both be generated then both are mortall Answ Whole man is generated by man I grant it Therefore both soule and body are generated I distinguish That both soule and body are made parts of man by generation and a creature produced like in nature to him that generates I also grant and doe affirme that by doing of this onely the compleat act of generation or procreation is performed according to the received definition of generation before exhibited in the Chapter precedent But that both soule and body must be therefore made and have their Entities or beings given them by procreation that consequence I deny as false and absurde yea so absurde as it suffers a thousand instances to the contrary in all sorts of Animals For example a whole horse is generated both matter and forme and yet his matter did not receive any being by generation and so it falls out in other creatures If then it be not necessary that the matter receive the being by procreation though the whole Animal consisting of matter and forme be truly generated what reason can there be why to the generation of the whole Animal a new being of the forme by vertue of procreation should be necessary or why can one be necessary to generation when as we see evidently the other is not or why againe should we exact the new production of either of them by generation when without any such act the definition of generation See Argenter com in Aphor. 1. Hippocr is fulfilled and agrees both unto the generation of beasts whose matter is not generated and to the generation of man whose forme is not generated any more then his matter is By force of this solution all his imaginary absurdities which he labours to fasten upon the non procreation of the soule doe of themselves dissolve If the soule saith he be infused then Christ did not take whole humanity from the seed of the woman Answ He received from the seed of the woman as much of the humanity as was to be received thence and that which he tooke did not come unto him by procreation nor was it so to doe As for the fourteenth to the Hebrewes which he cites for his purpose our answer to it is that it is not found in our bookes neither Greeke nor Latine neither do the Editions of Raphelengius or Elzevir contain any more Chapters than thirteen If saith he we consist of soule and body and are not men without both and receive not our soules from him he meanes the Generatour as I suppose then Adam is the father of no man nor Christ the Son of man because his manhood 's constitutive part even that which should make him a man could not be by the seed of the woman and a man is as much a father of fleas and lice which receive their matter from him as of his children Answ Surely fleas and lice whence soever they receive their matter do not proceed from him in likenesse of Nature as by the definition they if they were generated by man ought to do Moreover they are not generated by man but of him neither is he the agent but the patient and so is of these vermin no generatour at all proper or improper Secondly men do receive their soules by force of generation although they be not generated and so notwithstanding this non-generation of the soule Adam might truly and univocally be the father of all men and also the soule of Christ might come by the seed of the woman although it were not made or procreated by it If the soule addes he be infused after the conception then there is growth before there is life which is impossible for the soule is made the vegetative as well as the motive sensitive or rationall part Answ I grant that before the infusion of the soule there may be vegetation and this by the sole virtue of the sperme but I deny that therefore there be in man more soules than one that is than the rationall for this same force of vegetation which is in the seed holdeth it selfe upon the part of the matter onely and doth not performe the office of a soule or forme the substance and operation thereof being no more than to fashion an organicall body and to make it fit for the reception of the soule and the union with it after whose infusion both the vitall and animal spirits do but serve as instruments to it and to accomplish the body in making it to be so perfectly organicall as the eminency of a rationall spirit above other formes doth require to have it If the soule be not generated but infused into a dead body then saith he it is lawfull to be Nigromancer for Nigromancy is nothing but putting a spirit into a dead body and so it is imitation of God and God the onely Nigromancer and all the men in the world but Nigromanticke apparitions whose spirits when they have done the worke for which they were put into the bodies desert them as other conjured Ghosts do Answ See the shallownesse of this man who can neither speak right nor reason with common sense and probability He calls Necromancy constantly Nigromancy and he supposes that a soule in a dead body makes a living man and can exercise vitall actions in it or actions of life and so according to his grosse capacity if the soule be infused God must be a Necromancer and men but Necromantique apparitions for this Ignoramus it seemes knowes no difference between a soule and body that are united and those that are not united but together onely nor between a body living by the virtue of the spirit and by virtue thereof doing vitall actions and another which is onely moved and inhabited by a spirit without any union with it or participation of life But supposing all were one yet were it not lawfull to be a Necromancer because nothing at all be it never so good is to be done by superstitious actions or by making any recourse unto the Devill and acknowledgement of his power by any dependency of him whatsoever more or lesse It is granted saith he that the body considered meerly sensitive cannot sin and is but an instrument or as the pen in the hand of the writer Therefore if the soule be infused then of necessity the immortall thing and not our mortall flesh is the authour of all sin and so God's immediate hand the cause of all sin That the body is onely an instrument of the soule is false for it is a See Solo of this in 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 2. Rat. 3. living co-agent with it and a partaker both in the good and evill actions and so is both rewardable and punishable with it whether in the mean time it be created or generated for this variation makes no difference in this matter of merit or demerit neither doth the creation of the soule make God the authour of sin more than the generation of it that is to say
