and the self same he defineth l. de Demonstratione alledged by the ancient and learned Nemesius l. de Anima c. 1. Also before Galen Hippocrates resolved the very same whose words l. de Carne are these Of things saith he celestiall and sublime I am as it to me seems to say nothing save onely that men and other creatures which live upon the earth and are bred there have their Originall from thence and that the soul is from heaven Now will I declare my opinion Verily it seems to me that the thing which we term hote and heat is something which is not mortall So he according as we finde him cited by Fernelius in the place before quoted and so much for the honour of Physicians in order to this truth Our next authority is that of Apollonius Tyaneus that famous Pythagorean Philosopher whose life Philostratus Lemnius hath writ at large and amongst other accidents l. 8. relates of him how after his decease he appeared to a young man a student in philosophy resolving him as followeth The soul 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 delivered from a troublesome servitude removeth up and down and intermingles with the gentle â—ire Thus he to whom consenteth most expresly Hierocles in his commentary upon the golden verses of Pythagoras in sundry places telling us that the the soul is not onely incorruptible but also made immediately not by procreation but the hand of God See him of the Greek and Latine edition of Paris pag. 101. 103 132. Seneca the famous Stoicks minde may be learned easily out of his three severall consolatory Tractates namely to Polybius Helvia and Martia and Epist 121. as also out of other places wheresoever occasion was given His words to Martia be these Mobilis inquieta mens homini data est c. A minde saith he restlesse and unquiet is given unto man and no wonder if we look up unto the first Originall it is no concretion of any dull or earthly body but descendeth from a spirit celestiall is to be in motion incessantly it flyeth and is carried on with a swift course c. Thus he out of whose words we may gather three things first that the soul is from above and not by any naturall generation Secondly that it is immortall Thirdly that after once it is released from corporeall Organs it acts continually and never sleepeth I will adde to these the words of the Emperour Marcus Antoninus commonly called Aurel. de vita sua l. 4. n. 13. according to Merick Casaubon's division If souls saith he remain how from all eternity could the aire hold them or how the earth retain their bodies As here the bodies after they have lyne a while within the earth are changed and being dissipated leave space for other carkasses so souls carried up into the aire after they have been there some time whether kindled or liquefied are conjoyned to the common 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is unto the originall minde or great soul of the world Thus he as if he had said with Solomon the spirit returns to God that made it for the great soul of the Universe or the originall minde of all is nothing else Horace consenteth saying Melior pars nostri vitabit libitinam and Tacitus in vit Jul. Agric. Siquis piorum manibus locus sive ut sapientibus placet non cum corpore extinguuntur magnae animae placide quiescas If to the spirits of the pious there be any place remaining if as wise men do conceive great souls be not together with their bodies extinguished mayest thou rest in peace To these Ovid subscribeth Metamor l. 15. Morte carent animae c. Souls be exempt from death l. ult Cum volet ille dies quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet incertâ— spatium mihi finiat aevi Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar nomenque erit indelebile nostrum Come when it will my Deaths uncertain hour Which of this body onely hath a pow'r Yet shall my better part transcend the sky And my immortall name shall never dy Some may here imagine that this same immortality of the better part mentioned by Horace and Ovid is according to them nothing else but a never-dying fame yet this cannot be because fame though never so lasting is no part at all of us neither better nor worse The same doctrine is constantly taught by Pythagoras as appears by his doctrine of Metempsychosis and Palingenesia as also both Jamblichus and Porphyry in their severall histories of his life do witnesse of him as also Diogenes Lacrtius Porphyr l. de Abstinentia is also of the same opinion I conclude this Jury with the judgement of Macrobius who c. 14. in somnium Scipionis after he had recited sundry and differing fancies of severall Philosophers touching the nature of the soul concludes as followeth Obtinuit tamen non minus de incorporalitate ejus quam de immortalitate sententia Neverthelesse the opinion touching the incorporeity of the soul as well as touching the immortality of it hath been prevalent Against all these therefore it imports little that Dicaearchus Messenius a Peripatetick Philosopher and Scholar to Aristotle or that Aristoxenus should as Cicero relateth in the first of his Tusculanes and in the second of his Academicks 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 lineage of Deucalion did think there was no soul at all neither in man nor beast And forasmuch as concerneth the same Dicaearchus we reade in Sextus Empiricus and Tertullian l. 2. Hypot c. 5 as also in Job Fr. Picus of Mirandula l. de Doctrin vanit Gentiâ—â—â— c. 14. he was of the same opinion for there is nothing so absurd which some one Philosopher or other hath not maintained Sextus Empiricus was of the same minde also as he l. adv Mathematices acknowledgeth As for Epicurus and his associates they cannot be admitted to give sentence here and therefore their adverse judgment is not prejudiciall to our cause First because the common Epicureans were slaves to voluptuousnesse and vice using Philosophy onely as a cloak wherewith to palliate their enormities Secondly because they themselves are guilty persons and that in a high manner also for although as Tostatus in Genes determineth the right Epicureans were men of great gravity yet they offended grossely against the light of nature in sundry passages of Philosophy concerning the highest verities Moreover though Petrus Gassendus in his late voluminous tractates De vita Philosophia Epicuri hath freed Epicurus from many foul objections and imputations and with much labour hath washed him and wrung him and perfumed him yet many stains do rest behind which with all his art he was not able to fetch
from the starres and the Poets in relation also to this did feign that Prometheus stole fire from heaven wherewith he gave life to his men of clay which he had made Now fire as we know is an element alwayes in action yea even then when it is raked up in ashes for even then it works both upon the food that maintains it and also on the adjoyning bodies Wherefore no charm no medicine soporiferous can cast the spirit of man into such a dull and deadly heavinesse as it shall not so much as have a feeling of it self nor be awaked by any other voice then that of the last trumpet which shall with a dreadful found call all to judgement and which noise shall be heard even by bodies then which there is nothing more dead or more corrupted nothing farther off from life as having the atomes of which they were composed now all disordered and scattered with the wind and therefore that soul which can be rouzed up by a voice no lower must needs be more then a sleep or laid down to rest Sleep is a thing different from Death though nearly allied unto it as Seneca doth signifie in the Prosopopeia following Et tu somne domitor laborum Pars humanae melier vitae c. Sharp sorrows tamer steep that art Of life humane the choicer part Astrea's off-spring here beneath Faint brother unto pallid Death Consanguineus Lethi Sopor saith another Sleep is Death's kinsman but how near we will not examine and yet so near we are sure as to a spirituall or intellectuall substance they are both one and one of them as destructive of life in it as the other because though they in themselves be things distinct yet sleep is as deadly to the soul as death it self is to the body and can agree as little with it because though sense can rest from action yet reason cannot in regard there is a greater and a more eminent kinde of vivacity in the one then in the other If the Authours of this phantasie would be understood let them declare first what kinde of Entity they take a spirit to be secondly seeing a spirit hath no body to rest nor senses to shut up nor vitall or animall spirits to repair what this sleep of a spirit is I mean how they will define it If they cannot do this then are they bunglers and speak they know not what and therefore not regardable If they say it is a cessation from action and from possibility immediate of action then hath a spirit no life left in it more then a stone or a dead body and so in this case to sleep and to dy signify the same thing though in terms that are different Yet say that they indeed could tell us what kind of thing this sleep should be that same is not enough unlesse besides they do prove it strongly for such extravagancies as this is are not to be admitted without convincing arguments to make them good Let us hear then what their arguments be and let us consider also of what weight CHAP. IX Volkelius his Arguments for this Errour examined and refuted VOlkelius a known man and a most principall Socinian is the stoutest Champion in this attempt therefore let us hear him what he saith Holy men saith he after their change of this present life with death are said in the Scripture not to be any longer Psal 39.14.37.10 Jerem. 21.15 Matth. 2.18 Thren 5.6 and being dead do neither live actually nor understand c. And though the spirits of men return to him that gave them as shall be demonstrated elsewhere yet that those same spirits be persons which do any thing or be sensible or do now enjoy pleasures everlasting is a thing so farre off from being taught us by the holy Scripture as on the contrary side it is easily shewed to be repugnant to them and that also by reasons very evident For Paul affirmeth that if the resurrection of the dead were not to be hoped for a vain thing it were to think of piety or for the Truth 's sake to undergo so manifold calamities and that of all men the Christians would be the most miserable Which assertion of his could not be true of the souls of men without the resurrection were setled in such pleasures and authority as that they did not onely enjoy a good eternall but were also in a state to give assistance unto others because that same felicity of theirs would be so great as scarcely no accession might be made unto it by the resurrection Thus reasoneth Volkelius My answer to the first part is by denying it to be said in Scripture simply and absolutely that souls departed or men departed have no Being at all but onely that they have no being upon the earth in regard that by dying they cease not only to be men any longer of this world but even to be men as before death they had been and this must needs be the true meaning of the places quoted by the Adversary in the Margin and not that other which he pretendeth because it is a thing most evident both in reason and in holy Scripture also that the parts of which men are composed be not annihilated by death without any remnant of Being left them but that they cease onely to be united or to be men in respect of which deficiency alone it might be truely affirmed of men as it is in Scripture that after death they are not in being To the second part I say that although the soul after separation from the body be not a person humane or an entity compleat yet still hath it a stable subsistence and leaveth not to be a substance intellectuall or a spirit Wherefore it doth not follow that because the soul is not a person or a compleat entity after separation that therefore it can have no action but must either sleep or dy The soul be it separated or united is a spirit a spirit is intellective an intellective substance can neither dy nor wholly cease from action as before hath been proved and therefore is not capable either of sleep or slumber or in any danger of being benummed and much lesse of death To the third I answer that the Apostle speaketh there not of Christian souls being miserable but of Christian mens being so and therefore let the souls be never so happy after death yet if there should be no resurrection the men could be never otherwise then miserable yea farre more miserable then any other men because in this life they should be afflicted in a higher degree then others and in the next they should not be at all You will say What matter is it if the men be miserable in this world and never happy in any world so the souls in the next world be made happy In opposition to this I say Yes it is a matter and a very great matter also if we will weigh things rightly for to be miserable in
