Indivisibility though perhaps thâ—se also may be useful Sir I crave your pardon of these curt expressions of the thoughts which you desired concerning the description of a Spirit If God make us truly holy we shall quickly know more to our satisfaction I rest Nov. 17. 1681. Your obliged Servant Rich. Baxter You make a Spirit to be Ens ideoque Unum Verum and that True denotes the answerableness of the thing to its proper Idea and implies right matter and form duly conjoined Q. Do you not here make Spirits material But no doubt whether to be called Material or Substantial the form is not an Adjoyned thing but the form of a simple essence is but an inadequate conceptus making no composition OF THE NATURE OF SPIRITS A Placid Collation with the Learned Dr Henry More upon his Answer to à private Letter published in the second Edition of Mr. Glanviles Sadduceismus Triumphatus Reverend Sir § 1. THat my hasty Letter should occasion you to benefit the World with more of your Information in so considerable a point as is the nature of a Spirit was more than I thought of or could hope for Had I imagined that you would have so far honoured it I should have so written it as might have drawn out more of your Instruction and made your Animadversions yet more edifying § 2. I desired you to have forborn the title of Psychopyrist for these Reasons 1. Because it tendeth plainly to misinform the Reader as if I held that Souls or Spirits are Fire whereas in my Books and Letters I still say otherwise And that they may be so called not formaliter or univoce but only eminenter and analogice And when a name on the Title page through the whole and a supposition in much of your arguing implyeth that I hold what I renounce it may wrong your Reader 's understanding though I am below the capacity of being wronged 2. And the fastning of Nick-names on one another in Controversies of Religion hath so much caused Schisms and other mischiefs that I confess I the less like it about Philosophy But I must submit § 3. My understanding is grown so suspicious of ambiguity in almost all words that I must confess that what you say also against those whom you call Holenmerians and Nullibists satisfieth me not unless many terms used in the controversies were farther explained than I find them here or in your Metaphysicks your Books against Judge Hale I have not seen But I may take it for granted that you know that they who use the saying of Tota in toto tota in qualibet parte ordinarily tell us 1. That they use the word Tota relatively and improperly seeing that which hath no parts is improperly called Tota 2. That they mean it but negatively viz. That the Soul is not in the parts of the body per partes part in one part and part in another but indivisibly And one would think this should suit with your own hypothesis And when I better know in what sense Locus is used I shall be fitter to enquire whether Spirits be in loco When some take it for a circumscribing body and some for a subjective body on which it operateth and some for a meer room possest in vacuo and some for God himself in whom are all things the name of a Nullibist is as ambiguous to me § 4. You tell your Reader that All created Spirits are Souls in all probability and actuate some Matter or other Sir Philosophers freedom is usually taken easilyer than Divines I will therefore presume that our mutual freedom shall not be in the least distastful to either of us And so I must tell you that I have long taken it for a matter of very great use to distinguish unknown things from known and to bridle my understanding from presuming to enquire into unrevealed things And I take that holdness of Philosophers to have had a great hand in corrupting Divinity Secret things are for God and things revealed for us and our Children saith Moses And when I presume most I do but most lose my self and misuse my understanding nothing is good for that which it was not made for Our understandings as our Eyes are made only for things revealed In many of your Books I take this to be an excess And I have oft wondred at your Friend and sometime mine Mr. Glanvile that after his Scepsis scientifica he could talk and write of doubtful things with that strange degree of confidence and censuring of Dissenters as he did I am accused of overdoing and curiosity my self But I endeavour to confine my enquiries to things revealed This premised I say undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed either as to any certainty or probability that all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter Alass how should we come to know it Neither Nature nor Scripture tells it us But 1. If this be so the difference between you and the Psychopyrists must be opened as it is much like that of Mammertus and Faustus whether the Soul or a Spirit have Matter by composition or simply uncompounded for a body you suppose it still to have Is it separable from a Body or not If it be why should you think that it is never separated If it can subsist without a Body who can say that it doth not If it cannot but be inseparable it is a strange composition that God cannot dissolve And if it perish upon the dissolution then it was but an Accident of the body and not a compounding Substance Dr. Glissons and Campanella's way is as probable as this And I marvel that when you have dealt with so many sorts of Dessenters you meddle not with so subtile a piece as that old Doctor 's de Vita Naturae I have talkt with divers high pretenders to Philosophy here of the new strain and askt them their judgment of Dr. Glissons Book and I found that none of them understood it but neglected it as too hard for them and yet contemned it He supposeth all Matter to be animated without composition the Matter and Form being but conceptus inadequati of an uncompounded being however that Matter as such be divisible into atomes every atome still being uncompounded living Matter You suppose all Spirit to be in Matter but by way of composition as distinct substances I go the middle way and suppose that substance simple is Active or Passive that the three Passive Elements Earth Water and Air are animated only by composition or operation of the active But that the active substances have no composition but intellectual but Substance and Form are conceptus ejusdem inadequati So that what Dr. Glisson saith of every clod and stone I say only of Spirits of fire I shall speak after 2. And do you think that the Soul carrieth a body out of the body inseparable with it or only that it receiveth a new body when it passeth out of the old If the latter is there any instant of time
usually taken for corporeal or gross and impenetrable and divisible substance uncapable of essential vital self-moving perception and appetite If this seems nothing to you God seems nothing to you and true Nature which is Principium motus seems nothing to you And all that performeth all the action which you see in the world seems nothing to you It 's pity that you have converst so little with God and your self as to think both to be nothing § 14. What you say out of Gen. 1. is little else but mistake when you say all was made out of the deep waters by the spirit of God The Text nameth what was made of them It saith nothing of the Creation of Angels or Spirits out of them no nor of the Light or Earth or Firmament And whereas you say God made man of the dust of the ground but the body only is not man ergo Ans You use your self too unkindly to leave out half the words Gen. 2. 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul when the Text tells us the two works by which God made man will you leave out one and then argue exclusively against it What if I said The Chandler made a Candle of Tallow and then by another kindled it or a man made an house of Bricks and cemented them with Mortar c. will you thence prove That he made a Candle burning without fire or the House without Mortar Words are useless to such Expositors § 15. Page 4. you say You know all matter is eternal But you know no such thing If it be Eternal it hath one Divine perfection and if so it must have the rest and so should be God But what 's your proof You again believe the Souls concentration in its body Ans Words insignificant It 's Idem or Aliud If Idem then dust is Essentially Vital and Intellectual Deny not spiritual forms if every clod or stone have them If Aliud how prove you it to be there rather than elsewhere And if you considered well you would not believe essential substantial life and mind to lye dead and unactive so long as the dust is so § 16. You come to the hardest Objecti The Souls defective acting in infants ideots the sick c. and say It would rather not act if it were as represented Ans 1. It cannot be denied but the Operations of the Soul here are much of them upon the organized body and tho not organical as if they acted by an Organ yet organical as acting on an Organ which is the material Spirit primarily And so there go various Causes to some Effects called Acts. 2. And the Soul doth nothing independently but as dependent on God in Being and Operation and therefore doth what God knoweth and useth it too as his Instrument in the forming of the body and in what it knoweth not it self And as God as fons naturae necessitateth the natural agency of the Soul as he doth the Soul of Bruits But as the wise and free Governor of the world he hath to moral acts given mans Soul free-will and therefore conducting Reason which it needs not to necessitated acts as digestion motion of the blood formation of the body c. And as it is not made to do all its acts freely and rationally so neither at all times as in Apoplexies Infancy Sleep c. It is essential to the Soul to have the active power or virtue of Intellection and Free-will but not always to use it As it is essential to the substance of fire tho latent in a flint to have the power of motion lighe and heat And its considerable that as a traveller in his journey thinking and talking only of other things retaineth still a secret act of intending his end else he would not go on when he perceiveth and observeth it not at all He that playeth on the Lute or Harpsical ceaseth when his Instrument is out of tune because he acteth by free-will But the Soul of an Idiot or mad-man acteth only per modum naturae not by free-acts but necessitated by God by the order of nature Only moral acts are free and that some other are but brutish and some but vegitative is no-more a wonder than that it should understand in the head and be sensible only in the most of the body and vegitative only in the hairs and nails It operateth in all the body by the Spirits as calid but about the eyes and open sensoria by Spirits also as lucid for that use § 14. But never forget this That nothing at any time doth what it cannot do but many can do that which they do not Tho the Soul in the Womb or Sleep remember not or reason not if ever it do it that proveth it had the power of doiug it And that power is not a novel accident tho the act may be so § 18. To your Explications p. 4. I say 1. None doubts but all the world is the work of one prime operating Cause Whom I hope you see in them is of perfect power wisdom aud goodness the chief efficient dirigent and final cause of all 2. I doubt not but the created universe is all one thing or frame and no one atome or part totally separated from and independent on the rest 3. But yet the parts are multitudes and heterogeneous and have their Individuation and are at once many and one in several respects And the unity of the Universe or of inferior universal Causes as the Sun or an anima telluris c. are certainly consistent with the specifick and individual differences of the parts E. g. Many individual Apples grow on the same Tree yea Crabs and Apples by divers grafts nourished on the same stock One may rot or be sower and not another Millions of Trees as also of Herbs and Flowers good and poysonous all grow in the same earth Here is Unity and great Diversity And tho self-moving Animals be not fixed on the earth no doubr they have a contiguity or continuity as parts with the Universe But for all that a Toad is not a Man nor a man in torment undifferenced from another at ease nor a bad man all one with a good § 19. And if any should have a conceâ—â— That there is nothing but God and matter I have fully confuted it in the Appendix to Reas of Christian Religion Matter is no such omnipotent sapiential thing in it self as to need no cause or maker any more than Compounds And to think that the infinite God would make no nobler Creature than dead matter no liker himself to glorifie him is antecedently absurd but consequently notoriously false For tho nothing be acted without him it 's evident that he hath made active Natures with a principle of self-moving in themselves The Sun differs from a clod by more than being matter variously moved by God even
be no Contradiction yet it will never be because he useth every thing according to its nature till he cometh to miracles Therefore their dissilution of parts is no more to be feared than their annihilation 3. But if you take Souls to be partible and unible then you must suppose every part to have still its own existence in the whole And do you think that this doth not more advance Souls than abase them Yea you seem to Deifie them while you make them all to return into God as drops into the Sea And if you feign God to be partible is it not more honour and joy to be a part of God who is joy it self than to be a created Soul If a thousand Candles were put out and their light turned into one Luminary as great as they all every part would have its share in the enlightning of the place about it Is it any loss to a single Soldier to become part of a victorious Army 4. But indeed this is too high a Glory for the Soul of man to desire or hope for It is enough to have a blessed union with Christ and the holy Society consistent with our Individuation Like will to like and yet be it self Rivers go to the Sea and not to the Earth Earth turns to Earth and not to the Sun or Fire And the holy and blessed go to the holy and blessed And I believe that their union will be nearer than we can now well conceive or than this selfish state of man desireth But as every drop in the Sea is the same Water it was so every Soul will be the same Soul 2. And as to the incapacity of misery which you talk of why should you think it more hereafter than here If you think all Souls now to be but one doth not an aking Tooth or a gouty Foot or a calculous Bladder suffer pain tho it be not the body that feeleth but the same sensitive Soul is pain'd in one part and pleas'd in another And if all Souls be now but God in divers Bodies or the Anima mundi try if you can comfort a man under the torment of the Stone or other Malady or on the Rack or in terror of Conscience by telling him That his Soul is a part of God Will this make a Captive bear his Captivity or a Malefactor his Death If not here why should you think that their misery hereafter will be ever the less or more tolerable for your conceit that they are parts of God They will be no more parts of him then than they were here But it 's like that they also will have an uniting inclination even to such as themselves or that God will separate them from all true unity and say Go you cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels c. § 33. No doubt it 's true that you say page 7 and 8. That matter is still the same and liable to all the changes which you mention But it 's an unchanged God who doth all this by Spirits as second Causes who are not of such a changeable dissoluble partible nature as Bodies are It is Spirits that do all that 's done in the world And I conjecture as well as you That universal Spirits are universal Causes I suppose That this Earth hath a vegitative form which maketh it as a matrix to receive the Seeds and the more active influx of the Sun But Earth and Sun are but general Causes Only God and the seminal Virtue cause the species as such The Sun causeth every Plant to grow but it causeth not the difference between the Rose and the Nettle and the Oak The wonderful unsearchable Virtue of the Seed causeth that And if you would know that Virtue you must know it by the effects You cannot tell by the Seed only of a Rose a Vine an Oak what is in it But when you see the Plants in ripeness you may see that the Seeds had a specifying Virtue by the influx of the general Cause to bring forth those Plants Flowers c. Neither can you know what is in the Egg but by the ripe Bird nor what the Soul of an Infant is but by Manhood and its Acts. § 34. You here pag. 7. divert from the point of the Immortality or Nature of the Soul to that of the Resurrection of the Body of which I will now say but this Christ rose and hath promised us a Resurrection and nothing is difficult to God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 oft signifieth our living another life after this The Body hath more parts than Earth and Water The Spirits as we call them which are the igneous parts lodged in the purest aereal in the blood c. are that body in and by which the Soul doth operate on the rest How much of these material Spirits the Soul may retain with it after Death we know not and if it have such a body it hath partly the same and God can make what Addition he please which shall not contradict identity Paul saith of Corn God giveth it a body as pleaseth him in some respect the same c. in some not the same that was sown We do not hold That all the flesh that ever a man had shall be raised as that mans If one man that was fat grow lean in his sickness we do not say that all the flesh that sickness wasted shall rise It shall rise a spiritual body God knoweth that which you and I know not § 35. You add how easie it would have been to you to believe as the Church believeth and not to have immerged your self in these difficulties Ans 1. The Church is nothing but all individual Christians and it is their Belief which makes them capable of being of the Church As we must be men in order of Nature before we are a Kingdom of men so we are Believers before we are a Church of Believers A Kingdom or Policy maketh us not men but is made of men and Church-society or Policy maketh us not Believers but is made up of Believers Therefore Belief is first and is not caused by that which followeth it And why doth the Church believe Is it because they believe And whom do they believe Is it themselves I doubt you have fallen into acquaintance with those whose Interest hath made it their Trade to puzzle and confound men about things as hard to themselves as others that they may bring them to trust the Church and then tell them that it 's they that are that Church as a necessary means to the quieting their minds And they tell them You are never able by reason to comprehend the mysteries of Faith the more you search the more you are confounded But if you believe as the Church believeth you shall speed as the Church speedeth But it 's one thing to believe the same thing which the Church believeth and another to believe it with the same faith and upon the same Authority