to the judgement of the wisest doe appertaine unto it For first what is the wealth and treasure of man but the dignity and value of his actions of this he hath long since beene plundered His eyesight whereby his steps were to be guided was his knowledge but this divers have laboured to extinguish by denying with the old Academickes and late Socinians that there is any certainty in it and by becoming so witty as to know nothing His crowne and life was the immortality of his better part as therein cheifely being superiour to beasts and all other living things irrationall but behold here a privy but a dangerous traitor endeavours to despoile him of it so that in fine if all these treacherous assailants might have their wills he shall be wholly mortall poore feeble blinde and miserable dethroned from his wonted dignity and cast downe unto the lower classe of Beasts Profectò plurima homini ex homine mala as Pliny justly complaineth though he himselfe be one of the Authors of these eevills Was it not enough that all inferiour creatures doe rebell against us but we must basely and treacherously conspire against our selves The man that going from Jerusalem to Jericho fell amongst theeves had hard measure offered him for he was despoiled and wounded by them and left onely halfe alive but those theeves amongst whom we are now fallen be farre more cruell for they would kill us outright both in soule and body and with lesse then this will not be contented But now it is time we examine what urgent reasons what killing arguments there were that moved this new author unto so extravagant a course of rigour against all mankinde for if these be not very urgent and invincible we must conclude this man guilty not onely of much folly but also of heinous malice and temerity against the rights and prerogatives of man CHAP. II. His first Classe of arguments examined and refuted HIs first arguments be drawen from mans creation fall restitution and resurrection the principall is this That what of Adam was immortall through Innocency was to be mortalized by transgression But whole Adam quatenus animal rationale was in Innocency immortall Ergo all and every part even whole man liable to death by sinne Upon this bungling argument or syllogisme the weight of all his cause must leane which as I perceive by the posture it should have been a syllogisme if the Author could have cast it into that forme but since that might not be we will be contented to take it in grosse as it lies rather then passe it over without an answer We grant then that indeed all Adam for example by sinning became mortall and all and every part of him that is to say he was after so much of his age expired to yeild up to death and be totally corrupted or which is all one he was to have his two essentiall parts disunited and after that untill the resurrection neither he nor any of his parts thus dissevered disunited to be Adam or a man any longer All which might be without that either the matter of his body or substance of his soule should perish or be destroyed And forasmuch as concernes the matter of his body it is an evident case because matter is a thing both ingenerable and incorruptible and so neither produced by his generation nor destroyed by his corruption and as by generation onely fashioned and united so againe by corruption or death onely defaced and disunited or dissolved And as for the soule the other part there is no more necessity death should destroy it then there was it should destroy the matter there being no more reason for the one then for the other Wherefore Saint Paul wishing death that so he might be with Christ did not desire to be destroyed as this silly authours doctrine would inferre but to be dissolved for surely if his soule by act of mortality was to have beene destroyed he could not thinke to be with Christ during the time of that destruction or dissolution which he wished and so his words and wishing would have beene very vaine seeing according to this Author he should by his being dissolved come never the sooner to be with Christ because according to this Author neither alive nor dead he was to come unto him before the Generall resurrection nay further his wish would have made against himselfe and his owne ends because he knowing Christ a little in this life might in some small measure injoy him in it but if by death his soule be killed as well as his body he should have no knowledge at all nor comfort of Christ but be cast farther off then he was before Now as all agree that matter throughout all mutations remaineth incorrupted so also according to the judgement of sundry knowing men and diligent inquirers into the workes of nature and transmutation of naturall compounds naturall and materiall formes themselves also doe not perish at their parting from their matters but onely are dissolved and dissipated lying after that in their scattered atomes within the bosome of nature from whence they were before by force of the seed extracted the result of whose union was the forme So that the entity of the forme remaines after corruption though not in the essence and formality of a forme or totally and compleatly Thus teacheth the learned author of Religio medici and exactly declares himselfe of the same minde is the famous late Physitian Daniel Sennertus in his Hypomnemata though sometimes not so fully as for example when he ascribes to formes precedent the full production of the subsequent assigning a vis prolifica in every forme for multiplying of it selfe by which doctrine he seemes to recede from his former principles of Atomes and not to sticke constantly to them yea and besides to deliver a conceit which is hardly understood and which moreover seemes to be improbable for who can explicate what one forme does when it multiplies another or what kinde of causality it doth then exercise or by what strange influence that effect is wrought and the forme made up of nothing This same doctrine of Religio Medici and that also which we deliver here touching the Origination of formes was the doctrine of old Democritus expressed by him in his constitution of Atomes or minima naturalia not that every Atome did conteine a forme as Sennertus seemes to thinke but rather severall peeces for the composition of it as every simple or ingredient of Diacatholicon for example is not Diacatholicon but conteines something in it of which it is to be made up and from which as from differing heterogeneall parcells collected and united by an artificiall mixtion it results and for want of putting this difference or restraint Sennertus his owne doctrine and explication of Democritus may seeme defective This also was taught by Anaxagoras when he affirmed all to be in all or every thing and to have a preexistence in the bosome of nature
THE Prerogative of Man OR THE IMMORTALITY OF HVMANE SOVLES ASSERTED Against the vain Cavils of a late worthlesse Pamphlet ENTITVLED Mans Mortality c. VVhereunto is added the said Pamphlet it selfe GEN. 2. 7. Man became a living soule Ovid. Met. 1. Os homini sublime dedit OXFORD Printed in the yeare 1645. THE PREROGATIVE OF MAN OR His Soules Immortality and high perfection defended and explained against the rash and rude conceptions of a late Authour who hath inconsiderately adventured to impugne it I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead but of the living Matt. 22. 32. Printed in the yeare 1645. The Preface SO great and soveraigne to man hath been the benignity of indulgent nature as that she hath not onely bestowed upon his soule above those of other creatures the high and singular prerogative of immortality but hath moreover imparted to him light whereby he might come unto the knowledge of it and by that same knowledge be excited to make a diligent inquiry after the obligations that follow it and how also in this life he may make his best advantages and preparations for the next Neither is this same truth of immortality any new discovery but acknowledged of old by the Heathenish and Pagan nations of which thing we in the worke ensuing are to give in a large evidence by our producing the many testimonies of a full and frequent Senate of ancient Sages who being destitute of revelation had nothing but nature to instruct them To these I adde now and for a tast in the beginning present my Reader with onely two the one taken out of the 12 Booke of Marcus Antoninus Augustus the other out of Simplicius his Commentaries upon Epictetus one of these witnesses a Stoicke Philosopher the other a Peripatetique in performance of which omitting the Greeke citations as a diligence for the most part unnecessary in an English worke behold the words of Antoninus Hast thou faith he forgotten that the minde or soule