But he hath been pleased to give Us and imprint in Us also continually the Sentiment of our Subjection and Dependence He hath been pleased to make Us see his Sovereign Empire and his Infinite Power with the Character of his Immensity expanded thro' All and thro' All operating by that perpetual Empire which he exercises at the same time in all the parts of the World in making the same Idea's the same Sentiments and the same Passions continually to enter into the Souls of Men at such time as the same Impressions are made in their Brains either by the external Actions of Objects or by the fortuitous Course or the irregular Motion of the Blood of the Spirit and of the Humors If we should seriously reflect upon these two sorts of Operations of Acts Free and of Acts Necessary which we experience in Us as it will be impossible for Us not to know our Spiritual Nature so it will be impossible for Us to be ignorant of our Dependence and we should have the heart as well penetrated with Religious Sentiments with which we ought to be penetrated towards God as the Spirit instructed or enlightned with the clear and indubitable Idea of our Spiritual Nature and of the Essential Union which she hath with God CHAP. XIV Acts of Conscience Acts of Concupiscence Acts of Reason Acts of Passion WE observe in Us in the fifth place Acts of Conscience and Acts of Concupiscence Acts of Reason and Acts of Passion for I am not willing to separate things which do so much resemble one another Conscience is that sensibility of Duty which we have explained and described elsewhere Reason saith and includes more than Conscience for Reason is that Ground of the Superior Light which doth not only Regulate Duties but the Conduit also of all sorts of Affairs Conscience imports Reason every Act of Conscience is an Act of Reason but every Act of Reason is not an Act of Conscience Concupiscence and Passion are almost like Reason and Conscience Every Act of Passion is an Act of Concupiscence but every Act of Concupiscence is not an Act of Passion Concupiscence is the Will enticed to the side of Sensible Objects It is the love of Good in general essentially imprinted in Man and grounded in the Essence of the Soul turn'd out of the way by the Empire of Sense to the side of Sensible Good The Soul loving Good in general and Spiritual and Rational Good in particular conserves the Name of the Will and is otherwise called the Rational Appetite and this same Soul loving Sensible Good is called Concupiscence or the Sensitive and Material Appetite which is in us an Universal Ground of all sorts of Evil Desires and Evil Inclinations and the true Matter of that which we call Passions This love of Sensible Good is called simple Concupiscence when it is not extraordinarily over-heated and set on Fire by the lively Impression of some Object which is that which makes it turn into Passion It is simple Concupiscence when the Brain is not Imprinted with any Corporeal Image that presents to the Soul the lively Idea of some Part or of some kind of sensible Good It is Passion when the Impression of any Object hath caused to spring up in the Soul a more lively and more touching Idea than usually of what kind soever it may be of sensible Good This Corporeal Image retraced in the Brain with Tracks better marked more deep doth dilate the Vessels which make the commerce betwixt the Heart and the Brain it spreads its Rays thro'-out all the Body it diffuses there a Blood more fired and it causes an Universal Motion with a thousand different Characters according to the diversity of the Passion This Ground of Sensibility for sensible Good This Ground of the Appetitive Faculty This Ground of Love of Good in General turned into sensible Love is the Ground of all the Passions of Ambition of Avarice of the love of Pleasures of tender Friendship and not only of the Passions but of all their Acts and of all their divers Estates of their Joys and of their Sorrows of their Hope and of their Fears of every Sentiment of the Soul that is called Passion The Soul is subjected to this misery by the General Law of her Union with the Body to have necessarily a love for every thing that is presented to her under the Idea of a sensible Good or of the Good of the Body and capable of causing her to have agreeable Sentiments This is the General Law of the Union and of the punishment of God since sin which hath diminished to the Soul the Empire which she had over the Body hath augmented the Effect of the General Law of the Union Concupiscence is natural and essential to Man so far as to a certain Degree And it is in this Sense that St. Agustin says That the love of sensible Good might have been to Man in his State of Innocence or if you please of pure Nature but that Degree of Concupiscence in which we are born Children of Wrath which is a domineering Concupiscence cannot be in Man but by the punishment of his Revolt which makes it just that he should find and resent in himself by the Revolt from his Sensible Love against his Reason and his Conscience the disorder of his Revolt against God It is by the Law of the Union of the Soul with the Body that the Soul sees her Love of Good in General turn to the side of Sensible Good That she conceives the most lively Sparkles of it as often as any disposition makes the Blood and the Spirits to flow more lively thro' all the Body upon the occasion of some Sensible Good which hath been Mark'd in the Brain with most profound Tracks But it is by the punishment of sin that the Soul hath not command enough over the Fibres to hinder them from conceiving too much Motion or to stop the vehement Course of the Blood and Spirits which give to the Imagination that so Tyrannical force which it exercises over Reason Men distinguish the ground of Love into concupiscible and irascible Appetite But this is but one and the same Appetite which is diversly moved and determined by Goods conceived as easie and by Goods conceived as hard to be acquired that is to say that the Soul doth otherwise pursue after Goods where she sees not any difficulty and otherwise those Goods in which she sees difficulty the which excite in her bold and couragious Motions from whence comes the Passions of Boldness or Courage of Hope and Expectation A fruitful Overture of Morality You see here generally what Concupiscence is and its Passions It might be useful to descend into the particulars of all the divers Motions and of all the divers Acts whether of Concupiscence or of Passions and to explain how we Love and how we Hate how we Attend and how we Desire how we Rejoyce and how we are Sad how we are
the visible World the Common Matter which suffic'd to make the other Living Creatures was not at all sufficient for the making of Man Man cannot be made like Beasts by a sole Construction and Organization of his Body for the Body being fram'd it would not have been for all that a Man it would have been a Beast as Brutish as the rest if God had not sought out a Soul for it in His own Heart and in His own Essence There needed nothing but a well-placing of Matter and an altogether Earthly Structure of Organs animated by a Blood a little set on fire to cause a Body to eat and walk and to make it a living Creature like the rest But to make a Man who far above the Life of Beasts hath a Life of Knowledge Understanding and Reason who hath that Empire over himself which we call Liberty and that Natural Rightness which we call Conscience there was a necessity of searching for the Principle of this excellent Life out of all the Extent of Matter and the Region of Bodies and the Creator could find it no where but in Himself For this is what that Expression of the Holy Writer means And he breathed into him the breath of life He grafted upon this Material and Terrestrial Structure which of it self could have no other than the Life of Beasts which had been given to the Common Matter of the World in Animals a lively Image and an admirable Resemblance of his Eternal Essence And from the Conjunction of this Terrestrial Structure and this Celestial and Divine Nature which he pour'd into it Man became Man after His Image and was rais'd up in the middle of the World as a Living Statue to be reverenc'd by all the Universe The Perception and Certainty which all of us have of our Souls This is the History and Genealogy which Moses gives us of our Soul in which he appears no less a Philosopher than a Prophet And altho' he should never have given it us we should not have forborn to climb up to that Source or Origin of our Nobility by the inward Experience and Certainty which we all of us have of our selves since there is no body that doth not feel and perceive in himself this Celestial and Divine Part added and ingrafted upon this Terrestrial Matter with a thousand Characters and a thousand Attributes undoubtedly Celestial and Divine For who is there that doth not perceive in himself a Principle of Knowledge without Bounds which gives a kind of Immensity to his Soul Who is there that doth not perceive in himself a Principle and a Ground of an Empire over himself and over the visible World in the Foundation of his Liberty which raises up a Man into a kind of Equality or at least a Resemblance of Sovereignty with God Who doth not perceive in himself a Ground of Justice or Love of Order of Vertue and Duty which makes him like to the Eternal Justice from whence flows all the Order all the Beauty of the World both Moral and Natural Who doth not perceive in himself a Ground of Conscience whereby every one is punish'd or rewarded upon the spot according as he hath done well or ill in which Man bears in himself a lively Image of that Supreme Justice which continually judges the Universe and which will one day solemnly manifest its Judgment by a manifest Recompence of the Good and an awful Punishment of the Wicked Men have essentially this Perception and this Experience of themselves Some have it more clear and lively others more confus'd stupid and dead if I may so say according as they have more or less Attention or Reflection upon themselves but it is certain that they all of them have it It is apparent that the ancient Philosophers and the ancient Poets who were themselves the Philosophers of their time had not at all read the Book of Genesis when they made our Souls to descend from Heaven and confounded them with the Supreme Nature and said that they were a Portion of It more particularly applied to animate our Bodies than the rest of the Universe It is not any Tradition that hath given Men these Ideas it is the natural perception and inward experience and certainty which the Soul essentially hath of it self And if Men were not diverted and carried away on the one side by their Passions and on the other side over-rul'd to that degree as they are by the Empire exercis'd over them by the Imagination which dulls and obscures them so as hath been said there would be no need of writing Books to let them know the Nobility and Dignity the Imaterial Nature and the Spiritual and Immortal Quality of their Souls Every one would be his own Master and his own Book to himself But seeing that the Passions on one side take from us the Attention and Reflection upon our selves and that the Imagination on the other side presents us with Corporeal Images as soon as we apply our selves to conceive things Spiritual and Immaterial it is necessary to awaken and help this natural Sentiment and to support the feeble and weak Effort of the Understanding and Reason to unmingle our Soul from that Confusion with the Body which the Imagination causes For that purpose we must begin to own its Spiritual and Immortal Nature of which it can accumulate a thousand Proofs but not to weary the Spirit by too much Speculation we will close it up in Three only drawn from one triple indubitable Sentiment which every one hath and upon which every one may easily reflect For every one finds in himself a Principle of Knowledge a Principle of Liberty and a Principle of Conscience or Love of Order and Justice And these are the three evident Convictions of the Spiritual and Immortal Nature of our Souls which sparkle within us Let us treat of them in order and explain them one after another CHAP. II. That our Souls undoubtedly are Spiritual Natures and altogether distinct from Bodies upon the account of their Intelligent Nature IF we should follow the Light of our natural Ideas there would be no need here of any Effort of Reason or any Train of Discourse for the natural Idea which we have of a Spirit or a Spiritual Nature is no other than an Idea of an Intelligent Nature such as we find and perceive in us by that intimate and inseparable Experience which we have of our selves For we must observe and which admits of no difficulty that as we do not know Bodies but by the Experience which we have of them so we know not Spirits but by that Spirit which we have in our selves and by that Idea which we have of our Soul which we know not but under the Idea of a knowing Substance which we experiment and perceive in us to be capable of divers Matters of knowing perceiving and willing of loving of hating of being afflicted and rejoycing of having Pain and Pleasure and in fine to
would fain have them tell us how they conceive God and how they conceive themselves if they do not conceive in themselves this Nature and this Immortal Part of which we have given the Conviction How they conceive the Knowing and the Intellectual Nature which they find in them and the Corporeal Nature with which they see themselves environ'd I would fain have them tell us from whence they believe comes the Order the Structure the Arrangement and the so well contriv'd Disposition of the visible World What they think of those lively Resentments of the Natural Instinct and of Conscience What they judge of all that Train of Mysteries and Miracles which makes the Body of that which we call the Holy History or the History of Religion O God! what shame and Confusion ought we to have in our selves to feel so great a disorder in the Spirit And how ought one fear to see himself abandon'd of God to this Disorder which is a frightful Anticipation of the Utter Darkness of Hell On the contrary what Consolation the Wise and Regular Spirits who study in themselves the Knowledge of the Soul what Consolation ought they to have since they so undoubtedly acknowledge in themselves their Spiritual Nature and Immortal Condition upon so many diverse Principles St. Paul said that there are two things upon which is built the Certainty and the Hope of our happy Immortality if we are faithful to God but he will pardon me there are a hundred Principles in our selves and a hundred Foundations out of our selves of it Every thing gives a Testimony of our Life to come and of the Immortal Condition of our Souls Sense and Reason Nature and Grace the Ancient Law and the New Law Jesus Christ and Moses God and Devil Body and Spirit Concupiscence and Conscience our Ideas and our Desires our Fears and our Hopes all things when we know how to use them and to reflect upon them CHAP. XVI That it is easie not only to give our selves a Conviction of the Spiritual Nature of our Souls but to give a neat Idea of them WE have as we have seen in our indubitable Sentimment a certain Conviction of the Spiritual Nature and of the Immortal Condition of our Soul so it lies only on our part to have a lively and neat Idea of it and to make it to us an inexhaustible Ground of Comfort and an admirable Principle and clear Light of Morality I say it lies only on our part for without entring into the Question Whether we can have so just and so exact an Idea of our Soul as to deduce from thence all its Proprieties and all its Attributes as we deduce from an Idea of extended Matter every thing that can happen to it and agree with it because I will remove from this Writing every thing that carries any Air of Contest and of the useless Spirit of Curiosity I believe it my Duty to undeceive here those who say that they cannot comprehend a Soul or form a Notion or Idea of it they believe that it is the most difficult thing in the World and at this rate almost all Men judge But what is there more ordinary than for Men to err and deceive themselves and to be infinitely strangers to Attention and Reflection upon themselves which alone is able to conduct us to a neat and distinct Knowledge of our selves It is difficult for them who never deliberately and seriously reflect upon themselves to conceive the Soul separately to distinguish it from the Body and to consult the Idea of the Spiritual Nature and the Corporeal Nature which we find all neat and all distinct in that interiour Ground of Reason and Light which so infallibly and so surely enlightens us as often as we re-enter a little profoundly into our selves to consult and study it But there is at the bottom no true difficulty to conceive our Souls and to make our selves a neat and distinct Notion of them if we would but give our selves the trouble of commanding a serious Attention and Reflection upon our selves to apply our selves separately to distinguish what we conceive therein as Body and what we conceive therein as Spirit and to learn the two manners of conceiving things which are effectively in us to wit the manner of conceiving by Imagination and the manner of conceiving by pure Intellection or Conception Two things are the occasion that we do not know our Souls that we have not at all a clear and distinct Idea of them The one is That we do not apply our selves thereto The other is That tho' we do apply our selves thereto we do not at all conceive the two manners of Conceiving which are in us we do not conceive at all that there is a manner of Conceiving by pure Intellect and Spiritual Notion we will as hath been before observ'd conceive our Soul by Imagination we will give it a certain Figure a certain Shape a certain Colour and a Form entirely Corporeal for as this manner of Conceiving by Imagination is most easie and as it is made in us even almost without us and as it gives us no trouble at all whereas we must have a great deal to conceive things by pure Intellection we so strongly accustom our selves to it that we come to persuade our selves that there is nothing real but what we conceive after that sort yet in the mean time there is nothing more certain than this double manner of Conceiving and than the two kinds of Beings of Natures and of Objects which are the Matter and the Subject upon which this double Knowledge or this double manner of Conceiving exercises it self It was one part of the Error of the Manichees not to believe any thing real but what was Corporeal But there are undoubtedly things which are no ways Corporeal which are if we will more real than Corporeal ones for our Acts for Example of Imagining of Willing and of Reasoning are the thing of the World which we can the least look upon as a thing chimerical and not real Nothing is more real than our Acts and our Faculties of Thinking for what is there that we can have a greater certainty of who do's not know who do's not perceive that he Thinks that he Imagines that he Reflects that he Reasons and that he Desires and who can ever conceive any of these things under a Corporeal Image and Form God also is without doubt something of real Good for who can doubt that that Principle of Order of Being and of Intelligence which hath given Being and Order to the visible World hath an Effective Reality And yet in the mean time we cannot conceive him under any Corporeal Form and we conceive on the contrary that he Subsists without being connexed to any Basis or Terrestrial or Corporeal Mass There are therefore two Orders of things and by relation to these two Orders there are two manners of conceiving things We know and we conceive things Corporeal under a
exactly and in an Instant as often as these Immutable Laws require it be the Consequence of it Good or Evil. This Experience is Indubitable for the Power which Acts in Us do's not cease to determine in our Souls the agreeable Pleasures and Resentments which by its Immutable Laws ought to accompany the Motions which are profitable either to the good Disposition of the Body or to the Conservation of the Species altho ' the Disorder of unbridled Concupiscences should follow thereupon which so often ruine both Soul and Body and it is after the same manner with all the other agreeable Sentiments which this Power causes in us This Power regards not the Good or the Evil which may happen thereupon for particular Interests but only the general Good of its Universal Ends for the guidance of the Universe Nothing is more Indubitable and all these so certain and so sure Experiences joyn'd to the infallible Knowledge which we have already acquir'd of the particular Nature of our Souls will make us Easily comprehend how our Souls Are in our Bodies and how they Operate there CHAP. IV. False Idea's which we must avoid by the Light of these Experiences and first That of Believing that our Souls are united to our Bodies by any Sympathy Proportion or Inclination WE ought above all things to cut off by this double Light of these Indubitable Experiences and of the Knowledge which we have already acquir'd of the Spiritual Nature of our Souls all the Idea's which we shall find to have been evidently contrary to them and we shall find however a many such that are very common We find First That our Souls are not at all United to our Bodies as most Men do conceive by any Inclination or by any Sympathy which is betwixt them because such an Idea is contrary to the Spiritual Nature of our Souls as it is taken in it self This common Idea That our Soul hath a certain Proportion with our Bodies which is turn'd into a Sympathy and a violent Inclination whereby It is dispos'd to unite it self to the Body and by the same Reason according to the Opinion of some It is effectively thereby united to the Body is a false Imagination which had its Rise from that Idea and that constant Truth That the Soul is the True Form of the Humane Body as Humane according to the Definition of the Council of Vienna as it is effectively so by the Determination of the Creator who created it to be united to the Body for under pretence That it is truly the proper Form of a Man or of an Humane Body since it makes the substantial and specifick difference of that Compositum of Body and Spirit which we call Man just as Material Forms are in Material Compounds and are that which make the Essential difference and that which doth constitute and determine the Species of them They went about to Conceive it as if by its own Nature before the Determination of the Creator it had been an Imperfect and Incomplete Substance as a Man may say by Analogy to Material Forms having essentially Need of the Body to exercise its Faculties and its Functions If the Question had been but of the Souls of Beasts This Idea had been Just because the Soul of a Beast which is that last Perfection of the Structure and of the Organization of the Body design'd to move it self and to nourish it self by a natural and interior Principle which Aristotle hath very well express'd by his famous Definition Actus primus Corporis Organici Potentiâ vitam habentis is not effectively a Form but wholly Material whose Nature is essentially imperfect and insufficient to Exist and to Operate by it self as Thomas Aquinas teaches us That the Soul is not as Corporeal Forms tho' it be the Form of a Man But speaking of the Soul of Man of this new Nature joyn'd to the perfect Organization of the Structure of the Body which Aristotle himself says comes from without as Moses hath tanght us we ought to cut off every Idea and every Resemblance of a Corporeal Form and of a Substance by consequence Imperfect or as a Man may say Incomplete in it self which might have need of a Chief Head and by its Nature of the Assistance and of the Company of the Body or which might have an Inclination by which she should desire and search after the Body The difference between a Soul and an Angel One conceives but very ill the difference of an Angel and the Soul of Man by this Idea That an Angel is a perfect Substance in it self and by it self That the Soul of Man is Essentially an Imperfect Spiritual Substance which hath an Essential Relation to the Body an Essential Inclination for the Body an Essential Proportion with the Body All these Conceptions and Idea's are repugnant to the Spiritual Nature of the Soul because no Spirit can ever have any Relation to or Dependence upon the Body neither any Proportion with the Body or any Inclination for the Body but by the free and voluntary Disposition of Him who equally Governs Spiritual and Corporeal Natures Let it be taken for granted that the Soul of Man by the Empire of the Creator should be render'd dependent upon the Body that it should be destin'd to suffer a Probation in the Body to see by what means it would render it self worthy of Eternity Let her have Pleasures upon the account of the Body Let her henceforwards please her self in the Body after she is once united to it But that she should of her own accord of her own Nature and that antecedently as they say by her proper and essential Inclination by her Nature and by her Essence that she should I say require a Body that she should desire a Body that she should have any Proportion or any Sympathy with the Body is the most unreasonable Thought that ever was or could ever enter into the Mind of Man since besides that it is so far from the Soul to have need of the Body or to have an Inclination of it self for the Body its Spiritual Nature convinces us that it cannot chuse but have a strangeness for the Body which essentially bounds limits and keeps back its Knowledge and renders it a dependent Slave The Opinion of the Ancient Fathers upon all that hath been said concerning the Disproportion betwixt Souls and Bodies This is what we see in its Spiritual Nature and the Scripture and the Fathers do give us entirely the same Idea's So far is the Scripture from proposing the Body an Assistant to the Soul and as a supervening Perfection that on the contrary it proposes it to us as our Prison and as our Chain and as our Captivity and our Fetters And the Ancient Doctors until the Ninth Age spoke of this Matter agreeable to the Scripture An Angel and Man saith S. Gregory of Nice S. Gregory of Naziance and S. Augustin differ without doubt for an Angel is a Spirit
