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
such Grammar as that there is no School-boy but would be ashamed of it nor is there for all his pretences any place in Scripture to countenance such an extravagant Exposition by way of Parallelism as it may appear to any one that will compare the places which he alleadges with this which I leave the Reader to do at his leisure Let us consider the Context Joh. 17. 4. I have glorified thee upon earth during this my Pilgrimage and absence from thee being sent hither by thee I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do and for the doing of which I was sent and am thus long absent And now O Father glorifie me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 apud teipsum in thine own presence with the glorie which I had before the world was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 apud te or in thy presence What can be more expressive of a Glorie which Christ had apud Patrem or at his Fathers home or in his presence before the world was and from which for such a time he had been absent Now for others that would salve the business by communication of Idioms I will set down the words of an ingenious Writer that goes that way Those Predicates says he that in a strict and vigorous acception agreed onely to his Divine Nature might by a communication of Idioms as they phrase it be attributed to his Humane or at least to the whole Person compounded of them both than which nothing is more ordinarie in things of a mixt and heterogeneous nature as the whole man is stiled immortal from the deathlessness of his Soul thus he And there is the same reason if he had said that man was stiled mortal which certainly is far the more ordinarie from the real death of his Bodie though his Soul be immortal This is wittily excogitated But now let us apply it to the Text expounding it according to his communication of Idioms affording to the Humane Nature what is onely proper to the Divine thus Father glorifie me my Humane Nature with the glorie that I my Divine Nature had before the world was Which indeed was to be the Eternal Infinite and Omnipotent brightness of the Glory of the Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is the Glory which his Divine Nature had before the World was But how can this Humane Nature be glorified with that Glory his Divine Nature had before the world was unless it should become the Divine Nature that it might be said to have pre-existed But that it cannot be For there is no confusion of the Humane and Divine Nature in the Hypostasis of Christ Or else because it is hypostatically united with the Divine Nature but if that be the Glory that he then had already and had it not according to the Opposers of Pre-existence before the world was So we see there is no sence to be made of this Text by communication of Idioms and therefore no sence to be made of it without the Pre-existence of the Humane Nature of Christ And if you paraphrase me thus My Hypostasis consisting of my Humane and Divine Nature it will be as untoward sence For if the Divine Nature be included in me then Christ prays for what he has aleady as I noted above For the Glory of the eternal Logos from everlasting to everlasting is the same as sure as he is the same with himself Pag. 86. By his expressions of coming from the Father descending from Heaven and returning thither again c. I suppose these Scriptures are alluded to John 3. 13. 6. 38. 16. 28. I came down from Heaven not to do my own will but the will of him that sent me I came forth from the Father and am come into the world again I leave the world and go to the Father Whereupon his Disciples said unto him Lo now speakest thou plainly and speakest no Parable But it were a very great Parable or Aenigm that one should say truly of himself that he came from Heaven when he never was there And as impossible a thing is it to conceive how God can properly be said to come down from Heaven who is alwaies present every where Wherefore that in Christ which was not God namely his Soul or Humane Nature was in Heaven before he appeared on Earth and consequently his Soul did pre-exist Nor is there any refuge here in the communication of Idioms For that cannot be attributed to the whole Hypostasis which is competent to neither part that constitutes it For it was neither true of the Humane Nature of Christ if you take away Pre-existence nor of the Divine that they descended from Heaven c. And yet John 3. 13 14. where Christ prophesying of his Crucifixion and Ascension saith No man hath ascended up to Heaven but he that came down from Heaven even the Son of man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who was in Heaven So Erasmus saith it may be rendred a Participle of the present tense having a capacity to signifie the time past if the sence require it as it seems to do here Qui erat in Coelo viz. antequam descenderat So Erasmus upon the place Wherefore these places of Scripture touching Christ being such inexpugnable Arguments of the Pre-existence of the Soul of the Messiah the Writer of No Pre-existence methinks is no where so civil or discreet as in this point Where he saies he will not squabble about this but readily yield that the Soul of Christ was long extant before it was incarnate But then he presently flings dirt upon the Pre-existentiaries as guilty of a shameful presumption and inconsequence to conclude the Pre-existence of all other Humane Souls from the Pre-existence of his Because he was a peculiar favourite of God was to undergo bitter sufferings for Mankind and therefore should enjoy an happy Pre-existence for an Anti-praemium And since he was to purchase a Church with his own most precious Bloud it was fit he should pre-exist from the beginning of the world that he might preside over his Church as Guide and Governour thereof which is a thing that cannot be said of any other soul beside This is a device which I believe the Pre-existentiaries good men never dreamt of but they took it for granted that the creation of all Humane Souls was alike and that the Soul of Christ was like ours in all things sin onely excepted as the Emperour Justinian in his Discourse to Menas Patriarch of Constantinople argues from this very Topick to prove the Non-pre-existence of our Souls from the Non-pre-existence of Christs he being like us in all things sin onely excepted And therefore as to Existence and Essence there was no difference Thus one would have verily thought to have been most safe and most natural to conclude as being so punctual according to the declaration of Scripture and order of things For it seems almost as harsh and repugnant to give Angelical Existence to a Species not Angelical as Angelical
and fountain of Truth That in these I say consists the Truth in the Object and that the Truth in the Subject is a conception conformable to these or to the Truth of them whether in the uncreated or created Understanding So that the niceness of the point is this Whether the Transcendental Truth of things exhibited in their Objective Existence to the Theoretical Intellect of God consists in their Conformity to that Intellect or the Truth of that Intellect in its Conformity with the immutable natures and Relations or Respects of things exhibited in their Objective Existence which the Divine Intellect finds to be unalterably such not contrives them at its own pleasure This though it be no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or strife about mere words yet it seems to be such a contest that there is no harm done whethersoever side carries the Cause the two seeming sides being but one and the same Intellect of God necessarily and immutably representing to it self the natures Respects and Aptitudes of all things such as they appear in their Objective Existence and such as they will prove whenever produced into act As for example The Divine Understanding quatenns exhibitive of Idea's which a Platonist would call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does of its infinite pregnancy and fecundity necessarily exhibit certain and unalterable Idea's of such and such determinate things as suppose of a Cylinder a Globe and a Pyramid which have a setled and unalterable nature as also immutable properties references and aptitudes immediately consequential thereto and not arbitrariously added unto them which are thus necessarily extant in the Divine Intellect as exhibitive of such Idea's So likewise a Fish a Fowl and a four-footed beast an Ox Bear Horse or the like they have a setled nature exhibited in their Idea's and the properties and aptitudes immediately â—lowing therefrom As also have all the Elements Earth Water and Air determinate natures with properties and aptitudes immediately issuing from them Nor is a Whale fitted to fly in the Air nor an Eagle to live under the Water nor an Ox or Bear to do either nor any of them to live in the Fire But the Idea's of those things which we call by those names being unchangeable for there are diâ—ferences indeed of Idea's but no changing of one Idea into another state but their natures are distinctly setled and to add or take away any thing from an Idea is not to make an alteration in the same Idea but to constitute a new one As Aristotle somewhere in his Metaphysicks speaks of Numbers where he says that the adding or taking away of an Unite quite varies the species And therefore as every number suppose Binary Quinary Ternary Denary is such a setled number and no other and has such properties in it self and references immediately accrewing to it and aptitudes which no other number besides it self has so it is with Idea's the Idea's I say therefore of those things which we call by those names above-recited being unchangeable the aptitudes and references immediately issuing from their nature represented in the Idea must be also unalterable and necessary Thus it is with Mathematical and Physical Idea's and there is the same reason concerning such Idea's as may be called Moral Forasmuch as they respect the rectitude of Will in whatever Mind created or uncreated And thus lastly it is with Metaphysical Idea's as for example As the Physical Idea of Body Matter or Substance Material contains in it immediately of its own nature or intimate specifick Essence real Divisibility or Discerpibility Impenetrability and mere Passivity or Actuability as the proper fruit of the Essential Difference and intimate Form thereof unalterably and immutably as in its Idea in the Divine Intellect so in any Body or Material Substance that does exist So the Idea of a Spirit or of a Substance Immaterial the opposite Idea to the other contains in it immediately of its own nature Indiscerpibility Penetrability and Self-Activity as the inseparable fruit of the essential difference or intimate form thereof unalterably and immutably as in its Idea in the Divine Intellect so in any Immaterial Substance properly so called that doth exist So that as it is a contradiction in the Idea that it should be the Idea of Substance Immaterial and yet not include in it Indiscerpibility c. so it is in the being really existent that it should be Substance Immaterial and yet not be Indiscerpible c. For were it so it would not answer to the Truth of its Idea nor be what it pretendeth to be and is indeed an existent Being Indiscerpible which existent Being would not be Indiscerpible if any could discerp it And so likewise it is with the Idea of Ens summè absolutè perfectum which is a setled determinate and immutable Idea in the Divine Intellect whereby were not God himself that Ens summè absolutè perfectum he would discern there were something better than Himself and consequently that he were not God But he discerns Himself to be this Ens summè absolutè perfectum and we cannot but discern that to such a Being belongs Spirituality which implies Indiscerpibility and who but a mad man can imagine the Divine Essence discerpible into parts Infinity of Essence or Essential Omnipresence Self-Causality or necessary Existence immediately of it self or from it self resulting from the absolute and peculiar perfection of its own nature whereby we understand that nothing can exist ab aeterno of it self but He. And lastly Omniscience and Omnipotence whereby it can do any thing that implies no contradiction to be done Whence it necessarily follows that all things were Created by Him and that he were not God or Ens summè perfectum if it were not so And that amongst other things he created Spirits as sure as there are any Spirits in the world indiscerpible as himself is though of finite Essences and Metaphysical Amplitudes and that it is no derogation to his Omnipotence that he cannot discerp a Spirit once created it being a contradiction that he should Nor therefore any argument that he cannot create a Spirit because he would then puzzle his own Omnipotence to discerp it For it would then follow that he cannot create any thing no not Metaphysical Monads nor Matter unless it be Physically divisible in infinitum and God Himself could never divide it into parts Physically indivisible whereby yet his Omnipotence would be puzzled And if he can divide matter into Physical Monads no further divisible there his Omnipotence is puzzled again And by such sophistical Reasoning God shall be able to create nothing neither Matter nor Spirit nor consequently be God or Ens summè absolutè perfectum the Creator and Essentiator of all things This is so Mathematically clear and true that I wonder that Mr. Rich. Baxter should not rather exult in his Placid Collation at the discovery of so plain and useful a truth than put himself p. 79. into an Histrionical