of every man is a God He meanes by the word God onely an entity divine and a substance of higher and nobler extraction then other formes or soules of creatures inferiour Simplicius in his Prolegomen determines saying The soule maketh use of the body as of Organs or Instruments as also it doth of the passions irrationall and hath a substance altogether separable from them and remaining after their corruption The selfe same doctrine is delivered expressely and at large by Porphyry in his Booke De Abstinentia Against these powerfull impulsives and clearer notions of truth the adverse party hath nothing to oppose but meere surmises or suspicions such namely as the Author of the Booke of Wisedome out of their owne mouthes recordeth saying There hath not any one beene knowne to have returned from the Grave Or else such as Pliny doth imagine who grafteth the opinion of immortality not upon an innate or naturall longing and appetite as he should have done but contrariwise upon a false ambition and greedinesse in man of never ceasing to be Or againe as Lucian who brings nothing to make good what he conceiveth besides down-right impiety dressed up and set forth with facetious scoffes and derisory jestings wherewith neverthelesse sundry ill affected spirits and feebler understandings are easier perswaded then with solid arguments The Chorus of Seneca afterwards alleadged moved as it may seeme with no better or stronger arguments is driven as by a storme into darke and doubtfull cogitations touching the soules mortality and so is another Chorus consisting of Mahumetan Alfaquies in the English Tragedy of Mustapha By such shadowes also as these a late Philosopher was affrighted and before him some of the ancients so farre forth as to be made imagine that granting the soule should survive the body yet that it would not thence follow it were perpetuall but that contrarywise in tract of time it might decay and vapour it selfe at length to nothing burning or wasting out it 's owne substance like a torch or candle or at least have a period of duration set it connaturally to the principles of constitution beyond which it was not to passe but at that terme or point presently and naturally to extinguish or returne to nothing But if suspicions may come to be examined we shall finde that there be other of them perswading the soules mortality that seeme more hollow and deceiptfull then the former are as namely a depraved appetite or an unbridled and untamed sensuality that sollicites perpetually to be satisfied and is desirous without feare of future reckonings in the other world to wallow and tumble like a swine in the mire of dirty pleasures and to conceive some shadow of security for it that so with the old Epicureans it might merrily say Ede bibe lude post mortem nulla voluptas Eate and drinke and play thy fill There 's after death nor good nor ill Doubtlesse these latter perswaders seeme to be more ruinous and corrupt then the former and of more dangerous consequence And thus we see that on either side there want not suspicions as well for concluding of montality as of immortality if we will be guided by them But into this high Court of judicature wherein causes so weighty and so grave as this are to be decided suspicions and darke imaginations will not be allowed for evidence or be able to cast the businesse any way To these other proofes which after I alleadge I adde this one which I have placed in the frontispeice of this treatise namely these words of Christ Matth. 22. partly recited by him out of Exodus I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaak and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead but of the living By force of which Text the Sadduces who denied the resurrection were convinced and not onely they but this Author also against whom we deale for the place proves the soules immortality as well as the bodies resurrection Because if God be the God of Abraham after death then must his body one day rise againe to the end that being reunited with the soule there might result an Abraham againe if he be the God also of the living then must his soule continue living without any intermission from death for as without a body there is no Abraham so without a soule there is no vivens or thing endued with life If you object that it is sufficient if it live then when the body is to rise though not before I answer that this intermitted living neither is nor can be sufficient because then the soule must have a revivall resuscitation for the which we have no warrant any where feign it we must not or if we do it will want weight and be rejected It followes then that the soule of man after the departure of it from the body must either alwaies live or never and so by consequence seeing the soule
before such time as by the operation of seminall causes formes be accomplished and made to appeare in their owne likenesse upon this theater This is also the judgement of Athanas Kircherius a late learned writer l. 3. de magnete part 3. c. 1. where he shewes how rich compounds earth and water be as Chymique industries for seperation have discovered insomuch as in them as he noteth is conteined a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or generall magazine the common matter being from the first creation not leane and hungry but faeta and praeseminata with formes partiall and incompleate This also is the inchoations of formes and the rationes seminales praeëxistent which many learned men have often favoured and which being thus explained and in which this sence of ours can suffer nothing from the objections of Gandavensis or Durandus This lastly is nothing else but in a good sence an eduction of formes ex potentia materiae which is Aristotles and his Disciples Doctrine for it cannot be thought that Aristotle ever intended to presse or squeeze any formes out of the dry skeleton of materia prima which matter is a principle onely receptive and no promptuary out of which to educe a forme by virtue of any naturall agent whatsoever for in such a spare entity as that what fecundity is imaginable And so much touching the originall of formes which is one of the abstrusest and nicest points in all philosophy and that which by vulgar authors is meanliest handled and by the wisest is knowne but by conjecture Thus his maine argument is answered after which all the rest will fall downe headlong with any light touch though but of a finger Immediately after this he argueth out of Gen. 3. 19. where Adam is told that for his disobedience he must turne into that dust of which he was made out of which he concludes that all and every part of Adam must be converted into dust which if it be so as he sayeth then not only his earthly particles but his aiery watry and fiery partes must to dust also and not only his body but his soule if he have any must be turned into the same matter See what fine conclusions follow out of this mortall soules philosophy It sufficed then that so much of his body or of the whole man was to returne to dust as had beene made up of it And by this alone the commination of God is fullfilled without any more adoe After this he comes upon us with his false Latin saying as followeth Death reduceth this productio entis ex non ente ad Non-entem returnes man to what he was before he was that is not to be c. and by and by citing impertinently two or three places of Scripture falls to another argument drawen from the resurrection As for the Latine word Non-entem whether it be right or no we will not examine but apply our selves to the consideration of the sense which is as faulty as the Latine can be know therefore in breife