OF THE NATURE OF SPIRITS ESPECIALLY MANS SOUL In a placid Collation with the Learned Dr. Henry More In a Reply to his Answer to a private Letter Printed in his second Edition of Mr. Glanviles Sadduceismus Triumphatus By Richard Baxter LONDON Printed for B. Simmons at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls 1682. A Letter to the Reverend Dr. Henry More at Christs-Colledge in Cambridge Reverend Sir I Had answered your desire sooner but having lent out the Sadduc Triumph I staid till now to have â—ad it returned being loth to buy another it costing me 6s But I was fain to get another at last and â—n the review I find that I have exâ—resly given you my thoughts already â—f your notion of a Spirit in my Methodus having noted it in your Book of Atheism and your Ench. Metaphys In short 1. I think you and I are agreed that we cannot conceive of a Spirit unico conceptu but must have two inadequate conceptions of it of which one is that which Dr. Glisson De Vita naturae calls conceptus fundamentalis and is that which we call Substantia for we can scarce think of a Virtus formalis which is not substantiae alicujus virtus but qua virtus simpliciter existeth of itself unless we must so think with some of God And though this maketh not an actual composition as Matter and Form in mixtis yet intellectually we must take it as a distinct inadequate conceptus The other inadequate conceptus iâ— Formal and I think you and I arâ— agreed that this is Virtus Una-trinaâ— as described by me viz. Virtus Vâ—â—talis vitaliter activa perceptivaâ— appetitiva as Dr. Glisson speaks of which I make three species aâ— described And I am my self faâ— better acquainted with the nature â— a Spirit by the essential Virtus formalis known to us by its acts for nothing doth that which it cannot do than from the notion of substantiality And yet I dare not say that a self-moving principle is proper to a Spirit Nor do I consent to Campanella de sensu rerum and Dr Glisson that would make all things alive by an essentiating form in the very Elements I distinguish Natures into Active and Passive and Passivity is a word that serveth me as well as materiality But whence the Descensus gravium is I despair of knowing and if it be of an innate principle I call it not therefore a Spirit because it is but passivorum motus aggregativus ad unionem in quiete when Spirits motion is vital and so essential to them that they tend not to union in quiescence but in everlasting activity quiescence in inactivity being as much against their nature as motion against a Stones So that I think we are agreed of the formal notice of a Spirit in general and of an intellective sensitive and vegetative in specie But truly I am at a loss about the conceptus fundamentalis wherein the true difference lieth between Substantia and Materia Do we by Substantia mean a conceptus realis or only Relative To say it doth substare accidentibus speaks but a Relation directly and leaves the question unanswered Quid est quod substat accidentibus To say it is not an Accident tells us not what it is but what it is not To say it doth subsist per se either saith no more than that it is Ens reale or else tells us not what it is that doth subsist Quoad notationem nominis distinct from use doth not materia and substantia signify the same fundamental conceptus And is not the form the notifying difference You difference Substance and Matter antecedently to the formal difference by Penetrability Impenetrability Indivisibility Divisibility But 1. I despair knowing in this life how far Spiritual Substances are penetrable and indivisible I grant you such an extension as shall free them from being nothing substantial and from being Infinite as God is 2. We grant Spirits a quantitas discreta they are numerous individuate and formae se multiplicant Generation is the work of Spirits and not of Bodies And how can I tell that God that can make many out of one cannot make many into one and unite and divide them as well as Matter But if he should that would be no destruction of their Species as the mixtorum dissolutio is but as every drop of divided Water is Water one Candle lighting many and many joyned in one are all the same fire so much more would it be with Spirits were they united or divided and their locality and penetrability are past our conceit 3. But were we sure of what we say therein these two Penetrability and Indivisibility speak but Accidents though proper and therefore are no satisfying notice of the notion of Substance Spiritual as distinct from Matter I am hitherto therefore constrained to contain many thoughts in the following compass 1. I know Spirits best by the Virtus vitalis formalis una trina 2. I hold that of Created Spirits substantia as notisying a Basis realis must be the Conceptus Fundamentalis 3. The word Immaterial signifying nothing but a negation and Materia being by many Antients used in the same sense as we do Substantia I usually lay by the words 4. I hold to the distinction of Natures or Substances Passive and Active 5. I distinguish Spiritual Substances as such by the Purity of the Substance besides the Formal Difference 6. Yet I doubt not but all Created Spirits are somewhat Passive quia influxum causae primae recipiunt And you grant them a Spissitude and Extension which signifie as much as many mean that call them Material But Custom having made Materia but specially Corpus to signifie onely such grosser Substance as the three Passive Elements have I yield so to say that Spirits are not Corporeal or Material 7. Though I run not into the excess of Ludov. Le Grand de Igne nor of Telesius or Patricius I would Ignis were better studied But this Room will not serve me to say what I think of it But in brief He that knoweth that Ignis is a Substance whose Form is the Potentia Activa movendi illuminandi calesaciendi these as received in a gross Passive Body being but their Accidents oft but the Igneous Substance in act operating on them and conceiveth of Spirits but as Ignis eminenter that is of a purer substance than Ignis is which we best conceive of next the Formal Virtue by its similitude I think knows as much as I can reach of the Substance of Created Spirits And the Greek Fathers that called Spirits Fire and distinguished Ignem per formas into Intellective Sensitive and Vegetative or Visible Fire as it is in Aere Ignito allowing an Incomprehensible â—urity of Substance in the higher above the lower as in Passives Air hath above Water c. I think did speak tolerably and as informingly as are the notions of Penetrability and
between the dispossession of the old and the possession of the new If any then the Soul is sometime without a body And how can you tell how long If not what body is it that you can imagine so ready to receive it without any interposition I have not been without temptations to over inquisitive thoughts about these matters And I never had so much ado to overcome any such temptation as that to the opinion of Averrhoes that as extinguished Candles go all into one illuminated air so separated Souls go all into one common Anima Mundi and lose their individuation and that Materia receptiva individuat And then indeed your notion would be probable for the Anima mundi mundum semper animat and so my separated Soul should be still imbodyed in the world and should have its part in the worlds animation But both Scripture and Apparitions assure us of the individuation of Spirits and separate Souls And I confess to you that I have oft told the Sadduces and Infidels that urge seeming impossibilities against the Resurrection and the activity of separate Souls for want of Organs that they are not sure that the Soul taketh not with it at its departure hence some seminal material Spirits ethereal and airy and so that this spirituous or igneous body which it carrieth hence is a semen to the body which it shall have at the Resurrection no man knoweth the contrary and no man knoweth that it is so The Soul is many months here in organizing its own body in generation and more in nourishing it to a useful state That particular organical bodies are made ready to receive them just at death is hard to be believed That the matter of the Vniverse is still ready is past doubt But how organized or how the Soul worketh without Organs we shall better know hereafter Your opinion much favoureth the Pythagoreans If the Soul be never out of a body is it not as like to come into one new forming in the womb as into we know not what or where § 5. I could wish you had printed my Letter wholly by it self before you had annexed your answer that the Reader might have understood it which I can hardly do my self as you have parcel'd it But we must not have what we would have from wiser men I take it for an odd method when I never asserted Spirits to be fire but denyed it first to be in your Epistle feigned to have said it and yet in the end of it for you to say that I mean not ordinary fire but that my meaning is more subtile and refined and never tell the Reader what it is before you dispute it and then through the whole answer to dispute on a wrong supposition and in the end of the Book to confess again that I say not that Spirits are fire or material § 6. Had I been to choose an edifying method we would first have stated our question and agreed on the meaning of our terms But I must follow your steps though I had rather have done otherwise Ad SECT I. § 1. THat my Notions are like those of Judge Hale is no wonder we were no strangers to each others thoughts about these matters and though he and you have had some peaceable Velitations I take it for no dishonour to be of his mind 1. De Nomine There is no such agreement among Philosophers of the name Matter as you suppose I refer you for brevity but to a very small Book of a very Learned Author advanced by the Preface of one eminent for subtilty the Metaphysicks of Dr. Rich. Crakenthorp who tells you at large that Matter is taken either properly as you and I do Substance and so Spirits are material or improperly and narrowly for that only which hath the three dimensions and so Spirits are not material It 's unprofitable to cite many more to to the same purpose And I suppose you know that not only Tertullian but many other of the Fathers many of whom you may find cited by Faustus Reg. whom Mammertus answereth so used both Matter and Corpus also § 2. The word Form is as ambiguous You and I are not the only persons that use it not in the same sense Matter in its first Conceptus called Primus hath no Form that is is conceived of abstracted from all Form Matter in its next Conceptus is conceived of as diversified by accidents as quantity figure c. And so the 3 passive Elements Earth Air Water are diversified by many accidents making up that Consistence which is called their several forms known only by sensse and capable of no perfect definition Many such passive Materials conjunct have their Relative Form which is that Contexture in which consisteth their aptitude for their use as a House a Ship a Gun a Watch. In Compositions where the Active natures are added and operate unitedly on the passive there the Active is the Form of the Compound quite in another sense than any of the former viz. as it is principium motus You and I are enquiring of the different Forms of Matter and Spirit You say that Impenetrability and Divisibility are the Form of Matter and the contrary of Spirit I say that 1. Substance as Substance and Matter taken for Substance which Dr. Crakenthorpe thinketh is the properest sense as such hath no Form that is in conceptu primo 2. That substance distinguished by subtilty crassitude visibility and invisibility quantity shape motion c. doth herein differ Modally And this Mode may well enough be called the Form before it have another Form And as the divers foresaid Elements thus differ so the substance of Spirits no doubt hath some Modal Excellency above all Bodies or Matter strictly or narrowly so called And if you will call this a Form I contend not about the word but it is but equivocally so called Spirits having another nobler sort of Form 3. Nothing hath two Forms univocally so called But Spirits have all that Virtus formalis which I oft described which is their very form There is no Spirit without it It 's not a Compounding part but the form of a simple substance Vital Virtue Vis Potentia activa signifieth not the same thing with Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Therefore both cannot be the Form univocally so called And how you could put both these your self into one definition as a kind of Compounded Form I wonder Yea your two words themselves signify not the same thing Penetrable and Indiscerpible are not words of one signification And surely you will grant that these two Penetrable and Indiscerpible can be no otherwise a Form to Spirits than Impenetrable and Discerpible are a Form to Matter And it 's apparent that the first is but a modal conceptus and the latter a relative notion of Matter and neither one nor both are contrary to Virtus Vitalis in a Spirit or Virtus activa Meer passive potentiality is rather the contrary difference
here And I know not why you might not as well have named divers other Accidents or Modes especially Quantity and the trina dimensio and called them all the Form of Matter as well as your two Indeed when we have from sense a true notion of Matter we must know that it hath Quantity and is somewhere and therefore that one part of it and another part cannot possess just the same place and so we grant you the Impenetrability And how far you prove Spirits to be such substances as are extended and have Amplitude as you say pag. 105. and spissitude and be in loco and in more or less space variously and yet that they have no dimensions which the Divine Intellect or Power itself can measure and whether all the Spirits in the universe can be in eodem puncto and all that are finite contracted into that one point I leave this to Wits more subtil than mine to judge of For to tell you the truth I know nothing at all without the mediation of sense except the immediate sensation it self the acts of Intellection Volition or Nolition what the Intellect inferreth of the like by the perception of these I have seen felt how Water differeth from Earth and from that sensation my Intellect hath that Idea of the difference which it hath But without that seeing and feeling it all the definitions in the world and all the names of hard and soft and dry and moist would have given me no true notice of the formal difference Now hence I infer that I have no sense at all of the difference of a Spirits Substantiality in such modes and accidents from that of Matter and therefore how can I know it I know by knowing what knowing is and by willing what willing is And I know that these Acts prove a power for nothing doth that which it cannot do and that Act and Power prove a Substance for nothing hath nothing and can do nothing ab est tertii adjecti ad est secundi valet argumentum And I know that unless Light might be called Spirit Spirits are to me invisible And so I can knowingly say 1. What they do 2. What they can do 3. What they are in the genus of Substantiality 4. And what they are not as to many Attributes proper to Visible Substances or Bodies 5. And I have elsewhere fully proved in a special Dispute in Methodo Theol. that the Power of Vital Action Intellection and Volition is not a meer Accident of them but their very essential form But as to that Modification of their Substance which is contrary to Impenetrability and Divisibility I may grope but I cannot know it positively for want of sensation § 2. Is an Atom Matter or is it not If one Atom be no matter then two is none and then there is none If an Atom be matter is it Discerpible or not If not how is this the Form of Matter If it be divisible it is not an Atom that 's a contradiction And if every Atom be divisible in infinitum it is as great or greater than the world and then there are as many Infinites as Atoms That three Atoms united cannot be divided just in the middle etiam per Divinam Potentiam is because it implieth a contradiction viz. that an Atom is divisible so that by you an Atom is a Spirit Do you take the word Penetrable actively or passively or both If actively according to you Matter is penetrable for it can penetrate a Spirit that is possess the same place But I perceive you mean that Spirits can penetrate Bodies also that they can penetrate one another And I suppose that by Penetration you mean not that which separateth parts of the Matter cometh in between these parts but you mean possessing the same place as is said And if so do you put no limitation or what I ask before can all the Created Spirits in Heaven and Earth be in the same Atom of matter If so are they then absent from all other place or is every Spirit ubiquitary You confute the Nullibists by the operation of the Soul on the Body Ibi operatur ergo ibi est And do you think that all the Angels in Heaven and all Created Souls may be in one Body by Penetration If so Are they one Soul there or innumerable in one man And if they may be all in one point and so be all one may they not be divided again I confess my ignorance of the Consistence of spiritual Substance is so great that I am not able to say that God who hath given Souls quantitatem discretam and made them innumerable is not able to make one of two or many and to turn that one into two or many again I am not sure that it is a contradiction especially if it be true that Sennertus and many more say of the multiplication of Forms by Generation But if you take Penetrability passively then you mean that Spirits may be penetrated by Bodies or by one another or both No doubt you mean both and so as I said Bodies also are penetrable both actively and passively that is Bodies can penetrate Spirits and be penetrated by Spirits Whether any Bodies penetrate each other viz. whether Light or its vehicle at least be a Body and whether it penetrate the body of Glass or Chrystal with more about these matters I have heretofore spoken in my Reasons of the Christian Religion Append. Obj. 2. p. 525. and forward § 3. To conclude this as in natural mixt Bodies there are three principles Materia Materiae Dispositio for that I think is a fitter expression than Privatio Forma so in simple Beings there are three not parts but conceptus inadaequati answerable hereto viz. I. In the three passive Elements Earth Water and Air there is in each 1. The Matter 2. The Disposition of that matter by contexture and various modes of which Impenetrability and Divisibility are parts 3. The passive Form resulting from all these which consisteth in their various aptitude to their uses especially their Receptivity of the Influx of the Active Natures Here you put two Attributes together which are both but parts of the Materiae Dispositio and call them two the Form II. In the Active Natures there is 1. The Substantiality 2. The Substantiae Dispositio 3. The Form Of the first not part but inadequate Conceptus Substantiality we agree of the second Conceptus we differ That such Substances have an incomprehensible Purity of which we can have no distinct Idea for want of Sensation but a General Conception only and that this Purity whatever it be is not the Form of Spirits but the Substantiae Dispositio is that which I say And you say that Penetrability and Indivisibility are the Form which at most are but the Dispositio Substantiae and yet you joyn the Vital Virtue as part of the formal Conception too which is quite of another conception
And so we differ of the third Conceptus viz. the Form also which I affirm of all simple active natures to be the Virtus Activa And if they are Vital the Virtus Vitalis Of the name Vita there is a Controversie which must be distinguished from that de re If it be true that Dr. Glisson saith that every Atom of matter hath in it a Motive Principle without Composition then the Motive Virtue is the Form of all Matter as well as of Spirit If all be to be called Living or Spirit which hath a Virtus Motiva for its Essential Form then Ignis or Aether is Vital and Spirit for it hath an Essential Motive Principle as its Form Therefore the Question whether Ignis or Aether be Life or Spirit is but a question de nomine such as too many usually in Disputes manage as if it were de re It is no Life or Spirit if by those names you mean only Sensitive and Intellectual Natures But it is Life and Spirit if by that name you mean only an Essential Formal Motive Principle I have oft professed that I am ignorant whether Ignis and Vegetative Spirit be all one to which I most incline or whether Ignis be an Active Nature made to be the Instrument by which the three Spiritual Natures Vegetative Sensitive and Mental work on the three Passive Natures And though I was wont to think that what I knew not my self all men of great Learning knew specially such as you in the points which you have with singular industry studied yet now experience hath banished that modest Errour and convinced me that other men must be content with an humble Ignoramus as well as I. § 4. And here I must note that § 18. p. 127. where you purposely define a Spirit you agree with me Your definition is A Spirit is an Immaterial Substance intrinsecally endued with Life and the Faculty of Motion Forgive me for thinking that you are not strict enough in your terms for a definition but plainly you seem to mean the same as I do You should I think have mentioned a Spirit as a simple Substance differing from a mixt and have said not only intrinsecally endued for so is every Animal who is Body as well as Spirit but also endued with it as its simple Formal Essence And whether all Faculty of Motion e. g. Gravitation be Life I am in doubt But here 1. You agree with me in the first Conceptus Substance And 2. As to that mode of Substance which I call the Dispositio Substantiae ad Formam you call it but Immaterial which is a negative and speaketh nothing positively which is such an honest Confession as we poor Ignorants apertly make that what the excellent Purity or modal Consistence of Spiritual Substance is as compared to Material or Corporeal because we never saw or felt it as we do Corporeal we do not formally know and therefore only tell men de genere that it is most pure and excellent but in special that we have no true Idea of it and therefore only tell men what it is not not material and not what it is 3. But you name no Formal Difference but Life When you add the Faculty of Motion it is a defective Explication of the Virtus Vitalis which is ever Vnica-triplex viz. Activa-Peâ—ceptiva-Appetitiva when it operateth to generation or augmentation And do you think that Life and Immateriality are Synonyma's Or that Life and Penetrable and Indiscerpible are Synonyma's Or that the Form of a Spirit is a Compound of such and so many Heterogeneals Had you held to this definition I think you had done best § 5. Pag. 129. You seem to explain Immaterial so as to make Indiscerpibility an immediate Attribute and expound it It is indiscerpible into real Physical parts so is an Atom But as Physical signifieth corporeal some will say it may yet be per potentiam divinam divided into Spiritual parts And you expound Penetrability actively that it can penetrate the matter and things of its own kind that is pass through Spiritual Substances And such any gross Body can pass through § 6. When Answ p. 3. you say of a Spirit that it is so subtil as to be in such sort penetrable And in Sect. 31. to which you refer us you make the difference of Spirit penetrating and Body impenetrable to be subtilty and crassitude Could any of us have said more whom you contradict Is Subtilty and Crassitude the difference between Spiritual Substance and Material in their Consistency I have not said so much as this § 7. As to your oft-mentioned per se non per aliud as proper to Spirits I am past doubt that Spirits more depend on God for Being and Motion than Matter doth on Spirits Created But it 's difference enough that God giveth them an Essential Formal Virtue self-moving receptive of his moving Influx when Passives move only as moved by self-movers unless the aggregative Motion must be excepted of which afterward Ad SECT II. § 1. THree Faults of which one is a Mischief you find with my Conceptus formalis 1. That it leaveth out what is contained in the Conceptus formalis of a Spirit in General Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Ans 1. It is but the dispositio Substantiae at most and not a proper Conceptus formalis 2. You leave out other modifications as essential 3. It leaveth none out that is known while I say that it is Substantia purissima which containeth your Modes and Attributes with more if they be true if not it avoideth the errours § 2. 2. You say It puts in Perception and we have no assurance that a plastick Spirit hath Perception but as such hath none Else the Soul would perceive the Organization of its own Body Ans Dr. Glisson de Vita Naturae and Campanella have said so much against you of this that supposing the Reader to have perused them I will not repeat it Did you think that there is no Perception but sensitive or Intellectual Such indeed the vegetative Spirit hath not but it hath a vegetative Perception A Plant groweth in a Soil of various qualities It attracteth to itself that part of Nutriment which is congruous to it and digesteth that so Attracted And therefore it hath an answerable Perception which sort is congruous to it and which not when it neglecteth one sort and draweth another It doth not see or feel it nor understand it but insensibly perceiveth it 3. You say you do not easily assent to that conceit of a Trinity in this Conceptus formalis which I make to consist in Virtute una-trina vitali perceptiva appetitiva Ans Nor did I easily assent to it nor did Dr. Glisson after 80 Years of age easily procure men to assent to it nor Campanella take so marvellously with others as he did with our Commenius and some such And far be it from me to expect you should easily assent to it when I come not
