him from acting Nor can his Creatures oblige him to any thing But then 2. The divine liberty and freedom consists not in his acting by meer arbitrarious will as disjunct from his other Attributes For he is said to act according to the Counsel of his own will So that his wisdom and goodness are as it were the Rules whereby his will is directed Therefore though he cannot be obliged to act by any thing without himself yet he may be the Laws of his own essential rectitude and perfection Wherefore I conceive he is said not to be able to do those things which he might well enough by absolute power that consist not with his ever blessed Attributes Nor by the same reason can he omit that which the eternal Law of his most persect nature obligeth him to The summ is * God never acts by meer will or groundless humour that is a weakness in his impersect Creatures but according to the immutable Rules of his ever blessed essence And therefore 3 'T is a derogation from his infinite Majesty to assert any thing contrary to his Goodness upon pretence of his will and pleasure For whatever is most sutable to this most blessed Attribute and contradicts no other that be sure he willeth Wherefore 4 If it be better and more agreeable to the divine goodness that we should have been in an happier state before we came into these bodies Gods will cannot then be pretended to the contrary especially it having been proved already that he hath no way revealed any such will of his but rather it is demonstratively clear that his will was it should be so Since as God never acts in the absence of his wisdom and goodness so neither doth he abstain from acting when those great Attributes require it Now if it be excepted again 2 That 't is trâ—e
to act by due and orderly gradations and takes no precipitous leaps from one extream to another 'T is very probable therefore that in our immediately next state we shall have another vehicle And then 2. considering that our Souls are immediately united to a more tenuious and subtile body here than this gross outside 'T is methinks a good presumption that we shall not be stript and divested of our inward stole also when we leave this dull Earth behind us Especially 3 if we take notice how the highest and noblest faculties and operations of the Soul are help'd on by somewhat that is corporeal and that it imployeth the bodily Spirits in its sublimest exercises we might then be perswaded that it always useth some body or other and never acts without one And 4 since we cannot conceive a Soul to live or act that is insensible and since we know not how there can be sense where there is no union with matter we should me seems be induc'd to think that when 't is disjunct from all body 't is inert and silent * For in all sensations there is corporeal motion as all Philosophy and Experience testifies And these motions become sensible representations by virtue of the union between the Soul and its confederate matter so that when it is loose and dis-united from any body whatsoever it will be unconcern'd in all corporeal motions being a penetrable substance and no sense or perception will be conveyed by them Nor will it make any thing at all against this Argument to urge that there are Nâ—â— and purely unembodied Spirits in the Vniverse which live and act without relation to any body and yet these are not insensible For what they know and how they know we are very incompetent Judges of they being a sort of Spirits specifically distinct from our order and therefore their faculties and operations are of a very diverse consideration from ours So that for us to deny what we may reasonably argue from the contemplation of our own natures because we cannot comprehend the natures of a species of creatures that are far above us is a great mistake in the way of reasoning Now how strange soever this Principle may seem to those whom customary opinions have seasoned with another belief yet considering the Reasons I have alledged I cannot forbear concluding it very probable and if it prove hereafter serviceable for the helping us in some concerning Theories I think the most wary and timerous may admit it till upon good grounds they can disprove it The Fifth Pillar 5 The Soul in every state hath such a body as is fittest for those faculties and operations that it is most inclined to exercise 'T Is a known Maxim That every thing that is is for its operation and the Contriver and Maker of the World hath been so bountiful to all Beings as to furnish them with all suitable and necessary requisites for their respective actions for there are no propensities and dispositions in nature but some way or other are brought into actual exercise otherwise they were meer nullities and impertinent appendices Now for the imployment of all kinds of faculties and the exerting all manner of operations all kinds of instruments will not suffice but only such as are proportion'd and adapted to the exercises they are to be used in and the Agents that imploy them 'T is clear therefore that the Soul of Man a noble and vigorous Agent must be fitted with a suitable body according to the Laws of that exact distributive Justice that runs through the Vniverse and such a one is most suitable as is fittest for those exercises it propends to for the body is the Souls instrument and a necessary requisite of action Whereas should it be otherwise God would then have provided worse for his worthiest Creatures than he hath for those that are of a much inferiour rank and order For if we look about us upon all the Creatures of God that are exposed to our Observation we may seal this Truth with an infallible Induction That there is nothing but what is sitted with all suitable requisites to act according to its nature The Bird hath wings to waft it aloft in the thin and subtile aire the Fish is furnisht with fins to move in her liquid element and all other Animals have Instruments that are proper for their peculiar inclinations So that should it be otherwise in the case of Souls it would be a great blot to the wise managements of Providence and contrary to its usual methods and thus we should be dis-furnisht of the best and most convictive Argument that we have to prove that a Prinoiple of exactest wisdom hath made and ordered all things The Sixth Pillar 6 The Powers and Faculties of the Soul are either 1 Spiritual and Intellectual 2 Sensitive Or 3 Plastick NOw 1 by the intellectual powers I mean all those that relate to the soul in its naked and abstracted conception as it is a spirit and are exercised about immaterial Objects as vertue knowledge and divine love This is the Platonical Nâ—â— and that which we call the mind The two other more immediately relate to its espoused matter For 2 the sensitive are exercised about all the objects of sense and are concerned in all such things as either gratifie or disgust the body And 3 the Plastick are those faculties of the soul whereby it moves and forms the body and are without sense or Animadversion The exercise of the former I call the Higher life and the operations of the latter the lower and the life of the body Now that there are such faculties belonging to our natures and that they are exercised upon such and such objects respectively plain experience avoucheth and therefore I may be excused from going about to prove so universally acknowledged a truth Wherefore I pass to The Seventh Pillar 7 By the same degrees that the higher powers are invigorated the lower are consopited and abated as to their proper exercises è contra 1 THat those Powers should each of them have a tendency to action and in their turns be exercised is but rational to conceive since otherwise they had been supersâ—uous And 2 that they should be inconsistent in the supremest exercise and inactuation is to me as probable For the Soul is a finite and limited Being and therefore cannot operate diverse ways with equal intention at once That is cannot at the same time imploy all her faculties in the highest degree of exercise that each of them is capable of For doubtless did it ingage but one of those alone the operations thereof would be more strong and vigorous than when they are conjunctly exercis'd their Acts and Objects being very divers So that I say that these faculties should act together in the highest way they are capable of seems to be contrary to the nature of the Soul And I am sure it comports not with experience for those that are endowed with an high
place of light and blessedness by Principle 3d. But particularly to describe and point at this paradisaical residence can be done only by those that live in those serene regions of lightsome glory Some Philosophers indeed have adventured * to pronounce the place to be the Sun that vast Orb of splendor and brightness though it may be 't is more probable that those immense tracts of pure and quiet aether that are above Saturn are the joyous place of our ancient celestial abode But there is no determination in matters of such lubricous uncertainty where ever it is 't is doubtless a place and state of wonderful bliss and happiness and the highest that our natures had fitted us to In this state we may be supposed to have lived in the blissful exercise of vertue divine love and contemplation through very long tracts of duration But though we were thus unconceivably happy * yet were we not immutably so for our highest perfections and noblest faculties being but finite may after long and vigorous exercise somewhat abate and remit in their sublimest operations and Adam may fall asleep In which time of remission of the higher powers the lower may advance and more livelily display themselves than they could before by Axiom 7 for the soul being a little slackt in its pursuits of immaterial objects the lower powers which before were almost wholly taken up and imployed in those high services are somewhat more releast to follow a little the tendencies of their proper natures And now they begin to convert towards the body and warmly to resent the delights and pleasures thereof Thus is Eve brought forth while Adam sleepeth The lower life that of the body is now considerably awakened and the operations of the higher proportionably abated However there is yet no anomy or disobedience for all this is but an innocent exercise of those faculties which God hath given us to imploy and as far as is consistent with the divine laws to gratifie For it was no fault of ours that we did not uncessantly keep our spiritual powers upon the most intense exercises that they were capable of exerting * we were made on set purpose defatigable that so all degrees of life might have their exercise and our Maker designed that we should feel and taste the joys of our congenite bodies as well as the pleasures of those seraphick aspires and injoyments And me thinks it adds to the felicity of that state that our happiness was not one uniform piece or continual repetition of the same but consisted in a most grateful variety viz. in the pleasure of all our faculties the lower as well as the higher for those are as much gratified by suitable exercises and enjoyments as these and consequently according to their proportion capable of as great an happiness Nor is it any more derogation from the divine goodness that the noblest and highest life was not always exercised to the height of its capacity than that we were not made all Angels all the Planets so many Suns and all the variety of the Creatures formed into one Species Yea as was intimated above 't is an instance of the divine benignity that he produced things into being according to the vast plenitude of Forms that were in his all-knowing mind and gave them operations suitable to their respective natures so that it had rather seemed a defect in the divine dispensations if we had not had the pleasure of the proper exercise of the lower faculties as well as of the higher * Yea me thinks 't is but a reasonable reward to the body that it should have its delights and gratifications also whereby it will be fitted for further serviceableness For doubtless it would be in time spent and exhausted were it continually imployed in those high and less proportioned operations Wherefore God himself having so order'd the matter that the inferiour life should have its turn of invigoration it can be no evil in us * that that is executed which he hath so determined as long as we pass not the bounds that he hath set us Adam therefore was yet innocent though he joyed in his beloved Spouse yea and was permitted to feed upon all the fruits of this Paradise the various results of corporeal pleasure as long as he followed not his own will and appetites contrarily to the divine commands and appointments But at length unhappily the delights of the body betray us through our over indulgence to them and lead us captive to anomy and disobedience The sense of what is grateful and pleasant by insensible degrees gâ—ts head over the apprehension of what is just and good the Serpent and Eve prove successful tempters * Adam cannot withstand the inordinate appetite but feeds on the forbidden fruit viz. the dictates of his debauched will and sensual pleasure And thus now the body is gotten uppermost the lower faculties have greater exercise and command than the higher those being very vigorously awakened and these proportionably shrunk up and consopited wherefore by Axiom 3. and 5. the soul contracts a less pure body which may be more accommodate to sensitive operations and thus we fall from the highest Paradise the blissful regions of life and glory and become Inhabitants of the Air. Not that we are presently quite divested of our Aethereal state as soon as we descend into this less perfect condition of life for retaining still considerable exercises of the higher life though not so ruling and vigorous ones as before the soul must retain part of its former vehicle to serve it as its instrument in those its operations For the aethereal body contracts crasness and impurity by the same degrees as the immaterial faculties abate in their exercise so that we are not immediately upon the expiring of the highest congruity wholly stript of all remains of our celestial bodies but still hold some portion of them within the grosser vehicle while the spirit or higher life is in any degree of actuation Nor are we to suppose that every slip or indulgence to the body can detrude us from our aethereal happiness but such a change must be wrought in the soul as may spoil its congruity to a celestial body which in time by degrees is effected Thus we may probably be supposed to have fallen from our supream felicity But others of our order have made better use of their injoyments and the indulgences of their Maker and though they have had their Perigae's as well as their Apogae's I mean their Verges towards the body and its joys as well as their Aspires to nobler and sublimer objects yet they kept the station of their Natures and made their orderly returns without so remarkable a defection And though possibly some of them may sometimes have had their slips and have waded further into the pleasures of the body than they ought to have done yet partly by their own timely care and consideration and partly by the divine assistance they recover themselves