of his own kinde as totally and adequately as one beast does generate another doth not speak like a Philosopher and besides doth unjustly disparage and disgrace his own lineage and violates the rights of 〈◊〉 creation CHAP. XII A solution of the Adversaries objections together with some others of Doctour Daniel Sennertus THese former notandums having been premised we need not dwell long upon answering of objections for by them the way is opened already and that which before hath been delivered will not need any more then application Object 1. Whole man is generated by man therefore all his parts both soul and body and if both be generated then both are mortall Answ Whole man is generated by man I grant it Therefore both soul and body are generated I distinguish That both soul and body are made parts of man by generation and a creature produced like in nature to him that generates I also grant and do affirm 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 soul and body must be therefore made and have their entities or beings given them by procreation that consequence I deny as false and absurd yea so absurd as it suffers a thousand instances to the contrary For example a whole horse is generated both matter and form 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 truely 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 again should we exact the new production of either of them by generation See Argenter com in Aphor. 1. Hippocr Zacutus Lusitanus tom 2. l. 3. Hist ad praxin c. 7. § sed alia when without any such act the definition of generation 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 soul doe of themselves dissolve If the soul 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 that which he took did not come unto him by procreation nor was it so to do As for the fourteenth to the Hebrews which he cites for his purpose our answer to it is That it is not found in our books neither Greek nor Latin neither do the Editions of Raphelengius or Elzevir contain any more Chapters than thirteen If saith he we consist of soul and body and are not men without both and receive not our soules from him he means 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 likeness 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 soul Adam might truly and univocally be the father of all men and also the soul of Christ might come by the seed of the woman although it were not made or procreated by it If the soul addes he be infused after the conception then there is growth before there is life which is impossible for the soul is made the vegetative as well as the motive sensitive or rationall part Answ I grant that before the infusion of the soul there may be vegetation and this by the sole virtue of the sperme but I deny that therefore there be in man more souls than one that is than the rationall for this same force of vegetation which is in the seed holdeth it self upon the part of the matter onely and doth not performe the office of a soul or forme the substance and operation thereof being no more then to fashion an organicall body and to make it fit for the reception of the soul and the union with it after whose infusion both the vitall and animall 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 soul 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 Nigromantick apparitions whose spirits when they have done the work 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 soul 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 soul be infused God must be a Necromancer and men but Necromantick apparitions for this Ignoramus it seems knowes no difference between a soul 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 Devil and acknowledgement of his power by any dependency on him whatsoever more or lesse It is granted saith he that the body considered merely sensitive cannot sin and is but an instrument or as the pen in the hand of the writer Therefore if the soul be infused then of necessity the
minor of it and then what kind of conclusion it hath we may easily judge For first it is false that every thing is a temperature universally speaking which is subject to intension and remission excepting such things onely as be subject unto them per se and by their own nature and not by accident onely and this appears in the very businesse now in agitation between us for a greater clerk then this man is will hardly ever prove that the augment or diminution which is found in the acts of knowledge do arise from any internal alteration in the intellective faculty and not contrariwise from the difference advantage and alteration in the organ or the species and forms intentionall for this reason therefore a man may understand better then a child namely not because his faculty intellective is better then a childs but onely for betternesse in the organ also a learned man better then an illiterate and a diligent then a negligent because those may have acquired more species or forms intentionall or else have kept them better then these other that be illiterate and negligent and not for any intension or remission in the faculty This I say may be the reason of the difference and is likely so to be and not any variation in the faculty it self notwithstanding any thing which this Authour hath said and therefore this proof of his is defective and of no validity In the same sense we deny the minor also for it does not follow that the faculties rationall be more or lesse because the acts of it be more or lesse in regard that there may be more causes then one of this intension or remission as namely the different perfection of the organ as well as the severall measure of the faculty it self Wherefore it belongeth to this Authour to prove that this ebbing or flowing of acts of knowledge is to be referred to the soul's or understanding's wanings and increases and not to the differences of the organs which thing since he faileth to do his argument can by no means conclude or be admitted as good He argueth again Temperature is a quality A quality may be absent without the destruction of the subject Reason and understanding may be so therefore they are temperatures or qualities and not substances immortall The minor is proved by example of madnesse falling sicknesse c. In answer First I deny it to follow that because Reason is a quality therefore it is a temperature for there be many qualities which neither are temperatures nor belong unto them because no other qualities belong to temperature but onely such as be elementary Secondly I deny absolutely that reason or understanding can be absent without the destruction of the soul or of man I know the act of reason may be absent and the effluence of it hindred more or lesse as in infants mad men a poplectick persons and such like but still the root remains and without death cannot be removed Hence I inferre against this Authour that although sundry actuall intellections may be improved or impaired by sense yet the radicall cannot but is wholly independent Nay further even some acts of the soul are in the manner of working independent of the body and wholly inorganicall as divers learned Authours have shewed Some old authours have ascribed to the soul a body Aethereall but that it self was a body Aercall or Elementary I conceive none of them ever yet affirmed What that obscure writer saith whom he calleth Woolnor I neither know nor regard for he is no classicall Authour nor hath any voice allowed him in the Philosophers Parliament The severall absurdities which afterwards this Authour labours to inferre do not follow out of the doctrine of immortality but onely out of his own mistakes erroneous and ignorant conceptions and therefore he may take them all home to himself which to do I know it must be to his great losse for throughout his whole book he swarms so much with this kind of vermine as they eat up all the substance of his undertakings and discourse He addeth Every form depends of the matter and by separation perishes But we must tell him that this is false doctrine and can never be proved If it were not so saith he then one might be generated without the other a soul without a body and a woman be brought to bed of a spirit I answer That an immortall soul cannot at all be generated as first being by it self and its own nature ingenerable and secondly having no principle here on earth either materiall or efficient that is able to beget it all agents created in this kind being impotent as afterwards we intend to shew against this Authour as also against Sennertus Religio Medici and some others What reason is there saith he mans and beasts Anatomy being both considered and compared together that mans faculties in a higher degree should be an immortall spirit more then beasts in a lower degree but both elementary and finite For the finitenesse we grant you that both are finite but not both elementary or mortall and this we collect not from the Anatomy but from the operations by which we do collect not a graduall difference betwixt the two souls bestiall and humane but an essentiall See Aquinas l. 2. contr Gent. c. 66. Ferrariensis ibid. So that call it reason which is in beasts or call it what you will that reason which is in man is essentially superiour unto it and if that of beasts be reason then doth mans reason deserve another better term whereby to signifie the essentiall preheminence of it as Campanellae himself acknowledges in divers works of his and proves in his Metaphysicks at large We know that bordering nations do a little symbolize in their natures but yet are not therefore the same so then albeit the highest of vegetables as the herba viva or the Agnus Tartaricus if there be such a plant and the Zoophyta have some resemblance to creatures of sense yet neverthelesse are they different from them and the Zoophyta themselves belong onely to one classe or other and not to both So in like sort although the most perfect of animals have acts of sensation that something resemble the apprehensive discursive and judging faculties of man yet are they wholly and essentially distinct Wherefore as some erroneously may imagine the sense in beasts is not a weak or imperfect reason nor again in man is reason a strong and perfect sense for these two faculties be wholly different even in one and the same man as manifestly appeareth First by the severall degrees of subordinate perfections found in creatures which perfections whensoever extant in severall sorts of creatures be specifically or essentially distinct as namely the degree of vegetation is distinguished from that other next inferiour to it in all things that be destitute of life so again is the degree superiour of sensation from the inferiour of vegetation wherefore in like sort
of a spirit spiritually might peradventure be ascribed to the virtue or aptitude of the object but the understanding after a spiritual refined manner those objects that be grosse and materiall cannot be referred to any other thing then to the virtue of the faculty it self By this then it appears that in an eye corporeall there is a two-fold repugnancy against the seeing of a spirit viz. one because the power is materiall and therefore not intellective of any object at all spirituall or corporeall the other because every spirituall Entity is without the precincts of the visive faculty Wherefore on the contrary side the eye of the minde by the being in a state able to receive some notions of a spirit and to judge it to be an Entity devoid of matter may upon a two-fold evidence be determined to be spiritual Thus by these severall wayes the action of understanding in the Soul proves the incorruptibility thereof The first is by the being precisely intellective The second because intellective of spirituall entities The third because it understands materiall objects immaterially which act is done by abstracting of which act whether it be confused or distinct we are forthwith to consider more at large The second operation of the understanding is the knowing of spirituall things by abstraction from singularities and materiall objects after a manner immateriall and by penetrating into the quiddities or essences of things for of these conceal'd and hidden entities unto which our senses can have no accesse the soul of man gets some intelligence and attaineth of them notices though not perfect intuitive or comprehensive yet not contemptible or untrue neither are these essences temperatures as Basson and some others fondly and without probability do imagine as is elsewhere to be shewed A third is a reflection upon it self which acts are above the nature of matter as Albertinus Campanella in Phys and others doe suppose for certein Against abstraction some object that it is no perfection but rather an imperfection that manner of knowledge being confused But this objection is inefficacious for supposing the infirmity of humane understanding the force of our understanding things abstractedly is most perfect and distinct and of all other hath the least confusion in it though in such understandings as be above humane and are able with one view to comprehend abstraction is needlesse and no perfection As for humane understandings we finde by experience that the meaner and grosser they are the lesse they can abstract and indeed abstraction in the understanding is a subtle act and like to extraction in Chymistry which takes the purer parts from the faeculent and resolves bodies into their severall native parts which before did lie confused in one heape and mingled together For the preventing of objections we adde that there is a great and manifest difference betwixt a knowledge confused and an abstracted because the former of these two is done by making a commixture of the superiour differences with the inferiour that is to say of the genericall perfections with the specificall and individuall but the later is done by an intentionall or intellectuall separation of one from the other namely by the considering but one yet knowing more then one that is to say both the superiour and inferiour for we do notabstract from what we know not but from what we know so that according to the humane way of understanding this abstraction is not a confused way of knowledge but a distinct not an imperfect but an exquisite because by this the understanding doth as it were anatomize the object either pitching upon severall formalityes as they use to call them or else upon severall connotations to different effects as the Nominalls speak according to the different virtues conteined in the same object An abstractive knowledge makes Genus and Species by the drawing off from matter and singularity a confused does not so but fastens upon the inferiour degrees indistinctly and in grosse As for example a confused view if it perceive a figure or a tree does not distinguish the particulars as not whether it be