that death did not reduce Adam to non ens but to non Adam it did not cause him absolutely not to be but onely not to be man or Adam any longer And forasmuch as concernes his body it is confest and certaine that it was not turned by death or mortality into nothing or non ens but into dust which is an ens or something that is to say his body was not annihilated but corrupted and to dye is not wholly to be destroyed but partially only which act is all one with dissolution Now if to the totall mortalizing of man it be not necessary that his body be destroyed then can it not be needfull that his soule should be so and thus our adversaries stout argument is more then mortalized for it comes to nothing which man by dying does not We will not deny him but that the soule of man did die and die againe as much as it was capable of death for first it dyed by the being seperated from the body secondly by being subjected unto damnation which as we know is called in scripture a second death But as for the annihilation of it or of the body that is it which we deny and so to doe we have just reason In fine as generation is nothing but the union of the parts and not the creation or absolute production of them so againe Death and Corruption is nothing but the disunion or dissolution of them and in no wise the annihilation according as this wise Author would perswade us As for the article of the Resurrection it proves nothing against the perpetuity of the soule for we never read of any resurrection besides that of the body wherefore to averre a resurrection of soules were a grand foolery and a doctrine never debateable or heard of amongst Christians till this silly Author came to teach it And so much for his first chapter CHAP. III. Scripture no way a favourer of the soules mortality HIs places cited out of scripture in favour of his errour are so impertinent as that it were no small peice of folly to examine them one by one They all of them signifie that man shall dye or sometimes that Joseph or Simeon is not as Gen. 42. 36. all which how they are to be expounded and understood may sufficiently appeare by that which hath beene said in the precedent chapter and how againe they make nothing at all against the soules immortality Touching the words of Ecclesiastes c. 3. the answer is that they were no determinations or resolves but a history or an account given of what sometimes came into his thoughts and what obscurities and desolations of soule he had and what lastly was one of the first difficulties that troubled him and stirred him up unto a sollicitous enquiry for certainely this one verity of the mortality of mans soule is that which is to order his designes to regulate his actions and to put life and vigour into them this being a truth most fundamentall We see this one was it which moved Clemens Rom. if he be the true Author of that which passeth under his name to a serious inquiry and care Clem. l. 1. recogn for the finding out what he was to do whom to consult what to esteeme most and in fine what to feare or hope most and how to order all the passages of his life This is the question that usually troubles men first of all and till a resolution be had suffereth their hearts not to be at quiet every man at first suspiciously as Solomon did asking of himselfe as Seneca gallantly expresseth saying Senec. in Troade Verum est an timidos fabula decipit Vmbras corporibus vivere conditis Cum conjux oculis imposuit manum Supremusque dies Solibus obstitit Et Tristes cineres urna coërcuit Non prodest animam tradere funeri Sed restat miseris vivere longius An toti morimur nullaque pars manet Nostri cum profugo spiritus
halitu Immistus nebulis cessit in aëra Et nudum tetigit subdita fax latus Is it a truth or that our feares Have buzz'd a fable in our eares That mans hovering spirits doe live And their interred corps survive When greived consorts hands do close Their eyes and their last dayes oppose Our bright Hyperions beamy light And drownes the slender shades in night Then when our bones to ashes burne To be confin'd within an urne Be not the funeralls our fate But there must be a longer date For wretched man Or doth he dye Intirely and entombed lye Or may he not forthwith consume And vanish all in slender fume Then when his wandring spirit flyes And mingles with the aiëry skies And when the dismall funerall torch His side insensible doth scorch After this sort do anxious and afflicted spirits often times argue and dispute within themselves laying before their eyes all the doubts and difficulties immaginable before they descend to the making of any conclusion at all or to the determining of any settled doctrine Thus and no otherwise did Solomon when first revolving in his thoughts the matter of the soules condition and touching upon the various suspicious of men concerning it with no small sense and anguish of mind at length c. 12. drawing to a conclusion determines saying let the Eccle 12. dust returne unto the earth from whence it came and the spirit unto God who gave it And this text alone is sufficient to confound the Adversary and to confute whatsoever he hath endeavoured to draw out of scripture for mans totall corruption and mortality CHAP. 4. His argument out of reason viewed and examined WHat the severall fancies were of heathen Philosophers touching the nature and definition of the soule is not much regardable sundry of them being so monstrous and absurd But it is a thing very considerable that amongst so many stragling and wilde conceits all or most of all at least of the noblest and the best Philosophers have taught the immortality of the soule it selfe Howsoever in other businesses concerning it they might sometimes disagree Permanere animos arbitramur saith Cecero consensu nationum omnium qua in Cicero Tuscul l. 1. sede maneant qualesque sint ratione discendum est * and againe in his Hortensius as witnesseth Saint Augustine l. 14. de Trinitate Antiquis Philosophis hisque maximis â—â—ngèque clarissimis placuit quod aeternos animos divinosque habeamus We are perswaded by the consent of all nations that soules remaine but must learne of reason of what quality they are and in what places they remaine This assertion of Cicero for consent of nations and Philosophers in this truth hath beene shewed to the eye by the great diligence and learning of Augustinus Steuchus commonly called Eugubinus in the 9 booke of his excellent â—ugubinus l 9. â—e Peren. Philosoph worke de perenni Philosophia in which he voucheth to this purpose the authorities of Pherecides Syrus who as Cicero witnesseth was the first that delivered this verity in writing also of Trismegistus and the Chaldean monuments of Plato likewise Pythagoras Aratus Philo Cicero Plotinus Jamblichus Hierocles and sundry others as also of Aristotle the Prince of the Peripatetiques who is judged by the greatest searchers into his doctrine to have directly taught the immortality although he hath not declared himselfe in that point as in many others nor as others have done peradventure concealing himselfe on set purpose because he for want of light from divine revelation was not able to tell what to do with them after death nor was he willing to make up his matter with fictions poeticall as his master Plato had done The same Philosophers also are diligently alleadged â—less c. 15. de â—erit Christ Rel. by Monsieur Plessy in his booke de veritate Relig. Christianae which is every where extant Besides the same doctrine of immortality hath beene constantly taught by the learned Aben Sina or Avicen in the last booke of his Metaphysiques and also in his Almabad in which treatise he maintaineth