speak lyes They are as venomous as the poyson of a serpent even like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear That there should be such a difference in the Nativity of some from that of others and haply begot also of the same Parents is no slight intimation that their difference is not from their Bodies but their Souls in which there is so sudden Eruptions of vitious Inclinations which they had contracted in their former state not repressed nor extinct in this by reason of Adam's lapse and his losing the Paradisiacal body in which he was created and which should if it had not been for his Fall been transmitted to his Posterity but that being lost the several measures of the pristine Vitiosity of humane Souls discover themselves in this life according to the just Laws of the Divine Nemesis essentially interwoven into the nature of things Pag. 5. How is it that those that are under continual temptations to Vice are yet kept within the bounds of Vertue c. That those that are continually under temptations to Vice from their Childhood should keep within the bounds of Vertue and those that have perpetual outward advantages from their Childhood to be vertuous should prove vitious notwithstanding is not rationally resolved into their free will for in this they are both of them equal and if they had been equal also in their external advantages or disadvantages the different event might well be imputed to the freedom of their Will But now that one notwithstanding all the disadvantages to Vertue should prove vertuous and the other notwithstanding all the advantages to Vertue should prove vitious the reason of this certainly to the considerate will seem to lie deeper than the meer liberty of Will in man But it can be attributed to nothing with a more due and tender regard to the Divine Attributes than to the pre-existent state of humane Souls according to the Scope of the Author Pag. 9. For still it sâ—â—ms to be a diminutive and disparaging apprehension of the infinite and immense goodness of God that he should detrude such excellent Creatures c. To enervate this reason there is framed by an ingenious hand this Hypothesis to vie with that of Pre-existence That Mankind is an Order of Beings placed in a middle state between Angels and Brutes made up of contrary Principles viz. Matter and Spirit indued with contrary faculties viz. Animal and Rational and encompassed with contrary Objects proportioned to their respective faculties that so they may be in a capacity to exercise the Vertues proper and peculiar to their compounded and heterogeneal nature And therefore though humane Souls be capable of subsisting by themselves yet God has placed them in Bodies full of brutish and unreasonable Propensions that they may be capable of exercising many choice and excellent Vertues which otherwise could never have been at all such as Temperance Sobriety Chastity Patience Meekness Equanimity and all other Vertues that consist in the Empire of Reason over Passion and Appetite And therefore he conceives that the creating of humane Souls though pure and immaculate and uniting them with such brutish Bodies is but the constituting and continuing such a Species of Being which is an Order betwixt Brutes and Angels into which latter Order if men use their faculties of the Spiritual Principle in them well they may ascend Forasmuch as God has given them in their Spiritual Principle containing Free Will and Reason to discern what is best a power and faculty of overcoming all their inordinate Appetites This is his Hypothesis mostwhat in his own words and all to his own sence as near as I could with brevity express it And it seems so reasonable to himself that he professes himself apt to be positive and dogmatical therein And it might very well seem so to him if there were a sufficient faculty in the Souls of men in this World to command and keep in order the Passions and Appetites of their Body and to be and do what their Reason and Conscience tells them they should be and do and blames them for not being and doing So that they know more by far than they find an ability in themselves to perform Extreamly few there are if any but this is their condition Whence all Philosophers that had any sense of Vertue and Holiness as well as Jews and Christians have looked upon Man as in a lapsed state not blaming God but deploring the sad condition they found themselves in by some foregoing lapse or fault in Mankind And it is strange that our own Consciences should flie in our faces for what we could never have helped It is witty indeed which is alleadged in the behalf of this Hypothesis viz. That the Rational part of man is able to command the lower Appetites because if the superiour part be not strong enough to govern the inferiour it destroys the very being of moral Good and Evil Forasmuch as those acts that proceed out of necessity cannot be moral nor can the superiour Faculties be obliged to govern the inferiour if they are not able because nothing is obliged to impossibilities But I answer if inabilities come upon us by our own fault the defects of action then are upon the former account moral or rather immoral And our Consciences rightly charge us with the Vitiosities of our Inclinations and Actions even before we can mend them here because they are the consequences of our former Guilt Wherefore it is no wonder that there is found a flaw in a subtilty that would conclude against the universal Experience of men who all of them more or less that have any sense of Morality left in them complain that the inferiour powers of the Soul at least for a time were too hard for the superiour And the whole mass of Mankind is so generally corrupt and abominable that it would argue the wise and just God a very unequal Matcher of innocent Souls with brutish Bodies they being universally so hugely foiled or overcome in the conflict if he indeed were the immediate Matcher of them For how can that be the effect of an equilibrious or sufficient Free Will and Power that is in a manner perpetual and constant But there would be near as many Examples one way as the other if the Souls of men in this state were not by some precedent lapse become unable to govern as they ought all in them or about them that is to be subjected to their Reason No fine Fetches of Wit can demolish the steady and weighty structure of sound and general Experience Pag. 9. Wherein he seeth it ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt c. The Expression ten thousand to one is figurative and signifies how hugely more like it is that the Souls would be corrupted by their Incorporation in these Animal or Brutish Bodies than escape Corruption And the effect makes good the Assertion for David of old to say nothing of the days of Noah and Paul
dead to their life But the changing of our Earthly Body for an Aereal or Aethereal this is not Death but Reviviscency in which all the energies of the Soul are not depressed but exalted and our Memory with the rest quickened as it was in Esdras after he had drunk down that Cup offered to him by the Angel full of Liquor like Fire which filled his Heart with Understanding and strengthned his Memory as the Text says Thus we see how all Objections against the three Reasons of lapsed Souls losing the memory of the things of the other state vanish into smoak Wherefore they every one of them single being so sound all three put together methinks should not fail of convincing the most refractory of this Truth That though the Soul did pre-exist and act in another state yet she may utterly forget all the Scenes thereof in this Pag. 46. Now if the reasons why we lose the remembrance of our former life be greater c. And that they are so does appear in our Answer to the Objections made against the said Reasons if the Reader will consider them Pag. 50. And thereby have removed all prejudices c. But there is yet one Reason against Pre-existence which the ingenious Author never thought of urged by the Anti-Pre-existentiaries namely That it implies the rest of the Planets peopled with Mankind it being unreasonable to think that all Souls descended in their lapse to this onely Earth of Ours And if there be lapsed Souls there how shall they be recovered shall Christ undergo another and another death for them But I believe the ingenious Author would have looked upon this but as a mean and trifling Argument there being no force in any part thereof For why may not this Earth be the onely Hospital Nosocomium or Coemeterium speaking Platonically of sinfully lapsed Souls And then suppose others lapsed in other Planets what need Christ die again for them when one drop of his Bloud is sufficient to save myriads of Worlds Whence it may seem a pity there is not more Worlds than this Earth to be redeemed by it Nor is it necessary they should historically know it And if it be the Eclipse of the Sun at his Passion by some inspired Prophets might give them notice of it and describe to them as orderly an account of the Redemption as Moses does of the Creation though he stood not by while the World was framed but it was revealed to him by God And lastly it is but a rash and precarious Position to say that the infinite Wisdom of God has no more ways than one to save lapsed Souls It is sufficient that we are assured that this is the onely way for the saving of the Sons of Adam and these are the fixt bounds of revealed Truth in the Holy Scripture which appertains to us Inhabitants on Earth But as for the Oeconomy of his infinite Wisdom in the other Planets if we did but reflect upon our absolute ignorance thereof we would have the discretion not to touch upon that Topick unless we intended to make our selves ridiculous while we endeavour to make others so Chap. 6. pag. 51. Now as the infinite goodness of the Deity obligeth him always to do good so by the same to do that which is best c. To elude the force of this chief Argument of the Pre-existentiaries an ingenious Opposer has devised a way which seems worth our considering which is this viz. By making the Idea of God to consist mainly in Dominion and Soveraignty the Scriptures representing him under no other notion than as the Supream Lord and Soveraign of the Universe Wherefore nothing is to be attributed to him that enterferes with the uncontroulableness of his Dominion And therefore says he they that assert Goodness to be a necessary Agent that cannot but do that which is best directly supplant and destroy all the Rights of his Power and Dominion Nay he adds afterwards That this notion of Gods goodness is most apparently inconsistent not onely with his Power and Dominion but with all his other moral Perfections And for a further explication of his mind in this matter he adds afterwards That the Divine Will is indued with the highest kind of liberty as it imports a freedom not onely from foreign Violence but also from inward Necessity For spontaneity or immunity from coaction without indifferency carries in it as great necessity as those motions that proceed from Violence or Mechanism From whence he concludes That the Divine Will cannot otherwise be determined than by its own intrinsick energie And lastly Forasmuch as no Courtisie can oblige but what is received from one that had a power not to bestow them if God necessarily acted according to his Goodness and not out of mere choice and liberty of Will there were no thanks nor praise due to him which therefore would take away the duties of Religion This is the main of his Hypothesis whereby he would defeat the force of this Argument for the Pre-existence of Souls taken from the Goodness of God Which this Hypothesis certainly would do if it were true and therefore we will briefly examine it First therefore I answer That though the Scriptures do frequently represent God as the Lord and Soveraign of the Universe yet it does not conceal his other Attributes of Goodness and Mercy and the like But that the former should be so much inculcated is in reference to the begetting in the People Awe and Obedience to him But it is an invalid consequence to draw from hence that the Idea of God does mainly consist in Dominion and Soveraignty which abstracted from his other Attributes of Wisdom and Goodness would be a very black and dark representation of him and such as this ingenious Writer could not himself contemplate without aversation and horror How then can the Idea of God chiefly consist in this It is the most terrifying indeed but not the most noble and accomplishing part in the Idea of the Deity This Soveraignty then is such as is either bounded or not bounded by any other Attributes of God If bounded by none then he may do as well unwisely as wisely unjustly as justly If bounded by Wisdom and Justice why is it bounded by them but that it is better so to be than otherwise And Goodness being as essential to God as Wisdom and Justice why may not his Soveraignty be bounded by that as well as by the other and so he be bound from himself of himself to do as well what is best as what is better This consists with his absolute Soveraignty as well as the other And indeed what can be absolute Soveraignty in an intelligent Being if this be not viz. fully and entirely to follow the will and inclinations of its own nature without any check or controul of any one touching those over whom he rules Whence in the second place it appears that the asserting that Gods goodness is a necessary Agent in