Lucifer And for my body 't is most likely that never an Atom of his ever came at me or if any did he was no cause on 't Besides that of it self is neither capable of sense sin guilt nor punishment or 2. Admitting that we become thus obnoxious assoon as in the body upon the account of his default How doth it comport with the divine Justice in one moment to make such excellent Creatures and in the next to render them so miserable by thrusting them into a condition so fatally obnoxious especially since they were capable of living and acting in bodies more perfect and more accommodate to their new undefiled natures Certainly could they have been put to their choice whether they would have come into being upon such termes they would rather have been nothing for ever And God doth not use to make his Creatures so as that without their own fault they shall have cause to unwish themselves Hitherto in this second general Argument I have dealt against those that believe and assâ—rt the original depravity of our natures which those that deny may think themselves not pinâ—â—'t by or concern'd in Since they think they do no such dishonour to the divine Attributes while they assert that we were not made in so deplorable and depraved a condition but have so made our selves by our voluntary aberrations But neither is this a fit Plaister for the sore supposing our souls to be immediately created and so sent into these bodies For still it seems to be a diminutive and disparaging apprehenâ—ion of the infinite and immense Goodness of God that he should detrude such excellent creatures as our souls into a state so hazardous * wherein he seeth it to be ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt and defile themselves and so make themselves miserable here and to eternity hereafter And certainly be we as indifferent naturally to good and evil as can be supposed yet great are the disadvantages to virtue that all men unavoidably meet with in this state of imperfection For considering that our infant and growing age is an age of sense in which our appetites and passions are very strong and our reasons weak and scarce any thing but a chain of imaginations 't is I say great odds but that we should be carried to inordinacy and exceed the bounds the divine laws have set us So that our lower powers of sense and passions using to have the head will grow strong and impetuous and thus 't is an hundred to one but we shall be rooted in vice before we come to the maturity of our reasons or are capable of the exercise of virtue And woful experience teacheth us that most men run so far before they consider whither they are a-going that the care and diligence of all their lives after will scarce reclaim them Besides the far greatest part of the world are led into wickedness and all kinds of debauchery by corrupt and vitious education And 't is not difficult to observe what an enormous strength bad education hath to deprave and pervert well dispos'd inclinations Which things consider'd this way also methinks reflects a Disparagement on the Divine Attributes Since by creating souls daily and putting them into such bodies and such parts of the world as his infinite Wisdom sees will debauch them and pervert them from the ways of righteousness and happiness into those of vice and misery he deals with them less mercifully than a parent among us would with his Off-spring And to suppose God to have less goodness than his degenerate creatures is to have very narrow apprehensions of his perfections and to rob him of the honour due to his Attributes 3 It hath been urged with good probability by great and wise Sages that 't is an unbecoming apprehension of the Majesty on high * to suppose him assistant to unlawful and unclean coitions by creating a soul to animate the impure foetus And to think It is in the power of brutish lust to determine Omvipotence to create a Soul whensoever a couple of unclean Adulterers shall think fit to join in their bestial pleasures is methinks to have a very mean apprehension of the divine Majesty and Purity This is to make him the worst of Servants by supposing him to serve his creature's vices to wait upon the vilest actions and to engage the same infinite Power that made the world for the perfecting what was begun by dissolute Wantons This Argument was used of old by pious and learned Origen and hath been imployed in the same service since by his modern defendents But I foresee an evasion or two that possibly with some may stand for an answer the removal of which will clear the business It may be pretended that God's attending to create souls for the supply of such generations is but an act of his justice for the detection and consequently punishment of such lawless offenders which therefore will be no more matter of disparagement than the waiting of an Officer of justice to discover and apprehend a Malefactour But this Subterfuge cannot elude the force of the Argument for it hath no place at all in most Adulteries yea great injustice and injury is done many times by such illegitimate births the Child of a Stranger being by this means admitted to carry away the inheritance from the lawful off-spring Besides God useth not ordinarily to put forth his Almighty power to discover secret miscarriages except sometimes for very remarkable and momentous ends but leaves hidden iniquities to be the objects of his own castigations And if discovery of the fault be the main end of such creations * methinks that might be done at a cheaper rate that should not have brought so much inconvenience with it or have exposed his own innocent and harmless off-spring to undeserv'd Reproach and Infamy But further it may be suggested that it is no more indecent for God to create souls to furnish those unlawful Generations than it is that a man should be nourisht by meat that he hath unlawfully come by or that the Cattle which he hath stoln should ingender with his own But the difference of these instances from the case in hand is easily discernable in that the nourishment and productions spoken of proceed in a set orderly way of natural causes which work fatally and necessarily without respect to moral circumstances and there is no reason it should be in the power of a sinful creature to engage his Maker to pervert or stop the course of nature when he pleaseth But in the case of creating souls God is supposed to act by explicite and immediate Will the suspending of which in such a case as this is far different in point of credit and decorum from his altering the setled Laws he hath set in the Creation and turning the world upside down I might further add 4ly That * it seems very incongruous and unhandsome to suppose that God should create two souls for the supply
at first view that such variety of distinct and orderly representations should be made at once upon a single atom or the whole image is imprest upon every point and then there would be as many objects as there are points in this matter and so every thing would be infinitely multiplied in our delâ—sive senses Or finally every part of the soul must receive a proportionable part of the image and then how could those parts communicate their perceptions to each other and what should perceive the whole This Argument is excellently managed by the great Dr. H. More in whose writings this fond Hypothesis is fully triumpht over and defeated Since therefore the very lowest degree of perception single and simple sense is incompatible to meer body or matter we may safely conclude that the higher and nobler operations of imagining remembring reasoning and willing must have a cause and source that is not Corporeal Thus therefore those that build the souls traduction upon this ground of its being only body and modified matter are disappointed in the foundation of their conclusion But 2 Another sort of assertors of traduction teach the Soul to be spiritual and incorporeal and affirm that by a vertue deriv'd from the first benediction it can propagate its like one soul emitting another as the body doth the matter of Generation The manner of which spiritual production useth to be illustrated by one Candle's lighting another and a mans begetting a thought in anothers mind without diminishing of his own This is the most favourable representation of this opinion that I can think on And yet if we nearly consider it it will appear most absuâ—d and unphilosophical For if one soul produce another 't is either out of nothing or something praeexistent If the former 't is an absolute creation which all philosophy concludes impossible for a Creature And if it be pretended that the Parent doth it not by his proper natural virtue but by a strength imparted by God in the first blessing Increase and multiply so that God is the prime agent he only the instrument I rejoin that then either God hath thereby obliged himself to put forth a new and extraordinary power in every such occasion distinct from his influence in the ordinary â—ourse of nature Or else 2 he only concurrs by his providence as he doth to our other natural actions we having this Ability bestowed upon our very natures He that asserts the first runs upon all the rocks that he would avoid in the former Hypothesis of continual Creation and God will be made the cause of the sin and misery of his spotless and blameless Creatures which absurdities he cannot shun by saying that God by interposing in such productions doth but follow the rules of acting which he first made while man was innocent For certainly infinite goodness would never have tyed up it self to such Laws of working as he foresaw would presently bring unavoidable inconvenience misery and ruine upon the best part of his workmanship And for the second way it supposeth God to have no more to do in this action than in our eating and drinking Consequently here is a creation purely natural And methinks if we have so vast a power to bring the ends of contradictories together something out of nothing which some deny to Omnipotence it self 't is much we cannot conserve in being our Creature so produced nor our own intimate selves since conservation is not more than Creation And 't is much that in other things we should give such few specimens of so vast an ability or have a power so divine and excellent and no faculty to discern it by Again 2 if the Soul be immediately produced out of nothing be the agent who it will God or the Parent it will be pure and sinless For supposing our parents to be our Creators they make us but as natural agents * and so can only transmit their natural qualities but not their moral pravities Wherefore there can no better account be given from this way how the Soul is so debauched and infected assoon as it comes into the body than in the former and therefore it fails in the main end it is designed for Thus we see then that the traduction of the Soul supposing it to be produced out of nothing cannot be defended Nor doth the second general way yield any more relief to this Hypothesis For if it be made of any thing praeexistent it is either of matter or spirit The former we have undermined and overthrown already in what was said against those that hold it to be body And if it be made out of any Spiritual substance it must be the soul of the parent except we will revive the old enthusiastick conceit of its being a particle of the divine essence which supposition is * against the nature of an immaterial being a chief property of which is to be indiscerpible Nor do the similitudes I mentioned in the proposal of the Hypothesis at all fit the business for one candle lights another * by separable emissions that pass from the flame of that which is kindled to the wick of the other And flame is a body whose parts are in continual flux as a river But the substance of the soul is stable permanent and indivisible which quite makes it another case And for a mans informing anothers mind with a thought which he had not conceived it is not a production of any substance but only an occasioning him to exert an operation of his mind which he did not before And therefore makes nothing to the illustrating how a Soul can produce a Soul a substance distinct and without it self Thus we see how desperate the case of the souls original is in the Hypothesis of Traduction also But yet to let it have fair play we 'l give it leave to plead it's cause and briefly present what is most material in its behalf There are but two reasons that I can think of worth the naming 1 A man begets a man and a man he is not without a Soul therefore 't is pretended that the soul is begotten But this argument is easily detected of palpable sophistry and is as if one should argue a man is mortal therefore his Soul is mortal or is fat and lusty therefore his Soul is so The absurdity of which kinds of reasoning lyes in drawing that into a strict and rigorous affirmation which is only meant according to vulgar speech and is true only in some remarkable respect or circumstance Thus we say A man begets a man because he doth the visible and only sensible part of him The vulgar to whom common speech is accommodate not taking so much notice of what is past the ken of their senses And therefore Body in ordinary speaking is oft put for Person as here man for the body Sometimes the noblest part is used for the whole as when 't is said 70 Souls went down with Jacob into Egypt therefore such arguments as