Spirits should be a meer Virtus or Potentia Activa or Actus seemeth hard to believe And many words intimate that it is not your Judgment but that Substantiality signifieth not only the Modus of the Existence of the Actus Entitativus or Virtus but is the first half and fundamental Conceptus of a Spirit as Res speaking halfly its Entity In this I think we agree And now if this be so this very Conceptus of Fundamental Reality is but that same which Schibler and abundance others call Materia Metaphysica as different from Materia Physica and which Dr. Crakenthorpe many others take the general and most proper sense of Materia to contain therefore I say but that you should not take an equivocal word for univocal and lay so great a stress on an ambiguous name And I confess still all your names of Indiscerpibility Penetrability and Immateriality give me no scientifical notion of the true difference between the lowest Substantiality of a Spirit and the highest of Fire or Aether or Aristotelis quinta Essentia which you call Matter But I am fully satisfied of an Incomprehensible Purity of Substance 2. And of the true Form of a Soul and I find my self to need no more § 2. The Thomists take the Faculties of the Soul to be but Accidents as Mr. Pemble de Orig. Formar doth the Souls of Brutes to be but Qualities of Matter which I have elsewhere confuted And these must needs think that the Notion of 〈◊〉 is almost all of the Soul § 3. You add out of your Ethicks nulliuâ—◠〈◊〉 inâ—â—mam nudamque essentiam cognosci posse sed Attributa tantum essentialia essentialesque habitudines We are not any way able to discover the very bare Essence or Substance of any thing Ans Yet you say before What can be more plain and It 's obvious to every observing Eye I contess I understand you not I know no essentia that is not intima And if by nudam you mean accidentibus nudatam we know no Substance so because there is none such created but we can abstract the Essence from the Accidents And if we know not the nudam essentiam of any accident we know nothing Essential Attributes and Habitudes are hard words If by the Attributes you mean the names or second signal notions we know the Essence of Letters Names Sentences but by them ut per signa we know the things themselves but scientia abstractiva non intuitivâ But this is true knowledge of the Essence signified If by the Attributes you mean any Accidents signified by those Names those are not essential Attributes But if you mean the Essence signified you say and unsay I am past doubt that we know the Essences of the immediate Objects of Sense and also of our own Intellectual Acts. But how There is scientia adaequata and inadaequata I am past doubt that nihil scitur scientiâ adaequatâ but only inadaequata And so stricte Res ipsa non scitur quia tot a ejus Essentia non scitur but aliquid rerum scitur and this is true of the Essence itself All our knowledge is partial and imperfect a half Science but it reacheth Essences Ad SECT VIII § 1. WHereas I think that only Vsage must expound the difference between the sense of Substance and Matter you deny it not but still mis-suppose that use taketh Matter but in one sense and never applieth it to spiritual Substance All this de nomine is to little purpose but I will recite some words of your own Ench. Metaph. c. 2. p. 8 9 10. Essentia quae nihil aliud est quam materia forma simul sumptae Duo principia illa Entis interna incomplexa quatenus ens est esse Materiam formam Logicam Et uniuscujusque rei quatenus ens est Essentia consistit ex Amplitudine Differentia quae amplitudinem ab amplitudine discriminat Nam quod res quaelibet aliquatenus Ampla sit ex eo patet tum quod id voci materiae valde consonum sit quae tanquam principium Entis quatenus Ens est consideratur tum etiam quod nullam aliam ideam menti nostrae ea afferre potest praeter hanc amplitudinem Nec revera quicquam ab animis nostris concipi omni amplitudine destitutum p. 10. Ex quibus omnibus tandem profluit praeclarum hoc consectarium quod omne Ens quatenus Ens est Quantum Quale Ens dicitut respectu formae legitimaeque conditionis materiae Quod omne Ens sit Quantum ex illius Materiâ intelligitur Then you blame them qui imaginantur quaedam Entia omni Materia carentia etiam hac Logica omnique ad materiam relatione p. 12. Omnis substantia ex eo quod Ens sit Materiam quandam vel Amplitudinem in se includat You see here how much more now you write against your self than me I never said that Spirits are material nor that every Substance hath some matter as you do § 2. But this is but Materia Logica Ans And those that I excuse do but call it Materia metaphysica And what 's the meaning of Materia Logica If Logick or Grammar use second Notions Names and Signs if they be not rebus aptata they are false What is it now but the aptitude of the Name that we speak of Yea you that make Spatium to be God calling it Locus internus really distinct from Bodies yet say that you prove by Apodectical Arguments that it is tribus dimensionibus praeditum And no doubt God is a Spirit so that you your self make a Spirit even the Father of Spirits to be Matter that hath Amplitude Quantity and the three dimensions And yet write a Book against one as asserting Spirits to be matter who never asserted it unless the word Matter signifie but Substance For I ascribe no more to it than your Amplitude if so much And yet I take the word Amplitude to signifie no form at all no more than Quantity or Dimensions or Indivisibility or Penetrability but to be the Consistent Dispositio Substantiae And you once hit on that true notion of the Conditio materiae as a necessary Conceptus Entis praeter ipsam materiam formam Metaphys c. 2. p. 10. Verum Ens dicitur respectu formae Legitimaeque Conditionis materiae Neque enim Galea ex tenui Papyro fabricata concinnata vera galea est sed potius ludicrum illius imitamentum And so elsewhere Yet now you make the 〈…〉 to be the Form 〈…〉 you make all Spirits to 〈…〉 some matter You 〈…〉 to be but Anima Mundâ—◠〈…〉 it either as a 〈…〉 Substance as we say 〈…〉 the Body or else as the forma 〈…〉 which is but Conceptus inadaequatu◠〈◊〉 Vitality is forma animae If in the first 〈◊〉 you that say that operation of the Soul proveth locality and ascribe Amplitude and Quantity to God and the three dimensions do seem to make
him Intellectually though not actually Divisible That is the Intellect may conceive of God as partly in the Sun and partly on Earth c. or else you must ask pardon of your opposed Holenmerians as you name them and say as they that God is totus in toto totus in qualibet parte If in the 2d sense then you make the matter only to be Substance and God to be but the Form of that Substance or as some dreams a Quality And then I confess your Notions of Indiscerpible and Penetrable are very easily intelligible as agreeing to the meer Form Vitality Active-power Wisdom and Love But how either of these notions will stand either with Gods Existence ut spatium infinitum beyond all Matter which you sometime hint or the Infiniteness of Matter but with intermixt Vacuities which pag. 44. Metaph. you seem to suppose to be communi naturae voce confirmatum I know not For then the vacuum is Deus extra materiam and so all Spirit is not in matter I think that all matter and Spirit is in God and that he is much more than Anima Mundi omnium animarum Ad SECT IX § 1. TO your Indiscerpibility I further say I distinguish 1. Between Actual and Intellectual dividing 2. Between what God can do and what a Creature can do and 3. Between the Father of Spirits and created Spirits And so I say 1. That if you had spoken of the meer Virtus Vitalis of a Spirit I think it is a contradiction to say that it is Discerpible or impenetrable But seeing you ascribe Amplitude Quantity and Dimensions and Logical Materiality to the Substantiality of Spirits I see not but that you make them Intellectually divisible that is that one may think of one part as here and another there 2. And if so though man cannot separate or divide them if it be no contradiction God can Various Elements vary in divisibility Earth is most divisible Water more hardly the parts more inclining to the closest contact Air yet more hardly And if as you think the Substance of Fire be material no doubt the Discerpibility is yet harder And if God have made a Creture so strongly inclin'd to the Unity of all the parts that no other Creture can separate them but God only as if a Soul were such it 's plain that such a Being need not fear a Dissolution by separation of parts For it s own Nature hath no tendency to it but to the contrary and no fellow Creature hath power to do it and God will not do it God maketh all things apt for their use and useth things as he hath made them He made not Marble and Sand alike nor useth them alike And if he should make a Spirit e. g. an Anima hujus Vorticis Solis Stellae c. Such as he only can divide but hath no natural tendency to division but so much Indiscerpibility as no Creature can overcome this besides Scripture intimateth Gods purpose about it 3. But doubtless God and Creatures are both called Spirits equivocally or analogically and not univocally And it is the vilest Contradiction to say that God is capable of Division But whether it be so with created Spirits I know not They have passivity and God hath none It 's no great Wisdom to confess ones Ignorance But not to confess it is very great folly I am scarce of your mind that a man may be in the like puzzle in another World as he was in this if he methodize not his Thoughts aright But if it be so you are best think again § 2. For Penetrability you say that one Spirit may have a greater Amplitude than another and that the parts as I may so call them of the same Spirit may in the Contraction of it self penetrate one another so that there may be a Reduplication of Essence through the whole Spirit Ans You tempt me to doubt lest you talk so much against materiality of Spirits to hide the name of your own Opinion for that which others call materiality If Spirits have parts which may be extended and contracted you 'l hardly so easily prove as say that God cannot divide them And when in your Writings shall I find satisfaction into how much space one Spirit may be extended and into how little it may be contracted And whether the whole Spirit of the World may be contracted into a Nut-shell or a Box and the Spirit of a Flea may be extended to the Convexe of all the World Ad SECT X. § 1. I Said We grant that Spirits have a Quantitas discreta they are numerous individuate and Formae se multiplicant Generation is the work of Spirits and not of Bodies And how can I tell that that God that can make many out of one cannot make many into one and unite and divide them as well as Matter You say This passage is worth our attentive consideration And 1. You hence infer Amplitude and Dimension of Spirits Answ I meddle not for you nor against you What 's this to me § 2. You ask what are the Formae quae se multiplicant Ans Sensitive and Rational as well as Vegetative Spirits You say That must be Creation or Self-division Ans No it is but Generation And in Append. to the Reas of Christian Religion I have partly shewed that Generation is from God as the Prime Cause and yet the Parents Souls as a Second Cause so that somewhat of a sort of Creation and Traduction concur which having further opened in Method Theol. I here pretermit § 3. But to my Question Why God cannot make two of one or one of two you put me off with this lean Answer that we be not bound to puzzle our selves about it Ans I think that Answer might serve to much of your Philosophical Disputes But if you will puzzle us with a naked Assertion of Indiscerpibility we must ask your proof of it why God cannot divide and unite extended ample quantitative Spirits and if he can how you know that he doth not or that Indivisibility is the Form of a Spirit when as if Water be divided into drops every drop is Water still Ad SECT XI § 1. IN your further thoughts of this Sect. 11. you do first mis-suppose that my Question intimateth such a Divisibility of Souls as of terrene Bodies into Atoms or a contrary Union Terrene Atoms have the most imperfect Union All the Sands on the shoar are not only divisible but partly divided I cannot say that all the parts of the Air are so much less of the Fire There is a far closer Union of all the Substance of that Lucid Calefactive Element than of Earth Water or Air. § 2. And here I must insert that after long thoughts I doubt not but all things Created are truly one and truly many No one particle of the Universe is independent on the rest Parts they are as every part of a Clock or Watch Every Leaf and Grape and
sortioris You think I suppose that which you call the Spirit of the World or Nature bigger in amplitude than the Spirit of a Wren § 8. Ad Sect. 16. You that say Spirits have Extension and Spissitude say that spissitude signifieth more substance in less compass And these Phrases sound liker to Corporeity than any that I have used More substance and less substance spissitude by Contraction signifie much change and signifie that which the Intellect may distinguish into partes extra partes though undivided which would increase a mans doubt whether God be not able to make a bigger Spirit less and a less bigger and to separate the parts that are so distinguishable in amplitude and to make one into two or two into one § 9. Whether Aether or Fire be material methinks you should be as uncertain at least as I. For you say Light is but motus of somwhat exciting the Spirit of the World If it be the Spirit of the world that is the nearest cause of Illumination by way of Natural activity than that which you call the Spirit of the World I call Fire and so we differ but de nomine But I have oft profest my Ignorance whether Fire and the Vegetative Nature be all one which I encline to think or whether Fire be a middle active Nature between the Spiritual and the meer passive by which Spirits work on Bodies I think I shall quickly know all this better than you do Ad SECT XVII XVIII XIX § 1. OF your Doctrine of Atomes I spake before I have no mind to examine the weight of your Reasons publickly § 2. I thought you that so extol the Atomists Doctrine would have deigned to read at least some of the Leaders of the various Sects And my undervaluing them is no excuse to you for as you knew not my judgment so I suppose you do not much esteem it That which I blame them for is that Lud. le Grand over-magnifieth Fire Telesius and Campanella over-magnifie Heat Patricius over-magnifieth Light as Cartesius doth Motion But if the one Principle of Motion Light and Heat had been better handled as one as it is it had been sounder § 3. I need not your hydrostatical experiment of the rising Rundle to convince me of the Motion of the matter of the World by a spiritual power I doubt as little of Spirits as of Bodies But I understand not what greater wonder there is in the rising of your Rundle than in the rising of a piece of Timber from the bottom of the Sea or that the heaviest body should sink lowest if it have way Whether Water consist of oblong flexible Bodies I am not much regardful to know Each of those oblong ones are divisible into Atomes § 4. But as to what hence you infer of Fire I make no doubt but the Flames and the red hot Iron are compouud things and that the oily or sulphureous matter moved and heated is the Substance which we see But I believe not that bare motion as motion were it never so swift wo'd cause this But that these effects are caused in the capable matter by the special action of a permeant Substance in itself invisible as Substance whose form is the Active Virtue of moving illuminating and heating and so is sensible only in this triple Effect And if you call this a Spirit I leave you to your Liberty Ad SECT XX. XXI § 1. THE seven Propositions which you find in my words I own save that the fourth should be thus formed That the Substantiae dispositio in fire distinct from the form beareth some such Analogy to a Spirit if it be not one viz. Vegetative that may somewhat serve us to conceive of it thereby and they that from this Analogy call it Ignis non formaliter sed eminenter are excusable though it can be no strict proper name that cometh not a forma § 2. Ad sect 21. But you ask Whether by Active power I mean a power alwaies exerting itself into act so that this fire is alwaies moving enlightning and hot formaliter else why should it be called Ignis Ans Answer your self when you speak of a power of Sensation and Intellection and Volition in a Soul do you mean a power alwaies exerting itself into sensation Intellection and Volition else why is it called a Soul Ans 2. I mean a power which hath alwaies an inclination to Act hath its own secret immanent act alwaies acts ad extra when it hath fit recipient objects As to your oft mentioned Confutation of Judge Hale having not read it I am no Judge of your performance You Question what is this new igneous substance never heard of before while in all Ages it hath been so famous a controversy when not only the Stoicks but most old Philosophers gave to it so much more than meet when Lud. Le Grand would make us believe that it was almost the only God of all the Heathen World under various names and while so many new Sects have written so many volumes of it who would have believed that even Dr. Henry More had never heard of it before To your question Is it material or immaterial I still answer material is a word of larger or narrower sense ambiguous I know that it hath the aforesaid Actions And by them I know that it hath the Power so to act and by both I know it is a substance capable of such power Acts And I know that the substance is invisible in se but seen in its Effects And my brain is too dark to be confident of more Let him that knoweth more boast of it § 3. You say A material Fire distinct from the flame of a Candle or Fire-stick or red hot Iron there is no more ground for than material Water distinct from Wells Rivers Seas c. Ans Do you not take Cartesius materia subtilis if not globuli aetherei to be invisible not alwaies appearing in Candles or Fire-sticks If a Soul may be a sensitive and intellective Substance and yet not be alwaies feeling or understanding why may there not be Fire where it shineth not It seemeth you take not the illuminated Air to be Ignite because it is not a Candle or Fire-stick I doubt not but Fire is a Substance permeant and existent in all mixt Bodies on Earth in ipsa tellure in Minerals in your Blood it is the prime part of that called the Spirits which are nothing but the Igneous Principle in a pure aerial Vehicle and is the Organ of the Sensitive Faculties of the Soul And if the Soul carry away any Vehicle with it it 's like to be some of this I doubt you take the same thing to be the Spirit of the world while you seem to vilifie it § 4. It 's strange when I tell you that I conceive of a Spirit but as Ignis eminenter and not formaliter that you should still ask whether I take it not for