and course to pass through all these dispensations provided she keep her self sincere towards her Maker is not properly any lapse or sin but an harmless experiencing all the capacities of enjoying themselves that God has bestowed upon them Which will open a door to a further Answer touching the rest of the Planets being inhabited namely That they may be inhabited by such kind of â—ouls as these who therefore want not the Knowledge and assistance of a Redeemer And so the earth may be the onely Nosocomium of sinfully lapsed souls This may be an answer to such far-fetched Objections till they can prove the contrarie Pag. 118. Adam cannot withstand the inordinate appetite c. Namely after his own remissness and heedlessness in ordering himself he had brought himself to such a wretched weakness Pag. 121. The Plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken c. There are three Vital Congruities belonging to the Plastick of the Soul and they are to awake orderly that is to operate one after another downward and upward that is to say In the lapse the Aereal follows the Aethereal the Terrestrial the Aereal But in their Recovery or Emergency out of the lapse The Aereal follows the Terrestrial and the Aethereal the Aereal But however a more gross turgency to Plastick operation may haply arise at the latter end of the Aereal Period which may be as it were the disease of the soul in that state and which may help to turn her out of it into the state of Silence and is it self for the present silenced therewith For where there is no union with bodie there is no operation of the Soul Pag. 121. For it hath an aptness and propensity to act in a Terrestrial body c. This aptness and fitness it has in the state of Silence according to that essential order of things interwoven into its own nature and into the nature of the Spirit of the World or great Archeus of the Universe according to the eternal counsel of the Divine Wisdom By which Law and appoyntment the soul will as certainly have a fitness and propensity at its leaving the Terrestrial body to actuate an Aereal one Pag. 122. Either by mere natural Congruity the disposition of the soul of the world or some more spontaneous agent c. Natural Congruity and the disposal of the Plastick soul of the world which others call the Spirit of Nature may be joyned well together in this Feat the Spirit of Nature attracting such a soul as is most congruous to the predelineated Matter which it has prepared for her But as for the spontaneous Agent I suppose he may understand his ministry in some supernatural Birth Unless he thinks that some Angels or Genii may be imployed in putting souls into bodies as Gardiners are in setting Pease and Beans in the beds of Gardens But certainly they must be no good Genii then that have any hand in assisting or setting souls in such wombs as have had to do with Adulterie Incest and Buggery Pag. 123. But some apish shews and imitations of Reason Vertue and Religion c. The Reason of the unregenerate in Divine things is little better than thus and Vertue and Religion which is not from that Principle which revives in us in real Regeneration are though much better than scandalous vice and profaness mere pictures and shadows of what they pretend to Pag. 123. To its old celestial abode c. For we are Pilgrims and strangers here on the earth as the holy Patriarchs of old declared And they that speak such things saith the Apostle plainly shew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they seek their native country for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies And truly if they had been mindful of that earthly country out of which they came they might saith he have had opportunity of returning But now they desire a better to wit an heavenly Hebr. 11. Pag. 124. But that they step forth again into Airy Vehicles This is their natural course as I noted above But the examples of Enoch and Elias and much more of our ever Blessed Saviour are extraordinary and supernatural Pag. 125. Those therefore that pass out of these bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoyled weakened or orderly unwound according to the tenour of this Hypothesis c. By the favour of this ingenious Writer this Hypothesis does not need any such obnoxious Appendage as this viz. That souls that are outed these Terrestrial bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoiled weakned or orderly unwound return into the state of Inactivity But this is far more consonant both to Reason and Experience or Storie that though the Terrestrial Congruity be still vigorous as not having run out it may be the half part no not the tenth part of its Period the soul immediately upon the quitting of this body is invested with a bodie of Air and is in the state of Activity not of Silence in no sense For some being murdered have in all likelyhood in their own persons complained of their murderers as it is in that story of Anne Walker and there are many others of the same nature And besides it is far more reasonable there being such numerous multitudes of silent souls that their least continuance in these Terrestrial bodies should at their departure be as it were a Magical Kue or Tessera forthwith to the Aereal Congruity of life to begin to act its part upon the ceasing of the other that more souls may be rid out of the state of Silence Which makes it more probable that every soul that is once besmeared with the unctuous moisture of the Womb should as it were by a Magick Oyntment be carried into the Air though it be of a still-born Infant than that any should return into the state of Silence or Inactivity upon the pretence of the remaining vigour of the Terrestrial Congruity of life For these Laws are not by any consequential necessity but by the free counsel of the Eternal Wisdom of God consulting for the best And therefore this being so apparently for the best this Law is interwoven into the Spirit of the World and every particular soul that upon the ceasing of her Terrestrial Union her Aereal Congruity of life should immediately operate and the Spirit of Nature assisting she should be drest in Aereal robes and be found among the Inhabitants of those Regions If souls should be remanded back into the state of Silence that depart before the Terrestrial Period of Vital Congruity be orderly unwound so very few reach the end of that Period that they must in a manner all be turned into the state of Inactivity Which would be to weave Penelope's Web to do and undo because the day is long enough as the Proverb is when as it rather seems too short by reason of the numerosity of Silent souls that expect their turn of Recovery into Life Pag. 125. But onely follow the clew of this Hypothesis The Hypothesis
requires no such thing but it rather clashes with the first and chiefest Pillar thereof viz. That all the Divine designs and actions are laid and carried on by Infinite Goodness And I have already intimated how much better it is to be this way that I am pleading for than that of this otherwise-ingenious Writer Pag. 125. Since by long and hard exercise in this body the Plastick Life is well tamed and debilitated c. But this is not at all necessary no not in those souls whose Plastick may be deemed the most rampant Dis-union from this Terrestrial body immediately tames it I mean the Terrestrial Congruity of Life and itâ— operation is stopt as surely as a string of a Lutâ— never so smartly vibrated is streightways silenced by a gentle touch of the finger and another single string may be immediately made to sound alone while the other is mute and silent For I say these are the free Laws of the Eternal Wisdom but fatally and vitally not intellectually implanted in the Spirit of Nature and in all Humane Souls or Spirits The whole Universe is as it were the Automatal Harp of that great and true Apollo and as for the general striking of the strings and stopping their vibrations they are done with as exquisite art as if a free intellectual Agent plaid upon them But the Plastick powers in the world are not such but onely Vital and Fatal as I said before Pag. 126. That an Aereal body was not enough for it to display its force upon c. It is far more safe and rational to say that the soul deserts her Aereal Estate by reason that the Period of the Vital Congruity is expired which according to those fatal Laws I spoke of before is determined by the Divine Wisdom But whether a soul may do any thing to abbreviate this Period and excite such symptoms in the Plastick as may shorten her continuance in that state let it be left to the more inquisitive to define Pag. 128. Where is then the difference betwixt the just and the wicked in state place and body Their difference in place I have sufficiently shewn in my Answer to the third Argument against the triple Congruity of Life in the Plastick of Humane Souls how fitly they may be disposed of in the Air. But to the rude Buffoonry of that crude Opposer of the Opinion of Pre-existence I made no Answer It being methinks sufficiently answered in the Scholia upon Sect. 12. Cap. 3. Lib. 3. of Dr. H. Mores Immortalitas Animae if the Reader think it worth his while to consult the place Now for State and Body the difference is obvious The Vehicle is of more pure Air and the Conscience more pure of the one than of the other Pag. 130. For according to this Hypothesis the gravity of those bodies is less because the quantity of the earth that draws them is so c. This is an ingenious invention both to salve that Phaenomenon why Bodies in Mines and other deep subterraneous places should seem not so heavy nor hard to lift there as they are in the superiour Air above the earth and also to prove that the crust of the earth is not of so considerable a thickness as men usually conceive it is I say it is ingenious but not so firm and sure The Quick-silver in a Torricellian Tube will sink deeper in an higher or clearer Air though there be the same Magnetism of the earth under it that was before But this is not altogether so fit an illustration there being another cause than I drive at conjoyned thereto But that which I drive at is sufficient of it self to salve this Phaenomenon A Bucket of water while it is in the water comes up with ease to him that draws it at the Well but so soon as it comes into the Air though there be the same earth under it that there was before it feels now exceeding more weighty Of which I conceive the genuine reason is because the Spirit of Nature which ranges all things in their due order acts proportionately strongly to reduce them thereto as they are more heterogeniously and disproportionately placed as to their consistencies And therefore by how much more crass and solid a body is above that in which it is placed by so much the stronger effort the Spirit of Nature uses to reduce it to its right place but the less it exceeds the crassness of the Element it is in the effort is the less or weaker Hence therefore it is that a stone or such like body in those subterraneous depths seems less heavy because the air there is so gross and thick and is not so much disproportionate to the grossness of the stone as our air above the earth here is nor do I make any doubt but if the earth were all cut away to the very bottom of any of these Mines so that the Air might be of the same consistency with ours the stone would then be as heavy as it is usually to us in this superioor surface of the earth So that this is no certain Argument for the proving that the crust of the earth is of such thinness as this Author would have it though I do not question but that it is thin enough Pag. 131. And the mention of the Fountains of the great Deep in the Sacred History c. This is a more considerable Argument for the thinness of the crust of the earth and I must confess I think it not improbable but that there is an Aqueous hollow Sphaericum which is the Basis of this habitable earth according to that of Psalm 24. 2. For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the flouds Pag. 131. Now I intend not that after a certain distance all is fluid matter to the Centre That is to say After a certain distance of earthly Matter that the rest should be fluid Matter namely Water and Air to the Centre c. But here his intention is directed by that veneration he has for Des Cartes Otherwise I believe if he had freely examined the thing to the bottom he would have found it more reasonable to conclude all fluid betwixt the Concave of the Terrestrial Crust and the Centre of the Earth as we usually phrase it though nothing be properly Earth but that Crust Pag. 131. Which for the most part very likely is a gross and foetid kind of air c. On this side of the Concave of the Terrestrial Crust there may be several Hollows of foetid air and stagnant water which may be so many particular lodgings for lapsed and unruly Spirits But there is moreover a considerable Aqueous Sphaericum upon which the earth is founded and is most properly the Abyss but in a more comprehensive notion all from the Convex thereof to the Centre may be termed the Abyss or the Deepest place that touches our imagination Pag. 131. The lowest and central Regions may be filled with flame and
only an aereal body And there being no other more congruous ready and at hand for it to enter it must needs step back into its former state of insensibility and there wait its turn till befitting matter call it forth again into life and action This is a conjecture that Philosophy dictates which I vouch not for a truth * but only follow the clue of this Hypothesis Nor can there any danger be hence conceived that those whose congruities orderly expire should fall back again into a state of â—ilence and inertness * since by long and hard exercises in this body the plastick life is well tamed and debilitated so that now its activity is proportioned to a more tenuious and passive vehicle which it cannot fail to meet with in its next condition For 't is only the terrestrial body is so long a preparing But to The next step of Descent or After-state TO give an Account of the After-state of the more degenerate and yet descending souls some fancy a very odd Hypothesis imagining that they pass hence into some other more course and inferior Planet in which they are provided with bodies suitable to their so depraved natures But I shall be thought extravagant for the mention of such a supposition Wherefore I come to what is less obnoxious When our souls go out of these bodies therefore they are not presently discharged of all the matter that belonged to this condition but carry away their inward and aereal state to be partakers with them of their after fortunes only leaving the useless earth behind them For they have a congruity to their aery bodies though that which they had to a terrestrial is worn out and defaced Nor need we to wonder how it can now have an aereal aptitude when as that congruity expired before we descended hither If we consider the reason of the expiration of its former vital aptitude which was not so much through any defect of power to actuate such a body but through the excess of invigoration of the Plastick which was then grown so strong * that an aereal body was not enough for it to display its force upon But now the case is altered these lower powers are worn and wearied out by the toylsome exercise of dragging about and managing such a load of flesh wherefore being so castigated they are duly attemper'd to the more easie body of air again as was intimated before to which they being already united they cannot miss of a proper habitation But considering the stupor dulness and inactivity of our declining age it may seem unlikely to some that after death we should immediately be resuscitated into so lively and vigorous a condition as is the aereal especially since all the faculties of sense and action are observed gradually to fail and abate as we draw nearer to our exit from this Stage which seems to threaten that we shall next descend into a state of more stupor and inertness But this is a groundless jealousie for the weakness and lethargick inactivity of old age ariseth from a defect of those Spirits that are the instruments of all our operations which by long exercise are at last spent and scattered So that the remains can scarce any longer stand under their unweildy burthen much less can they perform all functions of life so vigorously as they were wont to do when they were in their due temper strength and plenty However notwithstanding this inability to manage a sluggish stubborn and exhausted terrestrial body there is no doubt but the Soul can with great â—ase when it is discharged of its former load actuate its thin aery vehicle and that with a brisk vigour and activity As a man that is overladen may be ready to faint and sink till he be relieved of his burthen and then he can run away with a cheerful vivacity So that this decrepit condition of our decayed natures cannot justly prejudice our belief that we shall be erected again into a state of life and action in aereal bodies after this congruity is expired But if all alike live in bodies of air in the next condition * where is then the difference between the just and the wicked in state place and body For the just we have said already that some of them are reinstated in their pristine happiness and felicity and others are in a middle state within the confines of the Air perfecting the inchoations of a better life which commenc'd in this As for the state and place of those