which God makes trial of out of the Body and whose Thoughts and Affections he hath not subjected to the Dispositions of a Body and Man is a Spirit which God makes trial of in the Body to which he subjects it before he crowns it with Eternity But the Soul of Man if God had not dispos'd of it after that manner would have had no need of a Body So far were the Ancient Doctors from conceiving our Souls as to have any need of Bodies or as having of themselves that ardent Desire of being united to the Body which somewould fain have attributed to them that they on the contrary have believ'd that which Experirience makes us see and perceive so clearly That the Union of Souls with Bodies is a hard and a difficult Empire which God doth Exercise over them and which if he should not sweeten the rigor and the difficulty of it by the Pleasures of agreeable Sentiments which he hath annex'd to the Acts and Operations of Souls in Bodies it would be for them not a Trial but a Hell They carry the Matter much further for they maintain That if God should not nor ought to Spiritualize Bodies that is to say to take away from Souls the Dependence which their present State gives them upon Bodies he would not raise them up again because he would not put the Just Souls whose approv'd Fidelity deserv'd to be Crown'd into Bodies which should constrain them and which enslave their Thoughts which is what Spiritualiz'd Bodies cannot bear because the Spiritualization of Bodies will consist in this precisely That they should no longer exercise an Empire over the Souls and that they should be no longer a Charge an Obstacle and an Incumbrance to them Even in the present State of Union which requires that the Souls should by the Empire of the Creator have an Affection for the Conservation of the Body and by consequence that they should Love the Body because it is as it were a Charm by which they are blinded to sweeten the pain and the rigor of their Prison The Just and Holy Souls know well that they are Captives and Prisoners they groan with S. Paul under the weight of their Fetters and their Chains and sigh with him for a deliverance from their Bodies Let us cut off then these gross and Material Idea's by the which we conceive our Souls as having this base Inclination of desiring of their own accord so improper a Match by an Union with the Body do not let us degrade them after that manner nor let us conceive in them any other Relation to Body or any other Inclination for Body but that which the Almighty Empire of the Creator gives them who being willing to have the Pleasure of receiving a free and a voluntary Service and the Honor of a Worship from them in seeing them combat for Order and Duty for his Eternal Law and for his Love against the diverse Inclinations which they have in their State of Union upon the occasion of this Terrestrial Nature sends them for a Trial into the Body to the end that he might have an occasion to Crown their Fidelity and their Combats CHAP. V. That the Body cannot in any manner Act upon the Soul to Illuminate or Affect it Physically and Immediately by it self AFter having cut off that common Idea of the Vulgar Opinion of the Inclination which the Soul of it self hath for the Body we must also remove that Belief That the Body can in any manner Act upon the Soul by any Physical Action be it from Immediation of Substance be it from an Efflux of their Parts or Species or Images as it is vulgarly conceiv'd We ought I say to banish this Imagination and this Chimerical Vision for if we consult the Idea which we have of Corporeal Nature we shall see That Body and Matter can never Act be it by themselves immediately or be it by Parts deriv'd from them or by Species or Images reflected from them but in Driving but in Dividing and diversly Figuring as they themselves cannot but be Mov'd diversly Driven Figur'd Situated and Divided For it is impossible to conceive in Bodies any other Active Faculty or any other Passive Faculty And as the Nature of the Soul is a Spiritual and Immaterial Nature in which there is not any Part or any Extension we shall evidently and clearly see that nothing of all That can have place in her We shall see That not being capable of being either Touch'd nor Driner Divided nor Figur'd or in any other manner that can be Modifi'd by the Action of Bodies Nothing is more Chimerical or more ridiculous than to conceive that there is any Physical Actions of Bodies upon Souls and by consequence that it is impossible that our Bodies or any others should produce and determine Immediately and Physically by themselves the Idea's and Sentiments which we have upon their occasion This is what ought to be seriously observ'd to undeceive us of that common Opinion and Prepossession That it is the Juice of the Meat which we eat which determines causes and produces Physically and Immediately in our Souls the Pleasure of Tasting That it is the Smell or subtil Exhalations and Evaporations of odoriferous Bodies which produce Physically in Them the Pleasure of the Smelling That they are the Pulsations of the Air melodiously beaten upon that distended Skin at the Entry of the Ear which we call the Tympanum which produce in us Physically and Immediately by themselves the Pleasure of Harmonious Sounds That they are the Beams of Light reflected from all the Points of Objects which being carried by the Optick Nerve even to the Center of the Brain do either Physically produce there the Representation of the Objects which the Soul hath upon that occasion or determine at least Physically the Soul to make it self Images of Objects wholly Spiritual and wholly Immaterial which she receives and which she hath in her self by their presence Therein lies the vulgar Opinion and the common Prejudice of believing That External Bodies by the Impression which they make upon our Bodies do either produce Effects in us or determine us Physically by their Interposition to frame to our selves the Sentiments and Idea's which we have upon their occasion But this common Opinion is indubitably a common Error combated equally by the Sentiment which every one hath of a Superior and Exterior Force which sends and detains the Soul in the Body and which Acts perpetually in them upon the occasion of the Body And by the Notion of a Spiritual Nature which do's not at all admit that we should conceive any Action or any Physical activity of Bodies upon Spirits and by consequence neither of ours nor any other Bodies upon our Souls That our own Bodies cannot Act Physically and Immediately by themselves upon our Souls whose Spirituality renders them inaccessible to all sorts of Impressions of Bodies There are some who not carrying far enough the clear Light of
the Notion of a Spiritual Nature do conceive well That separated Bodies say they cannot Act Physically upon the Souls but it is not after the same manner with Bodies which are united to them Separated Bodies can do nothing to the Souls say they they cannot determine in the Souls any Sentiment nor any Idea But the Body united to the Soul doth acquire by that Union a near Disposition whereby it is enabled to Act Immediately and Physically upon the Soul and to determine all its Idea's and Modifications which it hath from the occasion of other Bodies which surround it This is the common Fancy of the Schools which indeed is but a most false and a most repugnant Imagination full of Contradiction and Incompatibility for besides that the Union that is betwixt the Body and the Soul is but the Act of the Creator as I shall Explain it hereafter so that Union doth not at all change the Nature or Essence of the Body nor the Nature or Essence of the Soul The Body united to the Soul remains still a Body and the Soul united to the Body retains still its former Being of a Soul and by consequence of a Nature wholly Spiritual to which no Body can be united and upon which no Body can have a Physical Action because Bodies are not united but by a continuity of Parts neither do they Act but by Impelling Dividing or Figuring diversly which cannot be done upon Spiritual Natures who cannot be subject to any of these Corporeal Passions and to whom the Body can never approach by reason of the distance of an infinite Disproportion which keeps them asunder That the Body doth not cause in the Soul either Pleasure or Pain We must banish all those gross Imaginations by which Men conceive that our Bodies Act Immediately and Physically in any manner whatsoever upon our Souls be it for the illuminating them or for the producing in them either Pleasure or Pain That cannot be for two Reasons for the general Reason That Bodies can never be united to Spirits and Act Physically upon them and for a particular Reason That if they could have any Action upon them they could not have one so Superior and so Excellent For to cause Pain or Pleasure or generally any Modification in the Soul by which she is so intimately affected and as it were alter'd and penetrated in her Substance is an Act of Superiority and Dominion This is an Act of a Superior Nature which keeps the Body under it and subjected to it It is clear That the Body cannot at all be Superior to the Soul especially to cause in it either Pleasure or Pain which are not only the Acts of a Superior Nature but the Acts of a Nature Supreme in whom is Essentially this Sovereign Dominion over all created Natures to cause in them either Happiness or Unhappiness and by consequence the Pleasure and the Pain which makes up this Happiness or Unhappiness Moreover Pain and Pleasure and generally every Modification of the Soul is Essentially a Spiritual Act or Passion This is essentially a Vital Act of the Soul which is undoubtedly Spiritual for every Act of the Soul is of the same Nature with the Soul every Act of the Soul being Immanent as the Schoolmen say and by consequence receiv'd within the Soul and it is not possible to conceive that any thing should be receiv'd within the Soul which is not Spiritual Therefore there is nothing more incompatible than to conceive that the Body can produce any thing that is Spiritual I could here make use of the Authority of all the ancient Doctors who have held That God alone can Exercise upon created Spirits that Physical Action by which they are Modifi'd in themselves and by which they receive those Sentiments or Idea's whereof they are not at all Masters which is that which is call'd Agere per illapsum But that that we may better support this Tract rather upon the Experience of our own proper Sentiment and upon the clear Notions and Idea's which we can attain to by Reasoning than upon any Authority we will not if you please have any regard to an Authority so great and so worthy of Deference and Respect Let us say no more of it then but let us see if we can conceive That our Bodies by the Impressions which they receive from without or which come to them from their own proper Spirits and from their own proper Humors can by their Physical Action affect our Souls or determine them to cause to themselves either Pleasure or Pain or the Images which they have of things by reason of Corporeal Impressions Bodies do not only not cause the Sentiments and Idea's in the Soul but they do not so much as determine the Soul Physically to make them This is another vulgar Imagination and Opinion That if the Body doth not cause in Us these Sentiments and these Idea's at least it doth determine the Soul to make them But we ought also to cut off this Imagination and this Idea for many Reasons First of all for the Pleasure and the Pain because besides that it is always impossible to conceive in the Body a Physical Action upon the Soul since a Body cannot Act but by Stirring Dividing Figuring and Removing and that the Soul can neither be Stirr'd Figur'd nor Divided nor Corporeally affected in any manner It is also incompatible to conceive That the Soul can cause to it self and in it self either Pleasure or Pain for that moreover that the one and the other are things which are above it it is certain that Pleasure and Pain are things which we receive and which make in Us this invincible Power of Nature which we have so often taken notice of to be no other than the Author and Master of Nature and to say That the Soul causeth in it self either Pleasure or Pain a Man may as well say That she causeth the Health and Sickness the Beauty or Deformity of the Body That the Souls of themselves do not make the Idea's or Images of Bodies It is after the same manner with the particular Idea's of things which she receives by reason of the divers Modifications and Configurations of the Brain caused by the Impressions of Exterior Bodies as with Pleasure and with Pain for whatsoever Affection we can conceive the Soul to have by the Impression of the Idea receiv'd into the Brain it is impossible to conceive it Imprinted by her self with that lively and animated Image which she hath in her self This living and animated Image which she hath in her self is like a Seal which hath made an Impression upon her She suffers and receives more than she acts and whatever Advertisement is conceived there from the presence of the Object it is impossible to conceive that she should make the Pourtraicture which she hath thereof in her self To tell me that There is the King is nothing at all if I am blind to give me the means of representing
Principle of Happiness and Unhappiness which is the most Essential Character and Attribute of that which we call Divinity or Supream Nature Tho we should not have this so assur'd Experience of the Union which our Souls have with God by the continual Irradiation of his Divine Life and Influence in us the which agrees so well with this Idea which Faith gives That it is God who is the Immediate Cause of the Union of our Souls and our Bodies for we must observe by the way that it would be an Impiety to doubt of it since not only God according to Faith Created our Souls but he Infuses them also as they say and unites them to our Bodies we could not possibly be ignorant of it if we gave any attention to his Supream Sovereignty over us and to our Essential Dependence upon Him in all the Acts of our Life as well as in all the Foundations of our Being and by consequence in all our Knowledges Can the Sun-beam shine when it is separated from the Sun And can the created Spirit either subsist one moment or have the least Light or the least Spark of Life or of Knowledge without the Irradiations of the Supream Being The Ancients said very well when they said That all things were full of God That God was the Soul of the World the Life of every thing that Lives and the Being of every thing that Is and doth Subsist They had much better than Us conceiv'd the Supream Nature when they said that It was the Circumference and Center of a Circle That it was the Sun and its Rays That it contain'd All and replenish'd All And that its Action was the Life and the Motion of all things God is Effectively and Essentially apply'd to all the Parts of the Universe and that there is not one onely thing from which he withdraws himself for one only Minute Natural Evidence persuades us no less than the Divine and Heavenly Authority of S. Paul That every thing that Lives every thing that Moves every thing that Is Lives Moves and Is in Him In ipso vivimus movemur sumus But tho' he should not continually apply himself to all the other Parts of the Universe yet it must needs be that he should apply himself to Spiritual Natures and to every thing that is call'd Spirit or Knowing and Spiritual Nature for that also the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers do teach us That He is the Father that is to say the Lively and Essential Source of all Light and by consequence of all Knowledge the Sun of Intelligence and the Life of all Spirits Exposition of this Principle by S. Augustin St. Augustin by the force of this Natural Evidence Divinely said That we are so Essentially united to God that we may say we are much more in God even by our Bodies not only than we are in the Air or within any other Corporeal Space whatsoever but than we are in our selves because in fine saith he It is certain that God not only contains and environs our Bodies better than any Corporeal Space but he continually gives them their Being and their Motion by his Action and by his Almighty Influence a thousand times more than the Illumination of the Sun gives Light and Splendor to its Rays But this which the Holy Doctor says of our Bodies hath much greater force in it when he saith it of our Souls for tho' it be true that our Bodies are in God in whom all things are Essentially it is much more so that our Souls are in Him because they are ty'd to him by a thousand times more Dependences than the Body since they continually receive Life from him through all the Acts of all their diverse Faculties which are without number If a Man demands says he Where is the place of the Soul That is a Question which our gross and curious Imaginations make who being desirous to conceive all things after a Corporeal manner would determine a certain Space and a certain Extent to Souls But it would be very well says he to answer them and to say to them for to undeceive them of this Manichean Idea That they are in God that they Live they See they Perceive and they Imagine in God for it is certain that they do not any thing of all this but by the Immediate and Physical Influence and the continual and Essential Irradiation of his Divine Life which he communicates to them without ceasing And because the Life of God and of every Spirit is to See to Know and to Love it is certain That every thing that Thinks every thing that Seeth every thing that Loveth and every thing that Knoweth doth Think See Love and Know in him and by him by whom is every thing that is by whom is moved every thing that moves and by whom liveth every thing that lives For byreason that He is the First Being or Principle of Being it must needs be that every thing that Is receiveth without ceasing its Being from him by a perpetual and never-interrupted Communication of this Supream Essence By the reason that He is the Principle of Life or the Essential and Original Life it must needs be That every thing that lives receives continually a Life from Him by a like Influence and by a like Communication of his Life and by consequence That every thing that Thinks and Knows Thinketh and Knoweth by Him since to Think and Know is the Life of Spirits This is the solid Metaphysick of S. Augustin and this is also the Theology of S. Thomas who hath so often made use of these Arguments under the Name and Notion of a First Agent of a First Cause and of an Essential Principle of Life And this is the same common Notion of all the Doctors that ever were under the more consu'd Name and Idea of Concourse because it is certain that this Action of God which we call his Concourse cannot be in relation to the Passive Faculty by which our Soul hath the Idea's and Sentiments of Corporeal Objects but a Vision and a Chimera if it be not that Action by which I say That in the Quality of a First and Universal Cause on the one Part and on the other of a Particular Cause of the Union of our Souls and Bodies He determines in us our Sentiments and gives us our Idea's from the Occasion of the Impressions which either Actions from without on the part of the Bodies which are round about us cause upon our Brains or the Determination of the Circulation of the Blood of the Humors and of the Spirits within us which oftentimes are the Occasion of the Action of the Supream Cause without the intervening of any thing from without That this is not to have recourse to a Miracle but to Explain what sort of Commerce there is betwixt the Soul and the Body There is no need of opposing here that This is to have recourse to Miracle or to make God descend from