Ignis formaliter I have often said that I think Substances differ so gradually that the lower â—ath still some Analogy to the higher And I still say that Natura Mentalis sensitiva are not Ignis formaliter But whether the Natura Vegetativa be any other than ipse ignis I know not but think it is no other Do you that better know its consistence call it Spirit or not as you please Ad Sect. 22. 23 24 25 26 27. § 1. YOU puzzle me more and more Before you said Fire is nothing but motion of sulphureous particles and only in Candles Fire-sticks hot Irons c. And yet now The vehicles of Angels are Igneous or aethereal Is an Angel only in a Candle or hot Iron c. Is motion yea motion of sulphureous particles their vehicle If they are Animals and have bodies as you think they are such as deserve a nobler Character § 2. I tell you still the Greek Fathers I think as well as I call'd mental and sensitive Spirits Ignis but Analogically which you call Symbolically If that satisfy you what have you all this while disputed against And if Fire be the vehicle of Angels it is a substance And when you seâ— the Motion Light and feel the heat dâ— you think what ever is the Recipient moved Matter that the invisible Mover is not present and contiguous It is that immediate mover which I call Fire and am fully satisfied doth it not by Motion only but the exerting of its triple Virtue § 3. You confess Sect. 24. the common use of the name of Fire applied to Souls by the old Philosophers and still you say it was but Symbolically and did they find no Reason to make Fire a Symbol rather than Earth or Water When I still tell you that it is only analogically that Souls may be called Fire did you fairly to pretend the contrary § 4. Yea Sect. 25. You are at it again saying that I seem to conceive the Fathers to speak not symbolically but properly Ans where and when did I say any such thing will you tell the world that a Man holds that which he never said and hath oft written against and write a Book against him on such a supposition and at last have nothing to say but Putarem I use not the words Symbolical and Proper they are not precise enough for this subject I said more when I said that Souls and Angels are called fire only eminenter analogice but not formaliter and forma dat nomen But you are offended that I say those Greek Fathers spake tolerably and informingly and you say It was mischievously inducing men to believe the Soul mortal For Light may be blown out and hot Iron cooled Ans Alas What dry Philosophy is this of Fire Is any thing annihilated when the Candle goeth out Was there not an invisible active principle moving your supposed sulphureous particles which was as immediate an Agent as your Soul is of Sensation or Intellection which remaineth the same But indeed it is Air and not Sulphur which is the first and nearest Recipient of the illuminating Act and is Conjux Ignis I suppose you 'l say The Spirit of the World doth this Ans Call it by what name you will It is a pure active Substance whose form is the Virtus motiva illuminativa calefactiva I think the same which when it operateth on due seminal matter is Vegetative But the World hath Spiritual Natures more noble than this viz. sensitive and intellective § 5. Ad Sect. 26. You say against the Fathers When we enquire into the distinct Nature of things we must bid adieu to Metaphors Ans When I am ignorant of my own Ignorance I will hear you I am far from dreaming that I have one formal Conception of God but only Analogical Only that of Ens is disputed between the Thomists and Scotists whether it be Univocal de Deo Creaturis And here Analogical is but Metaphorical And yet it is not nothing to see as in a Glass enigmatically And when I can perceive that your two hard words do not only signifie more than negatively and modally or qualitatively but also give us an Idea of a Spirit which hath nothing Metaphorical but all formal I shall magnifie them more than I do § 6. You say we must search out the adequate defiâ—ition Ans That adequate is a word too big for me I dare say that you have not an adequate knowledg of any thing in the World not of one Fly or Flea or Pile of Grass And can you make adequate Definitions of Angels and all Spirits Even who before twice told us that we know not the intimate essence of things but the Attributes Indeed I perceive your Attributes are such as will not notifie Essences I ask my own experience whether Indiscerpible is a word that giveth any Idea of the Essence save negative that it cannot be torn into pieces and modal and I find no other that it maketh on my Mind The common note of Matter is that it hath partes extra partes and I think you thus make Spirits material You make them parts of the compound Animal and you deny them to be toti in toto and you give them locality amplitude quantity And if so though they be indiscerpible they have continued parts intelligible and that part of the Soul is not in one hand which is in the other and as partes Animalis they are actually separable from the matter The Spiritus Mundi you suppose to be a great continued amplitude or extended Substance And Atomes are in some Elements a closely continued Substance You seem to make all Substance to be Atomes spiritual atomes and material atomes And I am not sure that God cannot make material atomes so continued a matter as that no Creature can discerp them is it any contradiction and I doubt not but Souls and Angels are so indivisible as that their Nature tendeth to continued undivided Unity and no Creature can divide them But that God cannot do it I cannot say Even of the Souls Mortality not only Arnobius but many other Christian Writers maintain that it is mortal naturâ but immortal ex dono which is unfitly spoken but well meant that is God hath made their Natures such as have no tendency in themselves to a Dissolution or Destruction but not such as he cannot dissolve or destroy Yea I doubt not but without a continued Divine Sustentation all the World would in a moment be annihilated Preservation being a continued sort of Creation Your owning nothing in Fire but what 's visible I have spoke to Ad SECT XXVIII § 1. THat Spirits are each Ens unum per se so as to have no divided parts or such as tend to dissolution I doubt not that they are each one by the continued uniting Influx of that God who continueth their Being and so far per aliud is past doubt You here make Metaphysical Monades
the truly pious Conclusion in your 34. Sect. I not only agree with you but in my own name and many others humbly tender you unfeigned Thanks § 3. And because I would not seem more distant from you than I am I shall first tell you that on these Subjects your thoughts and mine have been so long working to the same ends much in the same way that 1655. your Book against Atheism and my popular discourses of the unreasonableness of Infidelity coming out together we both used many of the same Histories of Apparitions Witches c. for Confirmation and in that Book of yours you have these following words which if they are not as I think they are not mischievous it 's like mine of the same importance are not so nor are more so proved by you than your own Antid Li. 1. p. 17. The parts of a Spirit can be no more separated though they be dilated than you can cut off the Rays of the Sun by a pair of Scissars made of pellucide Chrystal Appen p. 304. Suppose a point of Light from which rayes out a luminous Orb according to the known Principles of Optiques This Orb of Light doth very much resemble the Nature of a Spirit which is diffused and extended and yet indivisible For wee 'l suppose in this Spirit the Center of Life to be indivisible and yet to diffuse itself by a kind of circumscribed Omnipotency as the point of Light is discernible in every point of the luminous Sphere And yet supposing that central lucid point indivisible there is nothing divisible in all that Sphere of Light For it is ridiculous to think of any Engine or Art whatsoever to separate the luminous Raies from the shining Center and keep them apart by themselves as any man will acknowledge that does but consider the thing we speak of Now there is no difficulty to imagine such an Orb as this as Substance as well as a Quality And indeed this Sphere of Light itself it not inhering in any Subject in the place it occupieth looks far more like a Substance than any Accident And what we fanry unadvisedly to befal Light and Colours that any point of them will thus ray orbicularly is more rationally to be admitted in spiritual Substances whose central Essence spreads out into a secondary Substance as the luminous Rays are conceived to shoot out from a lucid point From whence we are enabled to return an Answer to the greatest difficulty in the foregoing Objection viz. That the conceived parts in a Spirit have an inseparable dependance on the central Essence from which they flow and in which they are radically contained and therefore though there be an extension of this whole substantial power yet one part is not separable or discerpible from another but the entire Substance as well secondary as primary or central is indivisible But let us again cast our Eyes on this lucid point and radiant Orb we have made use of It is manifest that those Raies that are hindered from shooting out so far as they would need not lose their Virtue or Being but only be reflected back toward their shining Center and the Obstacle being removed they may shoot out to their full length again so that there is no Generation of a new Ray. And p. 357. When I speak of Indivisibility that imagination create not new troubles to her self I mean not such an Indivisibility as is fancied in a Mathematical point but as we conceive in a Sphere of Light made from one lucid point or radiant Center For that Sphere or Orb of Light though it be in some sense extended yet it is truly indivisible supposing the Center such For there is no means imaginable to discerpe or separate any one Ray of this Orb and keep it apart by itself disjoined from the Center Now a little to invert the Property of this luminous Orb when we would apply it to a Soul or Spirit As there can be no alteration in the radiant Center but therewith it is necessarily in every part of the Orb so there is also that Vnity and Indivisibility of the exterior parts if I may so call them of a Spirit or Soul with their inmost Center that if any of them be affected the Center of Life is thereby also necessarily affected and these exteriour parts of the Soul being affected by the parts of the Object with such Circumstances as they are in the inward Center receives all so circumstantiated that it hath necessarily the entire and unconfused Images of things without though they be contrived into so small a compass and are in the very Center of this spiritual substance This Symbolical Representation I used before and I cannot excogitate any thing that will better set off the nature of a Spirit c. Here is the same and more than I have said unless you think Light here to be no Fire but take Light for a Substance and Fire but for Motion which if you say I am willing to believe you will recal And that a Spirit is in its Contraction impenetrable let your words testifie p. 312. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I define thus A Power in a Spirit of offering so near to a corporeal Emanation from the Center of Life that it will so perfectly fill the Receptivity of Matter into which it has penetrated that it is very difficult or impossible for any other Spirit to possess the same and of hereby becoming so firmly and closely united to a Body as both to actuate and be acted upon to affect and be affected thereby So here is a Spirit when it hath filled a Body that can no more be penetrated by another Spirit or Body and so in this contracted state is impenetrable So that this is but bringing diffused parts closer together and then no other can be in the same place And is this the necessary Form of a Spirit But may not this extension and Indivisibiliâ—y also be omitted as too hard without all the mischief mentioned by you and a truer notifying Form found out Let us hear your self p. 359. To prevent all such Cavils we shall omit the Spinosities of the Extension or Indivisibility of a Soul or Spirit and conclude briefly thus That the manifold Contradictions and Repugnancies we find in the nature of matter to be able to either think or spontaneously to move itself do well assure us that these operations belong not to it but to some other substance Wherefore we finding those operations in us it is manifest that we have in us an immaterial Being really distinct from the Body which we ordinarily call a Soul The speculation of whose bare Essence though it may well puzzle us yet those properties that we find incompetible to a Body do sufficiently inform us of the different Nature thereof for it is plain she is a Substance indued with the power of Cogitation that is of perceiving and thinking of Objects as also of penetrating and spontaneously moving of a
light I have would enable me and what to do more I know not except this course I now take prove effectual you inclining to assist me that I know have studied these things My request to you therefore is If your more publick Studies will permit you That you would condescend to satisfie me in the Particulars I shall mention I assure you I have no other design but to know the Truth which in things of such moment certainly cannot be difficult tho to my unfurnished Head they have proved so I hope my shaking may prove my establishment That I may therefore put you to as little trouble as I can I will first tell you what I do believe and then what I stick at First therefore I do really believe and am very well satisfied That there is a God or a first Cause that hath created all things and given to every thing its Being For I am not acquainted with any independent Being I know not any thing that is able to subsist without the Contribution of its Fellow-Creatures I am conscioâ—s to my self when sickness invades me and death summons my Compound to a dissolution I can do nothing to the preservation of the Being I enjoy And if I cannot preserve my self as I am much less could I make my self what I am For when I was nothing I could do nothing And Experience and Sense tells me As it is with me so it is with others as there is none can preserve their Beings so there is none could acquire to themselves the Being they have and if none then not the first man And indeed that was it I enquired after from whence every species had at first their Beings the way how and means by which they are continued I know not any Cause of the Being of any thing of which again I may not enquire the Cause and so from Cause to Cause till through a multitude of Causes I necessarily arrive at the first Cause of all Causes a Being wholly uncaused and without Cause except what it was unto it self My next Enquiry was into my self and my next business to find what Concern I have with my Creator which I knew no better way to attain than by searching the bounds of humane Capacity For I concluded it reasonable to judg those attainments I was capable of in my Creation I was designed for Now if man is nothing more than what is visible or may be made so by Anatomy or Pharmacy he is no Subject capable of enjoying or loving God nor consequently of a life of Retrobution In this Enquiry I found Man consisted of something visible and invisible the Body which is visible and something else that invisibly actuates the same For I have seen the Body the visible part of man when the invisible either through indisposition of its Orgains or its self or being expelled its Mansion hath ceased to act I speak as one in doubt the Body hath been left to outward appearance the same it was yet really void of Sense and wholly debilitated of all power to act But then what this invisible is what to conclude of it I know not Here I am at a stand and in a Labyrinth without a Clue For I find no help any where Many have I acknowledg defended the Souls Immortality but none have proved the existence of such a Being and a life of Retrobution and that copiously enough but none have proved a Subject capable of it I know all our Superior Faculties and Actings are usually attributed to the Soul but what it is in man they call so they tell us not To say it is that by which I reason or that now dictates to me what I write is not satisfactory For I look for a definition and such an one as may not to ought else be appropriated Is it therefore a real Being really different from the Body and able to be without it or is it not If not whatever it be I matter not If it be is it a pure Spirit or meerly material If meerly material and different only from the Body gradually and in some few degrees of subtilty it is then a question whether or not that we call Death and suppose a separation of the Compound be not rather a Concentration of this active Principle in its own Body which through some indisposition of the whole or stoppage in its Orgains through gross Corporeity hath suffocated its actings If it be a pure Spirit I would then know what is meant by Spirit and whether or no all things invisible and imperceptable to Sense are accounted such If so it is then only a term to distinguish between things evident to Sense and things not If otherwise how shall I distinguish between the highest degree of material and the lowest degree of spiritual Beings or know how they are diversified or be certain the Being of the Soul is rightly appropriated For to me an immaterial and spiritual Being seems but a kind of Hocus and a Substance stript of all materiality a substantial nothing For all things at first had their Origine from the deep dark Waters witness Moses Philosophy in the 1st of Genesis on which the Spirit of God is said to move I am far from believing those Waters such as that Element we daily make use of but that they were material appears by those multitudes of material Productions they brought forth And if those Waters were material such were all things they dâ—d produce among which was Man of whom the Text asserts nothing more plain for it saith God created man of the dust of the earth the most gross part and sedement of those Waters after all things else were created Now the Body only is not Man for Man is a living Creature it is that therefore by which the Body lives and acts that constitutes the Man Now the Apostle mentioneth Man to consist of Body Soul and Spirit My Argument then is this God created man of the dust of the earth But Man consists of a Body Soul and Spirit Therefore Body Soul and Spirit are made of the dust c. and are material The major and minor are undeniable and therefore the conclusion Yet do I not therefore conclude its annihilation for I know all matter is eternal but am rather perswaded of its concentration as afore in its own body But of its real Being purely spiritual and stript of all materiality really distinct from its body I doubt Because that by several accidents happening to the body the man is incapacited from acting rationally as before as in those we call Ideots there is not in some of them so much a sign of a reasonable Soul as to distinguish them from Bruits Whereas were the Soul such as represented it would rather cease to act than act at a rate below it self Did it know its Excellencies such as we make them it would as soon desert its being as degrade its self by such bruitish acts It is not any defect in
existed be swallowed up of one where are the Rewards and Punishments of each individual And we have reason to judg it will be thus rather than otherwise because we see every thing tends to its own Centre the Water to the Sea and all that was of the Earth to the Earth from whence they were taken And Solomon saith The spirit returns to God that gave it Every thing then returning to its own Element Ioseth its Individuation For we see all bodies returning to the earth are no more individual bodies but earth Have we not reason then to judg the same of Spirits returning to their own Element And what happiness then can we hope for more than a deliverance from the present calamity or what misery are we eapable of more than what is common to all The same is more evident in the body with which we converse and are more sensibly acquainted with seems wholly uncapable of either c. For all bodies are material and matter it self is not capable of multiplication but of being changed Therefore Nature cannot multiply bodies but changeth them as some bodies arise others perish Natures expence in continual Productions being constantly supplied by the dissolution of other Compounds were it otherwise her Store-house would be exhausted for it s by continual Circulations Heaven and Earth is maintain'd and by her even Circular motion she keeps her self imployed on the same stock of matter and maintains every species There is no body the same to day it was yesterday matter being in a continual flux neither immediately on the dissolution of a Compound and Corruption of the body doth the earth thereof retain any specifick difference of that body it once was but is immediately bestowed by Nature and ordered to the new production of other things That part of matter therefore which constituteth a humane body in a short time is putrified and made earth which again produceth either other inferior Animals or Grass or Corn for the nourishment of Beasts and Fowl which again are the nourishment of men Thus circularly innumerable times round Nature continually impressing new forms of the same matter So that that matter that now constitutes my body it may be a thousand years ago was the matter of some other mans or it may be of divers mens then putrified which in this time hath suffered infinite changes as it may be sometime Grass or Corn or an Herb or Bird or Beast or divers of them or all and that divers times over before my body was framed who then can say why this matter so changeable should at last be restored my body rather than his whose formerly it was or the body of a Bird or other Animal For by the same Reasons that the body of man is proved to arise again may I think be proved the Restoration of all other bodies which is equally incredible to me if understood at one time For Natures stock of matter being all at first exhausted she could not employ her self in new Productions without destroying some of the old much less can she at once fabricate out of the same quantity of matter all the bodies that ever were are or shall be which yet notwithstanding could she they could not be said to be the same bodies because all bodies suffer such alteration daily that they cannot be said to be the same to day they were yesterday how then can they be capable of Reward or Punishment These are now my doubts but are they the fruits of Diligence and am I thus rewarded for not believing at a common rate A great deal cheaper could I have sate down and believed as the Church believes without a why or a wherefore have been ignorant of these Disputes and never have emerged my self in this gulf than thus by Reflection to create my own disturbance Had I been made a meer Animal I had had none of these Doubts nor Fears that thus torment my mind for doubting happy Bruits happy far more happy than my self With you is none of this with you only is serenity of mind and you only void of Anxieties you only enjoy what this world is able to accommodate with and it may be too have those Caresses we know not of while we your poor purveyors go drooping and disponding doubting fearing and caring about and our whole lives only a preying on one another and tormenting our selves You have the carnal content and satisfaction we nothing but the shell a vain glorious boast of our Lordship over you with which we seek to satisfie our selves as Prodigals with husks while the truth is we are afraid to confront our Vassals except we first by craft and treachery beguile them from whom likewise we flee if once enraged and what a poor comfort is this Is this a Priviledg to boast of Is this all Reason advanceth to only a Purveyor to Beasts and to make my life more miserable by how much more sensible of misery Well might Solomon prefer the dead before the living and those that had not been before both intimating thereby that being best least capable of misery that is of Trees of Herbs of Stones and all inanimates which wanting sense are insensible of misery Better any thing than man therefore since that every brute and inanimate stock or stone are more happy in that measure they are less capable of misery What the advantage then what the benefit that occurs to us from them or what preheminence have we above them seeing as dieth the one so dieth the other and that they have all one breath Pardon this Degression the real sense and apprehension I have of things extort it from me For I as Job cannot refrain my mouth but speak in the bitterness of my Spirit and complain in the anguish of my Soul Why died I not from the womb why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly Why did the knees prevent me or why the breasts that I should suck I had then been among Solomon 's happy ones I should now have lain still and been quiet I should have slept and been at rest whereas now I am weary of life For tho I speak my grief is not asswaged and tho I forbear I am not eased but now he hath made me weary and made desolate all my company he hath filled me with wrinkles which is a witness against me and my leanness rising up in me beareth witness to my face God hath delivered me to the ungodly and turned me over into the hand of the wicked and my familiar friends have forgotten me I said I shall die in my nest and shall multiply my days as the sand when my root was spread out by the waters and the dew lay all night on my branch when my glory was fresh and my bow was renewed in my hand but I find while my flesh is upon me I shall have pain and while my soul is in me it shall mourn Have pity upon me O my friend