a creature is capable â—of and that everlasting be not better than Nonâ—entity 2 If we cannot certainly know that it had been Better that we should have existed in a life of happiness proportion'd to our natures of old than have been meer nothing till some few years since we can never then own and acknowledg the divine goodness to us in any thing we enjoy For if it might have been as good for us not to Be as to Be and happily Then it might have been as good for us to have wanted any thing else that we enjoy as to have it and consequently we cannot own it as an effect of God's goodness that he hath bestowed any blessing on us For if Being be not better than Not-being then 't is no effect of goodness that we are and if so then 't is not from goodness that we have any thing else * since all other things are inferiour to the good of Being If it be said It had been better indeed for us to have lived in a former and happier state but it may be it had not been so for the universe and the general good is to be preferr'd before that of particulars I say then and it may serve for a 3 answer to the general objection If we may deny that to be done by almighty goodness which is undoubtedly best for a whole species of his creatures meerly on this account that for ought we know it may be for the advantage of some others though there be not the least appearance of any such matter we can never then argue any thing from the divine goodness It can never then be prov'd from that glorious Attribute that he hath not made some of his creatures on purpose that they might be miserable nor can it be concluded thence that he will not annihilate all the pure and spotless Angels both which I suppose any sober inquirer will think congruously deducible from the divine goodness And if to say for ought we know It may be best for some other creatures that those should be miserable and these annihilated be enough to disable the Argument on the same account we shall never be able to prove ought from this or any other Attribute I might add 2 There is not the least colourable pretence for any such suspicion For would the world have been too little to have contain'd those souls without justling with some others or would they by violence have taken any of the priviledges of the other intellectual Creatures from them If so how comes it about that at last they can all so well consist together And could other Creatures have been more disadvantag'd by them when they were pure and innocent than they will at last when they are so many of them debauched and depraved 3 If this be enough to answer an Argument to say for ought we know it may be thus and thus when there is not the least sign or appearance of any such thing then nothing can ever be proved and we are condemned to everlasting Scepticism We should never for instance from the order beauty and wise contrivance of the things that do appear prove there is a God if it were sufficient to answer That things are indeed so made in this earth on which we are extant but it may be they are framed very odly ridiculously and ineptly in some other worlds which we know nothing of If this be answering any thing might be answered But there is yet another objection against mine Argument from the Divine Goodness which looks very formidably at a distance though when we come near it we shall find it will not bear the tryal And it may thus be urged 3 If the Goodness of God always obligeth him to do what is best and best for his Creatures How is it then that we were not made impeccable and so not obnoxious to misery Or how doth it consist with that overflowing Goodness of the Deity that we were let to lie in a long state of silence and insensibility before we came into these bodies This seems a pressing difficulty but yet there 's hopes we may dispatch it Therefore 1 Had we been made impeccable we should have been another kind of Creatures than now since we had then wanted the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or liberty of will to good and evil which is one of our essential Attributes Consequently there would have been one species of beings wanting to compleat the universe and it would have been a slurre to the divine Goodness not to have given being to such Creatures as in the Idea were fairly possible and contradicted no other Attribute Yea though he foresaw that some would sin and make themselves miserable yet the foreseen lapse and misery of those was not an evil great enough to over-ballance the good the species would reap by being partakers of the divine Goodness in the land of the Living Therefore however 't was goodness to give such Creatures being But it will be urged upon us If Liberty to good and â—vil be so essential to our natures what think we then of the â—lessed souls after the Resurrection are not they the same Creatures though without the liberty of sinning To return to this I think those that affirm that the blessed have not this natural liberty as long as they are united to a body and are capable of resenting it's pleasures should do well to prove it * Indeâ—d they may be morally immutable and illapsible but this is grace not nature a reward of obedience not a necessary annex of our Beings But will it be said why did not the divine Goodness endue us all with this moral â—ability Had it not been better for us to have been made in this condition of security than in a state so dangerous My return to this doubt will be a second Answer to the main Objection Therefore Secondly * I doubt not but that 't is much better for rational Creatures that this supream happiness should be the Reward of vertue rather than entail'd upon our natures For the procurement of that which we might have mist of is far more sensibly gratifying than any necessary and unacquired injoyment we find a greater pleasure in what we gain by industry art or vertue than in the things we were born to And had we been made secure from sin and misery from the first moment of our Being we should not have put so high a rate and value upon that priviledge 3 Had we been at first establisht in an impâ—ssibility of lapsing into evil Then many choice vertues excellent branches of the divine Life had never been exercis'd or indeed have been at all Such are Patience Faith and Hope the objects of which are evil futurity and uncertainty Yea 4 Had we been so sixt in an inamissible happiness from the beginning there had then been no vertue in the world nor any of that matchless pleasure which attends the exercise thereof For vertue is a kind of victory
and ill nature that has made some men abuse this Text to the proving that God acts out of either an humourous or selfish principle as if he did things merely to please himself as self not as he is that soveraign unself-inreressed Goodness and perfect Rectitude which ought to be the measure of all things But the Text implies no such matter For if you make 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Compound of a Preposition and Pronoun that so it may signifie for himself which is no more than propter se it then will import that he made all things to satisfie his own Will and Pleasure whose Will and Pleasure results from the richness of his eternal Goodness and Benignity of Nature which is infinite and ineffable provided always that it be moderated by Wisdom Justice and Decorum For from hence his Goodness is so stinted or modified that though he has made all things for his own Will and Pleasure who is infinite Goodness and Benignity yet there is a day of Evil for the Wicked as it follows in the Text because they have not walked answerably to the Goodness that God has offered them and therefore their punishment is in behalf of abused Goodness And Bayns expresly interprets this Text thus Vniversa propter seipsum fecit Dominus that is says he Propter bonitatem suam juxta illud Augustini DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA Quia bonus est Deus sumus in quantum sumus boni sumus But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be a Compound of a Participle and a Pronoun and then it may signifie for them that answer him that is walk anserably to his Goodness which he affords them or for them that obey him either way it is very good sence And then in opposition to these it is declared that the Wicked that is the Disobedient or Despisers of his Goodness he has not made them wicked but they having made themselves so appointed them for the day of Evil. For some such Verb is to be supplied as is agreeable to the matter as in that passage in the Psalms The Sun shall not burn thee by day neither the Moon by night Where burn cannot be repeated but some other more suitable Verb is to be supplied Chap. 8. pag. 63. Since all other things are inferiour to the good of Being This I suppose is to be understood in such a sence as that saying in Job Skin for skin and all that a man has will he give for his life Otherwise the condition of Being may be such as it were better not to be at all whatever any dry-fancied Metaphysicians may dispute to the contrary Pag. 67. Indeed they may be morally immutable and illapsable but this is Grace not Nature c. Not unless the Divine Wisdom has essentially interwoven it into the natural constitution of our Souls that as after such a time of the exercise of their Plaistick on these Terrestrial Bodies they according to the course of Nature emerge into a plain use of their Reason when for a time they little differed from Brutes so after certain periods of time well improved to the perfecting their Nature in the sense and adherence to Divine things there may be awakened in them such a Divine Plaistick faculty as I may so speak as may eternally fix them to their Celestial or Angelical Vehicles that they shall never relapse again Which Faculty may be also awakened by the free Grace of the Omnipotent more maturely Which if it be Grace and Nature conspire together to make a Soul everlastingly happy Which actual Immutability does no more change the species of a Soul than the actual exercise of Reason does after the time of her stupour in Infancy and in the Womb. Pag. 67. I doubt not but that it is much better for rational Creatures c. Namely such as we experience our humane Souls to be But for such kind of Intellectual Creatures as have nothing to do with matter they best understand the priviledges of their own state and we can say nothing of them But for us under the conduct of our faithâ—ul and victorious Captain the Soul of the promised Messias through many Conflicts and Tryals to emerge out of this lapsed state and regain again the possession of true Holyness and Vertue and therewith the Kingdom of Heaven with all its Beauty and Glories will be such a gratification to us that we had never been capable of such an excess thereof had we not experienced the evils of this life and the vain pleasures of it and had the remembrance of the endearing sufferings of our blessed Saviour of his Aids and Supports and of our sincere and conscientious adhering to him of our Conflicts and Victories to be enrolled in the eternal Records of the other World Pag. 69. Wherefore as the Goodness of God obligeth him not to make every Planet a fixt Star or every Star a Sun c. In all likelihood as Galilaeus had first observed every fixed Star is a Sun But the comparison is framed according to the conceit of the Vulgar A thing neither unusual with nor misbecoming Philosophers Pag. 69. For this were to tye him to Contradictions viz. to turn one specifical form or essence into another Matter indeed may receive several modifications but is still real Matter nor can be turned into a Spirit and so Spirits specifically different are untransmutable one into another according to the distinct Idea's in the eternal Intellect of God For else it would imply that their essential properties were not essential properties but loose adventitious Accidents and such as the essence and substance of such a Spirit could subsist as well without as with them or as well with any others as with these Pag. 69. That we should have been made peâ—cable and liable to defection And this may the more easily be allowed because this defection is rather the affecting of a less good than any pursuing of what is really and absolutely evil To cavil against Providence for creating a Creature of such a double capacity seems as unreasonable as to blame her for makiâ—g Zoophiton's or rather Amphibion's And they are both to be permitted to live according to the nature which is given them For to make a Creature fit for either capacity and to tye him up to one is for God to do repugnantly to the Workmanship of his own hands And how little hurt there is done by experiencing the things of either Element to Souls that are reclaimable has been hinted above But those that are wilfully obstinate and do despite to the Divine Goodness it is not at all inconsistent with this Goodness that they bear the smart of their obstinacy as the ingenious Author argues very well Chap. 9. pag. 73. Have asserted it to be impossible in the nature of the thing c. And this is the most solid and unexceptionable Answer to this Objection That it is a Repugnancy in Nature that this visible World that consists in the