constantly the immortality of the soule but earnestly impugneth the bodies resurrect ion and withall which is most false and improbable defends that Mahomet in his law never taught it but only parabolically and for fashion sake complying with the peoples rudenesse whereby they were not sensible of any doctrine teaching a felicity that was spirituall Another Arabique author who goes under the name of Aristotle is of the same minde with Avicen seeing saith he it is manifest out of the bookes of Author secret sap secundum AEgyptios p. 1 12. the ancient and already proved that the soule or minde is not a body nor doth perish but remaine c. Thus he l. 1. de divin sap secundum Aegyptios c. 2. consonantly to other Philosophers though afterwards in the very next chapter most absurdly he affirmes as much of the soules of Beasts Afterwards c. 4. he addeth saying If our foreelders had beene doubtfull of the soules immortality they had never for the confirmation thereof by natures dictamen made a law against which no man is but he who is entangled in vice And a little after The soule therefore passing out of this life and gotten into the other world doth not at all perish Lastly l. 12 a c. 10. ad 17. he by many arguments assayeth to prove that the soule is void of corporeity Thus he of whose credit and excellency see the judicious censure of Doctor Guiliel Dunal in Synopsi doctrinae Peripateticae cap. ultimo Next unto this Author I produce Manilius yet not as a light Poet but as a sage Philosopher he flourished in the time of Cesa Julius This same same Author l. 1. Astronomicωn speaking of the Galaxia and indeavouring to give a reason of it writeth on the manner following Nec mihi celanda est famae vulgata vetustas Mollior ex niveo lactis fluxisse liquorem Pectore reginae divum caelumque colore Infecisse suo quapropter lacteus orbis Dicitur nomen causa descendit ab ista An Major densâ stellarum turba Coronâ Contexit flammas crasso lumine candet Et fulgore nitet collato clarior orbis An fortes animae dignataque nomina coelo Corporibus resoluta suis terraque remissa Huc migrant ex orbe suumque habitantia coelum Aethereos vivunt annos mundoque fruuntur Nor will we hide what ancient fame profest How milke that gusht from Juno's snowy breast In heaven that splendent path and circle drew From whence the name as erst the colour grew Or troopes of unseene starres there joyne their light And with their mingled splendours shine more bright Or soules Heroïck from their bodies freed And earthly partes attaine their virtues meed This shining Orbe and from their lowly herse Ascending high enjoy the universe And live Aethereall lives And againe Iam capto potimur mundo nostrumque parentem Pars sua conspicimus genitique accedimus
astris Nec dubium est habitare Deum sub pectore nostro In coelumque redire animas coeloque venire Of the whole world we' are now possest And cleare behold our Parent blest A part of him and from these warres Make our approaches to the starres No doubt but under humane brest A sacred Deity doth rest And that our soules from heaven came And thither must returne againe Lo here how he doth signifie not onely the soules of men be divine and immortall but besides that they had not their originall from the earth or from any earthly agent with whom consenteth a Greeke Philosopher Sallustius Emescenus in his booke de Diis mundo lately published and vindicated from the moathes by Leo Allatius This Philosopher c. 8. teacheth on this sort First saith he let us know Sallustius Emasenc 8. what the soule is The soule is that which makes things living or animated differ from the livelesse or inanimate Their difference consists in motion sense phantasie and intelligence The soule devoyd of reason is a life that serves apparences and the senses but the rationall using reason beares rule over the sense and Phantasie Indeed a soule destitute of reason followes the affections of the body for it desires and is angry without reason but a rationall according to the rule of reason contemnes the body and entring into combate with the soule irrationall if it get the better doth follow virtue if vanquisht declines to vice This of necessity must be immortall because it knowes the Goddesse and no mortall thing can know that which is immortall besides it contemnes humane things as if they were belonging to some other person and being it selfe incorporeall is a verse from things corporeall which bodies if they be faire and fresh it languisheth if old it begins to flourish Also every diligent soule makes use of the mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the soule is not generated by the body for how should any thing that wanteth reason generate that which hath Thus Sallustius out of whose words we have first that the soule differs from the body 2. That the rationall from the irrationall or the sence 3. That the rationall is immortall and the reason why 4. That it is ingenerable and for what cause With this greeke Sallustius agrees the Roman who l. de bello Jugurth saying Ingeniiegregia facinora sicut anima immortalia sunt The egregious atcheivments of the wit are like the soule immortall and by and by Omnia orta occidunt aucta senescunt animus incorruptus aeternus rector humani generis All things which rife do fall and being ever eased doe wax old the minde is incorrupt and eternall c. Our next authority is that of Apollonius Tyanaeus that famous Pythagorean Phylosopher whose life Philostratus Lemnius hath writ at Apollonius apud Philostrat l. 8. de vita ejus large and amongst other accidents relates of him how after his decease he appeared to a young man a student in philosophy resolving him as followeth The soule is immortall and no humane thing but proceedeth from the providence divine This therefore after the body is corrupted as a swift courser released from his bonds and delivered from a troublesone servitude removeth up and downe and intermingles with the gentle aire Thus he to whom consenteth most expressely Hierocles in his commentary upon the golden verses of Pythagoras in sundry places telling us that the soule is not only incorruptible but also made immediately not by procreation but the hand of God See him of the Greeke and Latine edition of Paris pag. 101. 103 132. I will adde to these the words of the Emperour Marcus Antoninus commonly called Aurelius l. 4. n. 13. according to Merick Casaâ—bon's division If soules saith he remaine how from all aeternity Marc. Antonin l. 4. de vitasuâ— n. 13. could the aire hold them or how the earth retaine their bodies As here the bodies after they have lyen a while within the earth are changed and being dissipated leave space for other carkasses so soules carried up into the aire after they have beene there sometime whither kindled or liquefied are conjoined to the common 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is unto the originall mind or great soule of the world Thus he as if he had said with Solomon the spirit returnes to God that made it for the great soule of the universe or the originall minde of all is nothing else Horace consenteth saying Melior pars nostri vitabit lebitinam and Tacitus in vit Jul. Agric. Siquis piorum manib locus sive sapientib placet non cum corpore extinguuntur magnae animae placide quiescas If to the spirits of the pious there be any place remaining if great soules be not together with their bodies extinguished mayest thou rest in peace To these Ovid subscribeth Metamor l. ult Cum volet ille dies quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet incerti spatium mihi finiat avi Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar nomenque erit