for the hand of God hath touched me The wicked live and become old yea they are mighty in power their seed is established in their sight with them and their off-spring before their eyes their houses are safe from fear neither is the rod of God upon them c. they are planted and take root they grew yea they bring forth fruit yet God is never in their mouth and far from their reins In vain then do I wash my hands in innocency seeing all things come alike to all There is one event to the righteous and to the wicked to the good to the clean and to the unclean to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not as is the good so is the sinner and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath I have now done tho I hardly know how lest I too far trouble you and only beg your perusal of these lines and two or three in answer of them by this Bearer who shall at your appointment wait on you for the same Let me farther â—eg these two things of you first That you would consider you have not to do with a Sophistick Wrangler or with one that would willingly err but with one that desires to know the Truth Let therefore your Answer be as much as you can void of Scholastick Terms or Notions that may lead me more into the dark And then as Job did beg That God would withdraw his hand far from him and that his dread might not make him afraid so I. And further That you would not awe me with his greatness nor suppress my Arguments with his Omnipotence Then call thou and I will answer or let me speak and answer thou me Thus begging the Divine Influence to direct you and enlighten me I subscribe my self SIR § 1. IT is your wisdom in Cases of so great moment to use all just endeavours for satisfaction and I think you did but your duty to study this as hard as you say you have done But 1. I wish you had studied it better for then you would not have been a stranger to many Books which afford a just solution of your Doubts as I must suppose you are by your taking no notice of what they have said 2. And I wish you had known that between the solving of all your Objections and taking all on Trust from men or believing as the Church believeth there are Two other ways to satisfaction which must be conjunct 1. Discerning the unanswerable evidences in Nature and Providence of the Souls future Life 2. And taking it on trust from Divine Revelation which is otherwise to be proved than by believing as the Church by Authority requireth you I have written on this Subject so much â—â—ready that I had rather you had told me why you think it unsatisfactory than desire me to transcribe it while Print is as legible as Manuscript If you have not read it I humbly offer it to your consideration It is most in two Books The first which I intreat you to read is called The Reasons of the Christian Religion the other is called The Unreasonableness of Infidelity If you think this too much labour you are not so hard or faithful a Student of this weighty Case as it deserveth and you pretend to be If you will read them or the first at least and after come to me that we may fairly debate your remaining Doubts it will be a likelier way for us to be useful to each other than my going over all the mistakes of your Paper will be And I suppose you know that we have full assurance of a multitude of Verities against which many Objections may be raised which no mortal man can fully solve especially from Modes and Accidents Nay perhaps there is nothing in the World which is not liable to some such Objections And yet I will not neglect your writing § 2. When you were convinc'd That there is a first Cause it would have been an orderly progress to think what that Cause is and whether his Works do not prove his Infinite Perfection having all that eminently which he giveth formally to the whole World as far as it belongeth to perfection to have it For none can give more than he hath And then you should have thought what this God is to man as manifest in his Works and you should have considered what of man is past doubt and thence in what relation he stands to God and to his fellow-creatures And this would have led you to know mans certain duty and that would have assured you of a future life of Retribution Is not this a just progress § 3. But you would know a Definition of the Soul But do you know nothing but by Definitions Are all men that cannot define therefore void of all knowledg You know not at all what seeing is or what light is or what feeling smelling tasting hearing is what sound or odor is what sweet or bitter nor what thinking or knowing or willing or loving is if you know it not before defining tell you and better than bare defining can ever tell you Every vital faculty hath a self-perception in its acting which is an eminent sense Intuition also of outward sensible Objects or immediate perception of them as sensata imaginata is before all Argument and Definition or reasoning action By seeing we perceive that we see and by understanding we perceive that we understand I dare say That you know the Acts of your own Soul by acting tho when you come to reasoning or defining you say you know not what they are You can give no definition what substance is or Ens at least much less what God is And yet what is more certain than that there is Substance Entity and God § 4. But I 'le tell you what the Soul of mâ—n is It is a Vital Intellectual Volitive Spirit animating a humane organized Body When it is separated it is not formally a Soul but a Spirit still § 5. Qu. But what is such a mental Spirit It is a most pure Substance whose form is a Power or Virtue of Vital Action Intellection and Volition three in one § 6. I. Are you not certain of all these Acts viz. That you Act vitall understand and will If not you are not sure that you see that you doubt that you wrote to me or that you are any thing II. If you act these it is certain that you have the power of so acting For nothing doth that which it cannot do III. It is certain that it is a Substance which hath this power For nothing can do nothing IV. It is evident that it is not the visible Body as composed of Earth Water and Air which is this mental Substance Neither any one of them nor all together have Life Understanding or Will They are passive Beings and act not at all of themselves but as acted by invisible Powers They have an aggregative inclination to Uâ—ion and no other
must needs know every Ingredient in his Physick and the Nature and Reason of it before he will take it when he should implicitly trust his Physician Man should have waited on God for all his Notices and sought to know no more than he revealed But a distrustful and a selfish knowledg and busy enquiring into unrevealed things is become our sin and misery § 36. You say Suppose all this answered what will it avail as to a life of Retribution if all return to one element and be there immerged as Brooks and Rivers in the Sea and we lose our individuation Ans I answer'd this in the Appendix to the Reas of the Christian Religion I add 1. Do you believe that each one hath now one individual Soul or not If not how can we lose that which we never had If we have but all one universal mover which moveth us as Engines as the Wind and Water move Mills how come some motions to be so swift as a Swallow and others so slow or none at all in as mobile a body Yea how cometh motion to be so much in our Power that we can sit still when we will and rise and go and run and speak when we will and cease or change it when we will A stone that falls or an arrow that is shot cannot do so Sure it is some inward formal Principle and not a material Mechanical mobility of the matter which can cause this difference Indeed if we have all but one Soul it 's easie to love our Neighbours as our selves because our Neighbours are our selves But it 's as easie to hate our selves as our Enemies and the good as the bad if all be one for forma dat nomen esse But it 's strange that either God or the Soul of the World shall hate it self and put it self to pain and fight against it self as in Wars c. But if you think still That there is nothing but God and dead matter actuated by him I would beg your Answer to these few Questions 1. Do you really believe that there is a God that is an eternal infinite self-being who hath all that power knowledg and goodness of will in transcendent Eminency which any Creature hath formally and is the efficient Governor of all else that is If not all the world condemneth you for it is not an uncaused Being and can have nothing but from its Cause who can give nothing greater than it self 2. Do you think this God can make a Creature that hath a subordinate Soul or Spirit to be the Principle of its own Vital Action Intellection and Volition or not Cannot God make a Spirit If not it is either because it is a Contradiction which none can pretend or because God is not Omnipotent that is is not God and so there is no God and so you deny what you granted But if God can make a Spirit 3. Why should you think he would not Some of your mind say That he doth all the good that he can or else he were not perfectly good Certainly his goodness is equal to his greatness and is commmunicative 4. Hath he not imprinted his Perfections in some measure in his Works Do they not shew his glory Judg of his Greatness by the Sun Stars and Heavens and of his Wisdom by the wonderful Order Contexture and Goverument of all things Even the Fabrick of a Fly or any Animal poseth us And do you think that his love and goodness hath no answerable effect 5. Do you think that passive matter doth as much manifest Gods Perfection and honour the Efficient as vital and Intellectual Spirits If it be a far nobler Work for God to make a free vital mental Spirit to act under him freely mentally and vitally than to make meer atomes why should you think that God will not do it 6. And do you not dishonour or blaspheme the prime Cause by such dishonouring of his Work as to say he never made any thing more noble than Atomes and Compositions of them 7. Is there not in the Creature a communicative disposition to cause their like Animals generate their like Fire kindleth fire Wise men would make others wise God is essential infinite Life Wisdom and Love and can he or would he make nothing liker to himself than dead Atomes Yea you feign him to make nothing but by Composition while you say That matter it self is eternal 8. But when the matter of Fact is evident and we see by the actions that there is a difference between things moved by God some having a created Life and mind and some none what needs then any further proof § 31. But if you hold That we have now distinct Spirits which are individual Substances why should you fear the loss of our individuation any more than our annihilation or specifick alteration If God made as many substantial individual Souls as men is there any thing in Nature or Scripture which thteatneth the loss of Individuation I have shewed you and shall further shew you enough against it § 32. You say page 7. Every thing returneth to its element and loseth its individuation Earth to Earth Water to the Sea the Spirit to God that gave it What happiness then can we hope for more than deliverance from the present calamity or what misery are we capable of more than is common to all Ans 1. Bodies lose but their Composition and Spiritual forms Do you think that any Atome loseth its individuation If it be still divisible in partes infinitas it is infinite And if every Atome be infinite it is as much or more than all the world and so is no part of the world and so there would be as many Worlds or Infinites as Atomes It is but an aggregative motion which you mention Birds of a Feather will flock together and yet are Individuals still Do you think any dust or drop any Atome of Earth or Water loseth any thing of it self by its union with the rest Is any Substance lost Is the simple Nature changed Is it not Earth and Water still Is not the Haecceity as they call it continued Doth not God know every dust and every drop from the rest Can he not separate them when he will And if Nature in all things tend to aggregation or union it is then the Perfection of every thing And why should we fear Perfection 2. But Earth and Water and Air are partible matter Earth is easily separable The parts of Water more hardly by the means of some terrene Separaror The parts of Air yet more hardly and the Sun-beams or substance of fire yet harder than that tho it's contraction and effects are very different And Spirits either yet harder or not at all Some make it essential to them to be indiscerptible and all must say That there is nothing in the Nature of them tending to division or separation And therefore tho God who can annihilate them can divide them into parts if it
to you as a Teacher But whereas you say that these make three no more than Animal Homo and Brutum or Cupiditas Desiderium and Fuga you silence me for it beseemeth me not to speak to you in a Teaching Language and there is no other to convince you And if all that I have said in Method Theol. will not do it I confess it will not easily be done Animal Homo and Brutum are three words containing only a Generical and specifick nature in two distinct species of Subjects If you think that in the Sun Virtus-motiva illuminativa calefactiva or in mans Soul a vegetative sensitive and Intellective power or in the latter mentally-active Intellective and Volitive Virtue are no other I will not persuade you to change your mind much less give you any Answer to your simile of cupiditas desiderium fuga save that you might almost as well have named any three Words § 3. But you say The Omission of Immaterial in your Conceptus formalis or which is all one of Penetrability and Indiscerpibility is not only a mistake but a mischief it implying that the Virtus Appetitiva perceptiva may be in a Substance though material which betrays much of the succours which Philosophy affords to Religion c. Ans Melancholy may cause fears by seeming Apparitions I hope no body will be damned for using or not using the Word Material or Immaterial It 's easie to use either to prevent such danger And I am not willing again to examine the sense of these words every time you use them You know I said not that Spirits are Material And you say they are Substances of Extension Amplitude Spissitude Locality and Subtilty as opposite to Crassitude And what if another think just so of them or not so grosly and yet call them Matter will the word undoe him But you say I omitt Immaterial Ans See my Append. to Reas of Christ Rel. whether I omit it But is a bare Negative Essential to a just definition here Why then not many Negatives more as invisible insensible c. To say that Air is not Water or Water is not Earth was never taken for defining nor any mischief to omit it But that the positive term Purissima doth not include Immaterial and is not as good you have not as yet proved Is Substantia purissima material Do not you by that intimation do more to assert the Materiality of Spirits than ever I did Have you read what I have answered to 20 Objections of the Somatists in the aforesaid Append. But you say It implyeth that Virtus perceptiva c. may be in a substance material Ans Negatur If I leave out 20 Negatives in my Definition it followeth not that the form may be with their positives But can you excuse your self from what you call a Mischief when you intimate that Substantia purissima may be material Because I only called it purissima you say I imply it may be material But I confess I am too dull to be sure that God cannot endue matter itself with the formal Virtue of Perception That you say the Cartesians hold the contrary and that your Writings prove it certifieth me not O the marvellous difference of mens Conceptions Such great Wits as Campanella Dr. Glisson c. were confident that no Matter in the world was without the una-trina Virtus viz. Perceptive Appetitive and Motive I agree not with them But you on the contrary say that Materia qualitercunque modificata is uncapable of Perception I doubt not materia qua materia or yet qua mere modificata hath no LIfe But that it is uncapable of it and that Almighty God cannot make perceptive living Matter and that by informing it without mixture I cannot prove nor I think you Where is the Contradiction that makes it impossible Nor do I believe that it giveth a man any more cause to doubt as you add of the Existence of God or the Immortality of the Soul than your Opinion that saith God cannot do this To pass by many other I will but recite the words of Micraelius Ethnophron li. 1. c. 13. p. 23 24. instancing in many that held the Soul to be Pure Matter Eam Sententiam inter veteres probavit apud Macrobium Heraclitus Physicus cui anima est Essentiae Stellaris scintilla Et Hipparchus apud Plinium cui est coeli pars Et Africanus apud Ciceronem qui detrahit animum ex illis sempiternis ignibus quae Sidera vocamus quaeque globosae rotundae divinis animatae mentibus circules suos orbesque conficiunt celeritate mirabili Et Seneca qui descendisse eam ex illo coelesti Spiritu ait Et Plato ipse qui alicubi animam vocat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 radians splendidum vehiculum Et Epictetus qui Astra vocat nobis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amica cognata elementa Ipseque cum Peripateticis Aristoteles qui eam quinta essentia constare 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in animabus inesse dicit Inter nostrates quoque Scaliger vocat animam Naturam coelestem quintam essentiam alia quidem à quatuor Elementis naturâ praeditam sed non sine omni materia Eadem Opinio arridet Roherto de Fluctibus c. And what many Fathers say I have elsewhere shewed And yet on condition you will not make the name Substance to signifie no real Being but a meer Relation or Quality I think you and I shall scarce differ in sense § 4. But you magnifie our difference saying In this you and I fundamentally differ in that you omit but I include Penetrability and Indiscerpibility in the Conceptus formalis of a Spirit Ans I think you mean better than you speak and err not fundamentally 1. I do not think that your two hard words are fundamentals nor that one or both are Synonyma to Immaterial 2. I do not think but Purissima includeth all that is true in them and so leaveth them not out 3. I do not leave them out of the Dispositio vel modus Substantiae though I leave them out of the Conceptus formalis 4. Your self affirm the vital Virtue to be the Conceptus formalis And hath a Spirit more forms than one You know of no existent Spirit in the World that hath not its proper specifick form And if your two words had been a Generical Form that 's no form to the species but a Substantiae dispositio Doth he fundamentally err that saith Corpus humanum organicum is not forma hominis Or that the puritas vel subtilitas materiae is not forma â—gnis vel solis but only the materiae dispositio If our little self made words were so dangerous on either side I should fear more hurt by making the form of a Spirit 1. To be but the Consistence or mode of the Substance 2. And that to consist in divers accidents conjunct 3. And those uncertain in part or unintelligible 4. And Spirits