round or triangular an Elme or an Oake but an abstractive knowledge supposes a particular sense of all for otherwise there could be no abstraction of one from the other Campanella in his Metaphysicks and some other also related by Carleton alias Compton disp 25. would have it that the eye abstracts though but a power materiall then namely when it sees confusedly as when it perceives for example a man but discernes not whether he be Socrates or Plato This objection is prevented already because the sense cannot abstract from what it sees not in particular nor yet draw off from individualls compleat or incompleat Againe the not-knowing of a perfection is not an abstraction from it and therefore the eye seeing colour and not sweetnesse doth not abstract from that sweetnesse as Campanella did imagine it to doe A fourth is the eminency of the acts of understanding which argue a principle nobler and higher than any mortall entity This argument is largely prosecuted by Lessius Mariana and Campanella and before these by Cicero A confirmation hereof is that some acts of humane understanding be inorganicall But Molinaeus in his Summe of Philosophy lately published will not agree to this objecting that it is contrary unto experience because saith he even at that time when the understanding doth abstract most and contemplates objects that be spirituall it makes them as it were materiall ascribing extension both to God and Angels circumscribing them in places and assigning lines and limits to them Againe there is nothing saith he in the understanding which hath not been formerly in the sense Thus objecteth he Our answer is to this Maxime of Philosophie that according to the learned Thom. de Argentina q. 3. Prologi ar 4. it is to be understood with limitation namely that whatsoever is in the understanding hath been formerly in the sense some way at least or other that is to say either immediatly or mediatly in it self or in the cause effect or signe It 's true accidents may enter by themselves into the sense so forward into the understanding but substances whether materiall or immateriall doe not so nor yet things absent in time or place whether they be substances or not Actions and events of ages past also of people absent of verityes supernaturall we know by testimonies as by signes and not by our senses immediatly we know a future Eclipse by the cause the soul of man by the effects and so also doe we know God namely by his word and by his works one as by a signe the other as by an effect neither hath God ever been known unto our senses Secondly we answer that the soul being in the middle region betwixt pure bodies without spirit and pure spirits without body as on the one side it cloathes pure spirits with some corporeall vestures so on the other it doth devest materiall objects of
the reprehender with greater force then it can be cast upon them by him or any man Now although it be a thing not evident that the spirits seeming to appear are really the souls of such or such deceased persons yet have we no reason to think otherwise but if that they are their good or evill Angells which by divine appointment do act in their behalf and likenesse yet even by that it will appear that those souls are still alive for God himself did often appear by such deputies and manifest himself to Moyses and Abraham by the apparition of his Angels But yet it is a thing no lesse reasonable to judge that they are humane spirits that make an apparition in themselves or at the least in their deputies then to judge that they are spirits Wherefore whoso question 's whether these appearing spirits be souls or no but rather deluding Devils putting on their likenesse may as well doubt whether on the contrary side those same Devils be really Devils and not the souls of men or again whether those living men whom our eyes daily do behold be really men or rather not some delusive apparitions I would fain learn why men contrary to the doctrine of Aristotle Epicurus should distrust their senses in judging every thing to be the same it seems unlesse they see some urgent reason to the contrary Surely in behalf of such apparitions there may be just reasons given because it is not unlikely that souls which had so much dealing in the world during the time of their habitation in the body and contracted so many obligations of justice might after death have something remaining here for them to rectifie and to give notice of unto the living whom it doth concern Besides say that they who appeared were Devils and not souls yet this alone would argue immortality for to Doggs and Horses or such like who have no relation to a future life neither Devils nor souls doe appear neither were it to any purpose that they should I add that if no returnes of souls were to be admitted but that being once gone from hence they were never to be heard of more many men would be afraid that indeed our soules were nothing but a breath or a slender exhalation which after it was once dissipated was never again to be drawn together and consequently that all the reasons brought for immortality were but sophisticall and found out to flatter us in that opinion for so indeed it fell out with Epicurean and wicked men who pleased themselves with Nō est agnitus qui sit reversus ab inferis There was never any known to have returned from the Dead which is as much as to say There were never any Ghosts or souls of men that did appear unto the living after death In the first Edition of this small Tract this argument of Apparitions brought up the rear but it pleased the Censurer of it in Oxford to dash it quite out though for what reason I do not know If it were because he counted all the narrations of apparitions to be fabulous he must give us leave to preferre before him so many faithfull witnesses who have avowed them Again although he esteemed them fabulous yet seeing all men of judgement did not so he might have left the argument to go as farre as it might and every reader to censure of it as he should see cause and not thus to impose laws upon other mens understandings and presume to put down his judgement as a rule to others But contrariwise if he scraped out this argument for fear such stories of apparitions might lead the way to some doctrines which he himself was not willing to admit this his way of proceeding I must tell him seems to me to relish more of craft then ingenuity and also to be so farre from reasonable as he who uses it may justly be compared to him who after a preposterous manner would deny the Premises therefore onely because he did not like the Conclusion or to an evil Astronomer who will not frame his Hypotheses according to his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or celestiall apparences but contrariwise correct his apparences according to his Hypotheses Wherefore our Censurer by this course of his seemed desirous to maintain what he did hold already to be true or false rather then to correct his errours and to take right information for beating out the truth We do acknowledge that the Law the Prophets and the Gospell well understood are sufficient to instruct us and again that for our ordinary intelligence and concernments we are not to expect messengers from the dead yet this will not inforce us to discredit all the testimonies of apparitions which time hath left us or to say that in all occasions they are fruitlesse for as Tostatus reasoneth although they would do no good upon the kindred of Dives which as it seems was hard-hearted yet they might upon others and again although they did not conferre to any living mans conversion and salvation yet they might rectifie some injustices and errours committed by the dead and this for the most part is the errand for which they pretend to come as Tyraeus and other writers teach us and of this Tostatus q. 89. in c. 16. Matth. and q. 54. in c. 17. recites an example happening in his own time and also teaches that at the transfiguration the soul of Moyses appeared upon mount Tabor CHAP. VIII The Catabaptists errour about the sleeping of Souls related and refuted HAving examined our Adversaries chief arguments brought by him for proving the soul's dying and mortality it remains that we take into consideration another errour one of no small affinity with this yea and in effect all one with it namely the sleeping of soules and their being in a state insensible from the first instant of their separation from their bodies untill the generall resurrection Such as maintain this errour not daring as Zanchius l. 2. de oper creat c. 8. notech openly to deny the immortality of mens souls because it seemed over plainly contradictory to the holy Scripture and to the judgements also of the gravest and wifest Philosophers and Divines do therefore deprive them of all sense knowledge or any other vitall operation and lay them to sleep untill the judgement day in which they are to be reunited to their bodies which time is to be the first of their awaking But indeed if this tenet of theirs be viewed diligently we shall finde that this pretended sleep is nothing else but a direct death and onely different in the name and the reason is because for a spirit to be destitute of all vitall and intellectuall operation is nothing else but to be dead seeing that life is nothing else in the soul besides the perpetuall motion or action of it Wherefore in consideration and acknowledgement of this incessant activity Cicero and others delivered that the souls of men were made of fire celestiall and unextinguible borrowed
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 soul is false See Soto of this in 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 2. Rat. 3. for it is a living co-agent with it and a partaker both in the good and evil actions and 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 soul make God the authour of sin more than the generation of it that is to say not at all for still the soul 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 soul yet he holds it probable that it comes by procreation and that from the first instance of conception the seed is ammated with the rationall soul which Doctrine of his by his leave inferrs mortality for whatsoever is generated is corruptible and is to go out 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 Hypom 4. c. 10. as also in his Paralipomena c. 7. n. 3. ad Hypomn. 5. 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 Fruits even out of the several natures of their composition which God hath appointed for them and not our of the free will of God immediately without any farther 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 Souls 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 seems neither to be Philosophicall nor true wherefore the immortality of Souls and Angels is not to be reared upon this weak foundation according to which a Fly may be as much immortall as an Angel one by nature according to Sennertus having no preeminence 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 Sennertus Hypomn. 4. ca. 10. lib. de consens Chymic cum Arist Galeno c. 9. he will needs have the sperme alwayes animated with a reasonable soul but then consider how many more souls are cast away without any bodies organicall and humane then are actuated and preserved by bodies I ask what must become of these innumerable souls must they perish or have bodies made them at the Resurrection 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 Again why does the soul depart from the body but onely because it leaves to be organicall why then or with what probability can we imagine the soul is in the inorganicall sperme certainly with none at all The winde that did drive Sennertus upon this inhospitall shore 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 soul his reason is because the soul only is to build an house fit for it self 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 parents 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 to performe that duty Argent com in 1. Aphoris Hippocr as Argenterius also teacheth which entity hath derived to it from the generatour so much natural strength and cunning as to make a sufficient architect for the effecting of this work and all this may be done with the onely form of seed without any animation of it with a soul Thus it is likely that the Acorn for example without any more form than of an Acorn collects sit particles out of the elements and materials about it and by a virtue derived from the tree on which it grew forms out and fashions the body of an Oake and for the effecting of this work the seed participates much of the nature of the tree or plant and hath ordinarily much of the same virtue Wherefore in this abstruse question or quaere 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 seed's own form 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 seems to be where the semen of the Cock being cherished and stirred up by the ambient and incumbent warmth of the Hen is that which changes the egge and forms 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 Cock the soul or essence of a Cock 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 soul to multiply another we confesse it to be true yet this not to be done by creating of the younger by the elder souls or by the giving of them new entities but rather by doing some other act out of which these forms should connaturally follow as materiall forms 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 and 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 himself