the Members every one to the Movement for the which it is destin'd when they themselves come to be determin'd That neither our Souls do come of themselves to lay hold on the Body nor do's the Body cause the Soul to descend but it is God who assembles them together There you see how I conceive the Body And whereas we have conceived the Soul as a Nature purely Spiritual capable of Perceiving of Knowing and of Willing We have no more to do than to see how this Spiritual Nature can become united to that Terrestrial Structure Whereupon the first thing that is to be conceiv'd is That neither the Body can lay hold on the Soul or draw it to it for to subject it and for to shut it up Nor can the Soul on its side neither be driven by any Inclination to become pour'd upon the Body nor become ty'd there of it self by its Choice and Good liking as being to be so ill match'd We must therefore comprehend before all things that these two Parties and these two so far distant Natures do neither of themselves by consent and by an appointed Rendezvous assemble nor by Chance do they meet together but that it is the Infinite Power which Governs the World and which would have it be adorn'd by the Beauty of this so rare and singular a Work which as Faith teacheth and all the World conceiveth brings them together and assembles them and makes all the Union that is between them St. Augustin most solidly observes That God makes three Functions for our sakes That of the Creator of the Matter of our Bodies and of the Substance of our Souls That of the Author of the Structure and Organisation of our Bodies And lastly That of the Principle of the Union of the two Parties and of the two Natures which compose Us Creator Fictor Unitor He is as essentially the efficient and immediate Principle of the Union of our Souls and of our Bodies as he is of the Structure of the Body and of the Creation of the Soul There is no other Power in the World that can shut up this Immaterial Immortal and Eternal Nature within that Terrestrial and Carnal Structure This is a certain Truth we read it in our own proper Sentiments and in the infallible Light of the notion of the Soul and of the Body and there is nothing in the World more undoubtable than this Principle That it is God that unites our Souls to our Bodies and I believe no Man will disagree with it and the Question is not Whether he doth it but How he doth it CHAP. IX How God can assemble and unite the Soul and the Body GOD cannot without doubt Unite these two so opposite Natures but in such a manner that they may be United and Assembled so that we must see first of all how a Spirit and a Body may be Assembled and United Men fall into a thousand Errors upon this matter and all these Errors happen because they will apply the Idea which they have of the Union of two or more Bodies to the Union of the Soul and Body which is the greatest mistake in the World and the entire Subsersion of Reason and good Sense for it is evident that the Union of a Spirit with a Spirit cannot be conceived by the Idea of the Union of a Body with a Body so likewise the Union of a Spirit with a Body cannot be comprehended by the Idea which we have of the Union of two Bodies We must shun this defect and disorder and give attention to this certain and infallible Rule That Union being a Relation of one thing to another it follows that she must change the Nature and the Idea according to the Nature of the Things which are United and thus to conceive an Union of a Spirit and a Body we must comprehend wherein and whereby these two Natures may be united How two Spirits may be united That we may well form an Idea thereof We must first of all conceive the Union of two Spirits for when we shall have comprehended how two Spirits may be united we shall with much more ease comprehend the Union of a bound dy a Spirit If we give good attention thereto we shall find that there being nothing in a Spiritual Nature but Knowledge Sentiment and Will for there is nothing precisely but That which we know in Spiritual created Natures It is impossible to conceive the Union of two Spirits otherwise than by the Union of their Thoughts of their Sentiments and of their Wills Things cannot be united but by that which is in them and there being nothing in Spirits but this triple ground of the Faculty of Thinking or of Knowing of the Faculty of Perceiving which is it self a manner of the Faculty of Knowing And lastly Of the faculty of Willing and freely determining themselves It is clear that two Spirits cannot be united but by the Faculties and by the Acts and Faculties of Thinking Perceiving and of Willing That which makes precisely the Union of two Spirits But this is not enough to have found and conceived that two Spirits cannot be united but by their Faculties of Thinking of Knowing and of Willing we must see also wherein the Union of the two Faculties of Thinking and the two Faculties of Perceiving and of the two Faculties of Willing may consist Wherein then may this Union consist It cannot without doubt consist but in the mutual respective and reciprocal dependence of the Faculties and their Acts If we conceive that an Angel thinks necessarily as often as another Angel thinks that he hath a Sentiment of Pleasure and of Pain of Joy or of Sadness as often as the other is sad or rejoyces That he hath a motion of love or of hatred as often as the other loves or hates We shall conceive without doubt these two Angels united and united in an Hypostatical Union or in Unity of Person and in a Substantial and Physical Union especially if this dependence of Thought of Sentiment and of Will be of the one side mutual and reciprocal and on the other not voluntary and arbitrary but necessary and forced caused by a Superior Power which leaves them not the liberty of breaking the Band of this mutual dependence This mutual and not arbitrary dependence caused by that Empire and that Physical Action of a Superior Power will so unite these two Spirits that it will be no longer a simple Angel but a Compositum wholly Spiritual of two Angels which will make no more than one single Whole in two individual Substances altogether distinct Such a mutual dependance makes precisely all the Physical Union that can be betwixt two Spirits since cutting off all other Ideas by that alone these two Angels will be comprehended to be united and not conceiving That though we may conceive other Things between these two Angels It will however be impossible to conceive them United for it is impossible to conceive any other Thing
is continual As to the rest let us not fear that God is too much Employed and hath too many Affairs than continually to entertain This Union by his perpetual Action multiplied and diversified into so many Manners in determining so many Sentiments and Thoughts or Idea's on one part in the Souls and so many Motions on the other part in the Bodies to the Souls liking for this Supream Agent who Animates and who Essentially moves the Universe who gives Life to every Thing that Lives Motion to every Thing that is Moved Thought to every Thing that Thinks and Light to every Thing that is Enlightned is in no wise incumbred by so much Action It is on the contrary his Essence and his Nature to Act thus continually and to be Equally the Soul of the Corporeal as well as of the Intelligible World to be equally applyed to the one and to the other To the one for to Entertain and direct its Motions to the other for to Englighten all its Thoughts and to Determin its Sentiments or its sensible Modifications Pater meus usque modo operatur As God conserves Things by a new Creation renew'd every Instant or to say better always continued so he Entertains the Union of Souls and Bodies by that continual Application which he hath of Acting on one part on the Souls in Enlightning them diversly from the occasion of Impressions which external Objects or the internal Course of the Animal Spirits make continually in our Brains and on the other part upon Bodies in determining their Motions according to the occasion of the Thoughts of the Sentiments and of the Wills of the Soul Union can be nothing else Let us not fear then Let us not at all fear that God is fatigued with so grand an Exercise nor that it is unworthy of him to be thus always Employed upon Nature and upon his Workmanship since it is on the contrary not only his Pleasure and his Glory but the Essential Act of his Supream Nature also But let Us comprehend that no other Idea can make Us conceive the Union of our Souls with our Bodies For let us not believe that the Body and the Soul can be united like two Liquors or like two Metals which are melted one with the other Let us not conceive that this Union can be made like the Union of Bodies to Bodies which are made either by an unctuous or viscous humor which binds the Parts of them together or by Nails Pegs and Joynts Let Us not imagine here any Thing that is material Let Us cut off every Thing which presents it self Corporeal to our Spirit Let Us conceive precisely this mutual and necessary Dependence and having conceived thereby the Union of our Souls and of our Bodies We shall find that we have comprehended the manner how our Souls are in our Bodies They are not there by a Local and Corporeal Circumscription They are not there as Liquor is in the Vessel as the Bird is within the Nest or in his Cage or as the Body is in the Air which environs it They are there as God is in the World in which we must so conceive Him as that we must conceive Him saith St. Augustin much more containing than contained Let us remember that tho the Nature of the Soul is a Spiritual Nature which doth as essentially exclude Local Extention and by consequence all sorts of Idea's of Local Presence such as we commonly conceive under the Corporeal Immages of Immediation of Proportion and of Co-extention of Substances as it doth essentially include the Grounds and the Acts of the knowing Faculty Bodies have their proper fashion of Being within Places and Spirits have theirs likewise There is nothing of likeness between the one and the other And from the moment that you shall conceive the manner how a Spirit is within a Place by any thing resembling the manner how do you conceive that Bodies are in their Places Say and hesitate not that you deceive your selves since you confound the Things of the World which are most distinct and by confounding Them you subvert and destroy both Corporeal and Spiritual Nature The Doctrin of Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas saith very well that Spirits are not in Bodies or in a Corporeal Spirit but in two manners Either by the Action which they exercise upon certain Bodies or certain Corporeal Spaces Or by the Action which they suffer and which they receive upon the Occasion of certain Bodies which is the manner how the Devils are in the Fire of Hell whose Motion they determine by the Empire of their Will upon the Occasion where of they are penetrated with an intimate Sentiment of Burning by the Supream Power and Justice which punishes them This Idea of Thomas Aquinas is just and exact and it is thus we ought to conceive that our Souls are in our Bodies They are not there but because they have the greatest part of their Thoughts and of their Idea's and all their Sentiments of Pleasure and of Pain by the Occasion of the Body and because that they Act upon the Body by the Action of their Will which removes them and moves them in the manner that hath been said already They are no otherwise in the Body Every thing that we shall conceive beyond this will be False Contradictory Impossible and Chimerical they will only be Corporeal Images of which there is not any one that can agree to the Soul and to the manner how she is in the Body For it is with the manner how the Soul is in the Body as it is with the Soul it self we cannot comprehend it as often as we conceive it by Imagination what Corporeal Image soever we may make of it under what Material Form soever we may conceive it it is not at all the Soul that we do conceive And it is the same with the manner how the Soul is in the Body From the moment that we imagine it it is no more That which we imagine it for to imagine is to conceive under a Corporeal Form and Image and it is impossible to conceive any thing Corporeal in the Soul either in the Foundation and Substance or in the Accidents of it The manner how the Soul is in the Body is altogether as Spiritual as is the Substance of the Soul And all these Idea's which conceive the manner how the Soul is in the Body with any Resemblance with the manner how Bodies are in Corporeal Spaces are False Chimerical and Monstrous Idea's because they conceive the Soul as Corporeal In what part the Soul is and whether it be in all the Body If it be demanded after this In what part of the Body the Soul is or Whether she is in all the Body The Question will not be difficult to resolve because there needs no more than to apply the Principle of Thomas Aquinas of the manner how Spirits are in Places because it will make us easily to comprehend without any Corporeal Image
or Material Imagination That all the Soul is in all the Body and all of it in all the Essential and Integral Parts of the Body as God is all in all the World and in all the Parts of the World not by that Co-extension and and Local Chimerical Presence which gross Spirits do imagine but by the Intimate Presence of his Sovereign Essence Essentially Operating in all the World and in all the Parts of the World We must say the same of the Soul that it is in all the Body by the Relation of its Dependence and Activity But this do's not hinder but that we may say That she is more properly and more particularly in the Brain since it is by that Part that the Action of the Soul upon the Body immediately commences and that all the Action of the Body upon the Soul terminates wholly in that Part as it sensibly appears by that which interrupts and suspends the Action of the Soul upon the Body and the Action of the Body upon the Soul For as often as it happens that the Action of the Body upon the Soul is interrupted it is because there is some relaxation or some obstruction in some of the Nerves which hinders the Motion from being continu'd in the Part affected of the Body as far as the Brain and when the Action of the Soul upon the Body is interrupted as when the Soul would move the Paralytick Foot but cannot at all move it It is likewise because the Motion which begins always by the Brain or by the determination of the Nerves which have their Origine in the Brain or if you will by that most subtile Portion of the Blood which we call Animal Spirits cannot be continu'd so far as to that diseased Part. But after having Explain'd the manner how our Souls Are in our Bodies which gives us so lively an Idea of our Dependence upon the Supream Being and upon all his Divine Attributes we must now see how our Souls Operate in our Bodies and observe all the Differences of our diverse Operations for the clearing every thing that may have any difficulty and require Day and Light for the better apprehending the Sovereign Perâ—â—◠〈◊〉 of the Supream Nature the which Operates continually in us and Rules over us so many ways in all our diverse Operations and the Essential Subjection and Limitation of all created Natures which do in so many ways depend upon this Supream Nature CHAP. X. What the Soul doth in the Body and what it doth not WE observe first of all That there are in Us the Operations or Acts of the Body and the Operations or Acts of the Soul for there are things which the Body doth in Us and things which the Soul doth in the Body This is a certain Rule That the Soul doth not do any thing which she doth not perceive that she doth and that she doth every thing that she perceives that she doth Thus we may say with Assurance That our Souls do not make the Digestion in Us the Circulation of the Blood the Natural and purely Animal Respiration in Us the Separation of the Chyle which is the prepar'd Juyce of concocted and digested Victuals in the Stomach together with the Faeces or gross Matter which is discharg'd into the Bowels the Motion of the Heart of the Veins and of the Arteries the Ebullitions and Fermentations of the Blood and of that Matter which provokes carnal Concupiscence It is moreover certain That the Souls do not make neither the Preparation of Spirits either Vital or Animal nor the Continuation of the Motion or of the Impression of External Objects which are carry'd by the Nerves as by little well stretch'd Chords from all the Circumference of the Body to the most Integral part of the Brain as to the common Center of all its Structure and all its Organization nor the retracement of Objects which is made in the bottom of the Eye in the Retina or that which is made in that part of the Brain which is the Organ of that which we call the Common and Internal Sense It is sure that they do not make the Relaxation of the Muscles and of the Nerves which cause the Tympanum to be relaxed with all the Nerves which serve to Hearing and the Optick Nerves which serve to the Sight from whence Sleep comes That they do not cause Fevers the Stone the Gout the Cholique the Bloody-Flux Palsies Obstructions Apoplexies and Diseases in general Our Souls do nothing of all this these are the Acts of the Body or its Alterations and its Passions for altho' the Perception and the Sentiments of the Soul do accompany some one of these Effects she feels and perceives them in such a manner that she perceives at the same time that they go before and precede her Sentiments and her Perception and that being so she doth not at all Cause them Much better doth she perceive that she hath Essentially the Empire over every thing that she doth and that she hath none at all over all these things That our Souls do not Operate out of themselves but by Will and cause not in Us neither Heat nor Digestion nor any Corporeal Effect There are some who conceive our Souls as the Physical and Immediate Causes of that Heat for Example which Concocts and Digests the Meat in our Stomach and which keeps in our Blood that degree of ardor and quickness which is necessary to the end that it may spread abroad the Nourishment and maintain Motion in all the Body They conceive the Soul of Man as having formally the Vegetable Faculty which nourishes and which causes the Body to increase by the which as Thomas Aquinas says we are rather Plants than Men And this is what they express by that common manner of Speaking when they say that our Souls are not only Reasonable but Vegetable or Vegetating But as we ought not to conceive or say any thing of our Souls but that which we find included and contain'd in the Idea and Notion which give us the Sentiment which we have of them and that this is a certain sure Rule by which we ought to guide our Opinions and our Judgments Not to Judge but according to our Light not finding at all in that Idea of our Soul which gives us that intimate Sentiment which we have of it that our Soul hath any such Vertue to do it Immediately and notwithstanding any other Vertue and Faculty that she may have for it we do not at all believe that it ought to be attributed to her We experience in our Soul no other Power nor no other Vertue upon Body than that of being able to move that Structure of Bone of Flesh and of Nerves which we call our Body and thereby other Bodies to which we do apply it So likewise she hath not the Power to make and determine all the Motions of the Body She can do nothing and she doth nothing as hath been already said
in the Vital and Natural Motions There are none but the Motitions which we call Animal or Voluntary that she can determine by her Empire There needs no other Proof of this here than that which we draw from our Sentiment which is the only bright and clear Light which Enlightens us in the Knowledge of our Soul for we ought not to conceive any thing of her but that which we Experience of her and that which evidently follows from that Experience And it is certain that that Vegetating Faculty and that Vertue of Heating the Meat and the Blood is neither found nor perceiv'd nor doth follow from any thing that is found and perceiv'd in the Soul But besides this Reason there is this farther evident Conviction that is drawn from two Principles from a Principle of St. Augustin which is That the Acting or Operating Soul is always free as the Receiving Soul is never so And from the Principle of Essential Certainty which the Soul hath of her self and of every thing that is done in her and much more of that which is done by her which is that which we have acknowledg'd to make the Foundation or the Ground of the Knowing Nature For it follows from these two Principles That if the Soul was the Cause of the Heat of the Stomach and of the Blood of the Formation and of the Distribution of the Chyle and the like in Us she would have Essentially the Sentiment and the Perception of it because she Essentially perceives every thing that she doth And not only the Perception but the Empire because she hath Essentially the Empire over every thing that she doth as Acting according to S. Augustin's Observation that is to say That she can increase or diminish Heat That she can advance or retard Digestion and make it as she pleases For this is an intimate Sentiment which we have from our selves That we are Free in the things that we have the Power and Vertue of doing by the Active Faculty Our Soul perceives her Liberty in all the things whereof she is the Cause and the Principle There is nothing which we certainly know but the Soul is the Active Cause and the Principle of it of which she hath gain'd the Empire either to do or not to do as she pleases We have no more to do than to reflect upon the Faculty which she hath of Thinking or of Willing and of Determining her self which are the two only Active Faculties that we know in her for the others are Passive and Receptive Faculties if I may so say And we shall see that the Soul hath Essentially the Empire as well as the Certainty of that double Faculty and of all the Acts which proceed therefrom We shall see that she suspends her Thoughts and her Reasonings That she puts them by That she determines and applies them to Matters as she pleases And we shall see that she is in the same manner Mistress of her Will without the Motion that carries her towards God in general if she be not preoccupy'd and transported with some Passion or other Now the Soul hath neither the Sentiment nor the Certainty of the Act and Vertue of Healing of Concocting and of Digesting nor the Empire over them For neither do we any ways perceive that our Soul Exercises these Functions nor have we Power to suspend or to advance them if we had the Power we should always without doubt make a very good and laudable Digestion and we should always take heed of producing in our selves any excessive Heat this would deliver us from all the Distempers of the Bowels and from all the ill Consequences which follow thereupon In my Opinion there is nothing more insupportable than this gross Idea of having the Soul to be the Formal or Physical Cause of the Heat which is in our Bodies because that besides that the Soul cannot be the Formal Cause of Heat since nothing can be the Formal Cause of Heat but that which is hot Nor likewise can it be the Efficient or Physical Cause since it is impossible to conceive that a Spirit should produce Heat and yet we not at all know in our Souls any other Vertue of Operating out of themselves than that of moving the Body by Empire and by Will as hath been said and by them other Bodies to whom they apply themselves It is certain that there is nothing more ridiculous than to imagine and to conceive our Soul as an Enemy to her self in refusing Heat sometimes even to a general Decay and Languishing of the whole Body and at other times increasing it even to a frightful Conflagration of the Blood and Humors of the Bowels and of all the Viscera which serve to keep up the Life of the Body This we must acknowledge for certain and indubitable That there are a thousand things done in Us which are only if I may so say but the Acts of of the Body and its Life How there is a Corporeal Act of Seeing Hearing and Smelling which is alike in Man and Beast This is extreamly remarkable for it follows from hence That as there is in Us a Material Principle of Vegetation or a Vegetative Life which the Soul doth not Cause so there is likewise a certain kind of Acts of Seeing of Hearing of Tasting of Smelling of Touching of Self-moving or of Sensibility in the Body in which the Soul hath not any part to which she doth not influence any thing and of which she hath not so much as a Sentiment For when the Image reflected from the Superficies of a Body which is before us by the Rays of Light which result from all the Points of its Exterior Superficies is en graven in that subtle thin Web form'd in the bottom of our Eye from the Extremities of the delicate Threds of the Optick Nerve which makes an end of carrying to the Brain the Material Image which it hath receiv'd the Soul so far meddles not at all and this Action may very well be call'd the Act of Seeing or Corporeal Vision because it cannot be carry'd into the Brain but it must there engrave the Corporeal Image of the Object which is before us and it must affect it after a certain particular Fashion which is capable to determine a Motion either of Flight or Pursuit without the Souls medling with it in any manner as we see every day happens by the force and vehemence of certain sudden Impressions which make us shun or approach in spite of our selves and which make us either open or shut our Eye-lids or turn to or turn away our Face whatsoever Determination we have to the contrary It is in the same manner with the Acts of Tasting Hearing and Moving For Odors for Example being receiv'd through the Os cribriformis into the Olfactory Nerve doe there determine a Motion which may lead on and determine another in the Nerves and Muscles which answer to the Olfactory Nerve without the Souls medling or taking any