that have lived in a continual course of sensuality and forgetfulness of God I come now to declare what we may fancy of it by the help of natural light and the conduct of Philosophy And in order to this discovery I must premise somewhat concerning the Earth this Globe we live upon which is that we are not to conceive it to be a full bulky mass to the center but rather that 't is somewhat like a suckt Egg in great part an hollow sphere so that what we tread upon is but as it were an Arch or Bridge to divide between the upper and the lower regions Not that this inward hollowness is a meer void capacity for there are no such chasms in nature but doubtless replenisht it is with some fluid bodies or other and it may be a kind of air fire and water Now this Hypothesis will help us easily to imagin how the earth may move notwithstanding the pretended indisposition of its Bulk and on that account I believe it will be somewhat the more acceptable with the free and ingenious Those that understand the Cartesian Philosophy will readily admit the Hypothesis at least as much of it as I shall have need of But for others I have little hopes of perswading them to any thing and therefore I 'le spare my labour of going about to prove what they are either uncapable of or at first dash judge ridiculous And it may be most will grant as much as is requisite for my purpose which is That there are huge vast cavities within the body of the Earth and it were as needless as presumptuous for me to go about to determinemore Only I shall mention a probability that this gross crust which we call earth is not of so vast a profundity as is supposed and so come more press to my business 'T is an ordinary observation among them that are imployed in Mines and subterraneous vaults of any depth that heavy bodies lose much of their gravity in those hollow caverns So that what the strength of several men cannot stir above ground is easily moved by the single force of one under it Now to improve this experiment 't is very likely that gravity proceeds from a kind of magnetism and attractive vertue in the earth which is by so much the more strong and vigorous by how much more of the attrahent contributes to the action and proportionably weaker where less of the magnetick Element exerts its operation so that supposing
them should be taught by their miseries to renounce and forsake their impieties or should have any dispositions to vertue and divine love re-inkindled in them meer Philosophy would conclude that in time they might then be delivered from their sad durance But we know what Theology hath determined And indeed those brutish Apostates are so fixt and rooted in their sensual and rebellious propensions that those who are not yet as far distant from their Maker as they can be are still verging downwards And possibly being quite void of the divine grace and any considerable exercises of reason and conscience they may never stop till they have run through all the infernal stages and are arriv'd to the extremest degree of misery that as yet any are obnoxious to Wherefore the earth and all the infernal Regions being thus monstrously depraved 't is time for the Divine Justice to shew some remarkable and more than ordinary severity upon those remorseless Rebels and his goodness is as ready to deliver the virtuous from this stage of wretchedness and impiety When therefore those have compleated the number of their iniquities and these are sit for the mercy of so great a deliverance then shall the great decree for judgment be executed which though it cannot be expected that meer Philosophy should give an unerring and punctual account of yet we shall follow this light as far as it will lead us not intrenching upon the sacred rights of Divinity nor yet baulking what the ancient Eastern Cabbala assisted by later discoveries into nature will dictate But sincerely following the Hypothesis we shall leave all its errours and misguidances to be corrected by the more sacred Canons So that where we shall discern the wisdom of the World to have misdirected the most knowing and sedulous inquirers we may duly acknowledge the great benefit of that light which we have received to guide us in matters of such vast and concerning speculation The Conflagration of the Earth THerefore at length when the time preappointed by the divine wisdom for this execution is come * The internal central fire shall have got such strength and irresistible vigour that it shall easily melt and dissolve that fence that hath all this while inclosed it And all those other smaller fires which are lodged in several parts of the lower Regions joyning themselves with this mighty flame shall prey upon what ever is combustible and so rage first within the bowels of the earth beginning the tragick execution upon those damned spirits that are there confined these having been reserved in the chains of darkness to the judgment of this great day and now shall their hell and misery be compleated and they receive the full reward of their impieties which doubtless will be the most intolerable and severe torment that can be imagined these fierce and merciless flames sticking close to yea piercing through and through their bodies which can remove no where to avoid this fiery over-spreading vengeance And now the subterranean vaults being thus all on fire it cannot be long ere this prevailing cumbustion take hold of the upper regions wherefore at last with irresistible violence it breaks forth upon these also So that the great pyre is now kindled smoak fire darkness horror and confusion cover the face of all things Wherefore the miserable inhabitants of the earth and inferiour air will be seized on by the devouring Element and suffer in that fire that was reserved for the perdition of ungodly men But shall the righteous perish with the wicked And shall not the Judge of all the earth do right Will not the sincere and vertuous both in the Earth and Air be secured from this sad fate And how can their deliverance be effected Doubtless Providence that in all things else hath been righteous and equal will not fail in this last scene but provision will be made for their recovery from this vengeance that hath taken hold of the wicked But all natural causes failing here since their bodies are not pure enough to waft them up the quiet regions of the un infested aether and the higher congruity of life being yet but imperfectly inchoated they would be detained prisoners here below by the chains of their unhappy natures were there not some extraordinary interposure for their rescue and inlargement wherefore when we contemplate the infinite fertility of the divine goodness we cannot think that he will let those seeds of piety and vertue which himself hath sown and given some increase to to come to nought or the honest possessors of them fatally to miscarry But that he will imploy his power for the compleating what he hath begun and the deliverance of those who have relyed upon his mercies But for the particular way and method how this great transaction will be accomplisht Philosophy cannot determine it Happy therefore are we who have the discoveries of a more certain Light which doth not only secure us of the thing but acquaints us with the way and means that the Divine Wisdom hath resolv'd on for the delivery of the righteous So that hereby we are assured that our ever blessed Redeemer shall appear in the clouds before this fiery Fate shall have quite taken hold of the Earth and its condemned inhabitants The Glory of his appearance with his Coelestial Legions shall raise such strong love joy and triumph in his now passionately enamoured expectants as shall again enkindle that high and potent principle the Spirit which being throughly awakened and excited will melt the grossest consistence into liquid Aether so that our bodies being thus turned into the purest flame we shall ascend in those fiery Chariots with our Glorious Redeemer and his illustrious and blessed Attendants to the Coelestial habitations This is the Resurrection of the just and the Recovery of our antient blessedness Thus have some represented this great transaction But I dare warrant nothing in this matter beyond the declarations of the Sacred Scriptures therefore to proceed in our Philosophical conjectures However the good shall be delivered be sure the wicked shall be made a prey to the Scorching Element which now rageth every where and suffer the Judgment threatned But yet the most degenerate part of Mankind if we consult meer Reason and the Antient Eastern Cabbala who are detained Prisoners in the now inflamed Atmosphere shall not for ever be abandon'd to misery and ruin For they are still pretended to be under the eye and tender care of that Almighty goodness that made and preserveth all things that punisheth not out of malice or revenge and therefore will not pursue them to their utter undoing for ever But hath set bounds to their destruction and in infinite Wisdom hath so ordered the matter that none of his Creatures shall be lost eternally or indure such an endless misery than which not Being it self were more eligible Wherefore those curious contemplators phancy that the unsupportable pain and anguish which hath long stuck to those miserable
scatter'd into the Air where they will at length when the fierce agitation of the fire is over gather in considerable proportious of tenuious vapours which at length descending in a crystalline liquor and mingling with the finest parts of the newly modified Earth will doubtless compose as genital a matter as any can be prepared in the bodies of Animals And the calm and wholesome Air which now is duly purged from its noxious reeks and vapours and abounds with their saline spirituous humidity will questionless be very propitious to those tender inchoations of life and by the help of the Sun 's favourable and gentle beams supply them with all necessary materials Nor need we puzzle our selves to phancy how those Terrae Filii those young sons of the Earth will be fortified against the injuries of weather or be able to provide for themselves in their first and tender infancy since doubtless if the supposition be admitted * those immediate births of unassisted nature will not be so tender and helpless as we into whose very constitutions delicacy and effeminateness is now twisted For those masculine productions which were always exposed to the open Air and not cloyster'd up as we will feel no more incommodity from it than the young fry of fishes do from the coldness of the water they are spawn'd in And even now much of our tenderness and delicacy is not natural but contracted For poor Children will indure that hardship that would quickly dispatch those that have had a more careful and officious nurture And without question we should do many things for self-preservation and provision which now we yield no signs of had not custom prevented the endeavours of nature and made it expect assistance For the Indian Infants will swim currently when assoon as they are born they are thrown into the water And nature put to her shifts will do many things more than we can suspect her able for the performance of which consider'd 't is not hard to apprehend but that those Infant Aborigines are of a very different temper and condition from the weak products of now decayed nature having questionless more pure and serviceable bodies senses and other faculties more active and vigorous and nature better exercised so that they may by a like sense to that which carries all creatures to their proper food pursue and take hold of that nutriment which the free and willing Earth now offer'd to their mouths till being advantaged by Age and growth they can move about to make their choice * But all this is but the frolick exercise of my pen chusing a Paradox And 't is time to give over the pursuit To make an end then we see that after the Conflagration the earth will be inhabited again and all things proceed much-what in like manner as before But whether the Catastrophe of this shall be like the former or no I think is not to be determined For as one world hath perish't by water and this present shall by fire 't is possible the next period may be by the Extinction of the Sun But I am come to the end of the line and shall not go beyond this present Stage of Providence or wander into an Abysse of uncertainties where there is neither Sun nor Star to guide my notions Now of all that hath been represented of this Hypothesis there is nothing that seems more extravagant and Romantick than those notions that come under the two last Generals And yet so it falls out that the main matters contained under them one would think to have a strange consonancy with some expressions in the Sacred Oracles For clear it is from the divine Volume that the wicked and the Devils themselves are reserved to a further and more severe Judgment than yet afflicteth them It is as plainly declared to be a vengeance of fire that abides them as a compleatment of their torments And that the Earth shall be burnt is as explicitely affirmed as any thing can be spoken Now if we put all these together they look like a probability that the conflagration of the Earth shall consummate the Hell of the wicked And * those other expressions of Death Destruction Perdition of the ungodly and the like seem to show a favourable regard to the State of silence and inactivity Nor is there less appearing countenance given to the Hypothesis of Restitution * in those passages which predict New Heavens and a New Earth and seem to intimate only a change of the present And yet I would have no body be so credulous as to be taken with little appearances nor do I mention these with an intent that they should with full consent be delivered to intend the asserting any such Doctrines But that there is shew enough both in Reason and Scripture for these Opinions to give an occasion for an Hypothesis and therefore that they are not meer arbitrary and idle imaginations Now whatever becomes of this particular draught of the Souls several conditions of life and action * the main Opinion of Prae-existence is not at all concerned This Scheme is only to shew that natural and imperfect Reason can frame an Intelligible Idea of it And therefore questionless the Divine Wisdom could form and order it either so or with infinitely more accuracy and exactness How it was with us therefore of Old I know not But yet that we may have been and acted before we descended hither I think is very probable And I see no reason but why Praeexistence may be admitted without altering any thing considerable of the ordinary Systeme of Theology But I shut up with that modest conclusion of the Great Des Cartes That although these matters seem hardly otherwise intelligible than as I have here explained them Yet nevertheless remembring I am not infallible I assert nothing * but submit all I have written to the Authority of the Church of England and to the matured judgments of graver and wiser men Earnestly desiring that nothing else may be entertained with credit by any persons but what is able to win it by the force of evident and victorious reason Des Cartes Princ. Philos lib. 4. ss CVII FINIS A DISCOURSE OF TRUTH BY THE Reverend Doctor RUST Late LORD BISHOP of DROMORE in IRELAND LONDON Printed for J. Collins and S. Louns over against Exeter Exchange in the Strand 1682. A LETTER Concerning the Subject and the Author SIR I Have now perused and returned the Manuscript you sent me it had contracted many and great Errours in the Transcription which I have corrected I was enabled to do it by a written Copy of the same Discourse which I have had divers years in my Hands The Subject is of great and weighty importance and the Acknowledgment of the Truths here asserted and made good will lay a Foundation for right conceptions in the Doctrines that concern the Decrees of God For the first Errour which is the ground of the rest is That things are good and