THE GRAND PREROGATIVE OF HUMANE NATURE Namely The Souls naturall or native immortality and freedome from corruption shewed by many arguments and also defended against the rash and rude conceptions of a late presumptuous Authour who hath adventured to impugne it By G. H. Gent. Now first published according to the perfect Copie and the Authours mind Math. 22.32 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 LONDON Printed by ROGER DANIEL and are to be sold by Antony Williamson at the Queens Armes in St. Pauls Church-yard An. 1653. THE PREFACE SO great and sovereigne to Man hath been the benignity of indulgent Nature as that she hath not only bestowed upon his soul 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 on 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 acknowledge of old by the Heathenish and Pagan Nations of which thing we in the Work 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 in this same verity Against these powerfull impulsives and clearer notions of truth the adverse party hath nothing to oppose but mere surmises or suspicions such namely as the Authour of the Book of Wisedome out of their own mouths recordeth saying There hath not any one been known to have returned from below 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 then these is driven as by a storme into dark and doubtfull cogitations touching the souls mortality and so also 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 even granting the soul 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 self at length to nothing burning or wasting out it 's own 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 term or point presently and naturally to extinguish or return to nothing of which vain phantasy we are to consider more hereafter But if suspicions may come to be examined we shall find that there be other sort of them perswading the souls mortality that seeme more hollow and deceitful 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 for the present 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 drink and play thy fill There 's after death nor good nor ill Doubtlesse these later perswaders seem 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 namely as well for concluding of mortality 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 dark imaginations will not be allowed for evidence or be able to cast the businesse either way To these other proofs which after I alleadge I adde this one which I have placed in the frontispiece 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 there surrection were convinced and not onely they but this Authour also against whom we deale for the place proves the soul's 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 soul there might result an Abraham again if he be the God also of the living then must his soul continue living without any intermission from death for as without a body there is no Abraham so without a soul 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 according to this same supposition the soul must have a revivall and refuscitation for the which we have no warrant any where and feign it we must not or if we do it will want weight and be rejected It follows then that the soul of man after the departure of it from the body must either alwayes live or never and so by consequence seeing the soul must live once more it must live alwayes that is to say not onely at the resurrection as this Authour feigneth but continually from the time of the separation to the time of the reunion and so after everlastingly And this is the conclusion was intended And thus much touching the argument of the Treatise following Now touching the Adversary I am to let you know that if the Readers had not deserved much more regard then he and besides if the matter had not required some elucidation more then his objections did an answer I had been wholly silent and spared all this labour I have taken Peradventure it may seem to some that over and above an answer given to this erroneous Authour the paines bestowed in opening the cause of the soul's indeficiency and also the tracing out the severall paths which lead unto the places from whence arguments are to be raised for the proving
of speaking this same separation of it be no death or true manner of dying 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 do 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 again Death and Corruption is nothing but the disunion or dissolution of them and in no wise the annihilation according as this wise Authour would perswade us As for the article of the Resurrection it proves nothing against the perpetuity of the soul for we never read of any resurrection besides that of the body wherefore to averre a resurrection of souls were a grand foolery and a doctrine never debateable or heard of amongst Christians till this silly Authour came to teach it And so much for his first chapter CHAP. III. Scripture no way a favourer of the souls mortality HIs places cited out of Scripture in favour of his errour are so impertinent as that it were no small piece of folly to examine them one by one They all of them signifie that man shall die or sometimes that for example Joseph or Simeon is not as Gen. 42.36 all which how they are to be expounded and understood may sufficiently appear by that which hath been said in the precedent chapter and how again they make nothing at all against the souls 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 soul he had and what lastly was one of the first difficulties that troubled him and stirred him up unto a sollicitous enquiry for certainly this one verity of the immortality of mans soul is that which is to order mans designs to regulate his actions and to put life and vigour into them this being a truth most fundamentall Wee see this one was it which moved Clemens Rom. l. 1. recogn if he be the true Authour of that which passeth under his name to a serious inquiry and care for the finding out what he was to do whom to consult what to esteem most and in fine what to fear or hope most and how to order all the passages of his life This is the question that usually troubles men first of all till a resolution be had suffereth their hearts not to be at quiet every man at first suspiciously as Solomon did asking of himself as Seneca in Troade gallantly expresseth saying Verum est an timidos fabula decipit Vmbras corporibus vivere conditis Cum conjux oculis imposuit manum Supremusque dies Solibus obstitit Et tristes cineres Vrna coercuit 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 aera Et nudum tetigit subdita fax latus Is it a truth or is' t our fears Have buzz'd a fable in our ears That mans hovering spirits do live And their interred corps survive When grieved consorts hands do close Their eyes and their last dayes oppose Our bright Hyperions beamy light And drowns the slender shades in night Then when our bones to ashes burn To be confin'd within an urn Be not the funeralls our fate But there must be a longer date For wretched man Or doth he die Intirely and intombed lie Or may he not forthwith consume And vanish all in slender fume Then when his wandring spirit flies And mingles with the aiery skies And when the dismall funerall torch His side insensible doth scorch After this sort do anxious and afflicted spirits oftentimes argue and dispute within themselves laying before their eyes all the doubts and difficulties imaginable before they descend to the making of any conclusion at all or to the determining of any setled doctrine Thus and no otherwise did Solomon when first revolving in his thoughts the matter of the souls condition and touching upon the various suspicions of men concerning it with no small sense and anguish of mind at length Eccles c. 12. drawing to a conclusion he determines saying Let the dust return 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 I adde according to good Expositours that Solomon in this place representeth not what he himself did judge nor what a rationall man ought to judge but rather what Epicureans and voluptuous persons did or were wont to judge according either to the desires or at least to the apparences of sense for according to them man and beast do breathe out their lasts alike but this judgement of theirs Solomon absolutely condemns as appeareth plainly by that which before hath been alledged out of him CHAP. IV. His argument out of reason viewed and examined WHat the severall fancies were of heathen Philosophers touching the nature and definition of the soul 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 wild conceits all or most of all at least of the noblest and the best Philosophers have taught the immortality of the soul it self howsoever in other businesses concerning it they might sometimes disagree Permanere animos arbitramur saith Cicero Tuscul l. 1. consensu nationum omnium qua in sede maneant qualesque sint ratione discendum est and again in his Hortensius as witnesseth Saint Augustine l. 14. c. 19. de Trinitate Antiquis Philosophis hisque maximis longeque clarissimis placuit quod aeternos ammos divinosque habeamus We are perswaded by the consent of all nations that souls remain but must learn of reason of what quality they are and in what places they remain Again in Somnio Scipionis he determineth saying Infra Lunam nihil est nisi mortale caducum praeter animos generi hominum Deorum munere datos Beneath the Moon there is nothing which is not corruptible excepting souls alone bestowed upon mankind by the munificence of the Gods Thus Cicero who in his book de senectute delivers himself more at large as also in the first book of his Tusculan questions and also bringeth reasons for what he saith This assertion of Cicero for consent of Nations and Philosophers in this truth hath been shewed to the eye by the great diligence and learning of Augustinus Steuchus commonly called Eugubinus in the 9 book of his excellent work de perenni Philosophia in which he voucheth to this purpose the authorities of Phereâ—ides Syrus who as Cicero witnesseth was the first that delivered
out neither could he sweeten him so fully but that he smells still of the hogge-sty and that also so strongly as he is not fit to enter into the Senate-house of Philosophy or to have a voice therein allowed him What was the occasion of his errour is needlesse to examine but the errour it self and the reasons brought for it by Lucretius are exactly refuted by the same Gassendus as also his other impious doctrines Neither again can the words of Pomponatius and Cromoninus be of any weight although they be men much adored by some superstitious followers of Aristotle for if we consider these two men attentively we shall find them to be wooden Idols because their chief talent lay onely in canvasing severall texts of Aristotle and foot by foot tracing out his senses and wayes of discoursing so that in fine they are rather Commentatous then Philosophers a Philosophers office being to prove his doctrines by reason and strength of argument which way these two never take but yet doubtlesse would have done if their habilities had served them for it Wherefore these men are of too low a classe to be made Judges here and have not law enough in them for the deciding of the controversie in hand After these Philosophers of name which I have alledged as favourers and asserters of immortality I produce the whole companies of the Esseni the Druides the Magi the Gymnosophists the Brachmans all which were tribes and Schools of selected spirits that in severall ages and regions did professe Philosophy and all subscribed to this one truth as we may find in Pliny Caesar Josephus Solinus Mela Philostratus Diodorus Porphyrius and others Neither can it be any prejudice to the authority of all these that during the night of Gentilisme an Epicurus or a Dicaearchus though men of note should stumble and fall into an errour but now after the sun is up it were a great shame for a Pomponatius or a Cremoninus to fall into a ditch and teach such doctrine as the wisest of the most early ages judged to be erroneus and absurd But now by the way I note how sublimely most of these heathen wise men did Philosophize when as they conclude the souls originall to be from heaven and how much above the low pitch of certain depressed spirits of this age who after their continuall poring into objects materiall and raking in the mudde of corruptible things will needs draw out of that dirt the nobler substances of our souls and natures intellectuall by assigning for them no more perfect principle then generation of which number this sorry Authour against whom we now deal is one yea and one also of the grossest that ever medled about this businesse as by his demeanour in it doth appear Hierocles in expresse terms determines saying It seems saith he that God himself produced the severall souls of every particular man and left the souls of Beasts to be produced by the hand of nature according to the judgements of Plato and of Timaeus the Pythagorean So he com in caerm aurea Pythagorae pag 133. of the Greek and Latine Edition of Paris Anni 1583. I know well that amongst these ancients the word Anima or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is equivocall because sometimes it is taken onely for an exhalation of purer bloud sometimes again for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mens or Animus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which words the ruling the spirituall and intellective and lastly the immortall part of man is signified and not any materiall or fading exhalation which here by the way I note for the avoiding of exceptions and mistakings Let us come now unto our Authour who would gladly father upon Aristotle Nemesius and Ambrosius Paraeus that the soul is all the externall and internall faculties of man jointly considered Which charge is strange seeing it is well known that Aristotle defines the soul after no such way but saith it is Actus corporis Organici and a substance by which we live have sense and do understand and if a substance then can it not receive intension and remission as every young Logician hath learned The ancient and learned writer Nemesius whom the adversary alledgeth doth no way favour him First because at that