diversity of Temperaments and of Genius's After which there remains nothing more to be said upon the occasion of this difference of the Operation of the Soul unless that it is thereby easie to comprehend that all the diversity which is observed betwixt one Man and another do's not come but from the diversity of the Temperament and from the material Structure and Harmony of the Body and from the greater or lesser Disposition whereby the Objects which strike the Senses are lively represented to the passive or to the active Faculty of the Thinking Soul for if one is Choleric and the other Phlegmatic it do's not at all happen because the Soul of one is more lively and more sensible than the Soul of another but because the same things do more hurt the Brain of the one and less hurt the Brain of the other and it is in the same manner with the advantage of the Understanding of the Judgment and of the Memory and of the other Natural Qualities But let us go on and see further what other Operations our Souls make in our Bodies CHAP. XVIII Acts of Spiritual Reminiscency and Acts of Corporeal Memory WE observe in the ninth place Acts of Reminiscency or of Remembrance Spiritual and to speak properly Inorganical and Acts of Corporeal Memory or of Mechanic Memory if we may be admitted to say so for if you observe you will find that beyond or above that Organical Mechanic Memory which determins in the same order and in the same connection that it hath received them the Species and the Motions of the Fibers of the Spirit from whence are formed the Motions of the Muscles of the Throat and of the Tongue which make us recite or sing truly an Air without dreaming of it or those of the Feet which make us dance a Currant or a Ballet There is another Species of Memory by which we conserve the most abstracted Idea's of Sciences in all the order and all the Arangement that Demonstrations make of them for tho' Corporeal and Mechanic Memory serves to these Sciences for conservation of these Kinds of Terms which serve thereto yet it is undubitable that there are a thousand sorts of Knowledges wholly intellectual which we have acquired by Speculation and Reasoning the remembrance of which remains with us which do's no way depend upon that Organ of the Corporeal Memory which goes like a Wheel or like a Clock so long as it hath Line and Weights for tho' this Corporeal Memory is lost this Spiritual Reminiscency remains and so far is Reminiscency or Spiritual Memory from being weakned by Time and Old Age that she is always growing more perfect for we see that abstracted and speculative Sciences are perfectioned more and more tho' the Memory diminishes in speculative Men. There might be a thousand Reflections made upon this double Memory for the Corporeal on the one side operating as she do's sensibly by Spirits without the determination of the Soul and often times without her participation from whence proceed a thousand marvellous Effects as to observe the Order and the Dependence of Tones and of Pauses or Cadences in Singing or in Dancing and to repeat thousands of Words in the Order that we have learn'd them may serve for a sensible Demonstration of the inutility of the Principle of a Knowledge like to ours which we so imprudently give to Beasts Since it is certain that Memory makes us Sing and Dance without our dreaming of it And on the other side Reminiscency and the Faculty wholly Spiritual of the Soul of Remembrance make us see in our Souls their Spiritual Quality and Nature by the Immensity of its Idea's of its Principles and of its Consequences and by the enchaining of the one with the other which she Treasures up in her self CHAP. XIX Acts of Spiritual Resentment and Acts of Corporeal Passion The difference of Pleasure and Joy of Grief and Sadness WE observe in us in the tenth place Acts of Spiritual Passion and Acts of Corporeal Passion for we have not only Pleasures and Pains but we have Joys and Sorrows Things altogether different Pain and Pleasure are Sensations these are Modifications and confused Sentiments of the Soul which affect it and penetrate it without Enlightning it but in respect to the conduct of the Body by Relation to which they instruct it teaching it to apprehend what is good and what is ill for the Body by way of Instinct A Joy and Sadness are Passions or Acts and Resentments of the Appetite of that Love which we have said caries us towards Good and do flow from the Idea oâ— the Opinion which we have of it The difference of Pain and Sadness Pain is very different from Sadness not only in the Sentiment which the one and the other gives us but also in the manner whereby the one and the other enter into our Souls Pain is made in us without us it enters indeed by our Senses but it is not us who open the Gate of our Soul to it we are very willing to keep it shut it makes way it enters it penetrates it in spight of us and independently of our Reflections even to the bottom of our Soul On the contrary we open the Gate to Sadness it enters by our Thought and by our Reflection and it is after the same manner with Pleasure and Joy as it is with Pain and Sadness Pleasure is a Sentiment like Pain which is made in us without us independent of our Thought and of our Reflection and Joy on the contrary enters by the Gate of our Thought and of our Knowledge or Reflection Joys Corporeal and Corporeal Sadnesses And as Pain and Sadness Pleasure and Joy are divers Operations in us so there is likewise in us a great difference of Joys and Sadnesses we have two sorts of them which we may call Corporeal and we have some which we may call and which we have always called Spiritual both the one and the other are Passions of the Soul for they are the Acts of the Appetitive Faculty which we otherwise call the Will not by way of free Determination and deliberate Act but by way of Resentment and Emotion and this is properly called Passion We have Corporeal Joys and Sadnesses not that the Body can have any resentment of Joy or Sadness for it cannot have them in any manner but because we have them upon the occasion of the Body or by the Principle of the Sensible or Corporeal Appetite which is the love of Sensible Good Corporeal Joys and Sadnesses do arise in Us these two ways either because the violent Passion of love for some Sensible Good hath a happy or unhappy Success from whence Joy and Sadness spring up by a necessary Resentment or because the Humours of the Body of which there are some Earthy and Melancholy ones which lock up the Fibres of the Brain and Heart and thereby give occasion to sad Thoughts Conditions and Dispositions and some that are
such manner that what it Operates in Us is our Operation and our Operation is its It Operates in Us sometimes by way of Light or Illumination and sometimes by way of anticipating or preventing Pleasure and Delectation and it Operates after this sort in two manners by transient Acts and by permanent and setled Habits Transient Irradiations whether they be by Illumination or by Celestial Delectation which we commonly express by the Name of Inspirations are that which we call Actual Grace and those permanent and habitual Dispositions of holy and righteous Inclinations and Affections which keep the Soul turned towards God tyed to Duty and to Vertue and determined to the Observation of the Divine Law are that which we call Habitual Grace or Divine Charity For that which we call Habitual Grace hath nothing in it that is Physical beyond Divine Charity or that happy Situation and Disposition of the Heart which regards and loves God and Duty as the Soveraign Good with a firm and inconcussible determination of the Will from which nothing can draw it until Human Liberty coming to be too loose doth so diminish the Heavenly Impression so that Temptation is able to prevail that is it which makes the sad Falls of the Just. There are some who conceive that this Heavenly Impression is not so much for the producing of Actions Holy and Just in themselves as for the producing them of a certain Fashion whereof they have not and of which they do not give any distinct Idea They believe that it is Essential to our Actions that they are made by a Supernatural Principle to the end that they may be agreeable to God and worthy of that Eternal Recompence which St. Paul calls the Crown of Justice But that is altogether a pure Illusion of certain School men who conceived it after that manner Grace is necessary for the Foundation of Holy and Just Actions themselves and not only for some Circumstance whereof they might stand in need to make them worthy This would be meer Pelagianism and most Gross to believe That we can without the inward Delectation of Grace preserve Continence pardon our Enemies and love God above all things by an Effective Love and Efficacy which withdraws our Heart from the World and from our Selves and ties it to that Eternal and Soveraign Beauty it is Grace which draws us from Time from the World and from our Selves and makes us taste God and Eternity It is Grace which causeth Us to do all the Good which we do for all that we do without Grace is poysoned and corrupted by some secret return of Self-love which is that Venemous Root whereof St. Austin so often speaks which Poysons all that it touches and even all that it comes near How Grace is Efficacious It is demanded whether Grace be Efficacious by its self or whether it be only by the free Determination and Co-operation of Human Will But besides that this may not perhaps be a place to decide Qustions of this Nature There is nothing perhaps but an Equivocation in all the Disputes which Christians can have amongst themselves thereupon For since there are two certain Truths amongst Christians that Grace of it self is Victorious over the impure Delectation of Concupiscence whereof it invincibly suspends the Charm by the Heavenly and Inward Tast which it gives Us of God of our Duty and of Eternal Happiness and that at the same time it regards our Liberty or at least it doth not restrain it leaving Us to our own Choice to Co-operate with it or not It seems that amongst Christians it ought necessarily to be acknowledged that in one Sense Grace is Efficacious and Victorious by it self and that in another it is not so It is Efficacious by it self against inordinate Desires but not against our Liberty for it invincibly suspends the Charm of Concupiscence but it doth not at all invincibly engage our Co-operation so often as it Opein Us. I say so often because it is of that we are Discoursing But for certain Occasions there is no doubt but Grace doth engage Us. CHAP. XXI Seven or Eight Differences of our Acts of Intellection And how God Acts perpetually in Us in the two Capital Faculties of our Soul WE observe in the twelfth place Seven or Eight notable Differences of divers Acts of pure Intellection for we have of them in the first place Notions which are Applicable to a thousand divers Subjects as are all those Idea's which we call in the Schools Abstracted or Universal by which we conceive Essences and Universal Natures without any individual Difference as for Example The Idea of a Circle of a Square of a Triangle the Idea of a Man of an Angel of a Lyon of a Stone in general and on the contrary We have such as are singular and individual Idea's which cannot be applied but to one certain determined Object which they Represent or Conceive We have in the second place Such as are directly in View and others that are in View by Reflection by which we come again upon our simple View and compare the one with the other for to observe their Diversities and their Singularities We have in the third place A simple Conception or Representation of Objects which we call simple Apprehension and we have the Judgment and the Comparison thereof by which we decide the Relations and the Agreements of Things their Equality their Identity their Disproportions c. We have in the fourth place Aquiescence and decisive Judgment by way of Affirmation or by way of Negation and a Doubt or Suspension and Ballancing of the Decision in the Obscurity of Things or in the Equality of Reasons which is called to Doubt We have in the fifth place Simple Speculation of Objects without any Motion of the Spirits to go further And an Effort and Agitation of the Thought to extend Knowledge and to pass on from that which we knew to that we do not as yet know which is that proper Species of Reasoning which brings into the World all the Arts and Sciences In Relation to all these different Acts of the Intellection there is this to be observed That it is not but by pure Accident considering the State of Union with the Body that they depend upon the Disposition of the Body for they do'nt depend upon a Configuration Determination or a particular Disposition of the Brain or of any other Part or Humor of the Body as the Acts of Imagining of Remembring of Passion and of Perceiving by proper Sensation but in what Estate soever the Body is provided that the too vehement Motions of the Spirits and of the Fibres of the Brain leaves the Soul her Liberty of Thinking The Soul exercises all these divers Acts upon all Objects which can be presented to it Secondly We ought to observe that all those Acts are the proper Acts of the Active Faculty of the Soul and by consequence Acts Free in their Nature which are not necessary or
thereupon we must see if there be any place into which our Souls do pass We must see what they Know and how they know it whether they have Joys and Pleasures Grief and Sadness whether they retain or lose the Idea's of this Life whether they have any Reminiscence or Memory and whether they conserve the Habits of Arts and Sciences what are the Faculties whether Perceptive or Sensible and Appetitive that they use whether they conserve Liberty whether c. To have a neat Idea of the manner How our Souls Are out of the Body We must exactly Illustrate all these things Let us begin with the place into which they pass That when our Souls go out of the Body they do not pass into a true Corporeal Place by a Local Transport or Passage properly so called As we have acknowledged in Our Souls a Nature wholly Spiritual and since we have demonstrated that Spirits are not in places where we conceive them to be by a Co-extension and a Local and Corporeal Circumscription and that so they have not properly any Place at all no more than the Supream Essence and are not said to be in the Places wherein we say they Are but by a pure Relation of Operation and Activity as Thomas Aquinas teaches So when we ask in what place do the Souls pass when they go out of the Body and out of the Visible World We must take a great deal of care not to degrade our Souls by conceiving them as if they ought to pass into a certain New Space and a certain Corporeal Circumscription by a Local Transportation or Passage properly so called as if they were a Material Substance We have said that our Souls are not in our Bodies by Co-extension or by Local Circumscription but by a pure Relation of the Reciprocal Dependence and Activity which is between Them and the Bodies and when we ask Where is it that our Souls Are and Whither do they go when they go out of our Bodies We do not look for a Corporeal Space or a part of the Extent which composes the World or which is out of the World with which they have an agreeableness and in which they are shut up and contained This would be well enough if they were Material and Corporeal When we say That our Souls go out of our Bodies we ought not to conceive That they cease from being shut up in our Bodies from Corresponding with our Bodies from Penetrating our Bodies from Occupying or filling the Space and the Extent of our Bodies by the Immediation of their Substances or by the Reduplication of their Presence as they speak in some Schools Chymerically in my Opinion but only that they cease from having that Relation that they had with the Body of a Mutual Dependence and of a Mutual Activity for we must Reason concerning the Souls going out of the Body as concerning the Presence of the Soul within the Body and as we have said That the Soul is not present with the Body and united to the Body but by a Relation of Empire and Servitude both at the same time which the Soul hath with the Body and the Body with the Soul which makes the Soul have the power of determining the Motions of the Body and the Servitude of receiving almost all her Knowledges and all her Sentiments generally by the Body or by the Occasion of the Body so when we say that the Soul goes out of the Body we ought not to conceive any thing else but that she ceases to have that Relation with the Body We must not conceive a Local Passage a Local Motion a Local Transportation properly so call'd of our Souls by a Succession of divers Correspondencies to divers Corporeal Spaces for all that is to Imagine and not to conceive by Intellection which is the only manner whereby the Soul is conceived and all that belongs to the Soul and the manner how our Souls go out of the Body we must conceive precisely the End of their Empire over the Body and the End of their Captivity and of their Dependence upon the Body By this only they cease to be in the Body that they have no longer the Power of determining its Motions nor the Subjection of Receiving by it or having their Thoughts dependently of it The Idea's which we commonly have thereupon are all contradictory chymerical and monstrous they are Manichean Idea's by which we conceive Spirits as true Bodies And we must always remember that which can never be too much reiterated against the Custom which we have of being desirous to Imagine every thing That Bodies are Bodies and Spirits Spirits That Bodies have a Local Dimension a Co-Extension and a Local Circumscription that they have a certain Bulk that they do or may fill Essentially a Space and a certain Extension But that Spirits have none of all that neither Dimension nor Bulk nor Space nor Extension they have no more Dimension Bulk nor Extension than they have Colour and Figure From whence it follows That it is not by a Local Transportation properly so call'd that our Souls go out of our Bodies because that is not done but by a Progress of Motion and of Correspondence to divers Spaces and by a new Union which they contract with some other Body or new Corporeal Space CHAP. III. That our Souls going out of our Bodies go not properly but into God WE have conceiv'd clearly after what manner our Souls go out of our Bodies by that which hath been said which makes us conceive how the Physical and Substantial Union which was between these two so disproportion'd and so distant Natures is dissolv'd and broken since the Efficacy of that Puissance which attexes the Spirits to the Body doth suspend the Act and the Empire thereof and gives them no more any Relation of Dependence upon the Bodies but we have not learn'd whither they go and we must form a just Idea of it Our Imagination labors and takes a great deal of pains about it because she would at what Price soever attribute to our Souls all the Passions or Corporeal Qualities and Proprieties She would shut them up in a certain Space and in a certain Dimension She forgets what we have said That Spiritual Natures are not shut up in any Space or in any Place The Heathens Imagin'd Elysian Fields for the Souls that were Innocent and an Hell after their fashion for the Guilty Those amongst Us who imitate them do conceive likewise a Local Passage and Transportation after the fashion of Bodies into certain new Spaces by a successive progress of Motion But the Idea which we have conceiv'd of our Souls as of a Nature wholly Spiritual must redress that which is too gross in these Idea's which are wholly Material and we must conceive that our Souls in going out of the Body do go immediately as the Scripture saith without any Local or Corporeal Passage into God who as St. Augustin saith Is more the true
Place of Spirits than the Sea is the Place for Fishes and the Air the Place for Birds The Body saith the Wise-man returns to the Earth from whence it was taken and the Soul returns to God who made it and from whom it issu'd out that is to say It hath no more immediate Union but with God alone which occasions us to say very exactly That she goes into God We have said That our Souls have an Essential Union with God in whom they live and to whom they are much more united by all their Parts and by all the Faculties of their Being than the Beams are united to the Sun than a River is united to its Spring than the living Branch is united to its Root We have said That all Knowing Created Natures do depend as immediately upon God in all the Acts of their Life and by consequence in all the Acts of their Perceptive and Appetitive Faculties as they depend upon him for the Foundation of their Being as well as all other Created Natures that is to say That as they cannot come out of nothing but by the Almighty and Efficacious Action of his Eternal Essence so they can neither Think nor Will but by the continual Action of his Supream Influence We have said That as God is the sole Being Existing by himself so he is the sole Living Being and by consequence the sole Thinking and Willing Being by himself and from thence arises a Relation and an Essential Union of all Created Spirits with the Supream Spirit and of the Supream Spirit with the Created Spirits All the Rivers drink of the Sea saith that Ancient all the Branches suck up perpetually the the Juyce and the Sap of the Root the Beams draw perpetually their Heat and Light from the Sun and all Living Beings drink perpetually of that Living and Eternal Spring of Life and all Spirits of that Living and Eternal Source of Knowledge It is the Natural Estate of all Spiritual Natures to have this immediate Union with God but this Supream Spirit being willing to do Honor to his Almightiness and to his Wisdom being willing to make the Idea of all kinds of Creatures possible to proceed from himself and to render it Real and Effective to make the World thereby compleat and finish'd and being willing to assemble together Corporeal and Spiritual Nature in one single Whole and being willing perhaps thereby to put Pure Spirits into the Places of the Fall'n Angels and to triumph over the Rebellious Ones in causing himself to be Serv'd in Bodies by Inferior Spirits would have it that this Immediate Union which the Created Spirits have Essentially with Him should be in some manner suspended and interrupted or at least obscur'd and diminish'd in regard of those whose Fidelity and Obedience he was willing to make Trial of in the Body The Union of Bodies interrupts and suspends the Immediate Union of our Souls with God Our Souls naturally like other Created Spirits ought not to have any Dependence upon any Bodies for to have the Idea's of things they ought only to depend immediately upon God and by consequence ought only to have Union with Him But this Supream Spirit having been pleas'd for the Reasons we have said for many others which we conceive and for more yet apparently which we do not conceive that our Souls should have their Thoughts and their Sentiments their Desires and their Affections upon the Occasion of the Body to the End that That should be a continual Subject of Victory and of meritorious Exercise He hath thought fit that for a time this Immediate and Essential Union of all Created Spirits with the Eternal Essence should become in our Souls Mediate if I may be permitted to say so and that the Essential Union of God and of all Created Spirits should not Operate in them but by an Accessory Union with this Matter Organiz'd or dispos'd into a certain Structure of Bones of Flesh and of Nerves which we call Human Body This Union of our Souls with our Bodies is not as we have said but this precisely That our Bodies by the diverse stirrings up the diverse Agitations and the diverse Configurations of the Brain which they receive from Bodies which environ them or from the natural Course of the Blood or from their proper Humors are the Occasion and Condition of the Determination of the Idea's and Sentiments which the Supream Spirit gives us that is to say That the Body is the Occasional Cause which Determines the Influence of the Essential Union which we have with God and thereby it is in some manner betwixt us and God it diminisheth in some manner our Essential Union with him because it hinders if I may be permitted to say so the Immediation of him Without That we could not say that our Souls were in our Bodies they would be immediately in God because the Place of the Souls and of all Spirits is intirely their Relation of Dependence and of Activity and our Souls in that case would have no Relation and Dependence but upon God only It is for that Reason that the Scripture speaks to us of the Union of our Souls with our Bodies or of our present Life not only as it were of a Wall between God and us but as it were of a Banishment as it were a Voyage and a Running away or Departure which we make from God Peregrinamur à Domino saith St. Paul and this is Effectively as it were a kind of Departure from God and by consequence a Banishment a Voyage a Running away from him because it is a Suspension and an Interruption of the Essential and Immediate Union which all Spirits have necessarily with him Our Souls going out of the Body are immediately united to God Now since our Souls entring into Bodies do go out from God according to the Expressions of the Divine Word which are exact and just when we know how to comprehend and penetrate them we must say likewise That our Souls going out of the Body return to God and in God as the Scripture Effectively saith it God is on both sides the Term of the Voyage It is from him we part in ceasing to be united immediately to him by reason of the Intervention of Body through which the Action of the Influence of his Divine Life in us doth pass and it is to him that we return in Dying and in going out of the Body because our Dependence on the Body ceaseth by Death and Death beating down the Wall which was between God and us the Union of God to us and of us to God becomes Pure and Immediate God is the Term we arrive to as well as that from whence we parted we are come out of him and we enter again into him that is to say That as before our Souls are united to our Bodies they have no Union with any thing but with God and by consequence they are nowhere but in God so after the same manner so