yet other peculiarities also being required and the former sensible Pathos to be recovered which is impossible in this State it is likewise impossible for us to remember the other in this The second Argument of the Author for the proving the unlikeliness of our remembring the other State is the long intermission and discontinuance from thinking of those things For 't is plain that such discontinuance or desuetude bereaves us of the memory of such things as we were acquainted with in this World Insomuch as if an ancient man should read the Verses or Themes he made when he was a School-boy without his name subscribed to them though he pumpt and sweat for them when he made them could not tell they were his own How then should the Soul remember what she did or observ'd many hundreds nay thousands of years ago But yet our Authors Antagonist has the face to make nothing of this Argument neither Because forsooth it is not so much the desuetude of thinking of one thing but the thinking of others that makes us forget that one thing What a shuffle is this For if the Soul thought on that one thing as well as on other things it would remember it as well as them Therefore it is not the thinking of other things but the not thinking of that that makes it forgotten Vsus promptus facit as in general so in particular And therefore disuse in any particular slackens at first and after abolishes the readiness of the Mind to think thereof Whence sleepiness and sluggishness is the Mother of Forgetfulness because it disuses the Soul from thinking of things And as for those seven Chronical Sleepers that slept in a Cave from Decius his time to the reign of Theodosius junior I dare say it would have besotted them without a Miracle and they would have rose out of their sleep no more wise than a Wisp I am sure not altogether so wise as this awkward Arguer for memory of Souls in their Pre-existent state after so hugely long a discontinuance from it But for their immediately coming out of an Aethereal Vehicle into a Terrestrial and yet forgetting their former state what Example can be imagined of such a thing unless that of the Messias who yet seems to remember his former glorious condition and to pray that he may return to it again Though for my part I think it was rather Divine Inspiration than Memory that enabled him to know that matter supposing his Soul did pre-exist Our Authors third and last Argument to prove that lapsed Souls in their Terrestrial condition forget their former state is from observation how deteriorating changes in this earthly Body spoils or quite destroys the Memory the Soul still abiding therein such as Casualties Diseases and old Age which changes the tenour of the Spirits and makes them less useful for memory as also 't is likely the Brain it self Wherefore there being a more deteriorating change to the Soul in coming into an earthly Body instead of an aereal or aethereal the more certainly will her memory of things which she experienced in that state be washed out or obliterated in this Here our Authors Antagonist answers That though changes in body may often weaken and sometimes utterly spoil the memory of things past yet it is not necessary that the Souls changing of her body should therefore do so because it is not so injurious to her faculties Which if it were not onely our Memory but Reason also should have been casheered and lost by our migration out of those Vehicles we formerly actuated into these we now enliven but that still remaining sound and entire it is a signe that our Memory would do so too if we had pre-existed in other bodies before and had any thing to remember And besides if the bare translocation of our Souls out of one body into another would destroy the memory of things the Soul has experienced it would follow that when People by death are summoned hence into the other state that they shall be quite bereaved of their Memory and so carry neither applause nor remorse of Conscience into the other World which is monstrously absurd and impious This is the main of his Answer and mostwhat in his own words But of what small force it is we shall now discover and how little pertinent to the business For first we are to take notice that the deteriorating change in the Body or deteriorating state by change of Bodies is understood of a debilitative diminutive or privative not depravative deterioration the latter of which may be more injurious to the faculties of the Soul though in the same Body such a deteriorating change causing Phrensies and outragious Madness But as for diminutive or privative deterioration by change the Soul by changing her Aereal Vehicle for a Terrestrial is comparing her latter state with her former much injured in her faculties or operations of them all of them are more slow and stupid and their aptitude to exert the same Phantasms of things that occurred to them in the other State quite taken away by reason of the heavy and dull though orderly constitution of the Terrestrial Tenement which weight and stupor utterly indisposes the Soul to recall into her mind the scene of her former state this load perpetually swaying down her thoughts to the Objects of this Nor does it at all follow because Reason is not lost therefore Memory if there were any such thing as Pre-existence would still abide For the universal principles of Reason and Morality are essential to the Soul and cannot be obliterated no not by any death but the knowledge of any particular external Objects is not at all essential to the Soul nor consequently the memory of them and therefore the Soul in the state of silence being stript of them cannot recover them in her incorporation into a Terrestrial Body But her Reason with the general principles thereof being essential to her she can as well as this State will permit exercise them upon the Objects of this Scene of the Earth and visible World so far as it is discovered by her outward senses she looking out at those windows of this her earthly Prison to contemplate them And she has the faculty and exercise of Memory still in such a sense as she has of sensitive Perception whose Objects she does remember being yet to all former impresses in the other state a mere Abrasa Tabula And lastly it is a mere mistake of the Opposer or worse that he makes the Pre-existentiaries to impute the loss of memory in Souls of their former state merely to their coming into other Bodies when it is not bare change of Bodies but their descent into worser Bodies more dull and obstupifying to which they impute this loss of memory in lapsed Souls This is a real death to them according to that ancient Aenigm of that abstruse Sage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We live their death namely of separate Souls but are
must make this great difference as they grow up in the Body but that their Souls were different before they came into it And how should they have such a vast difference in the proclivity to Vice but that they lived before in the state of Pre-existence and that some were much deeper in rebellion against God and the Divine Reason than others were and so brought their different conditions with them into these Terrestrial Bodies Pag. 75. Then how a Swallow should return to her òld trade of living after her Winter sleep c. Indeed the Swallow has the advantages of Memory which the incorporate Soul has not in her incorporation into a Terrestrial Body after her state of Silence But the vital inclinations which are mainly if not onely fitted in the Plastick being not onely revived but signally vitious of themselves revived with advantage by reason of the corruption of this coarse earthly Body into which the Soul is incorporate they cannot fail of discovering themselves in a most signal manner without any help of memory but from the mere pregnancie of a corrupt Body and formerly more than ordinarily debauched Plastick in the state of Pre-existence Pag. 76. Whenas others are as fatally set against the Opinions c. And this is done as the ingenious Author takes notice even where neither Education nor Custom have interposed to sophisticate their Judgments or Sentiments Nay it is most certain that they sometime have Sentiments and entertain Opinions quite contrary to their Education So that that is but a slight account to restore this Phaenomenon into Education and Custom whenas Opinions are entertained and stiffly maintained in despight of them This I must confess implies that the aerial Inhabitants philosophize but conjecturally onely as well as the Inhabitants of the Earth And it is no wonder that such Spirits as are lapsed in their Morals should be at a loss also in their Intellectuals and though they have a desire to know the truth in Speculations it suiting so well with their pride that yet they should be subject to various errours and hallucinations as well as we and that there should be different yea opposite Schools of Philosophie among them And if there be any credit to be given to Cardans story of his Father Facius Cardanus things are thus de facto in the aereal Regions And two of the Spirits which Facius Cardanus saw in that Vision left upon Record by him and of which he often told his Son Hieronymus while he was living were two Professors of Philosophie in different Academies and were of different Opinions one of them apertly professing himself to be an Aven-Roist The story is too long to insert here See Dr. H. Moore his Immortality of the Soul book 3. chap. 17. So that lapsed Souls philosophizing in their Aerial State and being divided into Sects and consequently maintaining their different or opposite Opinions with heat and affection which reaches the Plastick this may leave a great propension in them to the same Opinions here and make them almost as prone to such and such Errours as to such and such Vices This I suppose the ingenious Author propounds as an Argument credible and plausible though he does not esteem it of like force with those he produced before Nor does his Opposer urge any thing to any purpose against it The main thing is That these Propensities to some one Opinion are not universal and blended with the constitution of every person but are thin sown and grow up sparingly Where there are five says he naturally bent to any one Opinion there are many millions that are free to all If some says he descend into this life big with aptnesses and proclivities to peculiar Theories why then should not all supposing they pre-existed together do the like As if all in the other Aereal State were Professors of Philosophie or zealous Followers of them that were The solution of this difficulty is so easie that I need not insist on it Pag. 78. Were this difference about sensibles the influence of the body might then be suspected for a cause c. This is very rationally alleadged by our Author and yet his Antagonist has the face from the observation of the diversity of mens Palates and Appetites of their being differently affected by such and such strains of Musick some being pleased with one kind of Melodie and others with another some plâ—ased with Aromatick Odours others offended with them to reason thus If the Bodie can thus cause us to love and dislike Sensibles why not as well to approve and dislike Opinions and Theories But the reason is obvious why not because the liking or disliking of these Sensibles depends upon the grateful or ungrateful motion of the Nerves of the Bodie which may be otherwise constituted or qualified in some complexions than in other some But for Philosophical Opinions and Theories ' what have they to do with the motion of the Nerves It is the Soul herself that judges of those abstractedly from the Senses or any use of the Nerves or corporeal Organ If the difference of our Judgment in Philosophical Theories be resolvible into the mere constitution of our Bodie our Understanding itself will hazard to be resolved into the same Principle also And Bodie will prove the onely difference betwixt Men and Brutes We have more intellectual Souls because we have better Bodies which I hope our Authors Antagonist will not allow Pag. 78. For the Soul in her first and pure nature has no Idiosyncrasies c. Whether there may not be certain different Characters proper to such and such Classes of Souls but all of them natural and without blemish and this for the better order of things in the Universe I will not rashly decide in the Negative But as the Author himself seems to insinuate if there be any such they are not such as fatally determine Souls to false and erroneous apprehensions For that would be a corruption and a blemish in the very natural Character Wherefore if the Soul in Philosophical Speculations is fatally determined to falshood in this life it is credible it is the effect of its being inured thereto in the other Pag. 79. Now to say that all this variety proceeds primarily from the mere temper of our Bodies c. This Argument is the less valid for Pre-existence I mean that which is drawn from the wonderful variety of our Genius's or natural inclinations to the employments of life because we cannot be assured but that the Divine Providence may have essentially as it were impressed such Classical Characters on humane Souls as I noted before And besides if that be true which Menander says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That every man as soon as he is born has a Genius appointed him to be his Instructer and Guide of his Life That some are carried with such an impetus to some things rather than others may be from the instigations of his assisting