or take so much pains for the understanding of that which they think a gross absurdity as to collect those Principles that are scatter'd up and down the writings of that great and excellent Restorer of the Platonick Cabbala and accommodate them to the interest of this opinion So that I thought that till the Reasons Answers Principles and particular State of the Hypothesis were brought all together to talk of Praeexistence in Earnest were but to make a mans self ridiculous and the Doctrine the common Ludibrium of fools and ignorants And yet I must confess my self to be so much a contemner of the half-witted censurers of things they know not that this Reason alone could not have moved my pen the breadth of a letter But some ingenious friends of mine who were willing to do their Maker right in a due apprehension of his Attributes and Providences having read the Letter of Resolution and thence being induced to think favourably of Prae-existence were yet not fully satisfied in the proof nor able to give stop to those objections which their imperfect knowledge of the Hypothesis occasioned wherefore they desired me to draw up a more full and particular Account of that Doctrine which they had now a kindness for and which wanted nothing more to recommend it to them but a clear and full representation For their satisfaction then I drew up the following Discourse intending at first that it should go no further than their hands whose interest in mine affections had commanded it but they being more than I could well pleasure with written Copies and perceiving others of my acquaintance also to whom I owe regard and service to be in the like condition with these I was induced to let this Little Trisle tread a more publick Stage and to speak my mind to them from the Press If further reason be expected for mine undertaking a business in which others have been ingaged I would desire them to consider what an infinite of Books are written upon almost all subjects can be named And I am confident if they turn o're Libraries they 'l find no theam that is of any consideration less traced than this is So that no body hath reason to call it a Crambe who considers that there are multitudes even of Scholars that have never seen or heard of any thing of this nature And there is not that I know of any one Book extant in any language besides this that purposely solely and fully treats of Praeexistence Wherefore who ever condemns this as a superfluous ingagement if he will be just must pass the same censure upon well nigh every Discourse the Press is deliver'd of for hee 'l meet with few written on less handled subjects I might urge also if there were need on 't that various representations of the same thing fit the variety of phancies and gusts of perusers and that may have force and prevalence to perswade in one which signifies nothing in another But 't is enough he that will judge me on this account must pass the same Award on every Sermon he hears and every Book he looks on And such a censure will do me as little hurt as him good that passeth it Besides this exception 't is not unlikely that some may object that I use Arguments that have already been pleaded in behalf of this opinion which rightly understood is no matter of disrepute since every one else doth it that deals in a Subject formerly written of And I would have him that commenceth such a charge against me to consult divers Authours who have handled the same subject and if he find not the same Arguments and Reasons infinitely repeated every where let him call me plagiary and spare not 'T is true therefore I have not baulk't the reasons of Origen Dr. More or the Authour of the Letter of Resolution because they had been used already but freely own the assistance of those worthy Authours however I think I have so managed fortified and secured them against exceptions especially the most considerable that I may reasonably expect a pardon yea and an interest in them also For 't is the backing of an argument that gives it force and efficacy which I have done to the most weighty of them at my proper cost and charges Nor should I have been faithful to my cause had I omitted any thing that I thought confirm'd it upon any pretence whatever since possibly this discourse may fall into the hands of some who never met with those other Authors And my design being a full proof defence and explication of Praeexistence it had been an unpardonable defect to have pretermitted those weighty reasons by which its learned assertors have inforced it If any yet should criminate me as I know some did the account of Origen for using many of the same words and some of the same phrases and expressions that those others who have writ about those matters have made use of I am not very careful to answer them in this matter and I doubt this engagement against those little scruples will but seem importune to the judicious For no body blames the frequent usage of words of Art or those which the first Masters or Restorers of any Doctrine have been wont to express their notions by since that such words and expressions are best understood as have by custome or the Authority of some great Authors been appropriated to such Doctrines as they have imployed them in the service of And should every man that writes on any subject be obliged to invent a-new all the terms he hath need of and industriously to shun those proper expressive words and phrases that are fitted to his hands and the business he is about all things will be fill'd with impertinency darkness and confusion It must be acknowledged then that most of the peculiar words and phrases that either I or any body else that will speak properly and intelligibly in this matter make use of are borrowed from the judicious and elegent contriver of them the profound Restorer and Refiner of almost-extinct Platonism Whose invention hath been so happy in this kind that it hath served up those notions in the most apposite significant comprehensive and expressive words that could well be thought of Wherefore 't were an humoursome piece of folly for any man that deals in these matters industriously to avoid such termes and expressions as are so adapted and fitted to this purpose and so well known among those that are acquainted with this way of Learning when without vanity he could not think to be better furnish't from his own phancy If in the following papers I have used any expressions of others which these considerations will not warrant I must beg pardon for my memory which doth not use to be so serviceable And where I writ this Discourse I had not one of my books within my reach that treated of this or indeed any other Subject Nor am I at leasure now to examine them and
were of this opinion Wherefore I think we owe so much at least to the Memory of those grave Sages as to examine this Doctrine of theirs and if neither of the later Hypotheses can ease our anxious minds or free themselves from absurdities and this Grey Dogma fairly clear all doubts and be obnoxious to no such contradictions I see no reason but we may give it a favourable admittance till something else appear more concinnous and rational Therefore let us take some account of what the two first opinions alledge one against another and how they are proved by their promoters and defendants Now if they be found unable to withstand the shock of one anothers opposition we may reasonably cast our eyes upon the third to see what force it brings to vouch its interest and how it will behave it self in the encounter CHAP. II. Daily creation of Souls is inconsistent with the Divine Attributes THe first of these opinions that offers it self to Tryal is that God daily creates humane souls which immediately are united unto the bodies that Generation hath prepared for them Of this side are our later Divines and the generality of the Schoolmen But not to be born down by Authorities Let us consider what reason stands against it Therefore 1 If our Souls came immediately out of the hands of God when we came first into these bodies Whence then are those enormously brutish inclinations that strong natural proclivity to vice and impiety that are exstant in the children of men All the works of God bear his image and are perfect in their kind Purity is his nature and what comes from him proportionably to its capacity partakes of his perfections Every thing in the natural world bears the superscription of his wisdom and goodness and the same fountain cannot send forth sweet waters and bitter Therefore 't is a part of our allegiance to our Maker to believe * that he made us pure and innocent and if we were but just then framed by him when we were united with these terrestrial bodies whence should we contract such degenerate propensions Some tell us that this impurity was immediately derived from the bodies we are united to But how is it possible that purely passive insensible Matter should transfuse habits or inclinations into a Nature that is quite of another Make and Quality How can such a cause produce an effect so disproportionate * Matter can do nothing but by motion and what relation hath that to a moral contagion How can a Body that is neither capable of sense nor sin infect a soul as soon as 't is united to it with such vitious debauched dispositions But others think to evade by saying That we have not these depravities in our natures but contract them by Custome education and evil usages How then comes it about that those that have had the same care and industry used upon them and have been nurtured under the same discipline and severe oversight do so vastly and even to wonder differ in their inclinations * How is it that those that are under continual temptations to vice are yet kept within the bounds of vertue and sobriety And yet that others that have strong motives and allurements to the contrary should violently break out into all kinds of extravagance and impiety Sure there is somewhat more in the matter than those general causes which may be common to both and which many times have quite contrary effects 2. This Hypothesis that God continually Creates humane souls in these bodies consists not with the honour of the Divine Attributes For 1. How stands it with the goodness and benignity of that God who is Love to put pure and immaculate spirits who were capable of living to him and with him into such bodies as will presently defile them deface his image pervert all their powers and faculties incline them to hate what he most loves and love what his Soul hateth and that without any knowledge or concurrence of theirs will quite marre them as soon as he hath made them and of dear Children render them rebels or enemies and in a moment from being like Angels transform them into the perfect resemblance of the first Apostates Devils Is this an effect of those tender mercies that are over all his works And 2. Hath that Wisdom that hath made all things to operate according to their natures and provided them with whatever is necessary to that end made myriads of noble Spirits capable of as noble operations and presently plunged them into such a condition wherein they cannot act at all according to their first and proper dispositions but shall be necessitated to the quite contrary and have other noxious and depraved inclinations fatally imposed upon their pure natures Doth that wisdom that hath made all things in number weight and measure and disposed them in such exact harmony and proportions use to act so ineptly And that in the best and noblest pieces of his Creation Doth it use to make and presently destroy To frame one thing and give it such or such a nature and then undo what he had done and make it another And if there be no such irregular methods used in the framing of inferiour Creatures what reason have we to suspect that the Divine Wisdom did so vary from its self in its noblest composures And 3 Is it not a great affront to the Divine Jâ—stice to suppose as we are commonly taught that asâ—oon as we are born yea and in the Womb we are obnoxious to eternal wrath and torments if our Souls are then immediately created out of nothing For To be just is to give every one his due and how can endless unsupportable punishments be due to innocent Spirits who but the last moment came righteous pure and immaculate out of their Creators hands and have not done or thought any thing since contrary to his will or Laws nor were in any the least capacity of sinning I but the first of our order our General head and Representative sinned and we in him thus we contract guilt as soon as we have a Being and are lyable to the punishment of his disobedience This is thought to solve all and to clear God from any shadow of unrighteousness But whatever truth there is in the thing it self I think it cannot stand upon the Hypothesis of the Souls immediate Creation nor yet justifie God in his proceedings For 1. If I was then newly Created when first in this body what was Adam to me who sinned above 5000 years before I came out of nothing If he represented me it must be as I was in his Loins that is in him as an effect in a cause But so I was not according to this Doctrine for my soul owns no Father but God its immediate progenitour And what am I concern'd then in his sins which had never my will or consent more than in the sins of Mahomâ—t or Julius Caesar Nay than in the sins of Beelzebub or