in God as in a Rageing Sea which dashes against them and tosses them and threatens them perpetually with its Storms and Tempests And this is All in my Opinion that we can desire to know upon the Principal Head of that which Regards the State of our Souls out of our Bodies Let us conceive with all my heart That there is above those Heavens which we know a Heaven wholly Enlightned and abounding with Joy and overwhelmed with Pleasures wherein the Holy Souls are involved And let us conceive on the other side a Place replenished with Flames and Darknesses with Horror and all manner of Despair which the Criminal Souls do fall into All this is most True and these Places are most Real and Effective but it is in God in whom the Holy Souls do find this Enlightned Heaven and in whom the Criminal Souls do find these Flames and these Darknesses these Despairs and these Horrors It is God who by an Immediate Union of his Almighty Activity causeth in Them this Light and these Darknesses these Sadnesses and these Joys these Pleasures and these Pains all the Paradice and all the Hell Erit Deus Omnia in Omnibus it is by an Immediate Union of God with Them and They with God that they are in Heaven and in Hell Since it is by this Union that they have this Lively Idea thereof which renders these Places present to them CHAP. VII That which makes the Difference between the Present and Future State of the Soul IT follows from what hath been said That that which makes the Essential Difference of the manner how our Souls are in our Bodies and of the manner how they are out of our Bodies is That when they are in the Body then they have but Successively the Idea's and the Knowledges of Things from the Occasion of different Impressions which come and arrive to the Brain by the Action of other Bodies which are round about Us and that they have not also the Sentiments and the several Movements of the Appetite but from the Occasion of divers Dispositions of Bodies and when they are parted from the Body they receive immediately from God these Idea's and these Sentiments which is requisite for the Disposition of Vice or Vertue which we otherwise call Merit of Demerit in which they find themselves when they are parted from the Body Now the Body by the divers Impressions which it receives from other Bodies or by the divers Dispositions which are raised formed in it by the Ebullition of the Blood by the Course of the Spirits and by the divers Excesses or Fermentations of Humors is the Occasional Cause of all these Idea's and of all the Sentiments of the Soul because that the Supream Being by which it Lives it Perceives Thinks and Wills for to conserve the Dignity and good Order of its Greatness in acting as Universal Cause was pleased to tye the Determination of these Idea's and Sentiments to those Dispositions of the Body which result from the Laws of Motion by which He moves all the Corporeal Nature and by which he composes and conserves the Visible World with an infinite Wisdom which alone was able to produce so many Prodigious Effects with so much Order and so much Harmony from two or three Immutable Laws by which He moves the Matter of the Universe That in this New State of the Soul out of the Body God is not determined to Act in Them but by a necessary and immutable Love of Order and by their Vertuous or Criminal Disposition God doth not Act but as an Universal Cause with our Souls so long as they are in the Body He doth but follow the Law of Motion of the common Matter of the Visible World which diversly affecting our Bodies necessarily determines him by Vertue of his Immutable Decree to give to the Souls those Idea's and those Sentiments which answer the different Impressions wherewith the Body is affected but when the Soul is out of the Body God doth lay aside the Character of Universal Cause as to this purpose He no longer follows in respect of them the Laws of the Motion of the Universe Souls part with the World in parting with the Body They have no longer any Relation with the Body nor by consequence with the Visible World from that very instant that they have no more to do with their particular Bodies So long as they are in the Body they are united to all the Visible World because that their Thoughts and their Sentiments do depend upon the Laws of the Motion which moves all the Matter of the World it being that which gives them an Essential Relation to all the Parts of it because there is not any one of them which may not be an Occasion of the Determination of these Idea's and Sentiments but after Death all that ceases there is a new Order of things there are no more the same Laws God afterwards follows none but the Law of his Eternal and Inflexible Justice to Punish or to Reward the Souls according as they have made themselves deserving It is no more the Motion of the Universe and the particular Disposition of every ones Temperament which results from it which determins the diversity of our Idea's and Sentiments It is only the Pure and Holy Disposition or the Impute and Criminal Disposition of our Souls which determins the Sovereign and Eternal Justice and Equity to give us the Idea's and Sentiments proper to Reward or Punish our Irregular or our Vertuous Disposition God hath no longer Reason to be willing to mannage and conserve the Dignity and Character of Universal Cause He hath no longer Reason to mannage and conserve the Liberty of our Souls The time of our Trial is ended The time of Merit is past There is no more question to see whether they will make themselves worthy that is over They are fixed in an Immutable State That is Eternity There is no more Vicissitudes or Diversifications no more Instability or Changes no more an Alternativeness or a Passage from Evil to Good and from Good to Evil from Vice to Vertue and from Vertue to Vice The Tree lies where it falls And as the State of the Soul is fixed by this State of Immutability which is properly That which we call Eternity so God fixeth himself to Love or to Hate to Punish or to Reward He Acts thenceforwards as a particular Cause because that He immediately takes in the Ground of His Eternal Love of Order the determination of all these Idea's and Sentiments which he gives to our Souls That is all the Light which we can give to our First Curiosity concerning the State of our Souls out of our Body by which we see that they are not properly but in God and that it is He only who is the Cause and Occasion of all their Idea's and Sentiments We must now proceed and endeavour to Know all that belongs to this State by clear and infallible Lights CHAP. VIII How
the Just Souls See and Know God out of the Body and how the Criminal Souls do also See and Know Him TO this purpose we would willingly Know in the first place What those things Are which the Soul Knows out of the Body and it is easie to Resolve it by those Principles which we have setled For since we have said That there is not at all any other Occasional Cause of the Idea's and Sentiments of the Soul when it is once out of the Body than the Irregular and Vitious Disposition and the Regular and Vertuous Disposition of the Soul on one one part and on the other the Necessary and Eternal Love which God hath for Order so it is certain That this Sovereign Wisdom this Essential Life of all Intelligent Natures dispenseth his Lights and his Darknesses by his Sovereign Equity and that so he Acts otherwise in the Just Souls than in the Souls which are Criminal and Reprobate As to the Just Souls They have as it were a true Immensity of Knowledge First of all They Know God and See Him I say They see Him for it is not a simple Knowledge Abstractively such as we have at present that is to See to Perceive to Touch and if I may say so to Tast as the Holy Writ saith But this is to See by a kind of Vision which we call Intuitive which is not at all a simple or bare View of Speculation or a pure Contemplation of Reasoning but this is a lively and penetrating Impression of the whole Substance of the Divinity which renders it self present and intimate to the Soul by an intimate and penetrating Sentiment just as the Material Objects do now render themselves present to us by the Immediate Action whereby they strike upon and advertise our Senses This is to see God as it were by Sensation This is to perceive Him Present by a lively and an indubitable Experience of His Ineffable Nature and His Beatific Vision just as we perceive the Presence of Things whereof we have the most lively Idea and the most certain and most indubitable Experience This Intuitive Knowledge or Vision of God is not at all the indubitable Knowledge and Sentiment of His Existence only but it is the clear and distinct Knowledge and Idea of All his Attributes in general and of all his Perfections in particular it is a clear and distinct View of all the marvellous Table and of all the Charming Spectacle of the Beauties of this Supream Nature and especially the delicious and ineffable Sentiment of his Goodness and of his Love by which he pours if I may say so all the Joys and all the Felicities of his Heart into these Sanctified and Happy Souls Moreover These Just Souls in thus Knowing God do at the same time no longer Know themselves by that confused Sentiment by which they at present disentangle themselves as it were by main strength and force of Reason from the Body but by a clear and distinct Sentiment and by an Idea equally neat and lively all Shining and all Bright whereby they see themselves with all their Nobleness and with all the Characters of Resemblance which they have with God just as they now see a Picture exposed to their View almost like their Corporeal Image which the Nature of the Soul doth exclude CHAP. IX How the Just Souls See and Know the Visible VVorld and what they Know of the Politic and Civil VVorld IT is not only God and Themselves that they Know They also distinctly see in God all the visible World because besides that the Scripture do's in a manner speak to us of it It is a Knowledge which is naturally inherent in every created Spirit unless God for a time suspends this Knowledge for Reasons of his Providence as he now do's to our Souls which he makes Trial of in the Body and to whom he doth not give these Knowledges as we said before but Successively from the Occasion of the different Impressions made upon our Bodies by the divers parts of the Visible World which present themselves to our Senses one after another It is in Order That Spirits being Superior to Bodies by Reason of their Knowing Nature should Know Bodies Also when the Disposition of the present Oeconomy which requires That God should not Enlighten the Souls but Successively as we said before and from the Occasion of the Immutable Laws of the Motion of the Universe When I say this present Disposition shall cease the Illumination of God being no more annexed to these Vicissitude 〈…〉 of the Universe and of the 〈…〉 of Bodies received in our Material Senses will give in an Instant at once an Idea of all Corporeal Nature and of all the Visible World in its Whole and in its Parts in its Immensity or in its Extent in its agreeable Variety in its Order and Symmetry to all Souls which have not deserved his Anger and instead of this Light he needs but only to spread Darknesses upon the Criminal and Rebellious Souls The Scripture tells us of Holy Souls as if they had the pleasure of walking upon the Globes of the Heavens and to be in the midst of the Stars to walk upon the Sun and upon the Moon and after this manner of speaking it accommodates it self to our gross manner of conceiving the most Spiritual Things under Corporeal Forms But we need conceive by all these Expressions no more than what we have said of a clear and distinct Idea of all the Visible World which God gives to the just Souls they walk after their manner upon the Arches of the Heavens they march upon the Sun and Moon c. because that the lively Idea which they have of all the Visible World makes all the parts thereof present and as it were subjected and placed under their Feet They are at the same time at both the Poles of the World they fill its whole Extent they are in both the Hemispheres their Horizon is not at all a limited Horizon which never permits us to see here but a little Portion of the Universe It is not bounded but by the Bounds of Nature We do not at present see Bodies but only those parts of them which reflect the Light upon us We do not see the Sun the Moon the Stars and the Terraqueous Globe of the Earth and Seas but only one side of them but the pure Souls immediately enlightned by God as they Are They see at the same time the whole Globe of the Sun all the Face of the Moon both the Hemispheres of the Earth There is no Antipodes to them They see All at one View all the fair Prospects of Nature and all the Beautiful Table of the Visible World For besides That their Knowledge is Universal in this respect so it is not at all Successive but all at once So much for the Natural World VVhat the Souls out of the Body Know concerning the Civil and Politic World As to the Civil and Politic
that Will which remains in the Reprobate Souls do's not Operate there as it doth in Holy Souls They are driven and moved essentially by an invincible Love towards Good and instead of Good which they seek for with so much vehemence They see nothing before them but Pains Despair and Misery They launch out and throw themselves perpetually towards the Good by Efforts and Movements inconceivable and He in whom they see the Source of Good and as it were all the Treasure and all the Foundation of Good Repulses them and throws them back again and in the same time wounds and transpierces them with a thousand deadly Darts They are Eternally thirsting after Pleasure and they have Eternally nothing but Grief Pain and Despair for their Portion so that the Will placed in them to be the Beginning and the Seat of their Happiness is found to be the Eternal Principle and Seat of their Unhappiness and Despair It would be to no purpose to lose time in saying That all the agreeable Passions will be in the Holy Souls and all the afflicting ones in the Reprobate that is comprehended of it self as also That these Passions will be in the Appetitive Faculty independently of the Body as we have said That the acts of Perceiving Imagining and Remembring will be in the Perceptive Faculty So there remains nothing more to finish this last Illustration and to draw from thence the so-essential Instruction of our Duties of Time and of Eternity of the Present Life and the Future Life of the Present World and the World to come of all our Present Condition and of all our Future State Than to remark that this Estate of the Souls out of the Body will not be changed in the main at bottom but only in some Circumstances not essential by the Re-union of the Bodies which will be made by the Universal Resurrection CHAP. XIII That this State of the Souls out of the Body will not be changed in the main or at Bottom by the new State of the Universal Resurrection but only in some accessory Circumstances ALthough we do not at all find in the Sentiment or in the precise Idea which we have of our Souls the Certainty and the Conviction of their Future Re-union with the Bodies which Faith teaches us ought to be made by the Universal Resurrection it is for all that certain That considering all the Train and all the Concatenation of the Mysteries and Principles whereof the Divine System of Religion and of Christianity is formed considering also the honor of the Divine Attributes which require That God should be jealous of his Glory and of the happy Event and Success of his Designs It is altogether evident That God who hath been pleased to Assemble the two kinds of Natures which only are known to Us whether as Existing or as Possible viz. To wit Corporeal Nature and Spiritual Nature into one single Compositum and one single Whole or Hypostasis to make thereof the Master-piece of the Visible World and as it were an Epitome an Abridgment or a curious Recapitulation of all his Works ought necessarily to Re-place it and to Re-establish it such as he formed it and designed it at first He ought to do it either for his own honor and glory as Creator to the end That Man may eternally subsist in this admirable Composition of Body and of Spirit who holding equally of the Visible and Corporeal World and of the Intelligible and Spiritual World makes as it were a Third and a kind of One altogether singular which infinitely exalteth his Wisdom and his Power or else for the honor and glory of the Redemption and of the Man-God who would eternally remain Imperfect and Defective if things were not Re-established upon the foot of the first Plat-form and of the first Design of the Creation and by consequence if the Bodies were not re-placed with the Souls because the Man-God would not be altogether a Repairer and a Restorer if he did not re-place Man such as he was at first Created and Designed and his Triumph over Sin over Death and Satan would not be compleat and finished if the half of Men should remain in the Jaws of Death Considering then all this Train of the Divine System of Religion it is without doubt most clear and certain That the Universal Resurrection ought to be a Circumstance of that glorious Solemnity of Justice which God ought then to make at the Consummation of Ages for the Consecration of his Eternal Temple for the Overture and Commencement of his Immortal Reign for the Solemn Coronation of his Predestined for the compleat Triumph of the Man-God for the Justification of all his Providence and the Declaration of all his Designs It is I say indubitable and constant That then at the end of the present Oeconomy and then when God will put an end to the Vicissitudes of Time and to the liberty of Revolt and of License which he gives at present to his Creatures then when he will fix all things in an Immutable and Eternal Order then when he will give a beginning to the New World He will then Re-establish all the Bodies and Re-unite every Soul to that which she animated during the present Life But in the mean time as we cannot say That our Souls find in themselves the Sentiment of their future Re-union with their Bodies so we will not speak of it here but as a Truth of Faith because we proposed to our selves to decide nothing concerning Them but what we should find Established either by our own proper Sentiment and our indubitable Experience or by a clear Light of Evidence arising from the Notion which we have made our selves of it as of a knowing Nature sensible of Order and Duty no less than of Pleasure and Pain and of all that is done in Her but this Truth presupposed and elsewhere sufficiently justified to the Idea of the Divine Attributes and in all the Train of the Principles of Religion and of Christianity VVe may speak with assurance of the manner how our Souls will be in their Resuscitated Bodies He who calls Himself the Resurrection and the Life the First-Born amongst the Dead the Father of the Ages to come He in whom we are all raised up again in Mystery and in Figure according to St. Pauls Expression and by whom we all of us ought to be raised up again effectively at the Last Day He tells us that we shall be then even in our Bodies like the Angels disfranchised from the Businesses and the Inclinations which we have upon the Occasion of the Body St. Paul also teaches us That our Bodies shall be Spiritualized and we may upon this Principle decide with certainty That the Re-union of Bodies doth not at all change the Foundation of that State of the Soul out of the Body the manner and circumstances whereof we have been Illustrating When St. Paul saith That our Bodies shall be Spiritualized by the Resurrection he
A Discovery of Divine Mysteries OR THE NATURE and EFFICACY OF THE Soul of Man Considered in all its Faculties Operations and Divine Perfections and how it governs in Divine and Secular Affairs of Life In Three Parts I. Of the Preference due to the Soul above the Body by Reason of its Spiritual and Immortal Nature and how it operates on Things in Heaven and Earth II. How the Soul of Man moves and operates in Religious Duties and Moral Actions whether towards God towards our selves or towards Man And of our Duty of Gospel Self-denyal which results from the manner how our Souls operate in our Bodies under the visible Empire of God III. Concerning our Duties of Time and Eternity of the present Life and of the Life to come of the present World and of the World to come which results from the manner how our Souls ought to be out of our Bodies first of all and then in our Spiritualiz'd Bodies after the Universal Resurrection With many other Curious Matters Being a Compleat Body of Divine and Moral Philosophy By C. B. D. D. Fellow of the Royal Society LONDON Printed for Eben Tracy at the Three Bibles on London-Bridge 1700. TO THE READER THO' the World be full of Discourses Treatises and Essays of Morality yet we have believ'd it might not be unnecessary to Expose these New Essays to the Publick View Either because one cannot enough propose to Mankind their Duties or else because the greatest part of those Essays Treatises and Discourses which have appear'd already and of which some have so justly pleas'd the Relish of the Age are if well regarded no more than onely Paintings and Descriptions or at best but Incitements not Convictions and Establishments of Duties For they suppose that the Principles of Religion Morality and Duties are setled and acknowledg'd they presuppose them but they prove them not they persuade them to those who already do believe them but if there be some who do not believe them as there are too too many who doubt thereof or at least who are not sufficiently persuaded of them they do neither persuade nor convince Them in the least We believe that we have Discover'd the precious and inestimable Treasure of an entire Conviction of Religion and Morality in the Incultivated and Neglected Field of the Natural Knowledge of our Souls and the no less precious Treasure of that Knowledge of our Souls in the Attention and Reflection upon every ones Proper and Indubitable Sentiment and we have believ'd that we ought to render the Discovery Publick This is what we have done And tho' in all this Essay which is indeed no other than a meer Essay because it is only an Idea which we rough-draw and an Overture which we make but do not fully accomplish by Vnfolding and Pressing on in a particular and compleat Delineation all our Duties and all their Circumstances there needs nothing more Than that every one should apply his proper Sentiment and the clear Idea's which he finds in Himself by Attention and Reflection upon this Indubitable Sentiment which he hath in Himself Nevertheless because there are few Persons who are accustom'd to Reflect and Reason upon Matters so remote from their Senses and the Carnal Relish of Human Passions which stir up Attention in Reading the greatest part of other Books we foresaw that this Essay might appear too strong to some Spirits who can only digest Matters that are very easie who are not accustom'd to mount up to the Principles of Things who Relie upon the Credit of Authors and who are not at all Curious to see what we propose to them in First Notions and Clear Idea's But besides that we believ'd that an Age so Enlightned as Ours is would require an Instruction as strong and that there are Spirits who would willingly be thus Fundamentally Instructed and that it would be convenient to Impress this Relish upon others to the end that they may be rais'd up to a more Perfect Knowledge of God and themselves We do also hope that the meanest Capacities may here learn how to Know their Souls and by their Souls their Duties S. Paul would have all the Faithful apply themselves to Augment and Encrease Light and Knowledge in themselves And if there be any Knowledge which is useful and necessary to be Encreased and brought to Perfection it is without doubt The Knowledge of our Soul which is the most Essential Science which we have to acquire and the true Science of God and of Salvation as the Divine Apostle speaks since we can Know nothing Fundamentally neither of our Heavenly and Eternal Hope nor of our Present State upon Earth nor of our Essential Relation with the Eternal Nature and Essence from whence proceed all our Duties but in Proportion as the Knowledge of our Soul Encreaseth We see very Exact and very Religious Observers of Duties who oftentimes Know not why they perform them and tho' they do not do amiss in being so yet they would do much better in Being and Knowing why they are so because whatsoever a Man is Knowingly and by the Conviction of Reason he is much more solidly so for himself and much more profitably so for others We have believ'd that we ought to give a Compleat Science and Knowledge of the Soul to the end that all the World might thereby Instruct themselves in their Duties either for a particular Edification or for the Instruction and Edification of others And we are persuaded that all those who will give themselves the pains of Reading with some Attention and of adding to that Reading some little Reflection upon themselves to Remark what we Observe of the Natural and Universal Sentiments of all Mankind which is the perpetual Light of this Treatise will find that we have render'd this Matter otherwise so obscure and difficult of it self most Intelligible and Proportion'd to the Capacity of the whole World THE CONTENTS PART I. OF the Preference due to the Soul above the Body from the Reason of its Spiritual and Immortal Nature Page 1. Chap. 1. The Curiosity which we ought to have how to know our Souls ibid. The Dignity of our Souls 6 The Perception and Certainty which all of us have of our Souls 8 Chap. 2. That our Souls undoubtedly are Spiritual Natures and altogether distinct from Bodies upon the account of their Intelligent Nature 11 Why and how we conceive of God and Angels as Spirits 12 This is the common Doctrin of the Schools 14 Chap. 3. The manner of our conceiving that Knowledge which is in Beasts causes a Confusion which must necessarily be rectified 16 Four different Opinions which make four different Degrees of Knowledge in Beasts 19 Chap. 4. A general Discussion of the Opinion which gives to Beasts a Knowledge like to ours 21 Chap. 5. Whether Beasts have a true Reason like to ours 25 Chap. 6. Whether Beasts have any Reasoning inferior to Reason 33 Chap. 7. Whether Beasts have any sort