time both he and sundry others did hold that rationall souls were created before their bodies but the faculties organicall and externall could not be then created Secondly because l. de natura hom c. 1. he delivers doctrine diametrically opposite to that for which this Authour doth alledge him Moreover saith Nemesius the soul is a substance because susceptible of contrarieties it is a subject but harmony a qualitie Now substance and quality be things distinct and therefore the soul from harmony and though it may have harmony in it yet is it not therefore any harmony no more then it is a virtue therefore because it is partaker of virtue Galen determines nothing of this point witnessing in his book de Demonst that he hath affirmed nothing of the soul yet that he doth say sheweth him inclinable to judge it to be a temperature therefore because the difference in manners does follow it and this he labours to confirm out of Hippocrates If this be so then doubtlesse he holds it to be mortall though not all but so much onely of it as is devoid of reason for of that portion of it he in these words makes a question ...... But that the soul cannot be a complexion or temperature of the body it appeareth hence namely because every body c. Hitherto Nemesius whose doctrine as we may see is flatly opposite to the Adversaries His pretension to Ambrose Paraeus a late writer of Chiturgery is as wide from the mark as this other before of Nemesius was as may appear plainly by the perusall of c. 5. l. 1. c. 11. l. 23. wherein his doctrine is very good and also consonant to that which is delivered commonly and we here defend Wherefore let us now hear further All the faculties of man are mortall as well those peculiar to man as those other which are common to him with beasts and if all those with his corpulent matter compleating man be proved mortall then the invention of the soul upon that ground vanisheth which thus I prove All elementary compositions or temperatures are mortall But mans faculties à minore ad majus are temperatures Ergo mortall The minor is denied namely that all mans faculties be temperatures for to instance neither the understanding nor the will be temperatures and yet are principall faculties of man He proves the minor That which is subject to intension and remission is a temperature But such are all mans faculties yea those of reason consideration science c. All that distinguisheth man from beast is augmented by learning education c. lessened by negligence idlenesse and quite nullified by madnesse Ergo. Of this killing argument there be but two propositions falle that is to say both the major and the
the soul is not neither can man kill it and why I pray you but because it is immortall This objection can never be solved neither will all his trifling about the signification of the word Hell serve his turn for let Hell be what it will and where it will yet still it runs that the soul cannot be killed But what the true and formall signification of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is we way find expresly declared by Eustathius in 1. Iliad and Anastasius Sinaita quaest 90. contrary to the dreams of this man and in particular that formally it does not signifie the Grave and if it did yet it could be no place for souls that remained unkilled and quick for it were a very cruell course to bury souls alive or to cast them quick into the grave Moreover that there is no Hell before the Resurrection is more than he hath proved or any other for him or else that none shall see God till then even in the mean time abstracting from the controversie that is agitated betwixt the Schismatick Greeks on the one side and the Orthodox Greeks and Latines on the other for the most schismaticall Greeks did not deny Hell or Heaven before the day of judgment but onely that till then neither all men nor devils were made happy in the one or tormented in the other for the Schismaticks themselves acknowledge that the Martyrs have the prerogative of the first Resurrection that is to say that they are happy before the Resurrection of their bodies and before the rest of the just or which in substance is all one they are admitted into Heaven and to the clear vision of God or again whether or no they will allow the vision of God to be the happinesse of the blessed yet felicity is Heaven wheresoever it is or in whatsoever good thing it consists and again eternall torments appointed for the reprobate be truely a Hell whether it be in the centre of the earth or else in some other region This day saith Christ unto the Thief thou shalt be with me in Paradise but not in body therefore in soul alone and therefore also his soul still lived after his bodies dying He answers that Christ himself was not in Paradise that day But this is a foppery for though Christs humanity was three nights and dayes in the lower parts of the earth yet his Divinity was that day every where and besides his soul was happy still and carried its Paradise along with it so that the good Thief might be with Christ that day and be in Paradise also as the sacred text doth assure us he was Christ said Luke 22. Father into thy hands I commend my spirit And Steven Acts 7. said Lord Jesus receive my spirit But if the spirit died there was nothing to be received He answers that his spirit was his life This shift was frivolous for his life was to be lost and destroyed and so was not commended into the hands of any Apoc. 6.10 11. I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God c. and they cried with a loud voice c. Therefore they were then extant and alive or else they could not have been seen nor cry But it is certain that one impiety cannot be defended without more and therefore as formerly he depraves the Scripture saying not with the Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The souls of the slain or of the men slain but with such miscreants as himself The slain souls and that they cried but like the bloud of Abel But if it were meant no otherwise then thus the bodies might then have cried also as well as the souls The Text saith it was the souls of the slain and if the souls also had been slain the Text would not have uttered it in that manner as now it doth for it were an impertinent manner of speaking to talke of the souls of the slain if the souls had been slain and dead as well as the bodies The other places as that of Ecclesiastes I have urged as also the other of the Apostle who desired to be dissolved that he might be with Christ and this later I have enforced so farre as I suppose it convinces and is unanswerable as the rest also are Behold here by example of this poore silly man how bold and sawcy ignorance is growne since the time that darknesse fell upon the face of the earth for is not this with Simon Magus Acts 13.10 of set purpose to pervert the right wayes of our Lord and to thrust men headlong into perdition But setting complaints aside which even when they are necessary be not gratefull let us examine the later remnants of this Authours follies and so leave him if it may be to repentance for them yet first take into consideration some other verityes which concerne this argument CHAP. VI. The rationall Soul of man ingenerable and incorruptible VVE have seen already that by the consent of the wisest of all times and nations the rationall soul is not subject to corruption and that it hath not a period of time assigned it beyond which it must not passe nor that it may simply leave to be and be annihilated as it were by the principles of nature it self they not requiring any longer conservation from the beneficence of the first cause but contrariwise to be deserted by it as a late Authour vainly and without any probability at all imagined much according to the old phantasie of the Stoicks who as Cicero l. 1. Tusc not without indignation and signes of derision rehearseth Vsuram nobis largiuntur tanquam cornicibus diù mansuros aiunt animos semper negant They allow us a date as they do to Crowes they grant our souls shall continue long but that for ever they deny it dealing in like manner with Souls as some did with Oracles whose silence they ascribe to no other cause than impotency of speaking any longer the spirit that fed them exspiring of it self as being wasted and consumed with age One would judge saith Cicero these men spake not of Oracles but of falsedges which by long keeping would grow unsavoury and stale Certainly these that judge thus of Souls and spirituall substances make an estimate of them as they would do of trees whose timber is of severall solidity and duration as if some of them were like Cedar wood or Oake which would last long others as Chesnut or Elme which be not of so long continuance others again like Ash or Maple which rotte within a while This is light Philosophy worthy of derision more than confutation and is a device not acknowledged by our Authours before alleadged who give no limitation to the life of souls but determine absolutely a perpetuity For my part before such time as I can assent to their Philosophy in this point I desire to be satisfied by them what reason they can shew why the first cause should at a certain date
seems to be an Entity not capable of being produced by generation Secondly from the nature of the things out of which it is to be educed Thirdly by the inhability of those actions which are exercised in generation for the production of any spirituall substance or intellective faculty although the soul in it self were a thing producible and that the elements might afford sufficient materialls for the composing of it For the first I argue thus No entity which is simple and unmixt can be produced by generation but such is the intellective part of man therefore that part is not to be produced by generation and if ingenerable then is it incorruptible also That it is simple and unmixt needs no probation because it is a thing wholly improbable that an intellective power or substance should be a temperature or mixture as our Adversary conceived it to be for though a temperature and mixture may remotely or a farre off concerne understanding in as much as they belong unto the Organs yet is not an intellective Entity therefore a compound or a bodily temperature as by and by we are futher to declare That no simple Entity is producible by generation is evident because the effect or terminus of that action is the composition or compound which thing it performeth not by producing the Entity of the parts but by making a substantiall union between them and by the making those severall entities to be parts which although they were before yet were they not parts of that compounded body which by this newer generation did accrue Besides this is the cleare and expresse doctrine of Aristotle in sundry places of his works For the second head of probation I affirme that no lumpish matter or earthly concretion can yield materialls for the building up of an understanding or minde Chymists by their curious arts of dissolving bodies have found out salts sulphures oyles spirits quintessences elixirs they again can draw tinctures and magisteries and out of metalls a vitriol which shall contain in it the essence of them and have the virtue of transmutation of other metalls into their own nature but yet never any knew how to extract out of them any one dramme of understanding or to fill the least phiall with it nor could they ever finde metall or oar which contained wit and understanding in it Arnoldus de villa nova as Mariana recounteth in his Spanish story of Spain attempted by mixtures and furnaces to make a man but his art failed him and he was confounded all his ingredients could not afford him an intellective spirit wherewith he might be animated and informed You will say Sense cannot be extracted any more than reason True but sense arising from things divisible may come by a resultancy from things united as being materiall which our reason being immateriall cannot especially in the principall acts thereof which be wholly inorganicall as by name the acts of judgement be touching objects immateriall and à fortiori all such of them as transcend the spheare of Nature Cicero toucheth chiefely upon this point and his argumentation seemeth to be very solid and irresistible if pressed to the uttermost The third head of argumentation is from the improportion and imbecillity of the actions of humane generation For first the actions of vegetation and sense are of an inferiour nature and so unable to produce any thing higher and perfecter then themselves and for this cause each entity is to be produced by actions that be of its own classe and order namely per actiones congeneres cognatas therefore the soul if it were to be generated could not be so otherwise than by actions of understanding or of the intellective but it is certain that generation is not performed by acts of wit or understanding but contrariwise by acts of vegetation and sense which actions be of an inferiour degree and a man generates with his body and not with his minde so that the generation of man is no more any act elicite of reason than his eating or walking is which actions be no acts of the understanding though prescribed and directed by it Now though the act of the divine understanding be subsistent yet the acts of created understandings be only accidents for such and no better is the verbum mentis in all created understandings humane or Angelicall and therefore humane understandings beget no understandings nor any children like themselves It followeth then that the soul neither generates a soul nor again is generated by any and for this cause must be incorruptible and by the principles of nature immortall By this it appeareth that the non-generation or traduction of the soul is a verity so evident that by it the immortality may be proved and it stands not in need to be it self proved by immortality Besides all this it is plain that