indelebile nostrum Come when it will my Deaths uncertaine hower Which of this body only hath a power Yet shall my better part transcend the sky And my immortall name shall never die The same doctrine is constantly taught by Pythagoras as appeares by his doctrine of Metempsycosis and also both Jamblichus Porphyry in their severall histories of his life do witnesse of him as also Diogenes Laërtius I conclude this Jury with the judgement of Macrobius who c. 14. Macrob. in som scipio c. 14. in somnium Scipionis after he had recited sundry and differing fancies of severall Philosophers touching the nature of the soule concludes as followeth Obtinuit tamen non minus de incorporalitate ejus quà m de immortalitate sententia Neverthelesse the opinion touching the incorporeity of the soule as well as touching the immortality of it hath beene prevalent Against all these therefore it importes little that Dicaearchus Messenius a Peripatetique Philosopher Scholler to Aristotle or as Aristoxenus should as Cicero relateth in the first of his Tusculanes and in his second of his Academiques hold and defend it to be mortall or that both he and as Cicero reporteth out of him another more ancient Philosopher by name Pherecrates one of the linage of Deucalion did thinke there was no soule at all neither in man nor beast and forasmuch as concerneth the same Dicaearchus Sextus Emp. l. 2. Hypotyp c. 5. Fr. Picus l. 1. de Doctrin vanit Gentium c. 14. we read in Sextus Empericus and Tertullian as also in Joh. Fr. Picus of Mirandula he was of the same opinion for there is nothing so absurde which some one Philosopher or other hath not maintained Sextus Empericus was of the same minde also as he l. adv Mathematicos acknowledgeth But now by the way I note how sublimely most of these heathen wise men did Philosophize when as they conclude the soules
not at all for still the soule and body are authours of their own actions and the deformity ariseth from their misdemeanour and not from God's creation or concurrence Doctour Sennertus although he admit not of any mortality in the soule yet he holds it probable that it comes by procreation and that from the first instance of conception the seed is animated with the rationall soule which Doctrine of his by his leave inferres mortality for whatsoever is generated is corruptible and is to go out according to the ordinary Lawes of Nature at the same gate of according to the ordinary Lawes of Nature at the same gate of corruption at which it entred in Neither is it true or likely or lastly any way philosophicall to say as he doth Hypomn. 4. c. 10. that nothing created is immortall by the principle of Nature but onely by the free will or gift of God because as it is amongst bodies some are very durable as Marble and Cedar some by and by corrupted as flowers and fruits even out of the severall natures of their composition which God hath appointed for them and not out of the free will of God immediately without any further relation so in like sort some substances are perpetuall out of the nature of their being as spirituall substances and bodies that are simple and unmixt other some out of their own Natures corruptible as those that are mixt and made up of Elements which as by some naturall agents they were knit up together so by the operation of other some they are dissolvable Soules then if generated are compounds and if so may be uncompounded by the agency and operation of causes naturall wherefore to seek an immortality onely from a decree extrinsecall without any foundation in their naturall beings seemes neither to be philosophicall nor true wherefore the immortality of Soules and Angels is not to be reared upon this weak foundation according to which a Flye may be as much immortall as an Angel one by Nature according to Sennertus having no preheminence over the other the free determination of God for their perpetuall conservation being equally applicable to either of them Conformably to this position of his he will needs have the sperme alwaies animated with a reasonable soule but then consider how many Sennertus Hypomn 4. ca. 10. lib. de consens Chymic cum Arist Galeno c. 9. more soules are cast away without any bodies organicall and humane then are actuated and preserved by bodies I aske what must become of these innumerable soules must they perish or have bodies made them at the Resurreection neither of these two can be admitted without great temerity and absurdities Besides this we know God did not inspire Adam with a living spirit while he was a lumpe of clay but when he had a face and a body that was organicall and not before Againe why does the soule depart from the body but onely because it leaves to be organicall why then or with what probability can we imagine the soule is in the inorganicall sperme certainly with none at all The winde that did drive Sennertus upon this inhospitall shoare was the necessity of assigning a vis formatrix or a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say an able architect or former of humane body which though most acknowledge to be the seed yet Sennertus sees not how this can be unlesse it should be animated with the soule his reason is because the soule onely is to build an house fit for it selfe to inhabit But this reason of his is not urgent nay more it is not likely for egges and young birds do not build their own nests but the old ones for them so that it must by this account be the fathers office to erect this new building and not the childes But how sayes he can the father do this easily and well by sending his sperme as his deputy and officer Argent com in 1 Aphor. Hipp. to performe that duty as Argenterius also teacheth which entity hath derived to it from the generatour so much naturall strength and cunning as to make a sufficient architect for the effecting of this work and all this may be done with the only forme of seed without any animation of it with a soule Thus it is likely that the Acorne for example without any more forme than of an Acorne collects fit particles out of the elements and materials about it and by a virtue derived from the tree on which it grew formes out and fashions the body of an Oake and for the effecting of this worke the seed participates tmch of the nature of the tree or plant and hath ordinarily much of â—he same virtue wherefore in this abstruse question or quere that we may say something which is likely and hath for the truth thereof probable examples and instances in Nature we do conceive that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or forming virtue is the seeds own forme excited and assisted by the breeding cherishing and connaturall warmth of the maternall body which doth environ it as in the procreation of birds it seemes to be where the semen of the Cocke being cherished and stirred up by the ambient and incumbent warmth of the Hen is that which changes the egge and formes it into the shape of the bird from whence it came Neither is it probable that in so small a coagulum or seed which came from the Cocke the soule or essence of a Cocke is resident Now whereas he tels us that by the blessing granted to all Creatures by the Creatour of them in these words Increase and multiply force was given to every soule to multiply another we confesse it to be true yet this not to be done by creating of the younger by the elder soules or by the giving of them new entities but rather by doing some other act out of which these formes should connaturally follow as materiall formes they do by a resultancy and immateriall by creation from a higher cause which creation is to follow and is due by a regular ordination exigence of Nature and so they may truly be said to be given and communicated though not made by the force of generation And this is the true vis prolifica and not that other which Sennertus feignes unto himselfe by which he will have one humane soule to beget another and on the instant to become with childe of it no bodie knowes how neither by what particular operation nor from what Mine it should be digged For this manner of speaking makes shew rather of some empty Magicke than of sound Philosophy and seemes altogether as hard and impossible as the eduction of them out of the potentiality of the materia prima when understood in that sense in which he himselfe impugnes it If the Parents objecteth Sennertus do not give the soule which is the forme of man they do not generate the man but for certaine they do generate the man therefore