be generally susceptible of an infinite number of divers Modifications of which it hath an essential Certainty as often as it makes them in it self or suffers or receives them from any thing else As we have no Idea nor Experience of any sort of true Knowledge but that of our own so we have naturally no Certainty nor near or immediate Idea but of our own Spirit And tho' we form to our selves an Idea of some Spirit without us and of some Intelligent Nature it is only grounded upon that Idea which we have of our selves or of that Intelligent Nature which as I have said we find and prove to be in us for we know neither God nor Angel but by an Idea which we draw and which we form and build upon that Idea which we have of our selves Why and how we conceive of God and Angels as Spirits The Idea which we have of an Angel is no other than an Idea of an Intelligent Nature such as is in us but separated and disengag'd from the Servitude and Union of Bodies and by consequence enfranchiz'd from the Imperfections and Miseries tied to their Dependence such as we find in our selves The Idea which we have of God is in like manner no other than an Idea of an Intelligent Nature such as is in us but exempt from all the Imperfections which are in us It is an Idea of a Nature Intelligent and existing by it self with a Power Wisdom and Sanctity or Infinite Justice whereas we conceive of our selves just as we are under an Idea of a Created Intelligent Nature Imperfect Defective and Dependent in a thousand manners but this difference doth not at all hinder but that this Great and August Idea of the Supreme Spirit may be apprehended under the Idea of that Intelligent Nature which we find and prove in our selves We do not know that God knows otherwise than we were it not that he must of necessity know by Himself essentially all things without a Cloud without Obscurity without Uncertainty and all at one View Whereas we only know successively and dependently of a Superior Power which gives us Ideas and Perceptions as he pleases As we know no other Spirit than God Angel and Man and as we conceive neither God nor Angel nor Man as Spirits but under an Idea of a Knowing Nature and knowing with that kind of Knowledge which we find in us it follows That the Idea under which we conceive a Spiritual Nature is the Idea of that Knowing Nature which is in us And indeed it is impossible to have any clear and positive Idea of a Spirit which hath not for its Basis and Foundation either Knowledge or a Knowing Faculty for all other Definitions and Notions which are given of a Spiritual Substance have nothing Positive but consist in Negations This is the common Doctrin of the Schools Thomas Aquinas and the Scholiasts do commonly teach That we know neither God nor Angels but after the manner I have been speaking of For this is what they would say when they teach That we do not know either God or Angels but as they term it per alienam speciem that we know them not but by a borrow'd and copied Idea that we have no proper original and immediate Idea of them for these are their Expressions And tho' we had not these Authorities the Experience which we all of us have of the manner how we form to our selves the Notion and Idea of God and Angels by Reasoning and by Abstractions and by Precision or separation of the Imperfection which we know to be in us would not permit us to doubt but that the sole Idea and the sole Notion which we have of a Spiritual Nature is the Notion or Idea of an Intelligent Nature We know by an indubitable Experience that there are in the World two sorts of Natures a Knowing Nature and a Nature not knowing And to distinguish these two Natures of which we find in our selves Ideas and Notions altogether distinct by our Apprehension and Experience not to be doubted of we have given to the one the Name of Spiritual Nature and to the other the Name of Corporeal Nature Here you see the Truth of the Matter So if we would follow the Ideas and the Pure Lights of Nature which are always Infallible there would be no need here of making any Effort of Reasoning to manifest the Spiritual Nature of our Souls which we so surely find to be Intelligent But by the misfortune of a deadly Prejudice generally establish'd by a precipitate and an inconsiderate Judgment from our Infancy whereby is form'd an almost universal Error which hath taken place of Truth we have so confounded obscur'd and involv'd this lively and pure Light of Nature and of the Idea of Body and Spirit or of Spiritual and Corporeal Nature as it is absolutely necessary to stop here in order to regulate that Confusion which hath been cast upon these Ideas CHAP. III. The manner of our conceiving that Knowledge which is in Beasts causes a Confusion which must necessarily be rectified WE understand already that it is the Judgment which we have made of Beasts when upon the appearance of some exterior Movements like ours and of some Vital and Natural Functions we have judg'd that they had Knowledge like us which hath caused that Confusion which we are now about to rectifie I am no way desirous to change the Language of Men I will never say that Fire is not hot nor that Beasts do not know after their fashion provided Men do not confound their manner of Knowing with ours That Beasts know I grant and let People talk as much of it as they will provided they allow that they have no Idea of that Knowledge which they give them Beasts without doubt know after their manner since they fly from and pursue Objects as they are agreeable or disagreeable to them And it would be a very sad thing and contrary to the current Style of the Language of Men if we should not permit that to be call'd Knowledge in the best sense Let not then any one believe that I will here make any Innovation in the Language of Men or at all proceed in the Method of that New Philosophy which changes all Ideas and common Expressions into Paradoxes and Riddles Let Animals know with all my Heart after their manner which is to fly from or to pursue without knowing for all that what they do by an Instinct altogether blind in respect to them but most clear in respect of the Workman which gave it them and who conducts them the things which are good or ill for them and to be thereby capable of a thousand several Movements occasion'd by the different Impressions which come to them from without and from the divers Fermentations which arise in them from the Mass of Blood and the Humors which are within them But if we look upon Beasts to be entirely Corporeal as Moses would have us to
which is done in it self whereas the Unknowing Nature which we perceive in that part of us which we call Body neither hath nor can ever have the Certainty and Perception Sentiment or Idea either of it self or of any thing else either within it or without it Of such a Nature are for Example Marble Gold Diamond Wood Plaister Wax and generally all Bodies which can never have the Perception and Certainty either of their own Existence or of the Impressions which are made upon them by the Seal or the Saw the Chizel or the Crucible the Hammer or the Mallet A Looking-glass may serve for a very sensible Example to give a lively and neat Idea of the difference of Natures that are Knowing and of Natures Not-knowing For the Looking-glass receives in it the Image of the Body which is oppos'd to it and which is plac'd before it for this Image which is receiv'd in the Looking-glass for it must needs be receiv'd there since we see it there and since it reflects it upon the Eyes of all those who regard it gives no certainty at all of the Sentiment and Idea of it self to the Glass The Looking-glass hath the Impression of this Image as Wax hath the Impression of the Seal but the Looking-glass neither feels nor perceives this Image which is imprinted on it any more than the Wax doth the Seal and in that lies the Character of all Material things and all Corporeal Natures As Knowing things have essentially an Idea or an intimate certainty and Experience of themselves and of what is done in them so Unknowing and Corporeal Natures on the contrary essentially never have them This is that which we call to Know and to be a Knowing Nature as we are and nothing is clear and certain in the World if a Knowing Nature taken in this sense be not a Spiritual Nature and which can have nothing that is Corporeal and is necessarily distinct from all Body Nothing is clear if this is not for besides that the Act of Knowing is undoubtedly Spiritual and Immaterial it being impossible to conceive it under a Corporeal Form because it hath neither Figure Bulk nor Colour and an Act essentially Spiritual cannot proceed but from a Principle purely Spiritual It is impossible for one to frame to himself another Idea or another Notion of a Spiritual Nature than that of a Nature that is Knowing or that hath for its Ground and Basis the Faculty or Vertue of Knowing It is impossible to have a Notion of a Spiritual Nature that doth not include Knowledge in it or which hath it not for its Basis and Foundation And when we have conceived a Knowing Nature we have essentially conceiv'd a Nature that is Spiritual Let one take away and cut off all that one will let one despoil a Nature of all other Attributes and of all other Notions yet if we conceive it to be Knowing we have conceiv'd it to be a Spirit And let a Man assemble all that he pleases and accumulate as many Notions as he is able to conceive or imagine yet unless he places a Knowledge there he will never conceive a Spirit which is an evident conviction that an Idea of a Spiritual Nature is no other than an Idea of a Knowing Nature that is to say That a Spiritual Nature and a Knowing Nature are but one and the same thing It is effectually but one and the same thing as Corporeal Nature and Nature extended or capable of Extension are but one and the same For it is a certain Rule Where the Notions and the Idea's are the same the Things must be the same also Corporeal Nature for Example and Nature extended or capable of extension are the same thing because when we conceive Corporeal Nature we conceive a Nature which is the Basis of Length Breadth and Thickness and by consequence susceptible of Figure Colour and Motion Now so it is that it is entirely after the same manner with a Nature Knowing such as it is in Us which is that only of which we have the Idea and with a Spiritual and an Immaterial Nature the Names are different but the Notions and Idea's are the same When I conceive the Knowing Nature that is in Us I conceive a Nature which hath a Certainty of it self and of that which is done in it either by a lively and distinct Idea or by a Sentiment confused though inward and penetrating And when I conceive a Spiritual Nature I find nothing real and positive in my Idea but the same thing that is a Nature whose Property it is to be able to have an Idea or Certainty of it self and of that which shall be done in it For when I conceive a spiritual Nature and that I examine my Conception and my Idea to see what they contain I find nothing positive and effective precisely but that I defie even all the Men of the World to give me another Idea of a spiritual Nature which expresses something that is positive and real for it is of an Idea and Notion positive not of an Idea of negation by which some define a Spirit which I am speaking of here for to conceive of things by Negations is not to conceive what they are but what they are not and to conceive a Spirit for Example as some do by Negation and exclusion of Visibility and Extension this is not to conceive a Spirit but to conceive that a Spirit excludes Extension from its Nature and to comprehend not what it is but what it is not to wit that it is not a Body I speak therefore of a positive Notion and I say that it is is impossible to give of it or conceive of it any other by which a Man may define and conceive a Spirit than thus of that Knowing Nature which we find and which we know to be in us A Spiritual and a Knowing Nature then are but one and the same thing and the Knowing and the Corporeal are undoubtedly two things for as we acknowledge that a Man is not a Lion that a Triangle is not a Square that White is not Black that Bitter is different from Sweet and Heat from Cold because we experiment that the Idea's and the Notions of them are altogether different and diverse so we must by this infallible Rule acknowledge that the Knowing Part in Us is not at all the Corporeal part because White is not more sensibly distinct from Black by its Idea than the Knowing Nature which we find and perceive so undoubtedly in Us is distinct from Corporeal Nature since it is certain that there is nothing of that which we know of Corporeal Nature in that Intelligent or Knowing Nature which we perceive in us and nothing of that Intelligent Nature in the Corporeal Nature but the common Notion of Nature as the common Notion of Colour is found in White and in Black But if the distinction of our Knowing Nature and of our Corporeal Nature be so well setled by
the diversity of their Idea's it is no less by that of their Proprieties and Effects for nothing of that which Corporeal Nature do's can be done by an Intelligent Nature or by Knowledg For Example A Knowing Nature or Knowledge cannot Immediately and Formally as they say by it self alone neither heat nor moisten nor dry nor exclude Bodies by Impenetrability nor in a word perform many of those Effects proper to Extent or Corporeal Nature And on the contrary Corporeal Nature on its part can never what Perfections soever one may fancy to happen to it by the Almighty Power of the Creator be so much as conceiv'd and imagin'd as capable of Self-perception of Reflecting of Reasoning of Loving of Hating of Desiring For who can conceive for Example that Marble can be rais'd up to the perfection of being sensible of the Stroaks of the Mallet and Chizel as we perceive otherwise that which wounds us that which hurts us with a proper and true Sentiment of inward Pain Who can imagine that Gold can be capable of having in the Crucible a Sentiment of Burning like to that which we have when we burn our selves We must say the same thing of Properties for nothing of that which agrees with our Knowing part can be agreeable to our Corporeal part and nothing of that which is found in the Corporeal can be seen in the Knowing For Example It is impossible to give a Figure Shape and Bulk to a Thought The Act of Reasoning of Loving of Hating of Deliberating can never have either Bulk or Figure Parts or Colour And on the contrary no Body can ever have the Agility of Thought its Vastness its Light and no Body can have the Idea or Perception of it self or form in it self the Images of all those things which compose the visible World or the least thing which it contains and it follows evidently from all this That nothing is clear and certain in the Light of Nature if this be not That the Intelligent Nature which is in us is of a nature altogether distinct and diverse from Corporeal Nature and being so I do not see that there can be any difficulty to say That the Knowing Nature that is in us is essentially Spiritual for what can that be but Spiritual which is not Corporeal In the main there is no great matter for the Name provided that the Thing be indubitable for what signifies it at the bottom whether our Soul hath or hath not the Name of Spiritual provided that we do acknowledge that it is of a Nature altogether distinct from Body and infinitely more Excellent than any thing that there can be had of Body and which it will always have though we would deny it the Name of Spiritual But because this Name is affected and determin'd by the constant usage of the Language of Men to Immaterial Natures and distinct from Body it is indubitable that the Knowing Nature ought to be call'd Spiritual The word Spiritual Nature is a Galimophry which signifies nothing if it do's not signifie that Knowing Nature of which we have the Idea and the Experience in our selves There is nothing real and positive in the World which answers to that word but a Knowing Nature such as is in Us. It is to express a Knowing Nature that the Name of a Spiritual Nature was invented as the Name of Triangle hath been made to express a Figure that hath three Corners That of a City to express a certain number of Houses disposed into Streets and shut up within the compass of Walls under the same Laws and Policy That of Animal to signifie that which hath a natural and interior Principle of Motion and Growth That of Body that which is susceptible of Extent and Division The Name of Spirit and Spiritual Nature hath been made and invented to express this sort of Knowing Nature and Men have never given the Naâ—â— of Spiritual Nature but to things which they have conceived under the Idea of a Nature Knowing after that manner We have already observed that Men have not conceived either God or Angels but under the Idea of Knowing Natures and it is certain that it is for that Reason that we conceive them as Natures more Spiritual that we conceive them endow'd with a greater perfection of Knowledge For we conceive God more Spiritual than an Angel or than Man because we conceive Him as the Sovereign and Eternal Source of Knowledge who hath Essentially the Idea of all things possible through that Eternal and Substantial Thought which the Scripture calls his Word by the which declaring all that He is and all that he can and the manner how he can and ought to do all things He is to himself first of all his Model and his Notional Wisdom as they say and Exemplar and then his Verue and his infinite Efficacy and Omnipotency by which every thing that doth know knoweth every thing lives that hath life every thing that hath motion is moved and every thing that hath a Being doth exist And as this Idea includes not only more Knowledge but a Knowledge infinitely more efficacious and more excellent than that of Man or Angel we do therefore conceive This Spiritual Nature to be much more Spiritual Thus it is out of doubt that the Knowing Nature that is in us is essentially a Spiritual Nature and ought to bear that Name from whence it follows That as long as we have a certainty that our Soul is a Knowing Nature so long we have an assurance that our Soul is a Spiritual Nature distinct from Body And this is not here a thing which We divine as They do who place a true and proper Knowledge in Beasts This is the chief certainty which we have this of the Knowing Nature of our Souls We may doubt by an Hyperbolical and Metaphysical Doubt whether we have a real Body because speaking absolutely God is able having only regard to the Efficacy and Power with which he can act in us to give us what Idea's and Sentiments he pleases God is able to give us the Idea's and even the Sentiments of a Body altho' there were not any Body in the World just as we have them now so as it may come to pass in Dreams to believe that we have things which have not any reality But we cannot at all doubt whether there be in us a Part or Nature Knowing because we find that our Soul hath essentially the perception and the certainty of her self in her Existence and in the Idea's which the Supreme Power who rules over her upon the occasion of her Body clears up and in the Modifications whereby that Power affects her CHAP. IX The double immense and infinite Ground of Knowledge that is in our Souls is a new and certain Proof of their Spiritual Nature THE simple Notion of this Intelligent Nature which we find in us without more unfolding it and leaving it in that first general Idea which it gives elevates our