every substance incorporall being voyd of composition physicall hath no passive principles of corruption in it and therefore is not susceptible of any physicall generation or corruption nor is resolvable into parts and this argument is urged by Scaliger excercit 307. n. 20. Again the soul hath no contrariety of qualities within it nor is there any thing abroad which is contrary thereunto I know well that many things may cease to be and yet not by corruption as for example sundry sorts of accidents and the souls of Beasts but yet these are consequents of corruption for therefore the soule for example of a Beast perishes because the organicall body which it inhabited was destroyed or corrupted and again therefore an accident ceased to be because by a corruptive action of a contrary agent it was thrust out of doors and had nothing left it whereupon to rest no basis to sustein it any longer And by this the argument of Petrus Molinaeus l. 9. Phys c. 12. is answered by which he laboured to infringe the ancient doctrine namely That every immateriall substance and incorporeall was incorruptible and immortall and that consequently the soul of man being such a substance could not be corrupted or otherwise naturally cease to be of which point see Merat tom 1. tract de Ang. disp 9. sect 2. and Bagotius tom 2. Instit l. 1. disp 4. c. 8. To tell us here as some new masters do that a spirit may be compounded of a certain spiritual matter and of a form thereunto correspondent and that therefore every spirituall substance may not be simple but contrariwise resolvable into parts essentiall according as corporeall substances be is to tell dreames and fancies of the night instead of probabilities and therefore desiring them to dream again and to enjoy their own imaginations I leave them to their rest But howsoever this new device of theirs might have some truth in Angels which are compleat substances and abstracted from corporeall materiality yet in the soul of man it could not because the soul it self is a form a substance incompleat and therefore a prodigious thing it must needs
morte immort Ferrariens Philippus Faber Collegium Complut others especially Albertinus Tom. 1. Corol. Alexander Valignanus apud Possevinum Tom. 1. Biblioth Select Thomas Carmelita l. 11. c. 12. de conversione Gentium Bagotius tom 2. Instit d. 4. Menasseh Ben Israel de Resurr Mortuorum à c. 8. Zanchy de oper Creat l. 2. c. 8. Fromundus l. 4. de Anima Carleton in Philosophia tract de Anima q. 10. Morisanus in Philosophia tract de Anima Quaest 5. Petrus Gassendus tom 1. de Philosophia Epicuri where he musters up all the objections made by Lucretius and confutes them all which men of Learning did not only hold the reasonable Soul to be an immortall substance but also that thus much might be proved of it by naturall reason Thom. Campanella in his Metaph. very copiously This high preeminence in the Soul of immortality we trace out chiefly by the operations of it as by so many steps which lead unto the knowledge thereof because according to the rule in Philosophy sicut se habet res ad esse sic ad operari sicut ad operari sic ad esse By the nature of any thing we may search out the operations and again by the operations the nature One of the chief operations of the soul is the act of understanding by the indication of which we learn it to be immateriall and again by the being so not to be corruptible or dissolvable by any naturall agent or which is all one to be immortall These acts or operations intellectuall do by three wayes prove the immortality First because they simply are intellectuall Secondly because they terminate upon objects spirituall and are apprehensive of them Thirdly because they fall even upon materiall objects after a manner immateriall First according to Aquin. 1. p. q. 14. a. 1. Valentia ibid. Raynaud Nat. Theol. d. 2. q. 2. a. 3. Aquin. l. 10. con Gent. c. 44. and others no power or substance that is not devoid of matter can be intellectuall nor again any object directly and immediately intelligible which is not also immateriall the reason is because corporeity or matter darkens the power and confines it to singularities The words of Petrus de Aquila called Scotellus 1. Sent. dist 35. q. 1. are very pertinent and these By how much saith he any thing is freed from matter by so much is it both objectively and also actively intelligible because according to Avicenna and Aristotle Immateriality is the cause of Intellection But God is the most remote from matter and therefore is the most of all intellective Wherefore since matter and corporeity are over-grosse to admit of intellection and that the soul of man is intellective it can be neither materiall nor corporeall but contrariwise of nature elevated above matter that is to say spirituall and incorruptible Secondly The soul doth not onely understand mean objects but the highest and the purest of all that is to say all objects spirituall and God himself I grant to Aureolus that the object and the power need not be alike in nature and therefore it is no formall consequence that because the object is spirituall therefore the power must be so but yet neverthelesse the materiall consequence is very good because it is wholly necessary that the power intellective should be free from all those impediments of understanding whether like or unlike which are situate within the sphere of the object or without it and that moreover as Pet. Aureolus 2. Sent. dist 19. himself confesses there ought to be some resemblance or proportion between the object and the power at least quoad rationem cognoscentis cognoscibilis but between a materiall power and a spirituall object there is none First because the power is too low and gross Secondly because a spirituall entity is situate without the sphere or compasse of the object as for example an Angell is quite without the compasse of any eye corporeall because he is such an object as is not visible but intelligible onely that is to say perceptible onely by a power that is higher then any sense and properly intellective which the eye is not because materiall and a spirit is therefore imperceptible to our sight and beyond the lines of the object because the object of the sight is colour figure magnitude c. none of which are in a spirit And though as Arriaga teacheth in some kinde a corporeall agent may act upon a spirit for a body united to a soul as it is in man according as it is severally disposed may transmit something upon the soul cause alterations in it contristate or rejoice it yet neverthelesse can it not do any thing by way of vision because the soul hath nothing in it wherewith to terminate the sight in which case it must be wholly invisible even although it were no spirit but some other kind of entity as namely a sound is which though it partake of materiality yet is it invisible and therefore imperceptible by the eye though not by another sense For this cause it seems improbable that any corporeal eye can be enabled to see the Deity by means of any elevation or sublevation whatsoever contrary to the opinion of a late learned Grecian Leo Allatius l. de consen Eccl. Occid Orient As then one reason why an eye corporeall cannot see a spirit is because the organ of vision is corporeall so on the other side one reason why a soul may be sensible of a spirit is because the soul is spirituall and thereby prepared to receive an impression from it and also is conformably to the object a power intellective as the same object is intelligible I said before that a sound cannot be seen but I add now that it may be seen easier then any spirit can because a sound is material and therefore one degree nearer to visibility then a spirit and for this cause needing no intellective faculty to apprehend it as every spirit doth so that against the eyes seeing of a spirit there be two impediments whereas against the seeing of a sound there is but one Out of all this I deduce that if the Object be spirituall the Faculty perceiving must be no lesse Thirdly the soul doth not entertain materiall objects after a material manner but contrariwise after a manner immateriall for it abstracts them from the dross of matter the grossnesse of singularity Now it is a certainty that Vnumquodque recipitur secundū modum recipientis Every thing is received according to the form of the recipient not according to the own wherefore seeing the manner of being is correspondent to the manner of operation seeing again that the manner of the souls operation even upon things materiall is immateriall therefore the manner of being of it must be also immateriall The impression declares the figure of the seal If then the souls impression upon material objects be spirituall the soul it self is also spirituall The understanding
their materiality namely by conceiving them conformably unto it self that is to say after a manner abstracted and immateriall declaring thereby the spirituality of it's being for it is as great a signe of a spirituall Being to understand a matter immaterially as it is to understand a spirit that hath no matter Thirdly I answer that although our power apprehensive does attire spiritual substances in formes corporeall by reason of the imaginative faculty upon which it borders yet the judging and discursive faculties do not so for these two cast of all figures and resemblances corporeall determining Angels for example to be spirits purely and devoid of all figure and corporeity as also in like sort that privations though apprehended as positive entities yet are not so in so much as the soul by meanes of judgement and discourse goes further then the phantasy and findes out truths which the phantasy could not tell it by thus surmounting forms corporeall shewes her independency upon the body and that some of her acts be inorganicall By this then it appeares that the apprehension of spirituall objects under lineaments corporeall is but the first enterteinment of them which though it do argue some imperfection in the soul concerning her manner of being yet not in the being it self Wherefore as on the one side this imperfect way of apprehension argues the soul to be in a degree inferiour unto Angels or pure Intelligences so on the other side the acts of judgement and of discourse which it doth exercise afterward do sufficiently evict that it is in a degree superiour to corporeall entities I exemplify for declaration sake God when he first arrives in our understanding by the out-portalls of simple apprehensions appeares unto us in the habite of a body an Angel in the likenesse of a man Time drest up in wings in his hands a sithe and houre-glasse Death like a raw-bon'd sire armed with a dart c. but forthwith Judgement and Discourse do waite upon them dismissing Apprehension and being thus stepped in devest this Time for example pull of his strange disguize bid him lay down his sithe clippe his wings and break his houre-glasse and to appeare in no other likenesse but his own that is to say without colours or lineaments corporeall and thus having disrobed him of his borrowed attire the soul judges of him as he is and gathers new verities of him by discurring And as the understanding proceeds in this one example so it does in others of the same nature thus the difficulty which Melinaeus made hath found out a solution A fifth head of probation is from the appetite of man that can be satiated with nothing but eternity the desire of which is universall and infinite This desire being generall must needs be from Nature and therefore right and not a vicious rapacity or greedinesse as Pliny seems to make it and so being right cannot be frustrate This argument is urged earnestly by Alex. Valignanus l. contra Japonios apud Possevinum parte 1. Biblioth l. 10. c. 4. Thomas Carmelita l. 11. de salute omnium Gentium procur c. 12. and by sundry other learned men and it seems to be very efficacious because this same appetite of perpetuity is very vehement restlesse and incessant and besides universall yea Pliny himself acknowledgeth as much Wherefore as from the generall and pressing appetite of meat we do inferre rightly a convenient provision of sustenance ordered by nature so in like sort from this ingrafted longing after a perpetuity we may inferre no lesse rightly a provision of immortality ordeined for us One Pontius a late Scotist in his Philosophia universa secundum mentem Scoti excepteth against this argument and divers others also with whom not being willing to wrangle we returne him no other answer but this viz. that he who is more in love with the determinations of any one Master be he never so eminent then he is with truth especially in doctrines of concernment is not an Eagle of the right breed nor deserves the name of a Philosopher It may be here objected that if an appetite were a good argument to prove a satisfaction it would prove we should never dye because against death man hath a great and naturall aversion I graunt it proves that either we shall not dye or else at least should not have died if we had remained in that state of innocency in which Adam was created for death entred into the world onely by sinne but this punishment of death is not of the soul but of man and againe the death of man is no more but a separation of soul and body out of which the death of the soul does not follow but that of the body onely for although a body cannot live without a soul yet no reason can be given why a soul cannot live without a body nay on the contrary side though we may easily understand how a soul may be annihilated yet it is a thing hardly intelligible how it should dy The soul is a form assistent as well as an informant and therefore may well subsist without an actuall informing It appeares that this appetite is naturall First because it is universall and followes the whole species Secondly because it cannot be supprest from breaking out into actuall and vehement longings after immortality out of which it followes first that immortality is a thing possible because nature does not incline us to impossibilities secondly that the appetite is right and rationall and cannot be erroneous as Scotus did object it might for at least in the generalities the works of nature be the works of a high intelligence thirdly that this immortality is not onely possible to be obteined but also shall be atteined Neither if this argument from naturall appetite be a good one would it follow thence as Abulensis in c. 22. Matth. q. 224. conceiveth it would namely that the Resurrection would be a naturall effect and might be proved by reason this I say doth not follow because as Aquinas teacheth 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 1. lib. de veritate q. 24. a. 10. ad 1. in supplement q. 75. a. 3. Ferrariensis l. 4. con Gen. c. 79. the inclination of nature and her power be both of one latitude and therefore because no naturall efficient is able to reunite a body once separated nature does not incline unto it and so not unto the resurrection Wherefore that unto which nature does incline us is onely to a continuance of the soul with the body and not to a restitution of it after it is once separated from it in so much that if any longing do remaine still in man to have a body by way of resurrection it is but as hote embers the remnants of an ancient fire It is then in this case as it is in the desiring of having all our limbs perpetually entire for if by chance any be cut off as it is not then in the power of nature