with raking so long in such a heap of dirt and therefore at this instant I leave him to bethinke himselfe about making a timely recantation Now turning with delight unto my Reader to solace and refresh my selfe after all this travaile I desire him to look into Hierocles Commentary upon the Golden Verses ascribed to Pythagoras in Hierocles in Carm. Pyth. which he seemeth to have discovered the originall of this pernicious errour touching the soules mortality What availes it faith he with perjuries and murders and other wicked wayes to gather wealth and to seem rich unto the world and to want those good things which are conducible unto the minde But besides to be stupid and insensible of them and thereby to augment the evill or if they have any remorse of conscience for their offences to be tormented in their soules and affraid of the punishments of Hell comforting themselves with this alone that there is no way of escaping them and from hence are ready to cure one evill with another and by a perswasion that the soule is mortall to sooth up themselves in wickednesse judging they are not worthy to have any thing of theirs remaining after death that so they might avoid those punishments which by judgement should be inflicted on them for a wicked man is loath to thinke his soule to be immortall for feare of the revenges that are to follow his misdeeds Wherefore preventing the Judge who is below he pronounceth the sentence of death against himselfe as holding it fit that such a wicked soule should have no longer a being nor subsistence Behold here the fountain head of this errour opened and purged by Hierocles In fine from whatsoever puddle this errour sprung let us remember what Socrates being to die delivered touching the various condition of soules after this life He said as Cicero relateth there were two different pathes or voyages of soules at their departure Cic. l. 1. Tuscul from the bodies for all such as with humane vices had contaminated themselves and were delivered wholly up to lust with which as with domesticke vices being blinded they had by lewd actions defiled themselves or had attempted against the Common-wealth any crime or fraud inexpiable that these had a wandring way assigned for them sequestred from the assemblies of the Gods but such againe as had preserved themselves entire and chaste contracting little or no contagion from the body having alwayes retired and withdrawn themselves from it and had in humane bodies imitated the conversation of the Gods these found opened for them an easie way of returne to them from whom they proceeded at the first This is the Doctrine both of Cicero and of Socrates what then remaines to do but to hearken attentively to the wise Counsell of the Prince of Philosophers Aristotle and to suffer it to have a powerfull influence into all the passages of our life His words l. 10. Ethic. c. 9. according to the division of Andronicus Rhodius be as follow If then saith he our understanding in respect of man be a thing divine so Arist l. 10. Ethic. c. 9. that life which is lead according unto the understanding if compared with life humane is divine also neither as some perswade is it lawfull for a man to relish and follow onely that which is humane and being mortall those things onely which are mortall but as much as in him lieth he ought to vindicate himselfe from all mortality and to take speciall care that he live according to that part which is most excellent within him Now that which is best within us is our minde which though it be small in bulke and weight yet in power and excellency doth surpasse the rest And with this wise counsell of the Philosopher I conclude this whole Question which though the day of every mans departure will decide and give a finall resolution to it yet in the mean season are not disputes of this nature fruitlesse or superfluous because if they be well performed they are like burning torches which in the darke gallery of this life teach us how to direct our steppes and before that blacke day come to helpe us for the making our preparations before-hand that so with better hopes of safety we may meet our deadly enemies in the gate Without all doubting for the repressing of brutish bestiall and unworthy affections and again for our encouragement to noble and generous designements the best preparatives against Death there is no consideration so powerfull and efficacious as that one of the high perfection of mans soule and the immortall nature and condition of it for as Cicero observeth l. 1. de legib Qui se ipsum nôrit primùm aliquid sentiet se habere divinum ingeniumque in se suum sicut symulachrum aliquod dedicatum Cicero l. 1. de legib putabit tantoque munere Deorum semper aliquid dignum faciet sentiet He that doth know himselfe will forthwith finde within him something that is divine and will hold his understanding as a statue dedicated and be alwayes thinking or doing something answerable to so great munificence of the Gods That is to say he will be mindfull that as in upright shape of body and the perfection of his spirit he excelleth beasts and all creatures irrationall so he will endeavour to do in the condition of his living by disdaining to stoop to any thing which is base or to defile the house in which his soule inhabits with any unworthy or ignoble actions I will seale and signe this whole dispute with the determination and censure of the book of Wisedome which book whether it be received into the Canon or no yet is it confessedly very ancient and therefore by consent of all may claime a just precedence of authority before any Heathen Philosopher whatsoever the words are these Justorum animae in manu Dei sunt non tanget illos tormentum mortis visi sunt oculis insipientium mori illi autem sunt in pace The soules of Sap. 3. the just be in the hands of God and the torment of Death shall not touch them To the eyes of the foolish they seemed to die but they remain in peace Behold here in the judgement of this venerable Authour what kinde of people they are who hold the soules mortality namely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as be destitute of true judgement and understanding This is not my censure neither is this character of my making for who am I that should presume so farre but it is the judgement of the ancient Authour of the Book of Wisedome whose yeares and credit may deserve regard even amongst those spirits that be most confident of their own conceptions and be the greatest admirers and idolaters of themselves In fine this ancient Sage brands all deniers of our soules immortality with the selfe same note of ignominy that David the kingly Prophet did marke that wretched mortall who Psalm 13. closely and in his heart had said There is no God Yet there is this ods between them two and worthy to be observed for though both of them be impious and absurd yet one of them had some shame in him and said it onely in his heart But this Adversary of ours goes further and had the face to publish his impiety in Print or at least the heart so to do it as he himselfe might lie concealed and his name unknowne which covert way of his though it appeare not altogether so bold and bad as if he had put his name unto his worke yet was it an act too bold for any Christian man or true Philosopher to exercise or to be an Authour of in Print for alas after so many great Divines and deep Philosophers whose uniforme suffrages we have for the dignity of man that is to say for the soules immortall nature and incorruptibility how could the cogitations unto the contrary of this poore worme be a matter any way considerable with men of understanding and ability FINIS