two sorts of Sensation We have shewn that there is nothing precisely but the same Soul which reasons and speculates the most abstracted Objects and which at the same time is sensible of Heat and Cold Bitter and Sweet We have shewn that nothing is more contradictory and chimerical than to maintain That the Perception of Heat and Cold of Sweet and Bitter of White and Black and generally of every thing which Men call Sensible Qualities is a corporeal Act in the Soul and that the Act of Speculating Intelligible Objects and Universal Notions is a Spiritual Act there being nothing more monstrous than to conceive in a Subject undoubtedly Spiritual this Medley of Spiritual and Corporeal Acts. We have shewn that all Knowledge doth belong to the Soul and that the Body is incapable of having any Certainty or any Idea either of it self or of that which is done in it These are no more Philosophers which we have to combate withal upon this Subject these are none but Atheists and Libertines Fools and Brute Beasts who cannot maintain the Combate because as hath been said they are disarm'd by themselves and forc'd to confess that nothing is more impossible than to conceive That a Body Thinks Reasons Deliberates and Reflects There cannot be in effect a Paradox more enormous there cannot be a greater Contradiction there cannot be a Thought more monstrous than to say That a Body Knows It is as if one should say that a Thought is Green or Yellow that the Act of Reasoning is Cold or Hot that an Abstraction of Metaphysical Speculation is Square or Eight-corner'd as if one should make Birds to fly in the Sea and Elephants in the Air as if one should place Ice in the Fire and the Sweetness of Sugar or Honey in Wormwood or Gall. This is to unnature things this is to mingle subvert and confound every thing this is to bring Heaven and Earth together this is to embroil all the Universe this is to destroy all neat Ideas this is to take away and abolish the Distinction of Things this is to re-plunge the World into its first Chaos and into the first Darkness which cover'd it before the Light which enlightens it had made visible the Distinction and Diversity of its Parts We need not wonder that Libertines are willing to confound the Ideas of Body and Spirit It is the Genius of that frenetick Fury of Libertinism and Debauchery which carries them on not to be able to suffer the Light which manifests these Disorders They represent to us in History furious Men beginning by extinguishing Flambeaus by shunning the Day and the Light as it were to conceal the horror of their Rage and Fury under the horror of Night and Darkness but these by their good will would destroy the Light of Distinction of a Part that knows and a Part that do's not know Thanks to the most constant and to the most indubitable of all Experiences wee feel it we touch it we see it they cannot make us doubt but that there is in Us a thing that Knows and a thing that do's not Know and since We have seen that That which Knows is of a Spiritual Nature it is impossible for Us to doubt but that we have in us a Part that is Spiritual This Spiritual Part is our Soul for it is this Knowing Part that we call the Soul We do not only perceive that it is distinct from the Body but we perceive that it hath an Infinite Nobleness above the Body It hath not any Bulk nor any Extension it is a Being wholly Indivisible and yet in the mean time it contains and embraces the whole Universe It is a Nature Singular Determin'd and Individual and it is all the Natures Heaven Earth the Sea Trees Birds all that is seen in the World by a lively Expression which it makes of them in it self or which it receives Intelligendo fit Omnia All things are made by Understanding This is very much that this Knowing Part which we experience in Us hath by this Perfection of its Knowing Faculty that Species of Immensity by which we see it lodge as it were in its Bosom the Heavens the Earth and the Seas and to contain all the Universe and that admirable Power and Efficacy of transforming it self into all sorts of Natures and of becoming every thing it knows and conceives by the lively and animated Expression which it makes thereof in it self But its Grandeur is not shut up in that alone its Nobility appears yet more in its immense and infinite Capacity of Reasoning and extends its Knowledge and its Light upon all sorts of Objects and all sorts of Truths For whether it be that it is its essential Property as a Spiritual and Reasonable Nature and the Act of Reason to see into things whereby is made known to it all the Relations which they have and which Truth doth or whether it is God who over and above the Idea which He gives of things causes it moreover to see the Relation of them in the Eternal Idea which he hath of them I will not go about to decide here God sees nothing but what the Soul of Man may see if it pleases him to enlighten it and when he hath once enlightned it it can go of it self by its Faculty of Reasoning to a thousand and a thousand new Truths which it discovers by its proper Speculation It Contemplates the Eternal Order and reads in that Uncreated Light all the Rules of Duties It sees all the Proportions and Disproportions of things it hath no limits to its Knowledge It can know God and can plunge it self into the Abyss of his Perfections and his Mysteries it can even enjoy all his Delights and with him partake of his Felicity We find that it is sensible of a thousand Pleasures even in this Estate of Trial and Combat where it is kept in this Valley of Tears and this Earthly Inheritance of Thorns It is susceptible of a thousand sorts of agreeable Sentiments even in its present Estate by the which it is penetrated and fill'd with true and ineffable Felicity We must not believe that this Sensibility or this Capacity of feeling Pleasure is limited to those Pleasures only which we experience at present As its Knowledge by Idea's and by Lights is not bounded and limited to the Idea's which it hath at present since it is certain that we may be enlightned with a thousand sorts of new Idea's which now we have not so its Knowledge or the Faculty of Knowing by Perception is in the same manner infinite and without bounds This which at present gives us by the occasion of the Body a thousand several agreeable Sentiments with which we feel our selves so sweetly penetrated will be able always to give us new ones and greater during all Eternity These at present are Tastes of Felicity which we are made to feel and taste which ought to make us comprehend by these Foretastes what kind of
of its Dependence and is capable of doing Honor to God in a thousand manners whether it be in serving to his Justice and in paying Homage to his Power or in honoring his Mercy and in serving as a Manifestation of his Wisdom and other Divine Perfections Experience lets us see that God annihilates nothing even of Corporeal Nature since all the Matter which he created in the Beginning to frame the World subsists wholly entire without the loseing of one single Atom of it and the Scripture teaches us that tho' Heaven and Earth must pass away it must not be to return into Nothing but to re-take a Beauty altogether new after the Conflagration of the Last Day But tho' we could conceive that God should annihilate all the visible World it would not be possible to conceive that he would be willing to annihilate the least of Souls because that tho' one could conceive some Benefit in annihilating the World he could never have any by annihilating the Soul which Being no more can no more do Honor to God in any manner and which Being doth essentially do him Honor by the Perception which it hath of him by the Idea which it gives of him and by the essential Relation which It hath to Him as to Its Principle Its End and Its Center This is sufficient without doubt to make us acknowledge with the uttermost Evidence the Spiritual and Immortal Nature of our Souls by reason of their Knowing Nature which is the only thing we have hitherto consider'd in them But because we can increase this Certainty and this Conviction of the Spiritual Nature and Quality of our Souls and of their Immortal and Eternal Condition by the consideration of a second sensible and admirable Advantage which we all of us see and experience in them we must here give a little attention I speak of the Ground and of the Principle of Liberty which we all of us find in our selves and I say That This is a further indubitable Proof and Conviction to Us of the Spiritual Nature and Quality of our Souls CHAP. XII That our Souls are undoubtedly Spiritual by reason of the Principle and Ground of Liberty which we find in Them AS We Experience in Us a Ground and Principle of Knowledge which alone hath hitherto made Us Know the Spiritual Nature of our Souls we do there likewise Experience with the same Certainty a Marvellous Empire which we Exercise over our Selves and which we call Liberty or Free-will by the which we dispose of the Motions of our Bodies the Desires of our Hearts and the Thoughts of our Spirit The Experience of this Triple Ground of Liberty or Empire over Our Selves is General in all Mankind For altho' we do not all of Us Experience it in the same Degree yet there is no body who do's not Experience it in some Degree or other We all of us find that we have a free and voluntary Empire over the Motions of our Body either to Cause them or to Suspend them by a meer Empire We all of us find in the very same manner that we have the power of turning away our Love and our Pursuit from Objects that do most attract Us. And we find in fine that we have the power of applying or suspending our Reasoning as we please And it is certain that this Triple Principle of Liberty which frames in Us a most singular and most remarkable Distinction of our Nature is an evident and an indubitable Character of Spirituality in our Souls Animals have not the Liberty of their Motions Animals in truth move diversly and are not like Machines which Men make which for the most part move after a certain fashion they turn to the Right and Left they Advance and Retire they move all manner of ways But all these diverse Motions are either determin'd by the manifest and sensible Impression of some External Principle as when Sheep are attracted by the Verdure the Ox prick'd on by the Goad or provok'd by the secret Course of the Blood and Spirits which without any external Impression determine a thousand different Motions as the Skipping of fresh and pamper'd Horses and other Animals when a sudden Gayety makes them make a thousand different Leapings Those Persons also who by that Rashness of Judging which we have so justly condemn'd do believe that Beasts have a true Knowledge like to Ours by which they Act and Move do confess that they have not any sort of Liberty of their Movements that they have not any Empire to make them or to suspend them as they please They confess that they are always carried on by an invincible Necessity which draws them In effect we see that they always follow either the Exterior Determination of present Objects of which the Strongest always carries them as when the Dog being violently attracted by Bread or Meat is beaten back by the Stick the Species or Image of which passing thro' the Eyes is engrav'd in the Retina and is carried by the Optic Nerve as far as the Brain and to the Root of the Nerves and Muscles where It determins a Motion quite contrary to that which the Meat produc'd or else the Interior Determination of the Fermentations and Boyling of their Blood and Humors as when they go a Rutting or when they go to seek and pick out Juyces Plants or Metals which Nature hath prepar'd for them as Remedies against their Diseases St. Augustin observes That this is the Reason why the Creator hath in such manner ordain'd in the greatest part of Animals Passions which serve to the Conservation of their Species that they do not rise up in them but by certain orderly Intervals and in certain Seasons only because not having any command over themselves to check to moderate and to govern in any fashion the Movements which accompany them they would not be able to serve for the Uses to which they were destin'd if these Passions had been in them at all times as they are in Man Animals then have not any Command over their Body to determine or suspend it or to check its Motions but We We undoubtedly have this Empire not indeed in regard of Motions purely Natural and Vital for our Stomach do's not hearken to Us at all either to make or not to make Digestion our Blood circulates whether we will or no our Heart hath its twofold Motion of Systole and Diastole or of Dilation and Contraction our Arteries in like manner have their Pulsations which we can neither advance nor retard But in respect to the Motions which Men call Animal we have so absolute a Command of them that they are made suspended or check'd for that sole Reason precisely Because we will which it may be is a thing the most admirable either in Us or in all Nature for we do not know that there needs any thing else than to Will and to Desire to cause our Muscles and our Nerves to carry the dull Mass of our
Bodies either to the Right or the Left forwards or backwards above or below and all manner of ways We must needs see with what Volubility what Agility and with what Quickness we move our Tongues our Feet and our Hands And all this is done without our knowing how by meer Empire as hath been said hereupon When we have studied Anatomy and Physic we know that they are the Muscles and the Nerves which serve to these Motions but before we had ever known that we had Nerves and Muscles we spoke we danced we leaped all one and since we have acquir'd this Knowledge we neither speak nor walk the better for it nor do we make e're the more use of it to make our Movements once more I say it is purely an Empire which our Will exercises upon that Portion of the Common Matter of the World out of which the Creator hath form'd us the Place of our Trial and our Prison Now I say That this Empire or Command is an evident Mark of the Spirituality in our Souls first because it is already a Mark of a Nature Spiritual and Superior to all that there is of Body and to all that there can be had of Material in the World to have the Power of Willing because to Will is an Act no less essentially Spiritual than to Know for all that is Corporeal may be conceiv'd under some Corporeal Image and it is impossible to conceive either the Act or the Faculty of Willing under any Form or Image Corporeal or Material In the second place To Will and especially to Will and to have the Power of Willing as we experience in Us is a farther Mark of a Spiritual Nature because there is in this Ground of Liberty by the which we find that we have the Power of Willing and Desiring something Infinite and Immense for Our Will and our Desires have no Limits our Faculty and our Liberty of Willing is truly Infinite whether it be because there is not any thing but what we can Desire and Will whether it be because we effectively carry continually in the Bosom of this Liberty an Infinity of Desires and Wills or lastly whether it be because we can always conceive new Ones and it is plainly apparent no Corporeal Nature can be capable of such a Character of Immensity In the third place This Power and this Empire which we have of removing our Body by Command and by Will only is an evident Character of a Nature Spiritual and Superior to Body for two Reasons by the Reason that to Command is a Character and an Act of Superiority and as so the Nature that commands is Superior to that which obeys from whence it follows That the Soul which commands is of a Nature Superior to Body which obeys and by the Reason that this so Efficacious a manner of Empire and Authority is a lively Image of the Sovereignty of God which cannot be within a Corporeal Nature St. Augustin had well penetrated into this Reason when he said That by it we carry sensibly in Us a lively Resemblance of the Supreme Sovereignty and of the Infinite Power with which He created the World In effect by this Empire which we exercise over our Bodies we have in our selves the lively Idea of it and altogether resembling it in that kind of Almightiness with which we make our selves obey'd by the Members of our Bodies God said Let the Earth come out of Nothing and it came out by that alone that it was said to it Come out He said Let the Light be made and there was Light by the infinite Efficacy of that Sovereign Will. And we our selves say Let the Tongue speak Let the Foot advance Let the Hand be lifted up c. and so by the incomprehensible efficacy of this Command the Tongue speaks the Foot advances and the Hand is lifted up We do not seek here whether this Efficacy or this Force comes Effectively from ourselves for this is not a place for such a re-search But tho' it should not come from us the Empire which we exercise with that Vertue and that Efficacy which is undoubtedly in us is a Character incontestably Spiritual and not only Spiritual but Divine It is impossible to conceive that a Body can have such an Empire and this Empire marks essentially the Nature in which it resides with an admirable Tract of resemblance of the Supreme Power Our liberty of Thinking is a certain Character of the Nature and Spiritual Essence in our Souls If this Empire which we exercise over our Bodies be so certain a Conviction to us of the Spiritual Nature and Quality of our Souls of their Celestial Dignity and their Divine Quality what will it be if we consider the two other sorts of Empire and Liberty which we exercise over our selves If we find the Empire over the Motions of our Body to be so fine how much more fine shall we find that of the Thoughts of our Spirit and the Desires of our Heart We have the power to extend perpetually our Knowledges without any limits and to an Infinity by Reflection by Speculation of Principles by Reasoning and by Consequences Nothing can give bounds to our Thoughts and nothing can stop their Knowledge If we endeavor to extend them by the bright Light of Reasoning and Reflection we have before us a vast and an infinite Field of Truth and tho' we have of our selves but one Spark of Light which is that which we call the Ground of our Reason to wit that Light which makes us acknowledge and acquiesce to the Truth that is to say to the Relations and Conveniences or to the Oppositions and Contrarieties of things with this Spark we shall be able by Attention and Reflection to run thro' all this vast Field and acquire to our selves if I may be permitted to say so as it were the property and possession of all Truth We shall be able to lift up ourselves above the Heavens to know the Order the Structure the Harmony and the Periodick Motions of them We shall be able to measure the height and the extension of them We shall be able to reduce the Motions of them to their Principles We shall be able to see how the Lightning the Rain-bow the Thunder and the other Meteors in the Air are form'd We shall be able to penetrate into the Bowels of the Earth to see the diversity of Metals and Minerals there formed and to see how it sustains it self in the midst of Air without being supported but by its proper Center We shall be able to enter into the vast Ocean of the proper Nature of God We shall be able when he pleases to reveal them to us to know the adorable Mysteries Nothing can give bounds to our Curiosity nor to our Knowledge And this without doubt is a certain and infallible Character of a Spiritual Nature for Bodies are essentially Finite as well as Blind and an infinite Light wherewith a Nature
is enlightned or may be enlightned is in It an indubitable Character of a Nature not only Spiritual but truly Celestial and Divine But above all this Empire which we have over our Hearts is an Argument and a sensible Conviction to us of the Spiritual Nature of our Souls The Empire of our Desires is another certain Proof of the Spirituality of our Souls It is a constant Experience That neither Plants nor Metals nor Beasts in whom we place Desire or to say better to whom we give the Name of Desires to their violent Sympathies and Antipathies which carry them diversly to embrace or to shun one another have either the power to command their Desires to suspend them to pass them by or to check them The Loadstone seeks the Pole with a Desire the most vehement one can frame an Idea of it carries it self towards it with an indefatigable Motion and yet who ever saw that the Loadstone exercis'd over it self that Empire of stopping or checking this Motion Beasts have all of them their Instincts and their rapid Motions towards certain Objects to which Men also give the Name of Desires and yet we have never seen an Animal that could command his Instinct or his Desires We easily check the Motion which carries the Horse to the Mare by Barriers but never did a Horse thereupon command his Desires We easily stop the hungry Dog who runs eagerly to his Food and so turn him away from it but he himself do's never check the Motion of his Hunger Animals follow their Instincts and their Desires like Metals and Plants by an invincible Necessity which trains them on As the Mill goes as long as it hath Water or Wind and a Clock as longs as it hath Line and Weight so Animals go as far as their Instincts drive them and they have no more power to check themselves in their pretended Desires than Clocks and Mills in their Motions But we we experience in Us an Empire a Sensible Superiority over own Desires we curb them we turn them by we resist them we cast them off and we confront them and command them with a real Authority It is true that this Liberty is extremely enfeebled in the greatest part of us by natural Corruption by evil Education by wicked Imagination by the Custom and Habit of Vice by our want of Attention and Application to our selves We see well enough that the power of checking our Passions hath been in our Nature as it were absolute and despotick and that it hath at present lost something because we have need of Dexterity and Industry to resist them and because we have not always force enough to suppress them at their first onset But this Disorder of our Nature doth not hinder but that we are sensible of its Nobility and its true Empire over its proper Desires And tho' there were only almost dead Sparks of Liberty which are in the most corrupted and and in those that are most govern'd by their Vices and tho' there were no Wise Men to whom it made its Power visible as it does there would yet be enough of that deadned Spark of slavish and captive Liberty to acknowledge in it the advantage of our Spiritual Nature because it is certain that this Empire of our Soul over its Desires is an evident and an indubitable Character of a Spiritual Nature St. Augustin says That the only Contrariety of our Desires is an assured Argument of the Spirituality of our Souls because that in fine says he there would not be in us a combat of Desires if we were not composed of two Parts of a Corporeal one by reason of which we have Corporeal Desires and of a Spiritual one which causes us to have Desires quite opposite But it is not so much from this opposition of our Desires as from the Empire that we exercise over them that I will here draw the Conviction of this Advantage and of this Excellency of our Soul This Empire makes us evidently see two things The one That we are thereby imprinted with the lively Resemblance of that Wisdom and Sovereign Liberty of the Eternal Nature and Essence which the Grecian Fathers commonly express'd by that particular Name which their Language only furnishes to express the being Sovereignly Masters of our selves The other That we have an Order essentially in our Nature from whence is form'd that light and that force of Reason which makes us condemn our Desires that are contrary to our Duty And these two things make us undoubtedly see the Nature and the Spiritual Quality of our Souls because it is impossible that this double Resemblance of the Supreme Nature which is a Sovereign Spirit should be found in a Corporeal Nature CHAP. XIII We have an indubitable Certainty of the Immortal Condition of our Souls by the Desires and Instincts of Immortality and Eternity which we have THERE might be a great many Reflections added here to that which hath been just now said concerning the Empire of our Reason over our Heart and over our Desires to draw from thence convincing Arguments of the Indubitable Spiritual Quality of our Souls but because I am unwilling to tire the Readers Patience in holding him too long upon this Speculation I chuse rather to suppress them and to remark the Certainty of the Immortal Quality and Condition of our Souls which we shall be able to find by seriously reflecting upon it in that Ground of Liberty or Will which we experience in Us and by which I am going to let you see that we have a certain and an indubitable Conviction of our Spiritual and Immortal Nature The Desires of Immortality which our Soul resents in it self and which arise from the Ground of Will which I have call'd Liberty are an assured Proof and an indubitable Argument of its Effective Eternity and by consequence of its Immortality for without dispute there is in our Nature an Idea and a Desire of Eternity which hath its Principle in Nature's self and precedes all our Reasonings and all our Reflections and which Acts and Operates in Us before we have receiv'd any Instruction from other Men. Before Men do Reason and Reflect without Study and without Instruction by the movement of Nature thro' all the Habitable Earth they do not only find and perceive in themselves a confus'd Idea of Eternity and a Desire of Immortality but they distinctly conceive a New and an Immortal Life after this here in the which they either hope or fear something for themselves and for their Neighbors and Friends and into which they carry even their Desires and their Thoughts of Vengeance against their Enemies They do not only thus conceive a new and Immortal Life for their Souls from whence issu'd in all Nations whether Civiliz'd or Barbarous the Religious Rites concerning the Dead with Expiations Lustrations and Sacrifices but they perceive by Intervals their Hearts push'd on thither by redoubled Desires and Sighs so vehement that the present Life