now but of others also long lasting pleasures of obscenity and other such things full of luxury and folly So writeth Theophanes But this man who will seem a Christian might have learned out of the Gospel a felicity of an higher strain one purely refined from all dregs of basenesse and carnality and that the blessed shall neither marry nor be married but live like the Angels in Heaven not enjoying the felicity of a swine but a celestiall Wherefore leaving Mahomet and other beasts with him to enjoy such a felicity as they deserve and feigne unto themselves I passe unto our Authour's last folly which is his calling it a Riddle that the soul immortall is all of it in all and again all in every part wondring how this should be and holding it a meer fiction and thing impossible But I for my part do not wonder that a man of so grosse a wit and narrow a capacity as he in this book hath shewed himself should not understand this Doctrine or saying especially if he will judge of the nature of indivisible presences by those that are divisible as it seems he does Yet I have cause to wonder why so stupid and so sorry a fellow as this is should dare to hold it to be a Riddle or impossible onely because he with his small with is not able to understand it as if forsooth nothing were possible to Nature or to God the Authour of Nature saving that alone which he understands how it can be done I am now quite weary of this man and sick with raking so long in such a heap of dirt and therefore at this instant I leave him to bethink himself about making a timely recantation Now turning with delight unto my Reader to solace and refresh my self after all this travaile I desire him to look into Hierocles Commentary upon the Golden Verses ascribed to Pythagoras in which he seemeth to have discovered the original of this pernicious errour touching the souls mortality What availes it saith 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 mind 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 souls 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 by a perswasion that the soul 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 judgment should be inflicted on them for a wicked man is loath to think his soul 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 himself as holding it fit that such a wicked soul 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 souls after this life He said as Cicero relateth l. 1. Tuscul there were two different pathes or voyages of souls at their departure from the bodies for all such as with humano vices had contaminated themselves and were delivered wholly up to lust with which as with domestick 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 that life which is led 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 himself 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 mind which though it be small in bulke and weight yet in power and excellency doth furpasse 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 sinall 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 steps and before that black day come to help us for the making our preparations before-hand that so with better hopes of safety we may meet out 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 no consideration so powerfull and efficacious as that one of the high perfection of mans soul and the immortall nature and condition of it for as Cicero observeth l. 1. de legibus Qui seipsum nôrit primùm aliquid sentiet se habere divinum ingeninmque in se suum sicut simulacrum aliquod dedicatum putabit tantóque munere Deorum semper aliquid dignum faciet sentiet He that doth know himself 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 foul inhabits with any unworthy or ignoble actions Without all doubting there is
no man who as a Poet speaketh hath any thing within him that leaps under his left breast but that if he be well perswaded of his souls immortality and so by a plain sequel thereupon sees that he hath a longer part to act after his Exit from off this earthly Theatre then he hath here he will never live unmindfull of that second state and therefore will be sure to stop his eares against the Sirens bewitching songs and not drink of the inchanting cups of Circe whose fordid pleasures are feigned to have turned Vlysses his unwary companions into swine nor lastly Esau-like for a small pittance of temporall contentments or for a few voluptuous hours consumed in vice or vanity neglect the safety of his immortall spirit and sell his birth-right of Eternity I will seal and signe this whole dispute with the determination and censure of the book of Wisdome which book whether it be received into the Canon or no yet is it confessedly very ancient and therefore by consent of all may claim a just precedence of authority before any Heathen Philosopher whatsoever the words are these Justorum animae in manu Deisunt non tanget illas tormentum mortis visi sunt oculis insipientium mori illi autem sunt in pace The souls of 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 dy but they remain in peace Chap. 3. Behold here in the judgment of this venerable Authour what kind of people they are who hold the souls 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 I should presume so far but it is the judgment of the ancient Authour of the book of Wisdome 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 souls immortality with the self-same note of ignominy that David the kingly prophet did mark that wretched mortall who closely in his heart had said There is no God Psa 13. Yet there is this odds 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 to do it so as he himself might ly concealed his name unknown Which covert way of his though it appear not altogether so bold and bad as if he had put his name unto his work 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 soul 's immortal nature and incorruptibility how could the cogitations unto the contrary of this poor worm be a matter any way considerable with men of understanding and ability A Peripatetick Disquisition touching the Rationall Soul's Immortality whether it be Natuturall to it or no. THis intellectuall substance the Soul which is our Intelligencer for all things abroad being shut up here in an obscure prison of a corruptible body doth not without great difficulty know it self and learn out what kinde of entity it is corporeall or spirituall corruptible or free from corruption Hence arose so many varieties of opinions and even amongst those who asserted immortality so many degrees thereof Dicaearchus a Peripatetick Philosopher of Sicily was of opinion that men had no souls at all but notwithstanding this the soul being ashamed to be so grossely ignorant as to deny it self this man was left alone and had no followers Epicurus Lucretius and Pliny granted man a soul but denied the immortality of it condemning it to a death perpetuall which impious assertion hath been refuted by all the best Philosophers of Plato's Pythagora's Zeno's and Aristotle's School also excepting Alexander and some very few of no note Amongst those that admitted a perpetuity to the soul some did it with an intermission as namely the Hereticks called Arabici who as Georgius Syncellus in his Chronicle now newly published Parisii◠1652. ex typographia Regia anno Christi 237 testifieth did impiously hold the soul in the hour of death to perish with the body and again both of them to be revived at the resurrection concerning which point a famous Synod was assembled The same errour is largely shewed of them by Abraham Ecchellensis in his Historiae Orientalis supplemento where he describeth the customes and doctrines of the Arabians Now it is manifest that during the interim between death and the resurrection the soul is in being is alive and also awake by those reasons that do prove the immortality simplicity and immateriality of it as also by apparitions of them of which the Christian Histories are full and it is justified by Eustratius a Priest of S. Sophia in his Tract remembred by Photius in his Bibliothecae wherein he affirms that souls do appear really and not good or evil Angels in their places and lastly the same is confirmed even by Ethnick Histories as for example by that which Phlegon Trallianus in his Book de mirabilibus longaevis relates first of Polycrates after of Philinion by the appearing of Apollonius Tyanaeus after his death to his scholars assuring them of the souls incorruptibility about which they had been doubtfull and disputing if we may believe Philostratus who writ his life by the apparition of a Ghost to Athenodorus recorded by Pliny in his Epistles and last of all by Plutarch out of whom Georgius Monachus Syncellus relateth this notable following History Chronogr anno Christi 37. Caligulae 3. Caius Caligula saith he also slew Julius Canus the Stoick Philosopher of whom the Greeks relate a fiction beyond all credit namely that he being led to dy is reported to have foretold to one Antiochus a Seleucian who followed him with a minde undisturbed that the night following he would be with him and deal about a question worth the discussing and moreover that Rectus another of his fellowes should be slain by Caius within three dayes all which the event proved to be true he being slain within that space Antiochus relating what he had seen by night and that he had beheld Canus who had disputed with him concerning the immortality of the soul and the passage of it after death unto a purer light Thus Syncellus which relation I see no reason why he should hold to be a fiction Averroës as we use to call him grants a soul that is spirituall and immortall yet grants but one and that one to
intellectuall Ergo the rationall soul and every nature intellectuall are to be perpetuall according to the exigence of nature I say according to the exigence of nature and not according to any act of grace because if we were not so then had not the efficient wrought consequently to himself and to his own ends Wherefore seeing the skilful architect of Nature knows how to work conformably to the rules of reason and to proportion his work unto the end for which he made it it followes hence that every rationall soul or substance intellectuall is by the order of nature made up immortall and incorruptible And this consequence is therefore good because it is essentiall to felicity to be perpetuall and to be an endlesse state of everlasting joy and therefore the subject in which this joy is to reside cannot be otherwise then naturally perpetuall Morcover seeing it is our soul which is directly per sc proportioned to felicity and capable thereof and our bodies onely indirectly and as it were by accident therefore immortality belongeth primarily to the soul and to the body onely by a sequel And so we argue here in conformity to that we should in other cases not unlike to this as for example upon a supposall made that the sun was created to enlighten the earth perpetually we should conclude from thence that is was framed of a nature and body incorruptible Now further that perpetuity is of the very essence of felicity or at the least an inseparable companion thereof Reason it self doth teach us our Divines do shew it plainly as by name Aquinas 1. p.q. 44. a. 3. and 1.2 q. 5. a. 4. l. 3. cont Gent. c. 62. Albertus seu Aegidius in compend l. 2. Valentia tom 2. d. 1. q. 5. p. 6. Lessins l. 3. de summ bono c. ult Estius 4. d. 49. as I perswade my self Paravicinus l. de Bono and all the rest forasmuch as of a certain true felicity ought to be devoid of care sorrow then seeing that which we possesse with delight we cannot relinquish without sorrow again what we love we cannot enjoy contentedly without our being assured not to lose it forasmuch as the onely dread or suspicion of being deprived thereof causes sorrow and is afflictive to the heart even as well though not as much as the losse it self And for this there is great reason because we do not desire alone that good which is felicity but besides to have it alwayes and to be assured of it and therefore we are unsatisfied and in pain unlesse we be really happy and withall assured so to continue Of so large a capacity is the spirit of man as that it resteth not in that alone which is present to it but besides with swift-wing'd thoughts and flying affections overtakes the future and thereafter as that same is