Genius And for that Objection of the Author's Antagonist against his Opinion touching those inclinations to Trades which may equally concern this Hypothesis of Menander that it would then be more universal every one having such a Genius this truth may be smothered by the putting young people promiscuously to any Trade without observing their Genius But the Chineses suppose this truth they commonly shewing a Child all the Employs of the Citie that he may make his own choice before they put him to any But if the Opinion of Menander be true that every man has his guardian Genius under whose conduct he lives the Merchant the Musician the Plowman and the rest it is manifest that these Genii cannot but receive considerable impressions of such things as they guide their Clients in And pre-existent Souls in their aereal estate being of the same nature with these Daemons or Genii they are capable of the same Employment and so tincture themselves deep enough with the affairs of those parties they preside over And therefore when they themselves after the state of Silence are incorporated into earthly Bodies they may have a proneness from their former tincture to such methods of life as they lived over whom they did preside Which quite spoils the best Argument our Author's Antagonist has against this Topick which is That there are several things here below which the Geniusses of men pursue and follow with the hottest chase which have no similitude with the things in the other state as Planting Building Husbandrie the working of Manufactures c. This best Argument of his by Menander's Hypothesis which is hard to confute is quite defeated And to deny nothing to this Opposer of Pre-existence which is his due himself seems unsatisfied in resolving these odd Phaenomena into the temper of Bodie And therefore at last hath recourse to a secret Causality that is to he knows not what But at last he pitches upon some such Principle as that whereby the Birds build their Nest the Spider weaves her Webs the Bees make their Combs c. Some such thing he says though he cannot think it that prodigious Hobgoblin the Spirit of Nature may produce these strange effects may byass also the fancies of men in making choice of their Employments and Occupations If it be not the Spirit of Nature then it must be that Classical Character I spoke of above But if not this nor the preponderancies of the Pre-existent state nor Menander's Hypothesis the Spirit of Nature will bid the fairest for it of any besides for determining the inclinations of all living Creatures in these Regions of Generation as having in itself vitally though not intellectually all the Laws of the Divine Providence implanted into its essence by God the Creator of it And speaking in the Ethnick Dialect the same description may belong to it that Varro gives to their God Genius Genius est Deus qui proepositus est ac vim habet omnium rerum gignendarum and that is the Genius of every Creature that is congenit to it in vertue of its generation And that there is such a Spirit of Nature not a God as Varro vainly makes it but an unintelligent Creature to which belongs the Nascency or Generation of things and has the management of the whole matter of the Universe is copiously proved to be the Opinion of the Noblest and Ancientest Philosophers by the learned Dr. R. Cudworth in his System of the Intellectual World and is demonstrated to be a true Theorem in Philosophie by Dr. H. Moore in his Euchiridion Metaphysicum by many and those irrefutable Arguments and yet I dare say both can easily pardon the mistake and bluntness of this rude Writer nor are at all surprized at it as a Noveltie that any ignorant rural Hobthurst should call the Spirit of Nature a thing so much beyond his capacitie to judge of a prodigious Hobgoblin But to conclude be it so that there may be other causes besides the pristine inurements of the Pre-existent Soul that may something forcibly determine her to one course of life here yet when she is most forcibly determined if there be such a thing as Pre-existence this may be rationally supposed to concur in the efficiencie But that it is not so strong an Argument as others to prove Pre-existence I have hinted alreadie Pag. 79. For those that are most like in the Temper Air Complexion of their Bodies c. If this prove true and I know nothing to the contrarie this vast difference of Genius's were it not for the Hypothesis of their Classical Character imprinted on Souls at their very creation would be a considerably tight Argument But certainly it is more honest than for the avoiding Pre-existence to resolve the Phaenomenon into a secret Causality that is to say into one knows not what Pag. 82. There being now no other way left but Pre-existence c. This is a just excuse for his bringing in any Argument by way of overplus that is not so apodictically concluding If it be but such as will look like a plausible solution of a Phaenomenon as this of such a vast difference of Genius's Pre-existence once admitted or otherwise undeniably demonstrated the proposing thereof should be accepted with favour Chap. 11. pag. 85. And we know our Saviour and his Apostles have given credit to that Translation c. And it was the authentick Text with the Fathers of the Primitive Church And besides this if we read according to the Hebrew Text there being no object of Job's knowledge expressed this is the most easie and natural sence Knowest thou that thou wast then and that the number of thy days are many This therefore was reckoned amongst the rest of his ignorances that though he was created so early he now knew nothing of it And this easie sence of the Hebrew Text as well as that Version of the Septuagint made the Jews draw it in to the countenancing of the Tradition of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is the Pre-existence of Souls as Grotius has noted of them Pag. 85. As reads a very credible Version R. Menasse Ben Israel reads it so I gave thee Wisdom which Version if it were sure and authentick this place would be fit for the defence of the Opinion it is produced for But no Interpreters besides that I can find following him nor any going before him whom he might follow I ingenuously confess the place seems not of force enough to me to infer the conclusion He read I suppose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Piel whence he translated it Indidi tibi Sapientiam but the rest read it in Cal. Pag. 86. And methinks that passage of our Saviours Prayer Father glorifie me with the glorie I had before the World began c. This Text without exceeding great violence cannot be evaded As for that of Grotius interpreting that I had that which was intended for me to have though it make good sence yet it is
when we have weighed them in the balance of unprejudiced Reason we shall find them light enough And truly for the first It is not only weak and slight but wretchedly disingenuous The strength of it is nothing but a maimed and fraudulent Quotation which makes ashew as if the Author of the Account of Origen bluntly affirmed without any thing more to do that souls being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this terrestrial matter it seems necessary according to the course of nature that they should sink into it and so appear terrestrial men Whenas if we take the whole Paragraph as it lies before they cast themselves into this fatal necessity they are declared to have a freedom of will whereby they might have so managed their happy Estate they were created in that they need never have faln His words are these What then remains but that through the faulty and negligent use of themselves whilst they were in some better condition of life they rendred themselves less pure in the whole extent of their powers both Intellectual and Animal and so by degrees became disposed for the susception of such a degree of corporeal life as was less pure indeed than the former but exactly answerable to their present disposition of Spirit So that after certain Periods of time they might become far less fit to actuate any sort of body than the terrestrial and being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this too and in it to exercise the Powers and functions of life it seems necessary c. These are the very words of the Author of the Account of Origen wherein he plainly affirms that it was the fault of the Souls themselves that they did not order themselves then right when they might have done so that cast them into this terrestrial condition But what an Opposer of Pre-existence is this that will thus shamelesly falsifie and corrupt a Quotation of an ingenious Author rather than he will seem to want an Argument against his Opinion Wherefore briefly to answer to this Argument It does as much become the Goodness of God to create souls with a triple Vital Congruity as to have created Adam in Paradise with free Will and a capacity of sinning To the Second the Pre-existentiaries will answer That it is no more absurd to conceive nor so much that the soul after death hath an Airy body or it may be some an Ethereal one than to imagine them so highly happy after death without any body at all For if they can act so fully and beatifically without any body what need there be any Resurrection of the body at all And if it be most natural to the soul to act in some body in what a long unnatural estate has Adams soul been that so many thousand years has been without a body But for the soul to have a body of which she may be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 certainly is most natural or else she will be in an unnatural state after the Resurrection to all Eternitie Whence it is manifest that it is most natural for the soul if she act at all to have a body to act in And therefore unless we will be so dull as to fall into the drouzie dream of the Pyschopannychites we are to allow the soul to have some kind of body or other till the very Resurrection But those now that are not Psychopannychites but allow good Souls the joys and glories of Paradise before the Resurrection of the Body let them be demanded to what end the soul should have a Resurrection-body and what they would answer for themselves the Pre-existentiaries will answer for their position that holds the Soul has an Aethereal body already or an Aereal one which may be changed into an Aethereal body If they will alledge any Concinnity in the business or the firm promise of more highly compleating our Happiness at the union of our terrestrial bodies with our souls at the Resurrection This I say may be done as well supposing them to have bodies in the mean time as if they had none For those bodies they have made use of in the interval betwixt their Death and Resurrection may be so thin and dilute that they may be no more considerable than an Interula is to a Royal Robe lined with rich Furrs and embroidered with Gold For suppose every mans bodie at the Resurrection framed again out of its own dust bones sinews and flesh by the miraculous Power of God were it not as easie for these subtile Spirits as it is in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to enter these bodies and by the Divine Power assisting so to inactuate them that that little of their Vehicle they brought in with them shall no more destroy the individuation of the Body than a draught of wine drunk in does the individuation of our body now though it were immediately upon the drinking actuated by the Soul And the soul at the same instant actuating the whole Aggregate it is exquisitely the same numerical bodie even to the utmost curiosity of the Schoolmen But the Divine Assistance working in this it is not to be thought that the soul will loose by resuming this Resurrection-body but that all will be turned into a more full and saturate Brightness and Glory and that the whole will become an heavenly spiritual and truly glorified Body immortal and incorruptible Nor does the being thus turned into an heavenly or spiritual Body hinder it from being still the same Numerical body forasmuch as one and the same Numerical matter let it be under what modifications it will is still the same numerical matter or body and it is gross ignorance in Philosophie that makes any conceive otherwise But a rude and ill-natured Opposer of Pre-existence is not content that it be the same numerical body but that this same numerical body be still flesh peevishly and invidiously thereby to expose the Author of the Account of Origen who pag. 120. writes thus That the bodie we now have is therefore corruptible and mortal because it is flesh and therefore if it put on incorruption and immortality it must put off it self first and cease to be flesh But questionless that ingenious Writer understood this of natural â—lesh and bloud of which the Apostle declares That flesh and bloud cannot inherit the Kingdom of God But as he says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body So if he had made application of the several kinds of Flesh he mentions of Men of Beasts of Fishes and Birds he would have presently subjoyned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is a natural flesh and there is a spiritual flesh And 't is this spiritual Flesh to which belongs incorruption and immortality and which is capable of the Kingdom of Heaven But for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the natural flesh it must put off it self and cease to be natural flesh before it can put on immortality and
as entirely taken up with this one Bodie as if she enjoyed the pleasures of all three bodies at once Aethereal Aereal and Terrestrial And lastly Which will strike all sure He that is able to save to the utmost and has promised us eternal life is as true as able and therefore cannot fail to perform it And who can deny but that we in this State I have described are as capable of being fixed there and confirmed therein as the Angels were after Lucifer and others had faln And now to the fifth and last Argument against the state of Silence I say it is raised out of mere ignorance of the most rational as well as most Platonical way of the souls immediate descent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For the first Mover or stirrer in this matter I mean in the formation of the Foetus is the Spirit of Nature the great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Universe to whom Plotinus somewhere attributes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first Predelineations and prodrome Irradiations into the matter before the particular soul it is preparing for come into it Now the Spirit of Nature being such a spirit as contains Spermatically or Vitally all the Laws contrived by the Divine Intellect for the management of the Matter of the World and of all Essences else unperceptive or quatenus unperceptive for the good of the Universe we have all the reason in the world to suppose this Vital or Spermatical Law is amongst the rest viz. That it transmit but one soul to one prepared conception Which will therefore be as certainly done unless some rare and odd casualty intervene as if the Divine Intellect it self did do it Wherefore one and the same Spirit of Nature which prepares the matter by some general Predelineation does at the due time transmit some one soul in the state of Silence by some particularizing Laws that fetch in such a soul rather than such but most sure but one unless as I said some special casualty happen into the prepared Matter acting at two places at once according to its Synenergetical vertue or power Hence therefore it is plain that there will be no such clusters of Foetus's and monstrous deformities from this Hypothesis of the souls being in a state of Silence But for one to shuffle off so fair a satisfaction to this difficulty by a precarious supposing there is no such Being as the Spirit of Nature when it is demonstrable by so many irrefragable Arguments that there is is a Symptome of one that philosophizes at random not as Reason guides For that is no reason against the existence of the Spirit of Nature because some define it A Substance incorporeal but without sense and animadversion c. as if a spirit without sense and animadversion were a contradiction For that there is a Spirit of Nature is demonstrable though whether it have no sense at all is more dubitable But though it have no sense or perception it is no contradiction to its being a Spirit as may appear from Dr. H. Mores Brief Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit To which I direct the Reader for satisfaction I having already been more prolix in answering these Arguments than I intended But I hope I have made my presage true that they would be