reason and principles of Philosophy Which clearely teacheth us that it is man which is procreated or made by generation and not his soule his body is made or framed by it and not the matter of which it is composed For it is a received maxime and most true touching the power of naturall causes and no farther Quòd ex nihilo nihil fit Of nothing there is nothing to be made out of which it followes that before generation both matter and formes of all corporeall things must have before hand a being in rerum natura at least an incompleate one and cannot possibly have it from generation wherefore by the worke of generation they are not made or receive any new absolute entity but onely are collected ordered and at last substantially linked and united one with another which union is not by a sole approximation contiguity or juxta position that I may so speake of one of them with another as it falls out in artificiall compounds where colours for example though they be not pictures yet being thus or thus chosen formed and united make up such or such a picture but it is by a continuity or an inward and substantiall knot which is in our power better to conceive then explicate and yet not to conceive fully neither for these principles of generation are natures arcana her darkest and most secret misteries which like the springs of Nilus she hath hidden from our eyes as if our seeing of them were a prophanation and to let us know that she is our mother and we but ignorant children and such who must not be made much acquainted with our originall Againe if the parts also must be generated I aske whether these parts be simple or compound entities If simple they cannot be generated but must have their being by creation if compound then if they must be generated the parts also of which those parts are made must in like sort be generated and so either in infinitum or else at least till we come to some parts which are simple and ingenerable by which discourse it followes that no parts at all neither corporeall nor spirituall neither in man nor beasts doe receive their being by generation Touching the second misprision or originall of errour and mistaking note that although it belong to the perfection of an Animal to generate another like it selfe yet is it a perfection onely to Animals and Vegetables and to them also not simply but onely quatenus corruptibilia so farre forth as they are corruptible generation being instituted onely for reparation of decayes and to reëdify the ruines of corruption so that wheresoever there be more ruines in that place more reedification is needfull In creatures therefore irrationall where there is a corruption more large then in the rationall a fuller manner of generation is necessary because there is a greater decay in the forme in the one then in the other forasmuch as the formes of irrationall creatures be by corruption disformalized and dissipated into their atomes which dissipation if the formes were spirituall needed not and againe if indivisible were a thing impossible Therefore generation is to performe more in one then in the other and yet sufficiently in both according to their severall exigences Seeing then generation is nothing but productio viventis a vivente in similitudinem naturae a production of one living thing by another in a similitude of nature according to the definition thereof whatsoever agent shall doe this that same is truly and univocally said to generate how much more or lesse soever it doe besides this A man therefore producing another man by the onely composing and uniting his two essentiall parts body and soule maketh that to be a man which before was none and doth truly generate a man although he no more produce his soule then he does the matter of which his body is formed and made for there can be no more necessity for the production of the one then of the other And this one instance of matter will evidently destroy our adversaries argument taken from procreation Neither is it as Argenterius well declareth any imperfection in man not to generate so fully as other Animals doe but rather a great perfection in him for as it is a perfection in beasts to generate totally as much as generation can doe because they are toally corruptible as much as in nature it is possible and as in Angels it were an imperfection to generate because they by their nature are totally incorruptible so in man it is a perfection to generate as Angels doe not doe and also not to generate so totally and fully as brute beasts doe generate because he is as the Philosopers rightly and aptly terme him Horizon mundi nexus naturae utriusque as it were the Horizon of the world and that which knits corporeall and spirituall natures together by his participating with them both and not fully agreeing with either not being so corruptible as beasts nor so incorruptible as Angels or pure Intelligences By which it followes that his manner of generation is in something to agree with the non generation of Angels and againe something with the totall generation of creatures irrationall that same generation of his being truly and univocally a generation because he is univocally and truly an Animal and yet not totally so because in his immortall soule he resembles the incorruptibility of Angels or Intelligences For Modus generandi sequitur modum essendi ideo quod partim est immortale partim non partim etiam gener are debet partim non That which is not wholly mortall doth not wholly generate and therefore neither man nor beast doth generate wholly yet a beast more wholly then a man Constat aeternâ positumque lege est Vt constet genitum nihil Eternall lawes doe so ordaine That nothing gotten shall remaine Wherefore if some of him after corruption doe remaine there can be no necessity that all of him should be made by generation nay seeing something more of him namely the forme after corruption doth remaine incorrupted then there doth of Beasts for of beasts the matter onely remaines something lesse of him is to be produced by generation then there is of them though all of neither Whosoever therefore shall affirme that a creature intelligent like man should generate another of his owne kind as totally and adequatly as one beast does generate another doth not speake like a Philosopher and besides doth unjustly disparage and disgrace his owne linage and violates the rights of his creation CHAP. VIII A solution of the Adversaries objections together with some others of Doctor Daniel Sennertus THese former notandums having beene premised we need not dwell long upon answering of objection for by them the way is opened already and that which before hath beene delivered will not need any more then application Object 1. Whole man is generated by man therefore all his parts both soule and body and if