Apple on the Tree hath a certain individuate or numerical Being and yet every one is a part of the Tree And every Herb and Tree is a part of the Garden or Orchard and that a part of England c. and all a part of the Earth in which they grow and no doubt the Earth is as dependant on other parts of the Universe and all on God We dream of no total separation of any Creature from the rest much less Spirits But all the Illuminated Air is more one flamma tenuis though compound of Air and Fire and called by us Light than the Sands are one Earth And I doubt not but that Fire which is the Motive Illuminative and Calefactive Substance in all the Air and elsewhere is yet much less divisible than the Air and Souls than it So that should God make many into one they would be many Individuals no more but one again Divisible by God himself § 3. And you mis-suppose me to suppose that the whole Substance of all Humane Souls are but the same which once in Adam was but one and from him divided Writing is a tedious work because it so hardly causeth men to understand us I suppose that a continued Creative Emanation from the Father of Spirits giveth out all that Spiritual Substantiality which becometh new Souls but that God hath ordained that the Generating Souls shall first receive this Divine Emanation and be organical ☞ in communicating it to the Semen and so to new organical Bodies not that the Parents Souls only dispose the seminal recipient Matter but are themselves partly receptive and then active in the communication It will be a defective similitude if I say as a Burning-glass by a receptive contraction of the Sun Beams is instrumental in kindling combustible matter Rather as one Candle kindleth a thousand and yet the substance of the Lucid and Calid Being is communicated from the Ignite Air by the means of that one Candle For that it is only Motus a Motu I believe not That you have drawn me thus effutire quae circa generationem opinor must help you to be patient with my tediousness And the rather because to avoid offending you I will now pass by any further Answer to your Queries Whether Adam 's Soul was a Legion which else was Adam 's Soul How come they to be Male and Female was that number of Souls expanded or contracted what a change by Venery what becomes of the many Souls in the Chast and the rest I would not by a particular Answer disgrace your Questions or the jocular urgent amplifications No doubt Lights are too low Illustrations but the highest within the reach of sense There was not a Legion of Candles in that which lighted a Legion nor need I tell you which of the lighted Candles was that which lighted it nor why lighting more consumed not the first nor why it kindled a Wax-Candle and a Tallow-Candle c. I knew not till now that you thought Souls differed in Sex because the Persons do But I will not strive against your Conceit The Soul of a Male and Female I better understand than a Male and Female Soul § 4. But you tell me I must consider the Nature of Light throughly and I shall find it nothing but a certain motion of a Medium whose particles are so or so qualified some such way as Cartesianism drives at But here 's not Substances but Motion communicated c. Ans I had as willingly have heard Cartesius tell me any Dream else that ever came into his Brain For this I greatly despise And wonder not that any man is ignorant of the nature of Spirits who is so grosly ignorant of the igneous analogical Nature as he was I have said so much in divers Books against it that I will not here in transitu any further touch so noble a Subject than to tell you that if you have studied the old Stoicks Platonists c. and Patricius Telesius Campanella Lud. le Grand c. as much as Cartesius I pitty you for believing him I doubt not the Substance of Fire hath a Virtus motiva as well as illuminativa catefactiva And consequently that Light and Heat are neither of them without Motion But that they are a tripple operation of the Vna-trina forma ignea I am past doubt after as hard study as you can advise me to But your terms certain motion and an unnamed Medium and particles so and so qualified and some way c. are not notifying terms to me That Lumen is ipse motus methinks a man of half Cartesius's Age should never dream That it 's an effect of Motion many say and think it so as much as Intellection is an effect of mental-Vitality and Volition of Intellection But to lay no stress on Sir Ken. Digby's Arguments I make no doubt Ignis lucens is as truly a Substance as a Spirit is If Light be an Act or Quality it hath some immediate Agent or Subject It doth not exist separated from them It is in the Air but as the Recipient as it is in the Oil of the Candle The Air shineth not of itself as the Night informeth us It is therefore a Substance that moveth and illuminateth the Air And if Cartes will call that Substance Glâ—buli aetherei or mat eria subtilis I need not a game at such toyish words As Motus causeth Sensation and Intellection which yet by meer motion would never have been caused without the conjunct Acts of the Sensitive and Intellective Faculties as such so is it of Light Really when I read how far you have escaped the delusions of Cartesianism I am sorry that you yet stick in so gross a part of it as this is when he that knoweth no more than motion in the Nature of Fire which is the active Principle by which mental and sensitive Nature operateth on Man and Bruits and Vegetables and all the passive Elements if it be not ipsa forma telluris and all the visible actions in this lower World are performed what can that mans Philosophy be worth I therefore return your Counsel study more throughly the Nature of Aethereal Fire I find cause to imagine by your Writings that you are as Mr. Glanvile for the pre-existence of Souls before Generation And when do you think they were all made And what Bodies did all the Souls that have ever since been in the World animate when there was no human Body but Adam's and Eve's Can you conjecture what Animal's they were before they were men's If you on the one extream thinking that God made as many Souls yea Animals the first week as ever are in Being to the end of the World and the Averrhoists on the other extream who think all Souls are but one individuated by receptive Matter as one Sun lighteth many Candles by a Burning-Glass and all return as Candles put out into one again were to dispute it out by meer Philosophy without the
Experience of apparitions I know not which would get the better Ad SECT XII XIII THe 12. Section being all meer fiction needs no further Answer § 1. It seems you call that the excited Spirit of Nature lighting every Candle which other men call Fire And so you will number Fire with Spirits § 2. Your 13. Section is strange 1. You say Penetrability and indivisibility are not accidents at all no more than Rationale of a man Ans Anima rationalis is forma hominis in the strict proper sense of Forma as an Active Principle Indivisible is a Negative and it and Penetrable are the consistency or mode of the Substance or as you call it Matter As Amplitude Quantity Spissitude Dimensions Locality are by you said to be which are called Forms in another sense as the passive Elements differ from each other But the Principium Activum being the true and only Form of a Spirit these modalities and Consistencies are but conditio materiae as you call it or Substantiae as I call it as to the Form Yet that Dispositio materiae is Essential I have asserted § 3. And yet though all along I deny not your two words to be the conditio omnis Substantiae spiritualis joined with more I still tell you that difficulties make me not lay so much on them as you do To add one more As I told you Quality is penetrable as well as Spirit e. g. heat so yet though we commonly say it is indivisible I wish you would solve this Objection You prove the locality of Spirits by their operation on this or that Body And doubtless you may well prove that the Recipient body is in loco and consequently the Agent relatively But how shall we avoid the division of Qualities or Spirits ex divisione materiae subjectivae E. g. If a red hot Iron be penetrated by the heat yet if this Iron be cut in two while hot and each part set per potentiam superiorem at 20 Miles distance is not the heat divided with the Iron So if a mans Head be struck off and by such a quick mover as you think moveth the Earth the Head in a moment were carried far off while both parts of the Body are yet alive is not the Soul in each part And if the Parts were 20 or 100 Miles a sunder is it still one undivided Soul I can say somwhat to satisfie my self of this but hardly without crossing somwhat that you say § 4. Again when my chief dissent from you is more against your Confidence than your Verity yet you again tell us that we know not bare Essences but Essential Attributes I tell you I take not these to be notifying Expressions We know some Essences either intuitively as Ockam saith or without signs immediately e. g. what it is to see taste hear smell c. and what to understand and will And we know other Essences Scientia abstractiva per signa And what good would the knowledge of Attributes else do us Attributes in notione prima are the thing itself And to know an Essential Attribute and to know ipsam Essentiam Scientia inadaequata is all one But an Essential Attribute as notio secunda is but signum per quod res significata cognoscenda est And this is knowing the Essence too but scientia abstractivâ And all is scientia valde imperfectâ § 5. You say that Neither the faculty nor Operation of Reasoning is the Essence and consequently not rationale Ans Things of so great Moment should not not be obtruded on the World with a bare ipse dico The Act of Intellection or Reasoning is but the Essence in hoc modo but the Faculty is the Essential Form of the Soul When you have confuted the Scotists and my peculiar Disput in Meth. Theol. where I think I fully disprove what you say I may hear you further Ad SECT XIV XV XVI § 1 HEre you would first know How I know that the Vitalitas formalis belongs not to Matter unless I have an Antecedent notion of Spirit distinct from Matter Ans 1. I consent not to Dr. Glisson who thought all Matter had a Vital Form But I undertake not to prove that God cannot endow any Matter with a Vital Form And forma denominat where I find the Form of a Spirit I 'le call it Spirit 2. Dr. Henry Moore in his Metaph. would ask me how I know that a Helmet may not be made of Paper and he and I would agree that Paper is not materia disposita and yet we would not call it Galeae formam § 2. Your denial of Substantiality to be ex traduce I answered before telling you that I think it is both ex emanatione creativa ex traduce but not by either alone nor all Souls that ever will be created in Indisceâ—pible Individuality at once and transmuted from Body to Body § 3. When I say the Negative Immaterial notifieth not the form you say that Immaterial implieth Positiveness Ans Therefore give us the positive notion or you give us no definition nor any notifying word § 4. When you say You believe it is not easie to give an Example that materia is put in lieu of substantia in that adequate sense What abundance of Authors could I name you yea have I oft named besides Dr. Crakenthorp § 5. When you say All created Substance is both Active and Passive in some sense or other It 's but to say all words are ambiguous So all created Substance is matter in some sense or other But one would have thought by your oft repeated denial of the self-moving Power of Matter that you had thought only Spirits have a self-moving power And if so will you yet say that this is a distinction which distinguisheth nothing I think thus Natura activa as meet a name as Spiritus And that yet it hath some Passivity Damascene yea and Augustine de Spir. Anim. c. 8. say that is because the Soul respectu incorporei Dei corporea est though in respect to our Bodies it is Incorporeal Other Fathers say much more but I justify not their words § 6. Ad 15. Sect. I pretend not to have such an Idaea of Spiritual Substance as to denominate its consistence more fitly than by Purity a word which you also use yet not denying your several Attributes § 7. As to your Doctrine of Atomes I think no wise man dare say that God made matter first in divided Atomes and after set them together But that God is able to divide all matter into Atomes or indivisible parts I doubt not The Virtus Formalis of Spirits and so some qualities consist not of Atomes But how far God can divide the ample Substance of them I only tell you that I know not and to pretend to know it would be none of my Wisdom Your Attributes of amplitude quantity dimensions imply that God made some Spirits bigger in amplitude than others as well as Virtutis
absurd and ridiculous But is not that a Monad and Atome which is one and indivisible though it be not minimum and if your Penetrability imply not that all the singular Spirits can contract themselves into a punctum yea that all the Spirit of the World may be so contracted I find it not yet sufficiently explained For you never tell us into how little parts only it may be contracted And if you put any limits I will suppose that one Spirit hath contracted itself into the least compass possible and then I ask cannot another and another Spirit be in the same compass by their Penetration If not Spirits may have a contracted Spissitude which is not penetrable and Spirits cannot penetrate contracted Spirits but only dilated ones If yea then quaero whether all created Spirits may not be so contracted And I should hope that your Definition of Spirit excludeth not God and yet that you do not think that his Essence may be contracted and dilated O that we knew how little we know And as to your rejection of Metaphors I say the very name Spiritus which you use is a Metaphor rhe first sense being our Breath à spirando or the Air or Wind Martinius nameth no fewer than Fifteen senses of it and Wisdom itself said 1 Cor. 15. There is a natural Body and there is a spiritual Body § 2. You add If you will say that if he should create such a Spirit with metaphysical Amplitude which though so large himself cannot divide and sever into parts he would thereby puzzle his own Omnipotency at this rate he shall be allowed to create nothing no not so much as matter nor himself indeed to be Ans I had rather tremble at this than boldly answer it Whatever is a contradiction cannot be and it is not for want of power that God cannot do it It is no work of power Had you proved it a Contradiction for God to make two Spirits of one or one of two you had done that part in an easier way which I should not gainsay But this Speech of yours is as if you said He denieth God to be the Creator or to be God who saith that God is able to divide an Ample spiritual Substance that is who saith that this is no contradiction and that God is Almighty when our Creed saith that God is the Father Almighty maker of Heaven and Earth Cannot he alter or annihilate his own works Before he made the World he could have made the ample Substance of the Spirit of the World into many Spirits And is he less able so to change it If Spirits be unified as the Bodies which they animate cannot God make many Bodies into one Cannot he make many Stars into one And then would that one have many unifying Spirits or but one It 's a thing so high as required some shew of proof to intimate that God cannot be God if he be Almighty and cannot conquer his own Omnipotency § 3. Your words like an intended Reason are For that cannot be God from whom all other things are not produced created Ans 1. Relatively as a God to us it 's true though quoad existentiam Essentiae he was God before the Creation 2. But did you take this for any shew of a proof The sense implied is this All things are not produced and created by God if a spiritual ample Substance be divisible by his Omnipotency that made it Yea then he is not God Negatur Consequentia Ad SECT XXIX XXX XXXI § 1. YOU say your definition is more informing than defining a Spirit by Fire viz. a Spirit is an immaterial substance indued with Life and the faculty of Motion and virtually containing in it Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Ans 1. Your definition is common good and true allowing for its little imperfections and the common imperfection of mans knowledge of Spirits The same things need not be so very oft repeated in answer to you but briefly I say if by Immaterial you mean not without substance it signifieth truth but a negation speaketh not a formal essence 2. Spirit is itself but a Metaphor 3. Intrinsecal indued with Life tells us not that it is the form Qualities and proper accidents are intrinsecal 4. The faculty of motion is either a tautology included in life or else if explicatory of life it is defective or if it distribute Spirits into two sorts vital and motive it should not be in the common definition 5. No Man can understand that the negative Immaterial by the terms includeth Penetrability and Indiscerpibility 6 You do not say here that they are the form but elsewhere you do and the form should be exprest and not only virtually contained as you speak 7. They are not the form but the Dispositio vel conditio ad formam 8. If such modalities or consistence were the form more such should be added which are left out 9. Penetrability and Indiscerpibility are two notions and you should not give us a compound form 10. Yea you compound them with a quite different notion Life and the faculty of motion which is truly the form and is one thing and not compounded of notions so different as Consistence and Virtue or Power 11. You say Life intrinsecally issues from this immaterial substance But the form is concreated with it and issues not from it You mean well It is informing truth which you intend and offer to the world And we are all greatly beholden to you for so industrious calling foolish sensualists to the study and notion of invisible beings without which what a Carkass or nothing were the world But all our conceptions here must have their allowances and we must confess their weakness And you might have informed us of all that you know without fathering opinions on others which they never owned and then nicknaming them from your own fiction As if we said that Souls are fire and also took fire as you do for Candles and hot Irons c. only § 2. Now I that pretend not to a perfect definition repeat that which is the nearest to it that I understand And first I am for agreeing on the sense of words before we use them in definitions 1. I take not the word Spirit to be of univocal signification here but so analogical as to be equivocal God and Creatures are not univocally called Spirits 2. I know not and I think no other that all Created Spirits in the universe are so far of one substantial consistence as that the word Spirit univocally fits them all as a Genus among the 15 senses of the word before said mentioned by Martinius when we confine it to one men are apt to boggle at the ambiguity yet when we have defined it the name is to be used 3. Materia is as ambiguous as Spiritus and is oft used for Res or Substantia which is fundamental to modes and qualities and active forms and oft for substance of such a consistence as is
And I have long thought that so much selfishness as is our sin or imperfection is a potent cause of making all men more regardful of Individuation and fearful of losing it by Union of Spirits than they ought and that holy Souls will be nearlier one with Christ and one another than we can here desire or conceive and yet Individuation secundum quid at least shall be continued But yet I say while there is numerus animarum and it is uncertain whether also each Orb hath not one and you plead for Amplitude and Minority Quantity and the Bodies animated may as vastly differ as a Flea or a Wren or a Pigmy and the Sun it is quite above my reach to know that a change of Individuals by making one many or many one is a contradiction and so impossible And as to Penetrability I repeat that seeing by Penetration I suppose you mean not piercing inter partes but possessing the same place with other things and contraction of itself into less amplitude as I know not how a thing that hath no parts and that extra partes can contract itself into less space which is to contract parts that are no parts so I cannot see but such Contraction and Colocality must needs be limited so as that all the World cannot be deserted and mortified by all Spirits Contraction to one narrow space nor yet that at once every Spirit is every where and when the Contraction and Colocality is come to the narrowest possible in that state Spirits must needs be further impenetrable that is no more can be in that space So that while I am past doubt that God hath made Spirits of no kind of parts but what do naturally abhor separation and so are inseparable unless God will separate them and so there is no fear of altering the Individuation much less the species of Souls I there stop and will put no more into my definitions of Souls or Spirits than I know at least as strongly probable much less by laying the formal Essence on a Composition of hard doubtful words tempt all to believe tkat the very Being of Spirits is as doubtful as those words are Ad SECT XXIII § 1. YOu said That a Spirit is Ens ideoque verum and that True implieth a right matter and form duly conjoined To which I said Do you not here make Spirits material You answered I do not make Spirits material in any sense derogatory to their Nature and Perfections Reply Nor do those that I excused so then after all these Sections you make Spirits consist of Matter and form in a sense agreeable to their nature and perfection And so de nomine you come nearer those that you accuse than I do § 2. But you say That Matter and Form I there speak of is a Matter and Form that belongs to Ens quatenus Ens in a most general notion prescinded from all kinds of Being whatever and therefore belongs to Beings Immaterial Ans If you may say Quidvis de quovis lay not too great stress on words Ens quatenus Ens hath no Form nor proper Matter Ens is that terminus incomplexus to whose Conception all other are resolved Therefore every other conception incomplex or complex must add somwhat to it It can be no Genu◠or Species If it have any kind of Matter and Form it is more than Ens quatenus Ens And sure that which is prescinded from all particular kinds of Being is prescinded from Material and Immaterial unless the word particular be a Cothurnus To say that Ens hath Matter and Form is to say more than Ens a most general notion as you call it But if Ens as the most general notion have Matter and Form then so hath Spirits and every subordinate for the general is in them all § 3. But you say It 's only materia forma logica To which I answered before That 's but to say It is notio secunda which if it be not fitted ad primam or ut signum ad rem significandam it is false And we suppose you to mean to speak truly and aptly If you should mean neither materia ex qua nor in qua but circa quam so Form may be Matter § 4. You say Nor is the Form adjoined in a Physical Sense to the Matter unless where the Form and Matter are Substances really distinct Ans 1. I believe not this to be true If it be then only Compounds have Form and Matter but I think Simples have Matter and Form that are not two Substances but one As I have oft said Dr. Glisson after others most subtilly laboureth to prove it of every simple Substance that its Matter and Form are not compounding parts but Conceptus inadaequati If the Intellect compound and divide its own Conceptions that maketh not a real Composition of two Substances in the objects but as the Scotists call it of two Formalities or Conceptus objectivi which if you will call a Logical Composition or Intellectual if you explain it the matter is small But besides that Earth Water and Air have their Matter and differencing Forms which are not two Substances so hath Fire in a more noble sense if it be material And by your Application of the word Physical you seem to extend it to Spirits And if so I am past doubt that the Substance and Form of Spirits are not two distinct conjoined Substances Too many Logicians have hitherto taken the Potentia naturalis or Faculties of the Soul to be accidents in the Predicament of Quality Let them call them Qualities if they please but the Scotists have fully prov'd them to be no Accidents but the formal Essence of the Soul and I have answered all Zabarell's Arguments ubi sup And this Virtus formalis vel facultas vel potentia activa is not a Substance joined to a Substance but the form of a simple Substance But I perceive by your next words that you approve all this and speak only of mental Composition as to Spirits And I say that the Mind should conceive and the Tongue speak of things as they are and not at once deny Materiality to Spirits and call them Logically material or at least bear with others that say but the same If Logical Matter speak not Substantiality at least it is delusive Your Interminata amplitudo sounds so like Infinita that I am not willing to say that no Spirit hath any Terminos Substantiae Ad SECT XXXIII XXXIV The Conclusion § 1. YOu say that I wrote not so curtly but that I have sufficiently conveyed my mind to you ans I would have done so had I dream'd of your Printing it But that I did not appeareth by your grand Mistake as if I 〈◊〉 asserted that materiality of Spirits which is proper to Bodies § 2. As in all our difference lieth in a much smaller matter than you thought so in your great design of convincing the blinded Sadduces of this Age and in