of one monstrous body And of such prodigious productions there is mention in History That 's a remarkable instance in Sennertus of a Monster born at Emmaus with two hearts and two heads the diversity of whose appetites perceptions and affections testified that it had two souls within that bi-partite habitation Now to conceive the most wise Maker and Contriver of all things immediately to create two souls for a single body rather than suffer that super-plus of matter which constitutes the monstrous excrescence to prove effoete inanimate is methinks a derogatory apprehension of his wisdom and supposeth him to act more ineptly in the great and immediate instances of his power than in the ordinary course of nature about less noble and accurate productions Or if it be pretended that Souls were sent into them while the bodies were yet distinct but that afterwards they grew into one This I say will not heal the breach that this Hypothesis makes upon the divine Wisdom it tacitely reflecting a shameful oversight upon Omniscience that he should not be aware of the future coalescence of these bodies into one when he made souls for them or at least 't is to suppose him knowingly to act iâ—eptly Besides that the rational soul is not created till the body as to the main stroaks of it at least is framed is the general opinion of the Assertors of daily creation So that then there is no room for this evasion And now one would think that an opinion so very obnoxious and so lyable to such grand inconveniences should not be admitted but upon most pressing reasons and ineludible demonstrations And yet there is not an argument that I ever heard of from reason to inforce it but only such as are brought from the impossibility of the way of Traduction which indeed is chargeable with as great absurdities as that we have been discoursing of 'T is true several Scriptures are prest for the service of the cause but I doubt much against their intent and inclination General testimonies there are to prove that God is the Father and Creator of Souls which is equally true whether we suppose it made just as it is united to these bodies or did praeexist and was before them But that it is just then created out of nothing when first it comes into these earthly bodies I know not a word in the inspired Writings that speaks it For that saying of our Saviour My Father worketh hitherto and I work is by the most judicious understood of the works of preservation and providence Those of creation being concluded within the first Hebdomade accordingly as is exprest in the History * that God on the seventh day rested from all his works Nor can there an instance be given of any thing created since or is there any pretended but that which hath been the subject of our inquiry which is no inconsiderable presumption that that was not so neither since the divine way of working is not parti-colour or humoursome but uniform and consonant to the laws of exactest wisdom So that for us to suppose that God after the compleating of his Creation and the laws given to all things for their action and continuance to be every moment working in a quite other way in one instance of beings than he doth in all besides is methinks a somewhat odd apprehension especially when no Reason urgeth to it and Scripture is silent For such places as this the God of the Spirits of all flesh the Father of Spirits The spirit returns to God that gave it The souls which I have made We are his off-spring Who formeth the spirit of man within him and the like signifie no more but that our souls have a nearer relation to God than our bodies as being his immediate workmanship made without any creature-interposal and more especially regarded by him But to inferr hence that they were then produced when these bodies were generated is illogical and inconsequent So that all that these Scriptures will serve for is only to disprove the Doctrine of Traduction but makes not a tittle for the ordinary Hypothesis of Daily Creation against Praeexistence CHAP. III. 2 Traduction of souls is impossible the reasons for it weak and frivolous the proposal of Praeexistence THus then we have examin'd the â—irst way of stating the Soul's original that of continual Creation and finding no sure resting place for our inquiry here we remove to the second The way of Traduction or seminal Propagation And the adherers to this Hypothesis are of two sorts viz. either such as make the Soul to be nothing but a purer sort of matter or of those that confess it wholly spiritual and immaterial I 'le dispatch the former briefly strike at the root of their misconceit of the Souls production and shew it cannot be matter be it as pure as can be conceived Therefore 1 If the soul be matter then whatever perceptions or apprehensions it hath or is capable of they were lâ—â— in at the senses And thus the great Patron of the Hypothesis states it in his Leviathan and other writings But now clear it is that our Souls have some conceptions which they never received from external sense For there are some congenite implicit Principles in us without which there could be no sensation * since the images of objects are very small and inconsiderable in our brains comparatively to the vastness of the things which they represent and very unlike them in multitudes of other circumstances so that 't were impossible we should have the sensible representation of any thing * were it not that our souls use a kind of Geometry or mathematick Inference in judging of external objects by those little hints it finds in material impressions Which Art and the principles thereof were never received from sense but are preâ—upposed to all sensible perceptions * And were the soul quite void of all such implicit notions it would remain as senseless as a stone for ever Besides we find our minds fraught with principles logical moral metaphysical which could never owe their original to sense otherwise than as it gives us occasions of using them * For sense teacheth no general propositions but only affords singulars for Induction which being an Inference must proceed from an higher principle that owns no such dependence on the senses as being found iâ— the mind and not deriv'd from any thing without Also we find in our selves mathematical notions and build certain demonstrations on them which abstract from sense and matter And therefore never had them from any material power * but from something more sublime and excellent But this Argument is of too large a consideration to be treated of here and therefore I content my self with those brief Touches and pass on 2 If the soul be matter 't is impossible it should have the sense of any thing for either the whole image of the object must be received in one point of this sensitive matter a thing absurd
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
Divine Goodness And I have been the longer on it because I thought 't was in vain to propose it without taking to task the principal of those objections that must needs arise in the minds of those that are not used to this way of arguing And while there was no provision made to stop up those Evasions that I saw this Argument obnoxious to the using of it I was afraid would have been a prejudice rather than a furtherance of the cause I ingaged it in And therefore I hope the ingenious will pardon this so necessary piece of tediousness CHAP. X. A third Argument for Praeexistence from the great variety of mens speculative inclinations and also the diversity of our Genius's copiously urged If these Arguments make Praeexistence but probable 't is enough to gain it the Victory BUt now I proceed to another Argument Therefore Thirdly If we do but reâ—â—ect upon what was said above against the Souls daily Creation from that enormous pravity which is so deeply rooted in some mens natures we may thence have a considerable evidence of Praeexistence For as this strong natural propensity to vice and impiety cannot possibly consist with the Hypothesis of the souls coming just out of Gods hands pure and immaculate so doth it most aptly suit with the doctrine of its praeexistence which gives a most clear and apposite account of the phaenomenon For let us but conceive the Souls of men to have grown degenerate in a former condition of life * to have contracted strong and inveterate habits to vice and lewdness and that in various manners and degrees we may then easily apprehend when some mens natures had so incredibly a depraved tincture and such impetuous ungovernable irreclaimable inclinations to what is vitious while others have nothing near such wretched propensions but by good education and good discipline are mouldable to vertue This shews a clear way to unriddle this amazing mystery without blemishing any of the divine Attributes or doing the least violence to our faculties Nor is it more difficult to conceive how a soul should awaken out of the state of inactivity we speak of with those radical inclinations that by long practice it had contracted * than how a Swallow should return to her old trade of living after her winter sleep and silence for those customs it hath been addicted to in the other state are now so deeply fastened and rooted in the soul that they are become even another nature Now then if Praeexistence be not the truth 't is very strange that it should so exactly answer the Phaenomena of our natures when as no other Hypothesis doth any whit tolerably suit them And if we may conclude that false which is so correspondent to all appearances when we know nothing else that can yield any probable account of them and which is not in the least repugnant to any inducement of belief we then strangely forget our selves when we determine any thing We can never for instance conclude the Moon to be the cause of the flux and reflux of the Sea from the answering of her approaches and recesses to its ebbs and swellings Nor at this rate can the cause of any thing else be determined in nature But yet besides 2 we might another way inforce this Argument from the strange difference and diversity that there is in mens wits and intellectual craseis as well as in the dispositions of their wills and appetites Even the natural tempers of mens minds are as vastly different as the qualities of their bodies And 't is easie to observe in things purely speculative and intellectual even where neither education or custom have interposed to sophisticate the natural 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that some men are strangely propense to some opinions which they greedily drink in as soon as they are duly represented yea and find themselves burthened and opprest while their education hath kept them in a contrary belief * when as others are as fatally set against these opinions and can never be brought favourably to resent them Every Soul brings a kind of sense with it into the world whereby it tastes and relisheth what is suitable to its peculiar temper And notions will never lie easily in a mind that they are not fitted to some can never apprehend that for other than an Absurdity which others are so clear in that they almost take it for a First Principle And yet the former hath all the same evidence as the latter This I have remarkably taken notice of in the opinion of the extension of a spirit Some that I know and those inquisitive free and ingenuous by all the proof and evidence that is cannot be reconciled to it Nor can they conceive any thing extended but as a Body Whereas other deep and impartial searchers into nature cannot apprehend it any thing at all if not extended but think it must then be a mathematical point or a meer non-entity I could instance in other speculations which I have observ'd some to be passionate Embracers of upon the first proposal when as no arguments could prevail on others to think them tolerable But there needs no proof of a manifest observation Therefore before I go further I would demand whence comes this meer notional or speculative variety * Were his difference about sensibles yea or about things depending on the imagination the influence of the body might then be suspected for a cause But since it is in the most abstracted Theories that have nothing to do with the grosser phantasmes since this diversity is found in minds that have the greatest care to free themselves from the deceptions of sense and intanglements of the body what can we conclude but that the soul it self is the immediate subject of all this variety and that it came praejudiced and praepossessed into this body with some implicit notions that it had learnt in another And if this congruity to some opinions and averseness to others be congenial to us and not advenient from any thing in this state 't is methinks clear that we were in a former * For the Soul in its first and pure nature hath no idiosyncrasies that is hath no proper natural inclinations which are not competent to others of the same kind and condition Be sure they are not fatally determin'd by their natures to false and erroneous apprehensions And therefore since we find this determination to one or other falshood in many if not most in this state and since 't is very unlikely 't is derived only from the body custom or education what can we conceive on 't but that our Souls were tainted with these peculiar and wrong corruptions before we were extant upon this stage of Earth Besides 't is easie to observe the strange and wonderful variety of our genius's one mans nature inclining him to one kind of study and imployment anothers to what is very different Some almost from their very cradles will be addicted to the making of figures
