Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	body_n	motion_n	soul_n	7,616	5	5.6016	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B04263	A second part of Observations, censures, and confutations of divers errours in Mr. Hobbs his Leviathan beginning at the seventeenth chapter of that book. / By William Lucy, Bishop of S. David's.; Observations, censures, and confutations of notorious errours in Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan. Part 2	Lucy, William, 1594-1677.	1673 (1673)	Wing L3454A; ESTC R220049	191,568	301

undeniable but the affairs of Politique Government most weak the subjects which it treats about most unconstant which is men united and because the judgments of men their humours their passions are all obnoxious to variation there can be no certain Rules which can meet with all accidents at home or abroad with other Nations which are variable one as the other but much and many designs must be daily changed according to divers occasions and indeed they are so many that no wit of man can foresee all Let Achitophel himself advise never so cunningly yet if Absolon do not follow it which no man can foreknow but by guesses his directions can effect nothing and therefore there is no conformity in the Rules of the Mathematicks and these of Politiques the one like the subject most immutable the other like its subject most uncertain The last clause of that Paragraph and Chap. is nothing but a great Rant and express contempt of all other Writers and an implicite magnifying his own Politiques To which I may justly say it would have become other mens mouths or pens better than his own and what I think of it is this that if his former expression be true of them that they have built upon Sand I may say his building is upon Quagmire building upon Sand will support a building until storms fall but his will not support an Edifice but fall of its self the very Foundation sinks without any other weight upon it or violence to it And so I have run over this Chap. and thought to have gone no further in his Politiques but the Title of the next Chap. enticeth me on which is Of the Liberty of Subjects CHAP. XIX SECT I. Mr Hobbs his Comment upon his own Text censured Libertas coactionis necessitatis the second proper only to men HE begins this Treatise thus Liberty or freedom signifieth properly the absence of opposition by opposition I mean external impediments of motion and may be applied no less to irrational and inanimate Creatures than to rational Consider Reader what a strange perplexed kind of writing this is where he is forced to write a Comment upon his own Text. To begin with him Liberty or freedom What need of freedom here when the subject he treats of is Liberty Secondly What need of that Parenthesis to expound opposition If he had not affected a deceitful way of writing he might in fewer words and much more clearly have said Liberty signifies properly the absence of external impediments of motion But if his contempt of such Learning had not made him neglect to read it he might easily have known there is a liberty à Coactione from constraint and a liberty from necessity The first is that and that only which he defines but the second which is the more noble part of liberty is left out by him and that is peculiar to men alone amongst all sublunary Creatures He proceeds to illustrate his conclusions For whatsoever is so tyed or invironed as it cannot move but within a certain space which space is determined by the opposition of some external body we say it hath not liberty to go further This I agree to this is liberty from constraint and so I agree to his whole discourse in exemplifying that which I would say is ingenious but that it explains what no man denies therefore I let alone what follows to the bottom of this page and so come to page 108 which begins thus SECT II. M. Hobbs his Free-man not actually to be found in the whole world His unhandsom censures of those who have used the word Liberty or Freedom in a sense different from himself The activity of heat hindred by cold neither of them bodies Spirits hindred in their motion Freedom used in a passive acception ANd according to this proper and generally received meaning of the word A Free-man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindred to do what he has a will to do This is freedom and great liberty but I doubt he will not find any Subject in the world having this liberty He might have given this Chap. another title for there are no subjects which are not confined from this liberty Well he goes on and I wait upon him But saith he when the words Freedom and Liberty are applied to any thing but bodies they are abused It was unkindly and unhandsomly said to affirm it abused since it hath been the language of all men who have written of any spiritual things which certainly having no bodies to hinder them must needs be free according to his own conceit I hope in a fuller manner to handle the nature of Spirits therefore I will not meddle now with it only I will mind him of that common Proverb amongst us denoting a spiritual freedom in that which is no body and that is Thought is free and yet this thought is a spiritual thing having no dimensions but because no Humane Laws can restrain confine or judge of mens thoughts they are free But he produceth a reason for what he had writ for that which is not subject to motion is not subject to impediment What he means by motion I know not but if he means that which according to the common acceptation of Philosophers it importeth that is not only lation or changing of place but that which makes any change in any thing which he knows are commonly reduced to six species then he might have observed that that heat which warms a mans hand is not a body and yet may be impeded and hindred by cold from its activity or that motion of calefaction Well then some things besides bodies have motion and may have that liberty which he speaks of confined by external things But because his Philosophy points at a contempt of Spirits whose motion is not so clearly discerned as that of bodies especially in that succession in which bodies move and I think he means only local motion I dare affirm that Spirits move in their way from one place to another in a spiritual manner and are at one time in a place in which they were not before and many times have spiritual impediments of which I reserve a fuller discourse hereafter But at this present my affirmation is as good as his negation especially countenanced with such a general consent of Philosophers as cannot be counterpoised by any thing that can be produced for the contrary opinion Well then let us examine that which follows Therefore saith he when 't is said for example the way is free no liberty of the way is signified but of those who walk in it without stop This expression will not serve his turn that phrase The way is free doth not mean a liberty of the men who walk in it without stop for prisoners in bonds may walk in it without stop who are far from freedom nor is it yet used abusively but passively which that word freedom doth