Body which properties are as immediate to her as impenetrability and separability of parts to the matter and we are not to demand the cause of the one any more than of the other So here we have the true Form as sufficient notice And if voluntary Motion be proper to a Spirit I think meer Fire Solar or Aethereal is no Spirit But if all self-moving Power be proper to a Spirit Fire is a Spirit And from the Form will I denominate while you oft tell us that the Essence of Substance is unknown By Essence meaning somwhat else than that which I can fully prove to be the Form To conclude there are these different Opinions before us I. That the whole Entity or Conceptus realis of a Spirit is Virtus vitalis and is mera sorma or rather simplex actus Entitativus and that substantia is added not as a partial real Conceptus but as respective to notifie that this Virtus vitalis is no Accident but a thing that may subsist of itself Some hold this true only of God and some of all Spirits If this be true your notions of Penetrability and Indivisibility are most easily defended II. That Spirits have two inadequate real Conceptus and that Substantia is the fundamental as truly as materia is in meer Bodies and an incomprehensible purity of Substance or that it is Immaterial not having partes extra partes with the trine dimension is Substantiae dispositio yet that this hath degrees as the Forms have all Spirits not being of equal Purity And that Virtus vitalis is the partial Conceptus viz. Formalis And this I encline to as to created Spirits III. That the Conceptus formalis of Spirit is this Virtus vitalis vel motiva perceptiva appetitiva but that all Matter is essentially informed by that Vitality and so Matter and Vitality are the inadequate Conceptus of every Substance and that not by Composition but as of one simple thing And this is Dr. Glisson's and some others IV. That a Spirit is both a real Substance as the fundamental Conceptus and informed both by Immateriality Penetrability and Indiscerpibility and also by a vital and moving Power But that it existeth only in Bodies or Matter and so always makes up a Compound of two Substances saving that God is infinite beyond all Matter And that all such Spirits were at first made together indivisible Individuals both that of the least Creature and of the greatest but changed from Body to Body and so are parts of Animals This I suppose is your Opinion Our chief difference is that I profess to be ignorant of the Consistency and Incorporation which you talk of and must be so Though I am assured of the Substantiality and Form which satisfieth me for Christ knoweth all the rest for me FINIS OF THE IMMORTALITY OF Mans Soul And the Nature of it and other Spirits Two Discourses One in a Letter to an unknown Doubter The other in a Reply to Dr Henry Moore 's Animadversions on a private Letter to him which he published in his Second Edition of Mr Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus or History of Apparitions By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for B. Simons at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls 1682. The PREFACE § 1. THE Author of the Letter which I answer being wholly unknown to me and making me no return of his sense of my Answer I suppose it can be no wrong to him that I publish it I have formerly thought that it is safer to keep such Objections and false reasonings from mens notice than publickly to confute them But now in London they are so commonly known and published in open Discourse and Writing that whether silencing them be desirable or not it is become impossible And tho I have said so much more especially in two Books The Reasons of the Christian Religion and the Unreasonableness of Infidelity as may make this needless to them that read those yet most Infidels and Sadduces being so self conceited and fastidious as to disdain or cast by all that will cost them long reading and consideration it may be this short Letter may so far prevail against their sloth as to invite them to read more I would true Christianity were as common as the profession of it There would then be fewer that need such Discourses But alas how numerous are thâ—se Christians that are no Christians no more than a Carcass or a Picture is a man yea worse Christians who hate Christianity whose Godfathers and Godmothers not Parents but Neighbours did promise and vow three things in their Names 1. That they should renounce the Devil and all his Works the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World and all the sinful lusts of the flesh 2. That they should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith 3. That they should keep Gods holy Will and Commandments and walk in the same all the days of their lives Yea before they could speak the mouth of these Godfathers speaking for them did not only promise that they should believe but profess in the Infants name That even then they did stedfastly believe the Articles of the Christian Faith The Infant is said to make both the Promise and Profession by these Godfathers who also undertake to provide that they shall learn all things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his Souls health and shall be virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life Whether these Godfathers ever intend to perform this or the Parents use to expect it of them I need not tell you But how little most of the baptized perform of it is too notorious And what wonder is it if we have Christians that in Satans Image fight against Christ even PERJURED MALIGNANT PERSECUTING Christians haters of those that seriously practice the baptismal Vow when they are PERJURED and Perfidious Violaters of it themselves as to the prevalent bent of heart and life These Hypocrite nominal Ceremony Christians become the great hinderance of the cure of Infidelity in the world It is the SPIRIT by its supernatural Works which is the great Witness of Christ and the infallible proof of supernatural Revelation These witnessing works of the Spirit are these five 1. His Antecedent Prophecies 2. His inherent Divine impress on the Person Works and Gospel of Christ 3. His concomitant Testimony in Christs uncontrolled numerous Miracles Resurrection and Ascension 4. His subsequent Testimony in the numerous uncontrolled Miracles of the Apostles and supernatural gifts to the Christians of that Age. But tho the History of these be as infallibly delivered to us as any in the world 〈◊〉 the distance hindereth the belief of some who have not this history well opened to them 5. Therefore God hath continued to the end of the world a more excellent Testimony than miracles thought not so apt to work on sense even the special regenerating sanctifying work of the Spirit of Christ on the
souls of all sincere Believers The raising of Souls to a Divine and Heavenly Disposition and Conversation to live to God and the common good in the comfortable hopes of an everlasting heavenly glory as purchased and given by our Redeemer conquering the allurements of the world and flesh the temptations of Satan and all the flatteries and frowns of the ungodly This is a work that none but God can do and will do which beareth his Image and superscription But now these Hypocrites obscure it to themselves and other unbelievers and tempt men to say Are not Christans as bad as Heathens and Mahometans Are they not as fleshly and worldly and false and perjured and malicious and hurtful and pernicious to others and themselves But I answer No They are not These are no more Christians than Images are men They are the Enemies of Christians that under Christs banner and in his livery and name do the most perfideously hate him and fight against him Who will tell them Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these you did it to me They betray him for money as Judas by Hail-master and a Kiss I challenge any Infidel to find me One that seriously believeth the Gospel of Christ as perceiving the certain Evidence of its truth who is not a person of a holy and obedient heavenly life How can a man sincerely believe that God sent his Son from Heaven in flesh to Redeem man and to bring us to Glory and that he sealed his Doctrine by all his miracles resurrection and ascensiâ—n and the Holy Ghost and that he is our Head in Heaven with whom we shall live in joy for ever and is the Author of eternal Salvation to all them that obey him I say How can a man believe this seriously and not esteem and choose and seek it before all the shadows and vanitie to this world It is not Christians but false hypocrites whose lives represent Christianity blasphemously as no better than Heathenism or Mahometanism It is but for worldly Interest and Reputation or because it is the Religion of the King Countrey or Ancestors that they take up so much as the name and badg of Christianity And will you judg of our Religion by its enemies Do you not see in their drunkenness sensuality covetousness ungodliness how unlike their lives are to the baptismal Vow and that they hate and seek to destroy them that are serious in keeping that Vow and living as Christians § 2. And as I publish this for the use of unbelievers so I must let the Reader know that it is become one of the usual tricks of the Popish deceivers to put on the Vizor of an Infidel and to dispute about the immortality of the Soul and the greatest difficulties of Religion And it is to puzzle men and convince them that by Reasoning they can never attain to satisfaction in these matters And then to infer You have no way left but to believe the Church we are that Church If you leave that easie quiet way you will never come to any certainty Why do they not try the same triek about all the difficulties in Philosophy Astronomy Physick History c For every Sâ—â—ence and Art hath its difficulties But are not all these as gaeat difficulties to the Pope and his Prelates as they are to us But God hath given us a more clear and satisfactory way of the solution of such Doubts § 3. I must further give notice to the Reader That it was the publishing of Dr. H. More 's answer to a Letter of mine which occasioned the publishing of this When I was put on the one I thought it not unprofitable to premise the other as being of much greater use It seemed good to the worthy Dr. to desire my thoughts of his Description of a Spirit which he laid down in the first Edition of Mr. Glanvile of Apparitions which I gave him in a hasty Letter which he thought meet without my knowledg to publish an answer to in his second Edition of Mr. Glanvile Our difference is scarce worth the Readers notice And our velitation is only friendly and Philosophical But yet it may possibly be useful to some at least to excite them to a more profitable search than I have made And it explaineth some passages in my Methodus Theologiae But I much more commend to the reading of the Sadduces and Infidels the Histories themselves of Apparitiins and Watchcrafts which Mr. Glanvile and Dr. More have there delivered many of them at least with undeniable evidence and proof To which if he will but add the Devil of Mascon and Bodin and Remigius of Witches he will scarce be able to deny belief to the existence and Individuation of Spirits and the future life of separated Souls SIR I Have Reason to judg you no Stranger to such Addresses as these and therefore have adventured more boldly to apply my self to you Others would it may be rigedly censure this Attempt but your more Christian Temper will induce you I hope to judg more charitably did you but understand with what reluctancy I undertook this task I have had many Disputes with my self whether or no I should stifle these Doubts or seek Satisfaction Shame to own such Principles bid me do the first but the weight of the Concern obliged me to the last For I could not with any chearfulness or with that vigor I thought did become me pursue those unseen Substances those Objects of Faith Religion holds forth except I did really believe their existence and my own capacity of enjoyning them I thought at first to satisfie my self in the certainty of the things I did believe to confirm and establish my Faith by these Studies that I might be able to render a Reason of the hope that is in me but instead of building up I am shaken and instead of a clearer evidence I am invironed with uncertainties Unhappy that I am I had better have taken all upon Trust could I so have satisfied my Reason than thus to have involved my self in an endless Study For such I am afraid it will prove without help for that I may not in this Concern rest without satisfaction and yet the more I consider and weigh things the more are my doubts multiplied I call them only doubts not to palliate any opinions for I have not yet espoused any but because they have not yet attained so much maturity or strength as to take me off those things my doubts being satisfied I should conclude of indispensable necessity they are but yet in the Womb assist to make them Abortives I have not been wanting to my self but in the use of all means to me known have sought satisfaction both by Prayer Reading and Meditation I have weighed and consulted things according to my Capacity I have been as faithful to my self in all my reasonings as I could and void of prejudice have passed impartial Censures on the things in debate so far as that
Were it not for the Igneous Nature which is active or for Spirits they would be cessant Therefore you are thus far past the dark That there is in man an Invisible Substance which hath yea which is a Power or Virtue of Vital Action Intellection and Volition V. And that this Active Power is a distinct thing from meer Passive Power or mobilitie per aliud Experience puts past doubt There is in every living thing a Power or Virtue of self-moving else Life were not Life VI. And that this is not a meer accident of the Soul but its essential form I have proved so fully in my Methodus Theologiae in a peculiar Disputation that I will not here repeat it It 's evident That even in the igneous Substance the Vis Motiva Illuminativa Calefactiva is more than an accident even its essential form But were it otherwise it would but follow That if the very accidental Acts or qualities of a Soul be so noble its essential must be greater VII But it is certain That neither Souls nor any thing have either Being Power or Action but in constant receptive dependence on the continued emanation of the prime Cause and so no Inviduation is a total separation from him or an Independence or a self-sufficiency Thus far natural light tells you what Souls are § 7. You add you self That those attainments which you were made capable of you were designed to Very right God maketh not such noble Faculties or Capacities in vain much less to engage all men to a life of duty which shall prove deceit and misery But you have Faculties capable of thinking of God as your Beginning Guide and End as your Maker Ruler and Benefactor and of studying your duty to him in hope of Reward and of thinking what will become of you after Death and of hoping for future Blessedness and fearing future Misery all which no Bruit was ever capable of Therefore God designed you to such ends which you are thus capable of § 8. You say p. 3. Many have defended the Souls Immortality but none have proved a Subject capable of a life of Retribution It 's a Contradiction to be immortal or rewarded and not to be a Subject capable For nothing hath no accidents Nothing hath that which it is not capable of haing § 9. You say None tell us what it is How many Score Volumes have told it us I have now briefly told you what it is You say To say it is that by which I reason is not satisfactory I look for a Definition But on Condition you look not to see or feel it as you do Trees or Stones you may be satisfied I have given you a Definition The Genus is Substantia purissima the Differentia is Virtus Vitalis Activa Intellectiva Volitiva trinum a Imago Creatoris What 's here wanting to a Definition I have told you That there is an antecedent more certain Perception than by Definition by which I know that I see hear taste am and by which the Soul in act is conscious of it self § 10. You ask 1. Is it a real Being Answ I told you Nothing can do nothing 2. Is it really different from the Body Answ A Substance which hath in it self an Essential Principle of Life Intellection and Volition and that which hath not are really different Try whether you can make a Body feel or understand without a Soul 2. Those that are seperable are really different 3. You ask Is it able to be without it Answ What should hinder it The Body made not the Soul A viler Substance giveth not being to a nobler 2. Nothing at all can be without continued Divine sustentation But we see Juxta naturam God annihilateth no Substance Changes are but by composition and separation and action but not by annihilation An Atome of Earth or Water is not annihilated and why should we suspect that a Spiritual Substance is Yea the contrary is fully evident tho God is able to annihilate all things § 11. You say If it be meerly material and differ from the Body but gradually Death may be but its concentration of this active Principle in its own Body Answ If you understand your own words it 's well 1. Do you know what material signifieth See Crakenthorp's Metaphysicks and he will tell you in part it 's an ambiguous word Sometime it signifieth the same as substantia and so Souls are material Sometime it signifieth only that sort of Substance which is called corporeal Dr. More tells you That Penetrability and Indivisibility difference them But what if fire should differ from air materially but in degree of subtilty and purity or sensitive Souls from igneous and mental from sensitive but in higher degrees of purity of matter Is it not the form that maketh the specifick difference Air hath not the igneous Virtue of Motion â—â—umination and Calefaction nor igâ—â—s the sensitive Virtues nor meer sensiâ—â—ves the rational Virtues aforesaid Forâ—â— dat esse nomen This maketh not â—meer gradual difference but a speciâ—â— There is in Compounds matter and materiae dispositio receptiva forma There is somewhat answerable 〈◊〉 spiritual uncompounded Beings There is substantia and substantiae dispositio forma These are but intellectually distinct and not 〈◊〉 and are but inadequate conceptions of one thing That substantia is conceptus fundamentalis is confest Some make penetrâ—â—bility and indivisibility substantiae concepâ—â—â— dispositiâ—â— But the Virtus vitalis activa intol◠〈◊〉 volitiva in one is the conceptus formatis 2. But what mean you by the active Principles concentration in its own body It is a strange Fxpression 1. If you mean that it 's annihilated then it remaineth not 〈◊〉 If you mean that it remaineth an active Principle you mean a substance or acciâ—â—â—t If 〈◊〉 substance it seems you acknowâ—â—â—g it a self-subsisting being only not separate from its carcass And if they be two why are they not separable If separable why not separated When the dust of the Carcass is scattered is the Soul concentred in every atome or but in one And is it many or one concentred Soul If you mean That it 's but an accident that 's disprov'd before what accident is it If conâ—â—ntred in the body the body and every dust of it is vital and intellectual And if so every clod and stone is so which I will not so much wrong you as to imagine that you think § 12. But you would know what 's meant by a spirit whether all that is not evident to sense Ans It is a pure substance saith Dr. More penetrable and indivisible essentially vital perceptive and appetitive § 13. You add How shall I know the difference between the highest degree of materials and lowest of immaterials To me an immaterial and spiritual being seems a kind of Hccus a substantial nothing Ans If you take matter for the same with substance it is material But not if you take matter as it 's