and in little mechanical contrivances others love to be riming almost as soon as they can speak plainly and are taken up in small essays of Poetry Some will be scrawling Pictures and others take as great delight in some pretty offers at Musick and vocal harmony Infinite almost are the ways in which this pure natural diversity doth discover it self * Now to say that all this variety proceeds primarily from the meer temper of our bodies is me thinks a very poor and unsatisfying Account * For those that are the most like in the Temper Air Complexion of their bodies are yet of a vastly differing Genius Yea they that have been made of the same clay cast in the same mould and have layn at once in the same natural bed the womb yea whose bodies have been as like as their state and fortunes and their education and usages the same yet even they do not unfrequently differ as much from each other in their genius and dispositions of the mind as those that in all these particulars are of very different condition Besides there are all kind of makes forms dispositions tempers and complexions of body that are addicted by their natures to the same exercises and imployments so that to ascribe this to any peculiarity in the body is me seems a very improbable solution of the Phaenomenon And to say all these inclinations are from custom or education is the way not to be believed since all experience testifies the contrary What then can we conjecture is the cause of all this diversity but that we had taken a great delight and pleasure in some things like and analogous unto these in a former condition which now again begins to put forth it self when we are awakened out of our silent recess into a state of action And though the imployments pleasures and exercises of our former life were without question very different from these in the present estate yet 't is no doubt but that some of them were more confamiliar and analogous to some of our transactions than others so that as any exercise or imployment here is more suitable to the particular dispositions that were praedominant in the other state with the more peculiar kindness is it regarded by us and the more greedily do our inclinations now fasten on it Thus if a Musician should be interdicted the use of all musical instruments and yet might have his choice of any other Art or Profession 't is likely he would betake himself to Limning or Poetry these exercises requiring the same disposition of wil and genius as his beloved Musick did And we in like manner being by the â—ate of our wretched descent hindred from the direct exercising our selves about the objects of our former delights and pleasures do yet as soon as we are able take to those things which do most correspond to that genius that formerly inspired us And now 't is time to take leave of the Arguments from Reason that give evidence for Praeexistence If any one think that they are not so demonstrative but that they may be answered or at least evaded I pray him to consider how many demonstrations he ever met with that a good wit resolv'd in a contrary cause could not shuâ—â—le from the edge of Or let it be granted that the Arguments I have alledged are no infallible or necessary proofs yet if they render my cause but probable yea but possible I have won what I contended for For it having been made manifest by as good evidence as I think can be brought for any thing that the way of new creations is most inconsistent with the honor of the blessed Attributes of God And that the other of Traduction is most impossible and contradictioâ—s in the nature of things * There being now no other way left but Prae-existence if that be probable or but barely possible 't is enough to give it the victory And whether all that hath been said prove so much or no I leave to the indifferent to determine I think he that will say it doth not can bring few proofs for any thing which according to his way of judging will deserve to be called Demonstrations CHAP. XI Great caution to be used in alledging Scripture for our speculative opinions The countenance that Praeexistence hath from the sacred writings both of the old and new Testament Reasons of the seeming uncouthness of these allegations Praeexistence stood in no need of Scripture-proof IT will be next expected that I should now prove the Doctrine I have undertaken for by Scripture evidence and make good what I said above That the divine oracles are not so silent in this matter as is imagined But truly I have so tender a sense of the sacred Authority of that Holy volume that I dare not be so bold with it as to force it to speak what I think it intends not A presumption that is too common among our confident opinionists and that hath occasioned great troubles to the Church and diâ—â—epute to the inspired writings For for men to ascribe the odd notions of their over-heated imaginations to the Spirit of God and eternal truth is me thinks a very bold and impudent belying it Wherefore I dare not but be very cautious what I speak in this matter nor would I willingly urge Scripture as a proof of any thing but what I am sure by the whole tenor of it is therein contained And would I take the liberty to fetch in every thing for a Scripture-evidence that with a little industry a man might make serviceable to his design I doubt not but I should be able to â—ill my Margent with Quotations which should be as much to purpose as have been cited in general CATECHISMS and CONFESSIONS of FAITH and that in points that must forsooth be dignified with the sacred title of FVNDAMENTAL But Reverend ASSEMBLIES may make more bold with Scripture than private persons And therefore I confess I 'm so timorous that I durst not follow their example Though in a matter that I would never have imposed upon the belief of any man though I were certain on 't and had absolute power to enjoyn it I think the only way to preserve the reverence due to the oracles of Truth is never to urge their Authority but in things very momentous and such as the whole current of them gives an evident suffrage to But to make them speak every trivial conceit that our sick brains can imagine or dream of as I intimated is to vilifie and deflowre them Therefore though I think that several Texts of Scripture look very fairly upon Praeexistence and would encourage a man that considers what strong Reasons it hath to back it to think that very probably they mean some thing in favour of this Hypothesis yet I 'le not urge them as an irrefutable proof being not willing to lay more stress upon any thing than it will bear Yea I am most willing to confess the weakness of my Cause in
infinite fulness is to be communicating and overflowing And the most congruous apprehension that we can entertain of the Infinite and eternal Deity is * to conceive him as an immense and all glorious Sun that is continually communicating and sending abroad its beams and brightness which conception of our Maker if 't were deeply imprinted on us would I am confident set our apprehensions right in many Theories and chase away those black and dismal notions which too many have given harbour to But I come to erect the Second Pillar 2 Then There is an exact Geometrical Justice that runs through the Vniverse and is interwoven in the contexture of things THis is a result of that wise and Almighty Goodness that praesides over all things For this Justice is but the distributing to every thing according to the requirements of its nature And that benign wisdom that contrived and framed the natures of all Beings doubtless so provided that they should be suitably furnisht with all things proper for their respective conditions And that this Nemesis should be twisted into the very natural constitutions of things themselves is methinks very reasonable since questionless Almighty Wisdom could so perfectly have formed his works at first as that all things that he saw were regular just and for the good of the Vniverse should have been brought about by those stated Laws which we call nature without an ordinary engagement of absolute power to effect theâ— And it seems to me to be very becoming the wise Author of all things so to have made them in the beginning as that by their own internal spring and wheels they should orderly bring about whatever he intended them for without his often immediate interposal For this looks like a more magnificent apprehension of the Divine power and Prescience since it supposeth him from everlasting ages to have foreseen all future occurrences and so wonderfully to have seen and constituted the great machina of the world that the infinite variety of motions therein should effect nothing but what in his eternal wisdom he had concluded fit and decorous But as for that which was so it should as certainly be compast by the Laws he appointed long ago as if his omnipotence were at work every moment On the contrary to engage Gods absolute and extraordinary power in all events and occurrences of things is mâ—sâ—â—ms to think meanly of his wisdom as if he had made the world so as that it should need omnipotence every now and then to mend it or to bring about those his destinations which by a shorter way he could have effected by his instrument Nature Can any one say that our supposition derogates from the Divine concourse or Providence For on these depend continually both the being and operations of all things since without them they would cease to act and return to their old nothing And doubtless God hath not given the ordering of things out of his own hands but holds the power to alter innovate or change the course of nature as he pleaseth And to act by extraordinary means by absolute omnipotence when he thinks fit to do so The sum of what I intend is that Gods works are perfect and as his Goodness is discover'd in them so is his Justice wrought into their very essential constitutions so that we need not suppose him to be immediately engaged in every event and all distributions of things in the world or upon all occasions to exercise his power in extraordinary actions but that he leaves such managements to the Oeconomy of second causes And now next to this for they are of kâ—n I raise The third Pillar 3 Things are carried to their proper place and state by the congruity of their natures where this fails we may suppose some arbitrary managements THE Congruity of things is their suitableness to such or such a state or condition And 't is a great Law in the Divine and first constitutions that things should incline and move to what is suitable to their natures This in sensibles is evident in the motions of consent and sympathy And the ascent of light and descent of heavy bodies must I doubt when all is done * be resolv'd into a principle that is not meerly corporeal Yea supposing all such things to be done by the Laws of Mechanicks why may we not conceive that the other rank of Beings Spirits which are not subject to corporeal motions are also dispos'd of by a Law proper to their natures which since we have no other name to express it by we may call congruity We read in the sacred History that Judas went to his own place And 't is very probable that Spirits are conveyed to their proper states and residence * as naturally as the fire mounts or a stone descends The Platonists would have the Soul of the world to be the great Instrument of all such distributions as also of the Phaenomena that are beyond the powers of matter And 't is no unlikely Hypothesis But I have no need to ingage further about this nor yet to speak more of this first part of my Principle since it so nearly depends on what was said in behalf of the former Maxim Yet of the latter we need a word or two When therefore we cannot give account of things either by the Laws of Mechanicks or conceivable Congruities * as likely some things relating to the States of Spirits and immaterial Beings can be resolv'd by neither I say then we may have recourse to the Arbitrary managements of those invisible Ministers of Equity and Justice which without doubt the world is plentifully stored with For it cannot be conceived that those active Spirits are idle or unimployed in the momentous concerns of the Vniverse Yea the sacred volume gives evidence of their interposals in our affairs I shall need mention but that remarkable instance in Daniel of the indeavours of the Prince of Persia and of Grecia to hinder Michael and the other Angel that were ingaged for the affairs of Judea Or if any would evade this what think they of all the apparitions of Angels in the old Testament of their pitching their Tents about us and being Ministring Spirits for our good To name no more such passages Now if those noble Spirits will ingage themselves in our trifling concernments doubtless they are very sedulous in those affairs that tâ—nd to the good and perfection of the Vniverse But to be brief I advance The Fourth Pillar 4 * The Souls of men are capable of living in other bodies besides Terrestrial And never act but in some body or other FOr 1. when I consider how deeply in this state we are immersed in the body I can methinks scarce imagin that presently upon the quitting on 't we shall be stript of all corporeity for this would be such a jump as is seldom or never made in nature since by almost all instances that come under our observation 't is manifest that she useth
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
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