found to have no force in them to overthrow the Hypothesis of a threefold Vital Congruity in the Plastick of the soul So that this fourth Pillar for any execution they can do will stand unshaken Pag. 103. For in all sensation there is corporeal motion c. And besides there seems an essential relation of the Soul to Body according to Aristotles definition thereof he defining it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which actuates the boby Which therefore must be idle when it has nothing to actuate as a Piper must be silent as to piping if he have no Pipe to play on Chap. 14. pag. 113. The ignobler and lower properties or the life of the body were languid and remiss viz. as to their proper exercises or acting for themselves or as to their being regarded much by the Soul that is taken up with greater matters or as to their being much relished but in subserviency to the enjoyment of those more Divine and sublime Objects as the Author intimates towards the end of his last Pillar Pag. 114. And the Plastick had nothing to do but to move this passive and easie body c. It may be added and keep it in its due form and shape And it is well added accordingly as the concerns of the higher faculties required For the Plastick by reason of its Vital Union with the vehicle is indeed the main instrument of the motion thereof But it is the Imperium of the Perceptive that both excites and guides its motion Which is no wonder it can do they being both but one soul Pag. 114. To pronounce the place to be the Sun c. Which is as rationally guessed by them as if one should fancy all the Fellows and Students Chambers in a Colledge to be contained within the area of the Hearth in the Hall and the rest of the Colledge uninhabited For the Sun is but a common Focus of a Vortex and is less by far to the Vortex than the Hearth to the Ichnographie of the whole Colledge that I may not say little more than a Tennis-ball to the bigness of the earth Pag. 115. Yet were we not immutably so c. But this mutability we were placed in was not without a prospect of a more full confirmation and greater accumulation of Happiness at the long run as I intimated above Pag. 116. We were made on set purpose defatigable that so all degrees of life c. We being such Creatures as we are and finite and taking in the enjoyment of those infinitely perfect and glorious Objects onely pro modulo nostro according to the scantness of our capacity diversion to other Objects may be an ease and relief From whence the promise of a glorified body in the Christian Religion as it is most grateful so appears most rational But in the mean time it would appear most irrational to believe we shall have eyes and ears and other organs of external sense and have no suitable Objects to entertain them Pag. 117. Yea methinks 't is but a reasonable reward to the body c. This is spoken something popularly and to the sense of the vulgar that imagine the body to feel pleasure and pain whenas it is the soul onely that is perceptive and capable of feeling either But 't is fit the body should be kept in due plight for the lawful and allowable corporeal enjoyments the soul may reap therefrom for seasonable diversion Pag. 117 That that is executed which he hath so determined c. Some fancy this may be extended to the enjoying of the fruits of the Invigouration of all the three Vital Congruities of the Plastick and that for a soul orderly and in due time
Whence again their Authority is lessened upon the account of the third Head These things may very well suspend a careful mind and loth to be imposed upon from relying much upon the Authority of this fifth Council But suppose its Authority entire yet the Acts against Origen are not to be found in the Council And the sixth Council in its Anathematisms though it mention Theodorets Writings the Epistle of Ibas and Theodarus Mopsuestenus who were concerned in the fifth Council yet I find not there a syllable touching Origen And therefore those that talk of his being condemned by that fifth Council have an eye I suppose to the Anathematisms at the end of that Discourse which Justinian the Emperour sent to Menas Patriarch of Constantinople according to which form they suppose the errours of Origen condemned Which if it were true yet simple Pre-existence will escape well enough Nor do I think that learned and intelligent Patriarch Photius would have called the simple Opinion of Pre-existence of souls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but for those Appendages that the injudiciousness and rashness of some had affixed to it Partly therefore reâ—lecting upon that first Anathematism in the Emperours Discourse that makes the pre-existent souls of men first to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if their highest felicity consisted in having no body to inactuate which plainly clashes with both sound Philosophy and Christianity as if the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Rephaim were all one and they were not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 till they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 grown cold to the Divine Love and onely gathered body as they gathered corruption and were alienated from the Life of God which is point-blank against the Christian Faith which has promised us as the highest prize a glorified body And partly what himself adds that one soul goes into several bodies Which are impertinent Appendages of the Pre-existence of the soul false useless and unnecessary and therefore those that add these Appendages thereto violate the sincerity of the Divine Tradition to no good purpose But this simple Doctrine of Pre-existence is so unexceptionable and harmless that the third collection of Councils in Justellus which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though it reckon the other errours of Origen condemned in the fifth Council omits this of Pre-existence Certainly that Ecclesiastick that framed that Discourse for the Emperour if he did it not himself had not fully deliberately and impartially considered the Dogma of Pre-existence taken in its self nor does once offer to answer any Reasons out of Scripture or Philosophy that are produced for it Which if it had been done and this had been the onely errour to be alledged against Origen I cannot think it credible nay scarce possible though their spight had been never so much against some lovers of Origen that they could have got any General Council to have condemned so holy so able so victorious a Champion for the Christian Church in his life-time for an Heretick upon so tolerable a punctilio about three hundred years after his death What Father that wrote before the first four General Councils but might by the Malevolent for some odd passage or other be doomed an Heretick if such severity were admittable amongst Christians But I have gone out further than I was aware and it is time for me to bethink me what I intended Which was the justifying of my self in my seeming to prefer the Discretion of our own Church in leaving us free to hold the Incorporeity and Immortality of the soul by any of the three handles that best fitted every mans Genius before the Judgment of the fifth General Council that would abridge us of this liberty From which Charge I have endeavoured to free my self briefly by these two ways First by shewing how hard it is to prove the fifth Oecumenical Council so called to be a legitimate General or Oecumenical Council and such as whose Authority we may relie on And secondly if it was such by shewing that it did not condemn simply the Pre-existence of souls but Pre-existence with such and such Appendages So that there is no real clashing betwixt our Church and that Council in this But however this is from the eighth and ninth Heads it's plain enough that the Church of England is no favourer of the Conclusions of any General Council that are enjoyned as necessary to Salvation that be either repugnant to Holy Scripture or are not clearly to be made out from the same which Non-pre-existence of Souls certainly is not but rather the contrary But being the point is not sufficiently clear from Scripture either way to all and the Immortality of the Soul and subsistence after death is the main useful point that way which men can hold it with most firmness and ease her Candour and Prudence has left it free to them to make use of And as for General Councils though she does not in a fit of Zeal which Theodosius a Prior in Palestine is said to have done anathematize from the Pulpit all people that do not give as much belief to the four first General Councils as to the four Gospels themselves yet as you may see in the tenth Head she makes the Authority of the first four General Councils so great that nothing is to be adjudged Heresie but what may be proved to be so either from the Scripture or from these four Councils Which Encomium might be made with less skill and more confidence by that Prior there having been no more than four General Councils in his time But it was singular Learning and Judgment or else a kind of Divine Sagacity in our first Reformers that they laid so great stress on the first four General Councils and so little on any others pretended so to be But in all likelihood they being perswaded of the truth of the prediction of the Apostasie of the Church under Antichrist how universal in a manner it would be they had the most confidence in those General Councils which were the earliest and that were held within those times of the Church which some call Symmetral And without all question the two first General Councils that of Nice and that other of Constantinople were within those times viz. within four hundred years after Christ and the third and fourth within the time that the ten-horned Beast had his horns growing up according to Mr. Mede's computation But the Definitions of the third and fourth Councils that of Ephesus and that other of Chalcedon which are to establish the Divinity of Christ which is not to be conceived without the Union of both Natures into one person as also his Theanthropy which cannot consist with the confusion of both Natures into one were vertually contained in the Definitions of the first and second Councils So that in this regard they are all of equal Authority and that unexceptionable First because their Decisions were concerning points necessary to be decided one way or other
incorruption So little inconsistency is there of this Hypothesis as touching the souls acting in either an Aereal or Aethereal Vehicle during the interval betwixt the Resurrection and her departure hence with the Resurrection of the bodie But in the mean time there is a strong bar thereby put to the dull dream of the Psychopanychiles and other harshnesses also eased or smoothed by it Now as for the third Argument which must needs seem a great Scare-crow to the illiterate there is very little weight or none at all in it For if we take but notice of the whole Atmosphere what is the dimension thereof and of the three Regions into which it is distributed all these Bugbears will vanish As for the Dimension of the whole Atmosphere it is by the skilful reputed about fifty to Italick miles high the Convex of the middle Region thereof about four such miles the Concave about half a mile Now this distribution of the Air into these three Regions being thus made and the Hebrew tongue having no other name to call the Expansum about us but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heaven here is according to them a distribution of Heaven into three and the highest Region will be part of the third Heaven This therefore premised I answer That though the souls of good men after death be detained within the Atmosphere of the Air and the Air it self haply may reach much higher than this Atmosphere that is bounded by the mere ascent of exhalations and vapours yet there is no necessity at all that they should be put to those inconveniencies which this Argument pretends from the company of Devils or incommodious changes and disturbances of the Air. For suppose such inconveniencies in the middle and lowest Region yet the upper Region which is also part of the third Heaven those parts are ever calm and serene And the Devils Principality reaching no further than through the middle and lowest Region next the earth not to advertise that his quarters may be restrained there also the souls of the departed that are good are not liable to be pester'd and haunted with the ungrateful Presence or Occursions of the deformed and grim Retinue or of the vagrant vassals of that foul Feind that is Prince of the Air he being onely so of these lower parts thereof and the good souls having room enough to consociate together in the upper Region of it Nor does that promise of our Saviour to the thief on the Cross that that very day he should be with him in Paradise at all clash with this Hypothesis of Aereal Bodies both because Christ by his miraculous power might confer that upon the penitent thief his fellow-sufferer which would not fall to the share of other penitents in a natural course of things and also because this third Region of the Air may be part of Paradise it self In my Fathers house there are many Mansions and some learned men have declared Paradise to be in the Air but such a part of the Air as is free from gross Vapours and Clouds and such is the third Region thereof In the mean time we see the souls of good men departed freed from those Panick fears of being infested either by the unwelcome company of Fiends and Devils or incommodated by any dull cloudy obscurations or violent and tempestuous motions of the Air. Onely the shadowy Vale of the Night will be cast over them once in a Nycthemeron But what incommodation is that after the brisk active heat of the Sun in the day-time to have the variety of the more mild beams of the Moon or gentle though more quick and chearful scintillations of the twinkling Stars This variety may well seem an addition to the felicity of their state And the shadowyness of the Night may help them in the more composing Introversions of their contemplative mind and cast the soul into ineffably pleasing slumbers and Divine extasies so that the transactions of the Night may prove more solacing and beatifick sometimes than those of the day Such things we may guess at afar off but in the mean time be sure that these good and serious Souls know how to turn all that God sends to them to the improvement of their Happiness To the fourth Argument we answer That there are not a few reasons from the nature of the thing that may beget in us a strong presumption that souls recovered into their Celestial Happiness will never again relapse though they did once For first it may be a mistake that the Happiness is altogether the same that it was before For our first Paradisiacal Bodies from which we lapsed might be of a more crude and dilute Aether not so full and saturate with Heavenly glory and perfection as our Resurrection-body is Secondly The soul was then unexperienced and lightly coming by that Happiness she was in did the more heedlessly forgo it before she was well aware and her mind roved after new adventures though she knew not what Thirdly It is to be considered whether Regeneration be not a stronger tenour for enduring Happiness than the being created happie For this being wrought so by degrees upon the Plastick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with ineffable groans and piercing desires after that Divine Life that the Spirit of God co-operating exciteth in us when Regeneration is perfected and wrought to the full by these strong Agonies this may rationally be deemed a deeper tincture in the soul than that she had by mere Creation whereby the soul did indeed become Holy innocent and happie but not coming to it with any such strong previous conflicts and eager workings and thirstings after that state it might not be so firmly rooted by far as in Regeneration begun and accomplished by the operation of Gods Spirit gradually but more deeply renewing the Divine Image in us Fourthly It being a renovation of our Nature into a pristine state of ours the strength and depth of impression seems increased upon that account also Fifthly The remembrance of all the hardships we underwent in our lapsed condition whether of Mortification or cross Rancounters this must likewise help us to persevere when once returned to our former Happiness Sixthly The comparing of the evanid pleasures of our lapsed or terrestrial life with the fulness of those Joys that we find still in our heavenly will keep us from ever having any hankering after them any more Seventhly The certain knowledge of everlasting punishment which if not true they could not know must be also another sure bar to any such negligencies as would hazard their setled felicity Which may be one reason why the irreclaimable are eternally punished namely that it may the better secure eternal Happiness to others Eighthly Though we have our triple Vital Congruity still yet the Plastick life is so throughly satisfied with the Resurrection-body which is so considerably more full and saturate with all the heavenly richness and Glorie than the former that the Plastick of the soul is