by a self-moving power also Else there were no living creature but bodies in themselves dead animated by God But it would be too tedious to say all against this that 's to be said § 20. When you tell us of One life in all differenc'd only by diversity of Organs you mean God or a common created Soul If God I tell you where I have confuted it It 's pity to torment or punish God in a murderer or call him wicked in a wicked man or that one man should be hang'd and another prais'd because the Engines of their bodies are diverse But the best Anatomists say That nothing is to be seen in the brain of other Animals why they might not be as rational as Men. And if it be an Animâ— creata communis that you mean either 〈◊〉 think it is a universal Soul to the universâ—â— world or only to this Earth or Vortex If to all the World you feign it to have 〈◊〉 Prerogative If to part of the world 〈◊〉 each Vortex Sun Star c. have a distâ—â—â— individuate superior Soul why not 〈◊〉 so inferiors And why may not millions of individual Spirits consist with more common or universal Spirits as well as the life 〈◊〉 Worms in your belly with yours That which hath no Soul or Spirit of its own 〈◊〉 not fit for such reception and communion with superior Spirits as that which hath Communion requireth some similitude We see God useth not all things alike because he makes them not like § 21. But if the difference between Beasts Trees Stones and Men be only the organical contexture of the body then 1. Either all these have but one Soul and 〈◊〉 are but one save corporeally 2. Or 〈◊〉 very Stone Tree and Beast hath an Intellectual Soul for it is evident that man hath by its Operations I. Had you made but Virtue and Vice to be only the effects of the bodies contexture sure you would only blame the maker â—f your body and not your self for any of your Crimes For yon did not make your own body if you were nothing Is the common light and sense of Nature no Evidence Doth not all the world difference Virtue and Vice moral good and evil Is it only the difference of an Instrument in Tune and out of Tune Either then all called sin is good or God or the universal Soul only is to be blamed Then to call you a Knave or a Lyar or Perjured c. is no more disgrace than to say that you are sick or blind Then all Laws are made only to bind God or the Amima mundi and all punishment is threatned to God or this common Soul And it is God or the common Soul only in a body which sorroweth feareth feeleth pain or pleasure II. And if you equal the Souls of Beasts Trees Stones and Men you must make them all to have an Intellectual Soul If man had not he could never understand And if they have so also frustra fit potentia quae nunquam producitur in actum It is certain that it is not the body Earth Air or Water that feeleth much less that understandeth or willeth If therefore all men have but one Soul why is it not you that are in pain or joy when any or all others are so Tour suffering and joys are as much theirs You hurt your self when you hurt a Malefactor Why are you not answerable for the Crimes of every Thief if all be one § 22. You vainly liken several Natures and Faculties to several pieces of Clock-work For Natures and Faculties are self-acting Principles under the prime Agent but a Clock is only passive moved by another Whether the motus gravitationis in the poise be by an intrinslck Principle or by another 〈◊〉 active Nature is all that 's controvertible there All that your similitude will infer is this That as the gravitation of one poise moves every wheel according to its receptive aptitude so God the universal Spirit moveth all that is moved according to their several aptitudes passives as passive actives as active vitals as self-movers intellectuals as intellectual-free-self-movers under him No Art can make a Clock feel see or understand But if the world have but one soul what mean you by its concentring in the Carcass Is the universal Soul there fallen asleep or imprisoned in a Grave or what is it § 23. Add page 5. You well say That Life is the cause of all motion Yea infinite Life Wisdom and Love is the cause of all but there be second Causes under it Plurima ex uno And it maketh things various which it moveth variously and maketh them vital sensitive or mental which he will move to vital sensitive and mental acts Operari sequitur esse § 24. You are apt to believe That those eminent Faculties wherewith men seem meer Sensitives are only the improvement of Speech and reiterated Acts till they become Habits Ans 1. I had a Parrot that spoke so very plainly that no Man could discern but he could have spoke as well as a Man if he had but had the Intellect of a Man and quickly would learn new words but shewed no understanding of them 2. Many men born deaf and dumb are of a strong understanding enquire of a Brother of Sir Richard Dyett's a Son of Mr. Peter Whalley of Northampton a Son in Law of the Lord Wharton's c. 3. The Faculty and the Habit are Two things The Faculty is the Essential form of the Substance The Habit or Act is but an Accident The Faculty is nothing but the active Power And the Power goeth before the Act. Doth acting without Power to act cause the Power What need you the Power if you can act without it And what 's a Contradiction if this be not to say I do that which I cannot do or I can do that which I have no power to do You are not a man without the Faculty but you are without the Act or else you are no man in your sleep The act then is but the Faculties act and Habits are nothing but the Faculties promptitude to act And this indeed is caused sometime by very strong acts and sometime and usually by frequent acts and sometime suddenly by a special Divine Operation No doubt but Oratory and all Arts and Sciences are caused by frequent acts and their Objects But those acts are caused by humane Faculties under God the first Cause You can never cause a Carcass or a Parrot or any Bruit to think of God and the glory to come nor to do any proper humane act Credible History assureth us That Devils or separate Souls have acted Carcasses and discoursed in them and seemed to commit Fornication in them and left them dead behind them and they were known to be the same that were lately executed or dead and were re-buried Here the dead Organ was capable when a Spirit did but use it You too much confound Intelléction and Ratiocination The prime acts of
If a man believe all the Articles of the Creed only because men tell him that they are true it is but a human Faith as resting only on mans Authority but the true Members of the Church believe all the same things because God revealeth and attesteth them and this is a Divine Faith And so must you If you love light more than darkness and deceit distinguish 1. Believing men for Authority 2. Believing men for their Honesty 3. Believing men for the natural impossibility of their deceiving And the foundation of this difference is here Mans Soul hath two sorts of acts Necessary and Contingent or mutably free To love our selves to be unwilling to be miserable and willing to be happy to love God as good if known c. are acts of the Soul as necessary as for fire to burn combustible contiguous matter or for a Bruit to eat so that all the Testimonies which is produced by these necessary acts by knowing men hath a Physical certainty the contrary being impossible And this is infallible historical knowledg of matter of fact Thus we know there is such a City as Rome Paris Venice c. and that there was such a man as K. James Ed. 6. Hen. 8. William the Conqueror c. And that the Statutes now ascribed to Ed. 3. and other Kings and their Parliaments are genuine For Judges judge by them Lawyers plead them Kings own them all men hold their Estates and Lives by them Contrary mens Interest by Lawyers are daily pleaded by them against each other and if any one would deny forge or corrupt a Statute Interest would engage the rest against him to detect his fraud 1. The certain effect of natural necessary Causes hath natural necessary evidence of Truth But when all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg a thing true this is the effect of nataral necessary Causes Ergo it hath natural necessary evidence of Truth 2. It is impossible there should be an Effect without a sufficient Cause But that a thing should be false which all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg to be true would be an Effect without a Cause for there is no Cause in nature to effect it It is impossible in nature that all men in England should agree to say There was a King James K. Edward Q. Mary or that these Statutes were made by them if it were false This is infallible Historical Testimony It were not so strong if it were only by one Party and not by Enemies also or men of contrary Minds and Interests And thus we know the History of the Gospel and this Tradition is naturally infallible II. But all the Testimony which dependeth on humane Acts not necessary but free have but an uncertain moral humane Credibility For so all men are Lyars i.e. fallible and not fully to be trusted And I. Those Testimonies which depend on mens Honesty are no farther credible than we know the Honesty of the men which in some is great in some is 〈◊〉 in most is mixt and lubricous and doubtful Alas what abundance of false History is in the world Who can trust the Honesty of such men as multitudes of Popes Prelates and Priests have been Will they stick at a Lye that stick not at Blood or any wickedness Besides the ignorance which invalidates their Testimony II. And to pretend Authority to rule our Faith is the most unsatisfactory way of all For before you can believe that Jesus is the Christ and his Word true how many impossibilities have you to believe 1. You must believe that Christ hath a Church 2. And hath authorized them to determine what is to be believed before you believe that he is Christ 3. You must know who they be whom you must believe whether all or some or a major vote Whether out of all the world or a party 4. And how far their Authority extendeth Whether to judg whether there be a God or no God a Christ or no Christ a Heaven or none a Gospel or none or what 5. And how their determinations out of all the world may come with certainty to us and where to find them 6. And when Countreys and Councils contradict and condemn each other which is to be believed Many such impossibilities in the Roman way must be believed before a mâ—n can believe that Jesus is the Christ In a word you must not puzzle your head to know what a man is or whether he have an immortal soul but you must 1. believe the Church of Believers before you are a Believer in Christ 2. And you must believe that Christ was God and Man and came to save man before you believe that there is such a creature as man or what he is and whether he have a soul capable of salvation But I have oft elsewhere opened these Absurdities and Contradictions where you may see them confuted if you are willing § 36. Your question about the souls nature existence and Individuation may be resolved by a surer and easier way as followeth I. By your own certain experience 1. You perceive that you see feel understand will and execute 2. You may know as is oft said that therefore you have an active power to do these 3. You may thence know that it is a substance which hath that power Nothing can do nothing 4. You may perceive that it is not the terrene substance but an invisible substance actuating the body 5. You may know that there is no probability that so noble a substance should be annihilated 6. Or that a pure and simple substance should be dissolved by the separation of parts or if that were every part would be a spirit still 7. You have no cause to suspect that this substance should lose those powers or faculties which are its essential form and be turned into some other species or thing 8. And you have as little cause to suspect that an essential vital intellective power will not be active when active inclination is its Essence 9. You have no cause to suspect that it will want Objects to action in a World of such variety of Objects 10. And you have as little cause to suspect that it will be unactive for want of Organs when God hath made its Essence active and either can make new Organs or that which can act on matter can act without or on other matter He that can play on a Lute can do somewhat as good if that be broken 11. And experience might satisfie you that several men have several souls by the several and contrary Operations 12. And you have no reason to suspect that God will turn many from being many into one or that unity should be any of their loss All this Reason tells you beginning at your own experience as I have and elsewhere more fully opened § 37. II. And you have at hand sensible proof of the individuation of spirits by Witches Contracts and Apparitions of which the world has
unquestionable proof tho there be very many Cheats Read Mr. Glanvill's new Book published by Dr. Moore Lavater de Spectris Zanchy de Angilii Manlii Collect. Bodin's Daemonolog Remigius of Witches besides all the Mallei Malificorum and doubt if you can If you do I can give you yet more with full proof § 38. III. But all that I have said to you is but the least part in comparison of the assurance which you may have by the full revelats on of Jesus Christ who hath brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel where the state the doom the rewards and punishment of souls is asserted And without dark and long Ambages or Roman Juggles we prove the truth of this Gospel briefly and infallibly thus I. The History of Christ's Life Miracles Doctrine Death Resurrection Ascension the Apostles Miracles c. is proved by such forementioned evidence as hath physical certainty Not such as dependeth only on mens honesty or moral argument much less on a pretended determining authority but such as dependeth on necessary acts of man even the consent of all sorts of contrary minds and interests as we know the Statutes of the Land or other certain History But we are so far from needing to ask which part of Christians it is that is this Church that is to be believed that it tendeth to the assertaining of us that all the Christian World Papists Protestants Greeks Moscovites Armenians Jacobites Nestorians c. herein agree even while they oppose each other To know whether there was a Julius or Augustus Caesar a Virgil Ovid Cicero and which are their Works yea which are the Acts of Councils no man goeth to an authorized determining Judg for the matter of Fact but to historical proof And this we have most full II. And if the History be true the Doctrine must needs be true seeing it is fully proved by the matters of Fact Christ being proved to be Christ all his words must needs be true § 39. The Gospel of Christ hath these four parts of its infallible evidence I. The antecedent and inhererent Prophecies fulfilled II. The inherent impress of Divinity on the Gospel it self unimitable by man It hath Gods Image and Superscription and its Excellency propria luce is discernible III. All the Miracles and Resurrection and Ascention of Christ the Gift of his Spirit and extraordinary Miracles of the Apostles and first Churches IV. The sanctifying work of the Spirit by this Gospel on all Believers in all Ages of the World by which they have the Witness in themselves A full constant unimitable Testimony § 40. And now how highly soever you think of Bruits think not too basely of Men for whom Christ became a Saviour And yet think not so highly of Men Bruits and Stones as to think that they are God And think not that your true diligence hath confounded you but either your negligence or seducers or the unhappy stifling of obvious truth by the ill ordering of your thoughts And I beseech you remember that Gods Revelationt are suited to mans use and our true knowledg to his Revtlations He hath not told us all that man would know but what we must know Nothing is more known to us than that of God which is necessary for us Yet nothing so incomprehensible as God There is much of the Nature of Spirits and the world to come unsearchable to us which will pose all our Wits yet we have sufficient certainty of so much as tells us our duty and our hopes God hath given us Souls to use and to know only so far as is useful He that made your Watch taught not you how it 's made but how to use it Instead therefore of your concluding complaints of your condition thank God who hath made man capable to seek him serve him love him praiâ—e him and rejoyce in hope of promised Perfection Live not as a willful stranger to your Soul and God Use faithfully the Faculties which he hath given you sin not willfully against the truth revealed and leave things secret to God till you come into the clearer light and you shall have no cause to complain that God whose goodness is equal to his greatness hath dealt hardly with mankind Instead of trusting fallible man trust Christ who hath fully proved his trustiness and his Spirit will advance you to higher things than bruits are capable of God be merciful to us dark unthankful sinners Mar. 14. 1681. Ri. Baxter ERRATA IN the Second Part p 12. l. 9. for primus r. Primae p. 16. l. 21. for is r. are I have not leisure to gather the rest if there be any Here 〈◊〉 whaâ— wan◠〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 Copâ—
sensible to the highest senses and as a mind in the flesh can have an Idea of in its consistence and if you will such as you call Impenetrable and Discerpible 4. The word substance itself if used only to signifie either Quoddity and not Quiddity as Ens for Quod est and not Quid est and subsistit for aliquid subsistit not telling what or relatively only for Quod substat accidentibus or negatively for Quod non est accidens sed aliquid subsistens in se and include not the notion of Res fundamentalis is not fit here to be used as a Genus but in this sense it is 5. Forma being oft taken for substantiae figura and oft for the contexture of corporeal parts making it receptive of Motion and oft for the union of the moving and the moved parts and oft for the moving principle in a compound and oft for the Motive or Active Virtue in a simple substance but ever strictly for the specifick constitutive cause per quam res est id quod est I take it to be but improperly and equivocally applied to the meer Receptive consistence presupposed to the form These things supposed I presume not to give a definition of God but such a description as we can reach Supposing the word Nature to signify in general Quoddity and Quiddity I first distinguish Nature into Active and Passive By Active I mean that Nature which hath a formal Power Virtue and Inclination to Activity By Passive I mean that Nature which having no such Active form is formed to receive the Influx of the Active I refuse not to call the first Spirit but because they so greatly differ I choose rather the common name of Active Nature being not metaphorical 2. I suppose there is no such thing as Spirit or Active Nature which is not some species of Spirit Therefore I give no definition of Spirit or Active Na-Nature in general for where there is no form and no species there is no proper definition And all Spirit being actually Mental Sensitive or Vegetative and every thing having but one univocal form I name no form but of each species but as in compounds so in simples we mentally distinguish the materia vel substantia Dispositio forma Therefore defining only the species I define Naturam Mentalem to be substantia Purissima Virtuosissima Virtute scilicet Formali Vitaliter-Activa Intellectiva Volitiva una-trina I define Naturam Animalem seu sensitivam to be substantia Purior Virtuosior scilicet virtute Vitali-Activa sensitiva Perceptiva-sensitiva Appetitiva-sensitiva I have told you oft enough why I say Purissima including as much of your Immaterial Penetrable Indiscerpible and more as is really the substantiae dispositio and if you will call it as some do forma dispositiva I quarrel not But I use Purissima 1. to avoid many words and 2. To avoid pretending to more distinct conceptions of spiritual consistencies than I find any idea of in my mind I use but the Comparative degree of Purior and Virtuosior to sensitives not being sure that there is not a gradual difference in both consistency and virtue in these species of Spirits I define the Vegetative Nature supposing it to be ipse Ignis to be substantia Pura Virtuâ—sa scilicet Virtute formali Activa Illuminativa Calefactiva by which prime operations it causeth Vegetation thereby in plants Discretionem Attractionem Digestionem c. by an Analagous perception appetite and motion But these actions belong to compounds And I still profess my self in this also uncertain whether Natura Vegetativa and Ignea be all one or whether Ignis be Natura organica by which the three superior operate on the Passive But I incline most to think that they are all one when I see what a Glorious Fire the Sun is and what operation it hath on Earth and how unlikely it is that so glorious a substance should not have as noble a formal Nature as a plant And I take all the superior Virtues to be the inferior eminenter and the inferior to have analogy to the superiour Your frequent repetitions draw me to this repetition If we agree in the definitions I will not contend about any name And I confess if you could prove that Indivisibility is proper to any species then it would be a contradiction for it to be that species and yet to be divisible and so it would be no act of Omnipotency to do it But as in Materials so as far as I can conceive in Spirituals to make two into one is no change of the Nature of the things nor to make one into two This belongs to Individuation and not to specification Who can doubt but God being all in all things he is as intimate to us as our Souls to our bodies and more And tho the Schools commonly say that God hath no Accidents pardon my dissent who doubt not he hath the accidents of Relations and dare not say that all the world is not Dei Accidens while in him we live and move and have our being for I will not and I do not think that it is Pars Dei as if he were but Anima mundi and yet I will not say that the world hath no entity or substance nor yet that the entity of God and the world is more than the entity or substance of God alone for to be Minor or Pars is below God But Accidents though no parts are substantiae accidentia And though I think the Fryar Benedictus de Benedictis in Regula Perfectionis speaketh fanatically when he taketh it to be perfection to suppose we see and know no being but God yet we must know nothing quite separate from God and that hath not some dependent union with him And yet while all things are in God and so inseparable from him that nothing but annihilation can totally separate them yet they are multitudes in themselves and wicked Men and Devils are separated from the influx of his Grace and Glory And the human nature of Christ hath some nearer union with God than other Creatures have And so I doubt not but every Creature is so united to the universe that nothing but annihilation can totally separate it from the rest and yet this is consistent with individuation I remember when I told him whom you so oft mention of Augustines words de Anima in which he seemeth to favour the saying that All Souls are one and yet many rather than that All Souls are one and not many or many and not one he seemed much taken with it all which I mention to infer that there is a separability from God and the universe which is no way possible but by annihilation and in compounds some separation of parts will change the species and if it were proveable which Aquinas holds that no two Angels are not of distinct Species then every alteration of the individual might alter the Species but yet it wo'd be a Spirit