the solid earth to reach but to a certain and that not very great distance from the surface and 't is obvious this way to give an account of the Phaenomenon * For according to this Hypothesis the gravity of those bodies is less because the quantity of the earth that draws them is so whereas were it of the same nature and solidity to the center this diminution of its bulk and consequently vertue would not be at all considerable nor in the least sensible Now though there are other causes pretended for this effect yet there is none so likely and easie a solution as this though I know it also is obnoxious to exceptions which I cannot now stand to meddle with all that I would have is that 't is a probability * and the mention of the fountains of the great deep in the sacred History as also the flaming Vulcano's and smoaking mountains that all relations speak of are others * Now I intend not that after a certain distance all is fluid matter to the center For the Cartesian Hypothesis distributes the subterranean space into distinct regions of divers matter which are divided from each other by as solid walls as is the open air from the inferiour Atmosphere Therefore I suppose only that under this thick outside there is next a vast and large region of fluid matter * which for the most part very likely is a gross and fetid kind of air as also considerable proportions of fire and water under all which there may be other solid floors that may incompass and cover more vaults and vast hollows the contents of which 't were vanity to go about to determine only 't is very likely that as the admirable Philosophy of Des Cartes supposeth * the lowest and central Regions may be filled with flame and aether which suppositions though they may seem to some to be but the groundless excursions of busie imaginations yet those that know the French Philosophy and see there the Reasons of them will be more candid in their censures and not so severe to those not ill-framed conjectures Now then being thus provided I return again to prosecute my main intendment Wherefore 't is very probable that the wicked and degenerate part of mankind * are after death committed to those squalid subterraneous habitations in which dark prisons they do severe penance for their past impieties and have their senses which upon earth they did so fondly indulge and took such care to gratifie now persecuted with darkness stench and horror Thus doth the divine justice triumph in punishing those vile Apostates suitably to their delinquencies Now if those vicious souls are not carried down to the infernal caverns by the meer congruity of their natures as is not so easie to imagine we may then reasonably conceive * that they are driven into those dungeons by the invisible Ministers of Justice that manage the affairs of the world by Axiom 3. For those pure Spirits doubtless have a deep sense of what is just and for the good of the universe and therefore will not let those inexcusable wretches to escape their deserved castigations or permit them to reside among the good lest they should infect and poyson the better world by their examples Wherefore I say they are disposed of into those black under-Abysses where they are suited with company like themselves and match't unto bodies as impure as are their depraved inclinations Not that they are all in the same place and under the like torments but are variously distributed according to the merits of their natures and actions some only into the upper prisons * others to the Dungeon And some to the most intolerable Hell the Abyss of fire Thus doth a just Nemesis visit all the quarters of the Vniverse Now those miserable prisoners cannot escape from the places of their confinement for 't is very likely that those watchful spirits that were instrumental in committing them * have a strict and careful eye upon them to keep them within the confines of their goal that they rove not out into the regions of light and liberty yea 't is probable that the bodies they have contracted in those squalid mansions may by a kind of fatal magnetisme be chained down to this their proper element Or they having now a congruity only to such fetid vehicles may be no more able to abide the clear and lightsome Air than the Bat or Owl are able to bear the Suns noon-day beams or the fish to live in these thinner Regions This may be the reason of the unfrequency of their appearance and that they most commonly get them away at the approach of light Besides all this some there are who suppose that there is a kind of polity among themselves which may * under severe penalties prohibit all unlicensed excursions into the upper world though I confess this seems nor so probable and we stand in no need of the supposition For though the laws of their natures should not detain them within their proper residences yet the care and oversight of those watchful Spirits who first committed them will do it effectually And very oft when they do appear they signifie that they are under restraint and come not abroad but by permission as by several credible Stories I could make good But for brevity I omit them Now though I intend not this Hypothesis either for a discovery of infallible truth or declarement of mine own opinions yet I cannot forbear to note the strange coincidence that there is between Scripture expressions in this matter some main stroaks of the Orthodox Doctrine and this Philosophical conjecture of the state and place of the wicked 'T is represented in the Divine Oracles as a deep pit a prison a place of darkness fire and brimstone and the going thither is named a descent All which most appositely agree with the representation we have made And the usual Periphrasis of Hell torments fire and brimstone is wonderfully applicable to the place we have been describing since it abounds with fuliginous flames and sulphureous stench and vapours And as we have conjectur'd the lowest cavity is nothing else but a vault of â—â—re For the other expressions mentioned every one can make the application So that when a man considers this he will almost be tempted to think that the inspired writers had some such thing in their fancies And we are not to run to tropes and figures for the interpretation of plain and literal descriptions except some weighty reason force us to such a Refuge Moreover Hell is believed among the Orthodox to have degrees of torments to be a place of uncomfortable horror and to stand at the greatest distance from the seat and habitation of the blessed All which and more that I could reckon up cannot more clearly be made out and explained than they are in this Hypothesis Thus then we see the irreclaimably wicked lodg'd in a place and condition very wretched and calamitous If any of
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
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
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
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
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
〈◊〉 animarum And as our Saviour Christ passed it for an innocent Opinion so did the Primitive Church the Book of Wisdom being an allowable book with them and read in publick though it plainly declare for Pre-existence Chap. 8. 20. Chap. 12. p. 93. Therefore let the Reader if he please call it a Romantick Scheme or imaginary Hypothesis c. This is very discreetly and judiciously done of the Author to propose such things as are not necessary members or branches of Pre-existence and are but at the best conjectural as no part of that otherwise-useful Theory For by tacking too fast these unnecessary tufts or tassels to the main Truth it will but give occasion to wanton or wrathful whelps to worry her and tug her into the dirt by them And we may easily observe how greedily they catch at such occasions though it be not much that they can make out of them as we may observe in the next Chapter Chap. 13. pag. 96. Pill 1. To conceive him as an immense and all-glorious Sun that is continually communicating c. And this as certainly as the Sun does his light and as restrainedly For the Suns light is not equally imparted to all subjects but according to the measure of their capacity And as Nature limits here in natural things so does the Wisdom and Justice of God in free Creatures He imparts to them as they capacitate themselves by improving or abusing their Freedom Pag. 100. Pill 3. Be resolved into a Principle that is not meerly corporeal He suspects that the descent of heavy bodies when all is said and done must be resolved into such a Principle But I think he that without prejudice peruses the Eleventh and Thirteenth Chapters with their Scholia of Dr. Mores Enchiridion Metaphysicum will find it beyond suspition that the Descent of heavy bodies is to be resolved into some corporeal Principle and that the Spirit of Nature though you should call it with the Cabalists by that astartling name of Sandalphon is no such prodigious Hobgoblin as rudeness and presumptuous ignorance has made that Buckeram Writer in contempt and derision to call it Pag. 101. As naturally as the fire mounts and a stone descends And as these do not so though naturally meerly from their own intrinsick nature but in vertue of the Spirit of the Vniverse so the same reason there is in the disposal of Spirits The Spirit of Nature will range their Plasticks as certainly and orderly in the Regions of the World as it does the matter it self in all places Whence that of Plotinus may fitly be understood That a Soul enveigled in vitiousness both here and after death according to her nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is thrust into the state and place she is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if she were drawn thither by certain invisible or Magical strings of Natures own pulling Thus is he pleased to express this power or vertue of the Spirit of Nature in the Universe But I think that transposition she makes of them is rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a transvection of them rather than pulsion or traction But these are overnâ—ce Curiosities Pag. 101. As likely some things relating to the state of Spirits c. That is to say Spirits by the ministry of other Spirits may be carried into such regions as the Spirit of Nature would not have transmitted them to from the place where they were before whether for good or evil Of the latter kind whereof I shall have occasion to speak more particularly in my Notes on the next Chapter Pag. 102. Pill 4. The souls of men are capable of living in other bodies besides terrestrial c. For the Pre-existentiaries allow her successively to have lived first in an Ethereal body then in an Aereal and lastly after the state of Silence to live in a Terrestrial And here I think though it be something early it will not be amiss to take notice what the Anti-pre-existentiaries alledged against this Hypothesis for we shall have the less trouble afterwards First therefore they say That it does not become the Goodness of God to make Mans Soul with a triple Vital Congruity that will fit as well an Aereal and Terrestrial condition as an Aethereal For from hence it appears that their Will was not so much in fault that they sinned as the constitution of their Essence And they have the face to quote the account of Origen pag. 49. for to strengthen this their first Argument The words are these They 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 so appear terrestrial men And therefore say they there being no descending into these earthly bodies without a lapse or previous sin their very constitution necessitated them to sin The second Argument is That this Hypothesis is inconsistent with the bodies Resurrection For the Aereal bodie immediately succeeding the Terrestrial and the Aethereal the Aereal the business is done there needs no resuscitation of the Terrestrial body to be glorified Nor is it the same numerical body or flesh still as it ought to be if the Resurrection-body be Aethereal The third is touching the Aereal Body That if the soul after death be tyed to an Aereal body and few or none attain to the Aethereal immediately after death the souls of very good men will be forced to have their abode amongst the very Devils For their Prince is the Prince of the Air as the Apostle calls him and where can his subjects be but where he is So that they will be enforced to endure the companie of these foul Fiends besides all the incommodious changes in the Air of Clouds of Vapours of Rain Hail Thunder tearing Tempests and Storms and what is an Image of Hell it self the darkness of Night will overwhelm them every four and twenty hours The fourth Argument is touching the Aethereal state of Pre-existence For if souls when they were in so Heavenly and happy an estate could lapse from it what assurance can we have when we are returned thither that we shall abide in it it being but the same Happiness we were in before and we having the same Plastick with its triple Vital Congruity as we had before Why therefore may we not lapse as before The fifth and last Argument is taken from the state of Silence Wherein the Soul is supposed devoid of perception And therefore their number being many and their attraction to the place of conception in the Womb being merely Magical and reaching many at a time there would be many attracted at once so that scarce a Foetus could be formed which would not be a multiform Monster or a cluster of Humane Foetus's not one single Foetus And these are thought such weighty Arguments that Pre-existence must sink and perish under their pressure But I believe
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