questioned what crime he had done but what hurt he would do No they never questioned what he had done or what he would do for how could Aristides whose glory consisted in justice not in armes be mistrusted to endeavour hurt to the state for that vertue which he was so honoured for is so far from destroying that it is the very soul and life of a Common-wealth or rather I may term it the spirits which under the soul act with every part in the performance of their several duties and where that is lacking the inhabitants of a Common-wealth will be like walls built with loose stones without mortar which with ordinary storms will fall asunder and perish I will not trouble my self with the words which follow briefly he instanceth in Ostracism which was used there by which sometimes an Aristides was banished for his vertue and justice sometimes a scurrilous Jester as Hyperbolus Let us consider this Ostracism that is a legal act proper to that government not a meer arbitrary but a legal priviledge granted the people that when there was an occasion of any such danger they had their votes in it Now the proposition by him to be proved was that such an act as this might justly be done by the supreme only by his will which can never by any Logick be inforced hence and yet I can say further that even the laws of forraign nations may be censured by such as are not subject to them and have been in all ages without breach of duty or civility I joyn this therefore with that other Grecian city famous for its politie that of Lacedaemon in which it was one of the arcana imperii that when their country Tenants grew too numerous that they feared they might endanger the City they would in a night go out and slay thousands of them this was a most barbarous thing for subjects lives should be tender to Magistrates and the lives of vertuous subjects pretious and therefore I fear this Athenian custom of Ostracism is the worse because an Aristides was worth thousands of common people and therefore think such a law was most unworthy a wise state and not fit to be acted in any where there is no law for it CHAP. XX. SECT VI. This paragraph giving liberty to a person justly condemned to resist the execution of the sentence given against him the grand incitement to rebellion contrary to the dictate of St. Paul and practice of eminent Martyrs I Pass from this to page 111. In the midst of that page having discoursed of the liberty of subjects how that they have right to any such thing which they have not passed away by covenant he at the end of that page seems to give instances thus If the Soveraign command a man though justly condemned to kill wound or maim himself or not to resist those that assault him or to abstain from the use of food air medicine or any other thing without which he cannot live yet hath that man the liberty to disobey Truly in my judgement some pieces of this are great encouragements to Treason as that particle to resist them who assault him Certainly if a man may do it for his own defence he may do it for others who are men of a like condition in their humanitie and it may be in their sin and then it must follow where are many guilty persons they may lawfully combine and stand to each other in their defence and in order to that do what mischief they can for their safety Now St. Paul seemed to be of another mind when Act. 25.11 he told Festus if I have committed any thing worthy of death I refuse not to dye it is a sign of a rebellious spirit to resist authority to which he should be subject and for ought I know the pretence of most rebellions in the world is their own defence against imagined personal dangers Had his doctrine be true the Crown of Martyrdom had lost those thousands who filled the Roman Army and could by this pretence have defended themselves they chose rather to water and fructifie the seed of Gods word by their blood they thought it an injust war to defend their just lives how much more in an unjust cause should men less dare to do it CHAP. XX. SECT VII Mr. Hobbs his institution of a Common-wealth again examined and censured The absurdity and evil consequences of his doctrine WE pass now to his page 112. in the 7. line Again the consent of a Subject to Soveraign power is contained in these words I authorise or take upon me all his actions I have already and I think fully treated of the follies weakness and wickedness of this imagination of his heretofore which he makes the foundation of his whole Politiques He proceeds in which there is no restriction at all of his own former natural liberty What an impious proposition is this that he who had before affirmed that man by nature had right to any goods any life any thing which conduced to his own contented life before a Common-wealth was instituted hath now by these words which institute and give form and being to his doctrine of a Common-wealth these not liberties only but licenses but abominations must not be abridged or restrained But mark his reason for saith he by allowing him to kill me I am not bound to kill my self when he commands me So that it seems the authorizing he speaks of is of the supremes actions not his commands and then surely his former proposition is not good men are restrained by nothing of the Soveraign commands where his own interest is personally opposed to it If this be not insufferable doctrine in any well governed Common-wealth I know not what is for by this any man may act any thing which may conduce to his contented living nay what is more he hath right to do it and if so what a condition would a Common-wealth be in a King according to his doctrine may without injustice kill any man which he thinks fit and a subject hath right to kill him when he thinks it conduceth to his good for naturally every man hath this right by his doctrine and so cannot be supposed by any contract to part from his natural right all this is evident out of the beginning of the 14. Chap. where he defines the right of nature thus The right of nature which writers commonly call jus naturale is the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature that is to say of his own life and consequently of doing any thing which in his own judgement and reason he shall conceive to be the aptest means to conduce thereto And there is much more to this purpose of which I have already treated in my notes upon that Chap. So that it is clear by his doctrine That the constitution of a Common-wealth enables the Soveraign to act nothing by right more than