as a Spirit does Spirit and matter which Matter cannot do This is a certain Character of a Spirit And his instancing in Light as Indiscerpible is as little to the purpose For the substance of Light viz. the Materia subtilissima and Globuli are discerpible And the motion of them is but a Modus but the point in hand is Indiscerpibilitie of Substance To the Eighth I Answer That Mr. Baxter here is hugely unreasonable in his demands as if Penetrabilitie of Spirits were not sufficiently explained unless it can be made out that all the Spirits in the world Universal and particular may be contracted into one Punctum But this is a Theme that he loves to enlarge upon and to declaim on very Tragically as pag. 52. If Spirits have parts which may be extended and contracted you will hardly so easily prove as say that God cannot divide them And when in your Writings shall I find satisfaction into how much space one Spirit may be extended and into how little it may be contracted and whether the whole Spirit of the World may be contracted into a Nut-shell or a Box and the Spirit of a Flea may be extended to the Convex of all the world And again pag. 78. You never tell into how little parts onely it may be contracted And if you put any limits I will suppose that one Spirit hath contracted itself into the least compass possible and then I ask Cannot another and another Spirit be in the same compass by their Penetration If not Spirits may have a contracted Spissitude which is not Penetrable and Spirits cannot penetrate contracted Spirits but onely dilated ones If yea then quaero whether all created Spirits may not be so contracted And I should hope that the Definition of a Spirit excludeth not God and yet that you do not think that his Essence may be contracted and dilated O that we knew how little we know This grave moral Epiphonema with a sorrowful shaking of the Head is not in good truth much misbecoming the sly insinuating cunning of Mr. Richard Baxter who here makes a shew speaking in the first person We of lamenting and bewailing the ignorance of his own ignorance but friendly hooks in by expressing himself in the plural number the Doctor also into the same condemnation Solamen miseris as if He neither did understand his own ignorance in the things he Writes of but will be strangely surprised at the hard Riddles Mr. Baxter has propounded as if no Oedipus were able to solve them And I believe the Doctor if he be called to an account will freely confess of himself That in the things he positively pronounces of so far as he pronounces that he is indeed altogether ignorant of any ignorance of his own therein But that this is by reason that he according to the cautiousness of his Genius does not adventure further than he clearly sees ground and the notion appears useful for the Publick As it is indeed useful to understand that Spirits can both Penetrate matter and Penetrate one another else God could not be Essentially present in all the parts of the Corporeal Universe nor the Spirits of Men and Angels be in God Both which notwithstanding are most certainly true to say nothing of the Spirit of Nature which particular Spirits also Penetrate and are Penetrated by it But now for the Contraction and Dilatation of Spirits that is not a propertie of Spirits in general as the other are but of particular created Spirits as the Doctor has declared in his Treatise of the Immortalitie of the Soul So that that hard Question is easily answered concerning Gods contracting and dilating himself That he does neither he being no created Spirit and being more absolutely perfect than that any such properties should be competible to him And it is reasonable to conceive that there is little actually of that propertie in the Spirit of Nature it being no particular Spirit though created but an Universal one and having no need thereof For the corporeal world did not grow from a small Embryo into that vast amplitude it is now of but was produced of the same largeness it now has though there was a successive delineation and orderly polishing and perfecting the vast distended parts thereof And to speak compendiously and at once That God that has Created all things in number weight measure has given such measures of Spiritual Essence and of the facultie of contracting and dilating the same as also of Spiritual Subtilty of substance as serves the ends of his Wisdom and Goodness in creating such a species of Spirit So that it is fond unskilful and ridiculous to ask if the whole Spirit of the world can be contracted into a Nut-shell and the Spirit of a Flea extended to the Convex of the Universe They that talk at this rate err as Aliens from the Wisdome of God and ignorant of the Laws of Nature and indeed of the voice of Scripture itself Why should God make the Spirit of a Flea which was intended for the constituting of such a small Animal large enough to fill the whole world Or what need of such a contraction in the Spirit of Nature or Plastick Soul of the corporeal Universe that it may be contrived into a Nut-shell That it has such Spiritual subtiltie as that particular Spirits may contract themselves in it so close together as to be commensurate to the first Inchoations of a Foetus which is but very small stands to good reason and Effects prove it to be so As also this smalness of a Foetus or Embryo that particular Spirits are so far contracted at first and expand themselves leisurely afterwards with the growth of the bodie which they regulate But into how much lesser space they can or do contract themselves at any time is needless to know or enquire And there is no Repugnancie at all but the Spirit of Nature might be contracted to the like Essential Spissitude that some particular Spirits are but there is no reason to conceit that it ever was or ever will be so contracted while the World stands Nor lastly is there any Inconvenience in putting indefinite limits of Contraction in a Spirit and to allow that after such a measure of Contraction though we cannot say just what that is it naturally contracts no further nor does another so contracted naturally penetrate this thus contracted Spirit For as the usefulness of that measure of Self-Penetrability and Contraction is plain so it is as plain that the admitting of it is no incongruitie nor incommoditie to the Universe nor any confusion to the Specifick modes of Spirit and Bodie For these two Spirits suppose contracted to the utmost of their natural limits may naturally avoid the entring one another not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as in Bodies or Matter but by a vital Saturitie or natural Uneasiness in so doing Besides that though at such a contracted pitch they are naturally impenetrable to one
another yet they demonstrate still their Spirituality by Self-Penetration haply a thousand and a thousand times repeated And though by a Law of life not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are kept from penetrating one another yet they both in the mean time necessarily penetrate Matter as undergoing the diverse measures of essential Spissitude in the same So that by the increase of that essential Spissitude they may approach near to a kind of Hylopathick disposition of Impenetrability and thence by the Matter of the Universe out of which they never are be curb'd from contracting themselves any further than to such a degree and I noted at first that spiritual Subtilty as well as Amplitude is given in measure to created Spirits So that Penetrabilitie is still a steadie Character of a Spiritual Essence or Substance to thâ— utmost sense thereof And to argue against Impenetrability its being the propertie of Matter from this kind of Impenetrability of contracted Spirits is like that quibbling Sophistrie against Indiscerpibility being the propertie of a Spirit because a Physical Monad is also indiscerpible The ninth Objection is against the Indiscerpibility of Spirits and would infer that because the Doctor makes them intellectually divisible therefore by Divine Power if it imply no contradiction a Spirit is Discerpible into Physical parts But this is so fully satisfied already by the Doctor in his Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit and its Defence to say nothing of what I have said already above to prove it does imply a contradiction that I will let it go and proceed To the tenth and last Allegation which pretends That these two terms Penetrable and Indiscerpible are needless and hazardous in the Notion of a Spirit But how useful or needful Penetrability is is manifest from what we have said to the eighth Objection And the needfulness of Indiscerpibility is also sufficiently shewn by the Doctor in his Defence of the true Notion of a Spirit Sect. 30. But now for the Hazardousness of these terms as if they were so hard that it would discourage men from the admitting of the Existence of Spirits It appears from what has been said to the eighth Objection That Penetrability is not onely intelligible and admittable but necessarily to be admitted in the Notion of a Spirit as sure as God is a Spirit and that there are Spirits of men and Angels and that the Souls of men are not made of Shreds but actuate their whole grown bodie though at first they were contracted into the compass of a very small Foetus And that there is no Repugnancie that an Essence may be ample and yet indiscerpible Mr. Baxter himself must allow who pag. 51. plainly declares That it is the vilest contradiction to say that God is capable of division So that I wonder that he will call Penetrable and Indiscerpible hard and doubtful words and such as might stumble mens belief of the Existence of Spirits when they are terms so plain and necessary Nor can that Vnitie that belongs to a Spirit be conceived or understood without them especially without Indiscerpibilitie And indeed if we do not allow Penetrability the Soul of a man will be far from being one but a thing discontinued and scatter'd in the pores of his corporeal consistencie We will conclude with Mr. Baxters Conceit of the Indivisibleness of a Spirit and see how that will corroborate mens faith of their Existence and put all out of hazard Various Elements saith he pag. 50. vary in Divisibility Earth is most divisible Water more hardly the parts more inclining to the closest contact Air yet more hardly and in Fire no doubt the Discerpibility is yet harder And if God have made a Creature so strongly inclined to the unitie of all the parts that no Creature can separate them but God onely as if a Soul were such it is plain that such a Being need not fear a dissolution by Separation of parts Ans This is well said for an heedless and credulous multitude but this is not to Philosophize but to tell us that God works a perpetual Miracle in holding the small tenuious parts of the Soul together more pure and â—ine than those of Fire or Aether but here is no natural cause â—â—om the thing it self offered unless it be that in every Substance or rather Matter the parts according to the tenuitie and puritie of the Substance incline to a closer Contact and inseparable Union one with another which is a conceit repugnant to experience and easily confuted by that ordinarie accident of a Spinner hanging by its weak thread from the brim of ones Hat which â—eeble line yet is of force enough to divide the Air and for that very reason because it consists of thinner parts than Water or Earth As also we can more easily run in the Air than wade in the Water for the very same reason These things are so plain that they are not to be dwelt upon But Mr. Baxter is thus pleased to shew his Wit in maintaining a weak â—ause which I am perswaded he has not so little judgment as that he can have any great confidence in And therefore in sundry places he intimates that he does allow or at least not deny but that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie is contained in the Notion of a Spirit but not as part of the Conceptus formalis but as Dispositio or Modus substantiae but yet withal such a Dispositio as is essential to the substance that with the Conceptus formalis added makes up the true Notion of a Spirit See pag. 30 32 61 85. And truly if Mr. Baxter be in good earnest and sincere in this agreement without all equivocation that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie is Essential to the true Notion of a Spirit onely they are to be admitted as Dispositio Substantiae not as Pars Formae I confess as he declares pag. 94. That the diâ—â—erence betwixt him and the Doctor lyeth in a much smaller matter than was thought and the Doctor I believe will easily allow him to please his own fancy in that But then he must understand the terms of Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie in the Doctors sense viz of a Spirits penetrating not inter partes but per partes materiâ—â— and possessing the same space with them And of an Indiscerpibleness not arising from thinner and thinner parts of matter as he imagines Air to be more hardly discerpible than Earth or Water forasmuch as by reason of its thinness its parts lye closer together as was above noted but from the immediate essential Oneness of substance in a Spirit according to the true Idea of an Indiscerpible Being in the Divine Intellect which whether in Idea or in Actual Existence it would cease to be or rather never was such if it were discerpible and therefore implies a contradiction it should be so But if a Spirit be not Penetrable in the Doctors sense it is really Impenetrable and if not Indiscerpible in his sense