it but if by true vertue and unfeigned sanctity of mind that eye be opened the Mysteries of Philosophy are the more clearly discovered to it especially if points be studied with singular industry which Mr. Baxter himself acknowledges of the Doctor pag. 21. onely he would there pin upon his back an Humble Ignoramus in some things which the Doctor I dare say will easily admit in many things yea in most and yet I believe this he will stand upon that in those things which he professes to know he will challenge all the world to disprove if they can And for probable Opinions especially if they be useless which many Books are too much stuffed withal he caâ—â—s them out as the lumber of the mind and would willingly give them no room in his thoughts Firmness and soundness of Life is much better than the multiplicitie of uncertain Conceits And lastly whereas Mr. Baxter speaking of himself says And when I presume most I do but most lose my self He has so bewildered and lost himself in the multifarious and most-what needless points in Philosophy or Scholastick Divinity that if we can collect the measures of the Cause from the amplitude of the Effect he must certainly have been very presumptuous He had better have set up his Staff in his Saints everlasting Rest and such other edifying and useful Books as those than to have set up for either a Philosopher or Polemick Divine But it is the infelicity of too many that they are ignorant Quid valeant humeri quid ferre recusent as the Poet speaks or as the Pythagoreans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And so taking upon them a part in a Play which they are unfit for they both neglect that which they are fit for and miscarry by reason of their unfitness in their acting that Part they have rashly undertaken as Epictetus somewhere judiciously observes But if that passage And when I presume most I do but most lose my self was intended by him as an oblique Socratical reproof to the Doctor let him instance if he can where the Doctor has presumed above his strength He has medled but with a few things and therefore he need not envie his success therein especially they being of manifest use to the serious world so many as God has fitted for the reception of them Certainly there was some grand occasion for so grave a preliminary monition as he has given the Doctor You have it in the following Page p. 5. This premised says he I say undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed either as to any certainty or probability That all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter See what Heat and Hast or some worse Principle has engaged Mr. Baxter to do to father a down-right falshood upon the Doctor that he may thence take occasion to bestow a grave admonition on him and so place himself on the higher ground I am certain it is neither the Doctors opinion That all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter nor has he writ so any where He onely says in his Preface to the Reader That all created Spirits are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Souls in all probability and actuate some matter And his expression herein is both modest and true For though it is not certain or necessary yet it is very probable For if there were of the highest Orders of the Angels that fell it is very probable that they had corporeal Vehicles without which it is hard to conceive they could run into disorder And our Saviour Christs Soul which actuates a glorified spiritual Bodie being set above all the Orders of Angels it is likely that there is none of them is so refined above his Humane Nature as to have no bodies at all Not to add that at the Resurrection we become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though we have bodies then which is a shrewd intimation that the Angels have so too and that there are no created Spirits but have so Thirdly Mr. Baxter pag. 6. wrongfully blames the Doctor for being so defective in his studies as not to have read over Dr. Glisson De Vita Naturae and says he has talk'd with diverse high pretenders to Philosophie and askt their judgment of that Book and found that none of them understood it but neglected it as too hard for them and yet contemned it His words to Dr. More are these I marvel that â—hen you have dealt with so many sorts of Dissenters you meddle not with so subtile a piece as that of old Dr. Glissons De Vita Naturae He thinks the subtilty of the Book has deterred the Doctor from reading it as something above his Capacity as also of other high Pretenders to Philosophie This is a Book it seems calculated onely for the elevation of Mr. Baxters subtile and sublime wit And indeed by the benefit of reading this Book he is most dreadfully armed with the affrightful terms of Quoddities and Quiddities of Conceptus formalis and fundamentalis of Conceptus adaequatus and inadaequatus and the like In vertue of which thwacking expressions he has fancied himself able to play at Scholastick or Philosophick Quarter-staff with the most doughty and best appointed Wits that dare enter the Lists with him and as over-neglectful of his flock like some conceited Shepherds that think themselves no small fools at the use of the Staff or Cudgil-play take Vagaries to Fairs or Wakes to give a specimen of their skill so he ever and anon makes his Polemick sallies in Philosophie or Divinity to entertain the Spectators though very oft he is so rapt upon the knuckles that he is forced to let fall his wooden Instrument and blow his fingers Which is but a just Nemesis upon him and he would do well to interpret it as a seasonable reproof from the great Pastor of Souls to whom we are all accountable But to return to his speech to the Doctor I will adventure to answer in his behalf That I marvel that whenas Mr. Baxter has had the curiosity to read so many Writers and some of them sure but of small concern that he has not read that sound and solid piece of Dr. More viz. his Epistola altera ad V. C. with the Scholia thereon where Spinozius is confuted Which if he had read he might have seen Volum Philosoph Tom. 1. pag. 604 605 c. that the Doctor has not onely read that subtile Piece of Doctor Glissons but understands so throughly his Hypothesis that he has solidly and substantially confuted it Which he did in a faithful regard to Religion For that Hypothesis if it were true were as safe if not a safer Refuge for Atheists than the mere Mechanick Philosophie is And therefore you may see there how Cuperus brought up amongst the Atheists from his very childhood does confess how the Atheists now-a-daies explode the Mechanick Philosophie as not being for their turn and betake themselves wholly to such an Hypothesis as Dr. Glissons Vita Naturae But God be thanked Dr. H. More
Principle in Philosophie That there is nothing in the whole Universe but what is either Substantia or Modus And when a Mode or several Modes put together are immediately and essentially inseparable from a Substance they are lookt upon as the Form or the onely knowable Specifick difference of that Substance So that Impenetrability and Discerpibility which are immediately essential to and inseparable from Body or Matter and Self-Inactivitie as Irrational is made the specifick difference of a Brute may be added also These I say are as truly the Form or Specifick difference of Body or Matter as any thing knowable is of any thing in the world And Self-Inactivity at least is contrary to the Virtus vitalis of a Spirit though Impenetrability and Discerpibility were not So that according to this oeconomy you see how plainly and exquisitely Body and Spirit are made opposite Species one to another And 't is these Modal differences of Substances which we only know but the Specifick Substance of any thing is utterly unknown to us however Mr. Baxter is pleased to swagger to the contrarie p. 44 62. Where he seems to mis-understand the Doctor as if by Essence he did not understand Substance as both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Essentia usually signifie especially with the Ancients but any Being at large But of Substance it is most true we know it onely by its essential Modes but the Modes are not the Substance it self of which they are Modes otherwise the Substance would want Modes or every Substance would be more substances than one And Mr. Baxter himself saith pag. 62. To know an essential Attribute and to know ipsam essentiam scientiâ inadaequatâ is all one Which inadequate or partial knowledge say I is this the knowing of the Essential Mode of the Substance and not knowing the Substance it self Otherwise if both the Essential Modes were known and also the Specifick Substance to which the Modes belong more than that those Modes belong to that Substance the knowledge would be full and adequate and stretcht through the whole Object So that Mr. Baxters Scientia inadoequata and the Doctors denying the bare Substance it self to be known may very well consist together and be judged a mere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which is an exercise more grateful it 's likely to Mr. Baxter than to the Doctor To the third I say Any one that considers may find a necessarie reason why Quantitie or Trina Dimensio should be left out in the Form of Body or Matter especially why the Doctor should leave it out because he does professedly hold That whatever is has Metaphysical Quantitie or Metaphysical Trina Dimensio Which no man can denie that holds God is Essentially present every-where And no man I think that does not dote can denie that Wherefore allowing Matter to be Substance in that Generical nature Trina Dimensio is comprized and need not be again repeated in the Form But when in the Forma or Differentia Discerpible and Impenetrable is added this is that which makes the Trina Dimensio included in the Genus Substantia of a Corporeal kind and does constitute that Species of things which we call Corpora This is so plain a business that we need insist no longer upon it Now to the fourth I answer briefly That from what knowledge we have by the mediation of the Senses and inference of the Intellect we arrive not onely to the knowledge of like things but of unlike or rather contrary As in this very example we being competently well instructed indeed assured by our Senses that there is such a kind of thing as Body whose nature is to be Impenetrable and Discerpible and our Reason certainly informing us as was noted even now that whatever is has a kind of Amplitude more or less or else it would be nothing hence we are confirmed that not Extension or Trina Dimensio but Impenetrabilitie and Discerpibilitie is the determinate and adequate nature of what we call Body and if there be any opposite species to Body our Reason tells us it must have opposite Modes or Attributes which are Penetrability and Indiscerpibility This is a plain truth not to be groped after with our fingers in the dark but clearly to be discerned by the eye of our understanding in the light of Reason And thus we see and many examples more we might accumulate That by the help of our Senses and Inference of our Vnderstanding we are able to conclude not onely concerning like things but their contraries or opposites I must confess I look upon this allegation of Mr. Baxter as very weak and faint And as for his fifth I do a little marvel that so grave and grandaevous a person as he should please himself in such little â—â—irts of Wit and Sophistry as this of the Indiscerpibility of an Atom or Physical Monad As if Indiscerpibility could be none of the essential or specifical Modes or Attributes of a Spirit because a Physical Monad or Atom is Indiscerpible also which is no Spirit But those very Indiscerpibilities are Specifically different For that of a Spirit is an Indiscerpibility that arises from the positive perfection and Oneness of the Essence be it never so ample that of an Atom or Physical Monad from imperfection and privativeness from the mere littleness or smalness thereof so small that it is impossible to be smaller and thence onely is Indiscerpible The sixth also is a pretty juvenile Ferk of Wit for a grave ancient Divine to use That Penetrability can be no proper Character of a Spirit because Matter can penetrate Spirit as well as Spirit Matter they both possessing the same space Suppose the bodie A. of the same amplitude with the bodie B. and thrust the bodie A. against the bodie B. the bodie A. will not nor can penetrate into the same space that the bodie B. actually occupies But suppose the bodie A. a Spirit of that amplitude and according to its nature piercing into the same space which the bodie B. occupies how plain is it that that active piercing into the same space that the bodie B. occupies is to be attributed to the Spirit A. not to the bodie B For the bodie A. could not get in These are prettie forc'd distortions of Wit but no solid methods of due Reason And besides it is to be noted that the main Character of a Spirit is as to Penetrability that Spirit can penetrate Spirit but not Matter Matter And now the Seventh is as slight as the Fifth Diverse Accidents saith he penetrate their Subjects as Heat Cold c. Therefore Penetrabilitie is no proper Character of a Spirit But what a vast difference is there here The one pierce the matter or rather are in the matter merely as continued Modes thereof the other enters into the matter as a distinct Substance therefrom Penetration therefore is here understood in this Character of a Spirit of Penetratio Substantialis when a substance penetrates substance
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