apprehended to be good or bad pleasing or unpleasant draws from it either comfort or affliction But why is it that a man cannot be happy for a season as well as miserable for a season Jo. Pontius a late Philosopher and follower of Scotus is of opinion that he may for so he determineth q. 6. Ethic. con 3. n. 28. to whom I can by no means assent because as Cicero and Boetius do define Felicity is such a state and such a good as fully satiates and iâ— replenished with all that is justly desirable It is saith Cicero l. 3. Tuscul Secretis malis omnibus cumulata bonorum complexio And Boetius l. 3. consol pros 2. Status omnium bonorum aggregatione perfectus Wherefore it must consist either in all severall goods together or else in some one that conteins and countervails them all Wherefore though a man who is miserable now may be happy afterwards yet he who is happy now can never be miserable afterwards because happinesse that is in being now excludes misery both present and future but contrariwise misery that is now in being although it excludes a present happinesse yet not a happinesse to come The reason of which disparity is because a true and perfect happinesse includes essentially as we shewed before all good things of which number a secured perpetuity is one as on the contrary side every state of misery does not of necessity include all evill things or all the causes of infelicity and therefore not any perpetuity of them and for this reason it is that there is no repugnance why it may not have an end forasmuch as S. Dionysius defineth Bonum est ex integra causa malum ex quocunque defectu seeing that more is required to the constitution of felicity then to the destruction or abolition of it more to an efficiency then to a deficiency and so consequently although felicity cannot subsist without a perpetuity yet infelicity may contrarily to that which Pontius imagined And although felicity be the same for a day that it is for a yeare or for ever considering only the Physicall entity thereof yet considering the whole value and morall estimation thereof it is not so because an endlesse duration accruing to the possession of any good thing doth raise the value of it and the just esteem as contrariwise the same duration accruing to an evill doth make it infinitly worse and more afflictive for which cause a good which is perpetual known for such may satiate when being but for a time it cannot As for brute beasts whatsoever Mr. Hobbes conceives unto the contrary they have neither sense nor capacity of a present happinesse nor knowledge of a future And no other in former ages that I have heard of besides the false Prophet Mahomet ever asserted any happinesse to beasts whereas on the contrary part according to good Philosophy beasts neither have any happinesse nor do desire it Ignoti nulla cupido No Animal saith Aristotle l. 10. Eth. c. 8. apnd Andronicum 10. devoid of reason can be partaker of felicity because wholly destitute of the faculty contemplative The life of God is happy altogether and of man also so farre forth as he resembles him and participates of his vigorousnesse No other Animal is happy because not communicating of the hability to contemplate Such as be able to contemplate be capable of selicity and the more able to contemplate the more happy they may be and felicity extends it self as farre as that and this not by accident but per se Thus he The true reason then why beasts can have no happinesse is because they cannot possesse nor enjoy themselves for want of an understanding spirit within them and so properly speaking though they can be or not be yet can they not have any thing at all nor contrariwise lose any thing and so neither be rich nor poore happy nor miserable I argue again to the same intent Such as the operations of the soul be such is the nature of it and therefore all the proofs for immortality drawn from the natural operations do prove the soul
to have been arguments well steeled that should be of power sufficient to force theirway through the brazen wall of death and to rear up a huge pile or fabrick of another life after corruption and rottennesse of which life they could perceive few or no signes appearing in the world Wherefore although the arguments for immortality were very weighty yet they having such a strong barre laid to crosse their way no marvell if sundry of those Ancients should be brought unto a stand and the arguments as forcible as they were benummed and though not killed yet cast into a slumber For indeed because men then knew not how to dispose of souls after their separation from the body therefore they might have license granted them to speak doubtfully not knowing what to determine or to say nothing at all either pro or contra Some few we finde did contradict as by name Epicurus and Lucretius yet notwithstanding this maine obstacle the generall sense of the world was for the immortality and much more then when the other hemisphere of life came creditably to be discovered by the Messias for at that time those old reasons for immortality awaked and recovered their naturall vigour and vivacity and no wonder because this truth of immortality and that other of a life to come are mutuall inductives one unto the other and conspire so friendly as whosoever denies either of them doth disparage and weaken the other and again they give so great aides to each other as that the notice of another life made ready way for the entertainment of immortality and contrariwise the doctrine of immortality added reputation to the doctrine of the other life Moreover The incorruptible nature of the reasonable soul The state of felicity or infelicity in a life to come That God is the high Rectour of the Universe extends his providence over all and is a just and bountifull rewarder be all of them symbolizing verities and of a strict confederacy both offensive and defensive and so can hardly be overthrown I conclude this small labour as Pythagoras and Philolaus concluded their golden verses wherein the ancient doctrine is declared plainly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sic ubi deposito jam corpore libera coeli Templa penetrâris Deus immortalis omni Spretus ab illuvie terrarum eris integer avi And having once laid down our dust Through spacious aiery Lawnes we must And free in those large circles move Immortall like the Gods above 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Hierocles the Commentatour limiting and qualifying the higher expression of the verse by admonishing his reader that albeit Gods we must be yet not simply and absolutely as the words do sound but onely so farre forth as it is possible for a separated soul to be FINIS POST-SCRIPT OVer and above those reasons brought by the Authour of the precedent work all which do prove an immortalitie naturally belonging to the soul there want not divers others that do the same as amongst the rest for example this one viz. Such as the physick and food of the soul is for curing of the maladies thereof and for the strengthening and cherishing of it such is the nature of the soul it self But the physick and food of the soul is wholly immateriall and intellectuall that is to say Reasons and Truths eternall and incorruptible Therefore the nature of the soul is such I prove the minor proposition by experience for when the minde is troubled and out of peace and order by reason of some losse or misfortune then all the Materia medica of Dioscorides or of Horstius will not make a cure if so the body be not diseased or out of tune no physicians skill will be able to prevail we must not seek in such cases as these to Galen or Celsus or Paracelsus or Avicenna no druggists shop no physick-garden can furnish us with remedies against the raging sorrows or bewitching pleasures of the minde Non est medicamen in hortis Tollere nodosum nescit medicina dolorem A sick body physicians can sometimes cure but a sick mind never If so the body be then in health and that the infirmity do not proceed from thence Philosophy in that case must do the deed and not Medicina Philosophy saith Hierocles in Proem ad aureos versus Pythagora is the purger of humane life and the perfection the purger it is because it delivers it from all corruption contrary to reason and from the mortall body the perfecter because by the recovery of the true naturall constitution it reduceth it to a similitude with the divine which two things being to be done by vertue and verity by one of them it takes away the distempers of perturbations and by the other induces a God-like form into it Thus he conformably to whom determineth the wise Emperour Marcus Aurelius Antoninus l. 2. de vita sua § 15. when having numbred up a world of miseries and perplexities which haunt this life he addeth saying What is it then that must conduct us through all these Philosophia Also the great Aegyptian King Osmanduas as we find it recorded by Diodorus Siculus l. 1. p. 2. raised a goodly structure which had graven on it this inscription Medicatorium Animi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say a store-house for curing of the minde and this same was not an Apothecaries-shop but a Library well furnished with books wherewith to charme mens cares and cure both the vain delights and bitter anguishes of the mind whose tranquillity is not procurable by medicines or receipts but contrariwise by the good documents for example of Epictetus of Seneca or Marcus Antoninus and where all Pagan doctrines and consolations be deficient by the instructions and good counsels to be found for us in the Holy Bible in Thomas de Kempis Peraldus Petrarch de remediis utrinsque fortunae and other such like The Recipes taken from hence will work when all the materiall compounds quintessences extractions and Elixirs can do nothing as not having vertue in them nor yet subtility to penetrate Now albeit the Ethnick Moralists can do much for pacifying our disordered affections and introducing a content yet do they not come home for though they be able to persuade a generous contempt of all transitory delights and fading glories and also how to draw on a kinde of sad or disconsolate way of resolution for a constant suffering of all adversities telling us that Quidquid erit superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est and read us many such melancholy lectures yet do not they assigne us any solid reasons whereupon to build content or whereby we might receive true satisfaction but contrariwise endeavour to feed us with shadows as namely by their telling us that vertue is an ample reward unto it self and again that the miseries and affliction of this present life are not evills really though we do think them so and with such empty phantasies as these would make us give our own experience the lie Moreover they sometimes speak faintly and fearfully of the life to come and the rewards thereof by means of which alone the inequalities and the great disorders of this can be made up and reconciled with providence On this sort spake Tacitus concerning the soul of his Father in law Julius Agricola then late deceased Si quis piorum manibus locus sit si ut Sapientibus placet non cum corporibus extinguuntur magnae animae placidè quiescas If saith he to the spirits of the pious there be any place remaining if as wise men are persuaded great souls be not extinguished with their bodies mayest thou sweetly rest To strong and pressing sorrows such feeble remedies did many of the Ethnicks bring but this sovereign medicine was left for Christianity to compose and shew unto the world by the belief of which those cold sweats with which many before had been sore afflicted were prevented wholly Another naturall track whereby to trace out immortality is the universall shamefastnesse of mankinde of the own nakednesse which passion is not found to be in brute beasts and the reason of the difference between them seems to be because beasts are corruptible and are so to be but men though now they also be corruptible yet it seems they were not so to be but onely by a misadventure or mischance for mans body because composed of severall disagreeing parcells is dissolvable and may be taken in sunder by the very same way that it was put together and therefore by the own right cannot lay any just claim to a perpetuity more then other composed bodies can yet it seems that by right of the being matched with a substance intellectuall it might pretend unto it and therefore holds it a disparagement and disgrace to be reputed mortall which without such a title it could not do and seeing nakednesse betrayes it to be a piece of corruption a condition so abject and inferiour it is ashamed to be seen forasmuch as sexes be the evident marks and tokens of mortality for why are sexes but to propagate and what need of propagation but onely to provide a substitute and none provides a successour or a substitute who is not himself to be turned out and to be gone of which mean and inferiour condition as not befitting men are ashamed and in relation to this grand imperfection we finde that men labour to conceale even as much and as long as possible their amorous affections as springing out of a root of corruption Thus we see that men once in high fortunes and cast down and grown into necessity are abashed at their poor and present state whenas others that were poor and low alwayes be not so And this I conceive to be the principal reason why men doe blush at businesses of corporeall love and are ashamed of their nakednesse although hitherto I do not know any that in particular have taken notice of it Now finally how immortality is consistent with the principles of Aristotle and also how it doth follow upon them is not my intention to examine as being a long and intricate piece of work and performed by others as namely by Javellus l. de indeficientia anima and of late by Card. Augustinus Oregius in a work peculiarly intended for that purpose