which as we have seen cannot be destroy'd by Death which does not act but upon Bodies It is an ancient Reasoning of the Holy Fathers and even of the profane Philosophers That God punishing here sensibly some few of the Crimes of Men and not punishing them all there need be another Life where he finishes the Justice which he begins here And this Reasoning carries the most sensible Conviction in the World since we see so visibly the Hand of God to extend it self upon the Wicked which is according to St. Augustin that which the Kingly Prophet calls the Lightnings of the Supreme Justice which fore-run the Clap of Thunder Apparuerunt fulgura ejus orbi terrae vidit commota est terra His Lightnings appear'd to the Globe of the Earth the Earth saw and it was moved But tho' we had never seen such miraculous Examples of the Heavenly Justice upon the Wicked we should see enough to be convinc'd of the Immortal Conditions of our Souls from the so indubitable Sentiment that Conscience gives us of an Eternal Uprightness and Holinevs which ought to recompense us or to punish us because there must be nothing certain in the World if this be not That this natural Sentiment and this clear Idea of the Supreme Justice and Holiness cannot Deceive us Reason and all that is call'd Light and Certainty whether Natural or Supernatural must needs be nothing but Illusion and Chimera if Good and Evil can remain without Reward and Punishment because God must needs be only a Wisdom and Sanctity indolent and insensible of the Order and Disorder of the World with the Conduct of which he is charg'd if he ought not at last signally to evidence his Justice and if Natural Reason and Light is any thing as he cannot be a disarm'd and an useless Power so he is not assuredly a Sleepy Wisdom and an Indolent and Idle Sanctity He cannot leave either Vertue without a Reward or Vice without Punishment and tho' he neither punishes Crimes nor rewards Vertue in this Life it follows necessarily that this Sentiment and this Idea which Conscience gives us of a Justice which prepares a Reward for Vertue and a Punishment for Crimes in another Life is an Idea most true and which hath a real and most effective Object and that there is a new Life for our Souls after the present Life wherein they receive the Price of their Vertues and the Recompence of the Fidelity and the Constancy of their Trial and the pain of their unfaithful dissolute Prevarications through which they abandon the Interest of God and his Service for the little and trifling Interest of the false and frenetick Pleasures of their Passions With all these Certainties and all these Convictions we ought to see more sensibly the Future Life into the which our Souls enter in going out of the Body than we do the Present Life for it glitters and shines more lively in the midst of us than the Sun shines or glitters in the midst of the World But we must take care that we do not apprehend it after the same manner We are commonly full of Incredulity of the World to come and of the Immortal Condition of our Souls it is the just Punishment of our Disorders and the natural Effect of our Exorbitant Desires Tho' God should not concern himself and tho' He should not spread over his Darknesses He that makes the Day and Night of Grace as well as the Light and Darkness of Nature over our Criminal Desires to blind the Carnal Souls who forgetting the Advantage of their Spiritual and Immortal Nature plunge themselves wholly into sensual and earthly Pleasures our own exorbitant Desires are Veils thick enough to rob us of that Light how resplendent soever it may be The Incredulity of the Life to come and of the Immortal Condition of our Souls cannot be in Us but by these two Principles If it is so common it is because the inward Eye is so troubled and obscur'd by the disorder of carnal and terrestrial Passions and that this natural Blindness of Passions is augmented by a Veil of Darkness that God puts upon impure and terrestrial Hearts I know not how Libertines apprehend it but if they would in the lucid Intervals of their Reasoning never so little reflect upon themselves and upon the Light which they smother it is sure that it is impossible but that they must conceive that their Libertinism and their Incredulity is not only an Estate of Obscurity and natural Blindness but an Effect of the Hand of God which is upon them This is effectually the Effect of the utmost Disorder of the Spirit and of the uttermost abandonment of God for how should one be ignorant of the Life to come and of the Immortal Condition of our Souls if one had had either any spark of Natural Light of good Sense and Reason or any Ray of Grace or Celestial Illumination Let the Libertines speak and let them tell us upon what they found their Impious and Sacrilegious System upon what Principle and upon what Reason they believe that their Souls die with their Bodies Let them speak they would be in a great deal of Pain to do it for this furious and frenetic Judgment by which they bloody their Hands with the Parricide of their Souls if one may be allow'd to say so hath not any Foundation nor any Principle There are some to whom the Immortality of the Soul is not incredible but because they cannot as they say comprehend what the Soul will be when it shall be no longer in the Body but these themselves here do no ways conceive how their Soul is in the Body and People who do not doubt but that their Soul is and that it is the thing of the World which hath so much effective Reality altho' they do not know how it is do doubt that their Soul can be any thing out of the Body under pretext that they do not conceive how it will be then There are some who stupifie themselves on set purpose to judge that their Soul is no more any thing after this Life not by any Reason that they have to form this Judgment but because that the fear of finding at their going out of this Life an Implacable Judge who they well see ought to punish their Licentiousness and Disorder if there remains any thing of them after their Death makes them desire that there should remain nothing of them and makes them prefer the horror of the Nothingness of this sad and vast Darkness to the Beauty and Light of that Immortal and Resplendent Life of Joys and Felicities which Reason and Religion equally discover to us at the end of the short Career of this Life There are in fine some who make the same Judgment without knowing why they make it they judge without Reason and without Principle contrary to all Reason and all Principles I say against all Lights all Reasons and all Principles for I
Corporeal Image with a certain Bulk a certain Figure and a certain Colour and this is called To Imagine And we conceive things Spiritual and Intelligible without any Corporeal Form and this is called To know by pure Notion and by pure Intellection As we conceive for Example the Thought or the Act of Knowing or Thinking God Angels Universal Notions and all the Idea's of Duties These two manners of Conceiving are incontestable by the Experience of all Men and that which occasions the difficulty which a Man commonly hath of knowing his Soul is because it cannot be known but by Intellection and because even then when a Man will give himself the time and take the pains to re-enter into himself and to suspend the Pleasure of abandoning the Soul to Sense and Imagination instead of supporting as hath been said already the Intellect he immediately puts himself into a desire of conceiving the Soul which is an Object altogether Spiritual under a Corporeal Image and Form and that by Imagination The Question is to conceive it by Inteâ—ection and he will at any rate Imagine it it is a Spirit and he will make it a Body St. Augustin makes this Confession of himself That he was a long time abandon'd to this Empire of Imagination which fill'd him full of darkness he could not conceive his Soul but as a Wind an Air and a subtle Fire But when he had made a more serious Reflection upon himself he said that he saw how grosly he deceiv'd himself in conceiving that his Soul was a Wind an Air and a Fire since it was evident that his Soul was none of all that because it was impossible but that that which conconceived the Air the Wind the Fire and all things should be something more than those things which it conceived and that it was nothing of all that but that it was that which conceived all those things That every one feels and perceives his Soul and that altho' he be ignorant it is only because he knows not that he knows it St. Augustin made himself an Idea and a Notion of his Soul by that Reflection and thenceforwards he cut off and suspended all the Acts and all the Exercises of the Imagination when he would Reason concerning God concerning Angels and concerning Humanc Souls See here we have found a good Guide and a good Master let us follow his Principles and his Examples He attained to have the most perfect Idea of the Soul that one can possibly have of it and we shall attain it likewise with him he hath learnt us to know our Soul with the greatest ease in the World Let us reflect like him upon our selves and upon our proper Faculty of Imagining of Seeing of Perceiving and when we shall have well Reflected we shall find that we have not need of making any Effort for to know our Souls that we have nothing to do but to cut off all the Corporeal Images which can present themselves to us and to shut up our selves into that which we perceive of our selves which is that we have in us something that Perceives that Knows that Reasons that Loves that Hates c. And when we have well setled and fixed our Thoughts thereon we shall say that we have found our Soul that we hold it that we touch it that we see it For effectively there is That which is our Soul there is no Man who may not know it and who cannot frame a Notion and an Idea of it because there is no Man who doth not perceive it and who by the reflection upon his own Sentiment cannot frame a clear Idea and Notion of it but we do not at all perceive that we know it because we Imagine which is another thing we go to see for the Idea or Notion of it out of our selves we run over all Nature and a thousand Countreys that lie perdue out of Nature a thousand chimerical Imaginations to find an Idea and a Notion of the Soul which can content the Imagination we seek afar off for that which is at hand we search after that which we Have and we seek out of our selves for that which we have in the first and most interior Sentiment which we have of our selves we are like him who having heard speak of the Sun and not at all knowing that it was That so beautiful and so luminous Body which lightens and which warms all the visible World that bore that Name enquir'd of every body for the Sun and search'd for it every where We know necessarily what the Soul is we perceive it but till we have reflected on it we do not know that we know it If we had nothing to do but to reflect we should then have this clear and distinct Idea of our Soul That our Soul is that which we Experience makes us Perceive makes us See makes us to Love and to Hate which makes us have Pleasure and Pain and all the Certitude which we have of our selves and of the things which are out of us From whence we form this Notion That our Soul is a Knowing Nature and Substance and indubitably distinct from the Body Mistress of its Thoughts and Desires and sensible of Order and Duty by which we are capable and susceptible of Idea's and Sentiments without bounds and without end according as the Supreme Nature which rules over us with so sensible and so evident an Empire will please to give us them and tho' there were in our Nature but this single Character of our Dependence of which all our Sentiments and all our Knowledges carry the Idea to our Understanding it would be impossible to be ignorant and not to acknowledge that we are under the Hand of a Master who can make us Sovereignly happy or unhappy when he pleaseth CHAP. XVII Some Essential Reflections to Establish the Order of the Preference of the Soul above that of the Body THIS is the just Idea and Notion of our Soul in the which we must cull out and separate Eight or Nine Things which mark it out by August and altogether Illustrious Characters and which are so many Principles and Lights of Morality by the which we ought to Establish the Order of our Duties in relation to our Souls and our Bodies which is the First Part of this Idea and of this Moral Essay which we have propos'd to give you That all the good and ill Fortune are in our Souls We must first of all observe in that Notion which we have made of our Soul by our reflection upon our Sentiment and upon the inward and indubitable Experience that we have of our selves That the Soul is in Us Our Principal Part the Ground both of our Being and to apprehend it aright all our Being since the Ground of our Being ought not to be apprehended only in relation to the most noble Part but to That which causes in Us the good or ill Fortune For to Be is not estimable but in relation to
not so much as see or know even themselves only which gave occasion of that Expression of the Schoolmen Videntur ut quò non ut quod non cognita faciunt cognoscere We may then presuppose that it is not at all these Tables whereon the Soul sees the Object and this being presupposed we have no more to do than to search into the manner how the Soul hath by the occasion of these dead and Corporeal Images and Impressions those living and animated Idea's and Images which she hath in her self and by which she is render'd formally and actually Knowing having in her self a lively Representation or an inward Sentiment of the Objects which render themselves present by the Material Impression which is receiv'd in the Body That Men do not commonly Explain how the Passage of the Material Impressions of Corporeal Objects make a Passage into the Spiritual Substance of the Soul One may say That here are the Limits or if a Man may be permitted to say so the Pillars of Humane Intelligence there hath appear'd nothing neither hath there been any thing in Nature more inaccessible than the Knowledge and the clear Notion of the manner how this Passage is made and this Transmission from the Corporeal into the Spiritual Region and than the manner how the Corporeal Impressions of the Senses whether Interior or Exterior do become Spiritual Idea's and Perceptions in the Soul Men have said almost nothing thereupon but enormous and monstrous Contradictions But we need not despair of arriving at a clear Notion and an indubitable Certainty thereof how dark soever this Mystery may be wrapped up if we follow that Rule which prescribes to us to go always notwithstanding the resistance of Prejudices thither where the Evidence and clearness of Principles and Consequences calls us and leads us on In following on the one part the double shining Light of the Experience which we have of a Superior Light and Power which rules over us and which enlightens us and of the Certainty we have made our selves of the Spiritual Nature of our Souls And on the other part in following the infallible Principle of this certain Truth That it is God alone who Essentially unites things Spiritual and Corporeal and who alone can unite our Bodies and our Souls we shall carry a certain and an infallible Light in this so dark and so obscure a place and we shall come to have a clear Idea of that which we search after That it is the Author and the Principle of the Union of the Soul and of the Body which makes the Commerce between the Soul and the Body and by consequence between the Soul and the Corporeal Objects We find that these Corporeal Images and these Material Impressions do not pass into the Soul to render it actually and formally Knowing by themselves for this would be a Repugnancy with a Witness if it were only in this because a Corporeal thing cannot be the enlightning and illuminating Form of a Spiritual Nature We find that these Images and these Corporeal Impressions do not quit their quality and material Essence to change themselves by a Chimerical and an Impossible Metamorphosis to Spirituals We find that these Corporeal Images are not the Tables and Glasses to which the Soul doth apply her self and towards which she turns her self to contemplate and see in them the Objects which are render'd present to the Body in drawing upon them their Idea and Representation We find that these Images or Corporeal Impressions which the Exterior Objects do engrave in our Brains are no other thing than the Occasional Cause of the Action by which He who unites the Body and Soul doth Instruct Us and Enlighten Us who in the Quality of the First Cause concurs Essentially with all Second Causes and who in the Quality of an Universal Cause hath been pleas'd to render in Men the Concourse of his Illumination and the Essential Irradiation of his Life by which He makes to live all that liveth dependent of divers Impressions which are brought and receiv'd within our Brains for to conserve his Character of Universal Cause in such a manner that these Images serve to no other purpose than to determine the Author of Nature who is necessarily the immediate Cause and immediate Principle of the Union of the Soul and of the Body and by consequence of our Corporeal Impressions and of our Spiritual Faculties to give as an Essential Cause of all the Light and of all the Life which is in created Beings the Idea's and the Sentiments of things at that moment that the general Course of the Universal Movement of Corporeal Matter and of Nature or the free and accidental Determination of some particular Cause doth make in that Structure of Bone of Flesh and of Nerves which we call Human Body any Impression which is carried to the Center of all that Structure which is the Brain This is the Formal Act of the Power which unites the Soul to the Body and the Body to the Soul This is the Active and Formal Union of the Soul to the Body This is It which is the immediate and necessary Principle and Cause which makes the Commerce betwixt the Body and the Spirit This is It which makes the Passage to the Corporeal Species and Images from the Corporeal to the Spiritual Region This is It which Spiritualizeth our Phantômes not by a Chimerical and Impossible Metamorphosis but by an Infallible and an Omnipotent Efficacy of his Action as First Cause and as Cause Universal by which from the occasion of divers Impressions made in the Body He gives to Souls the Idea's and Sentiments which ought to correspond and accompany them in the Intention of the End of his Workmanship It would be very surprising if this Idea should appear New to those Understandings who know that it is an Idea so common and so necessary To regard God as the immediate Author and necessary Cause of the Union of our Souls and of our Bodies for when it shall be known that God is the immediate and necessary Principle and Cause of this Union it ought not to appear strange or new That it is God who makes and who entertains this Commerce which is the essential and necessary continuance thereof and that he continually Acts after this manner upon our Souls from the occasion of the Impressions of Bodies seeing that the Action by which he makes this Union which ought necessarily to be renew'd reiterated and continu'd every moment cannot consist but in this everliving Commerce between the Soul and between the Body as shall be prov'd hereafter In sum all is thereby clear and easie all of a piece and made very plain Thereby we do not only ascend to the true Principle and immediate Cause of the Union of our Souls and of our Bodies but we clearly conceive thereby how this Union so incomprehensible and so admirable is made how it is He that is the First Tie and Essential Band
thereof And He is at the same time the Light and the Life of all Spirits as He Acts perpetually in Us and doth not less Animate the little World which is the Assembly of the Body and Spirit whereof Man consists than the Universal World which is the Assembly of all Corporeal Natures Thereby doth subsist our dependence upon Him in all the Acts of our Life as well as in the Foundation of our Being which depends every moment upon the continuation of that Action by which he at first Created us Happy it is that the Notion which we have made of the manner whereby we know all things which are without us should lead us back and unite us so intimately to the Source of our Being and that we cannot know how our Knowledges and Sentiments are form'd in us without knowing likewise together with the dependence that all our Life and all our Being hath from Him the Immensity the Excellency and the Superiority of his infinite Essence above all created Beings The blind and ignorant Pride of Humane Understanding will not perhaps suffer in some People that we should humble it after this manner and that we should thus bring it back again to God It will revolt it may be against the Evidence of the things which I have been speaking of and it will perhaps chuse much rather not to comprehend at all how the Corporeal Impressions of Objects become in our Souls Spiritual Images and Sensations than to comprehend it after a manner which gives it so lively an Idea of its Dependence and its Nothingness But we must not suffer it peaceably and quietly to enjoy the Pleasure of its affected Ignorance of its criminal Independency we must convince it not only that there is no other means of Explaining the manner how we have by reason of Corporeal Impressions the Idea's and Sentiments of things but we must also necessarily make it acknowledge That this perpetual Action of the Illumination and Irradiation of God in us as an Essential Act of his Supream Sovereignty over us is the inseparable Character of our Essential Dependence and the necessary continuance of the Function by which he unites the Souls to Bodies so as Faith teaches it CHAP. VII A Proof of what hath been decided That it is God as Author of the Union of the Soul and Body who gives to the Soul the Sentiments and Idea's of things from the occasion of Corporeal Impressions which are made upon the Material Senses THIS continual Action of God in us whereby he Acts perpetually in us in the Quality of the First and Universal Cause Enlightning us and affecting us with several Sentiments by reason of divers Impressions which are made either by a Cause from within or by a Motion from without in our Brain ought necessarily to be acknowledg'd by two or three sorts of Proofs and different Reasons equally convincing The first Proof by the Essential Union of our Souls with God First of all We have the indubitable Sentiment and Experience thereof For if we rereflect well upon our own Sentiment we shall find equally two Unions in us an Union of our Bodies with all the visible World and an Union of our Souls with a Nature Knowing Immense Infinite and Unchangeable which with an Eye always vigilant and always attentive to all the Movements of our Brains penetrates us continually with a thousand lively Sentiments and enlightens us with a thousand Idea's upon their Occasion Our Bodies are undoubtedly united to all other Bodies and by consequence to all the visible World Because there is not one single Motion made about them which doth not come to them through some one of their Parts or through some one of the Organs which the provident Wisdom of the Creator hath disposed so diversly to receive their different Motions If the Sun or any other Luminous Body be mov'd in the middle of that imperceptible Matter which it drives in straight Lines from all sides our Eyes receive in the instant and in the moment the Impression of it by the necessary Effect of the continuation of Motion or of the effort of Motion which is imprinted in that Matter because they find themselves so dispos'd to let it pass thro' the different Humors whereof they are compos'd and to receive it in that thin and subtil Web which is form'd in the bottom of our Eyes about the Extremities of the Optick Nerves and which is call'd the Retina If there be a Shock of two solid Bodies in the Air or any vehement Fomentation of Exhalation as it happens in Thunder from whence arise redoubled Trepidations in this fluid Matter like to those Circles which are describ'd upon the Superficies of Water one after the other and one against another this Motion comes to strike in our Bodies that which is called the Tympanum in the Organ of Hearing It is generally in the same manner with all other Bodies some of them are united to our Bodies by the subtile Vapours which they emit from them as are Odours others by an Immediation as they say of the Superficies of their Parts and there is not any one single one of them which doth not Act upon our Bodies after their manner But if our Bodies are so naturally united to all other Bodies by Contiguity which communicates the Motion of one to the other our Souls are yet more sensibly united to a Superior and an over-ruling Nature which imprints on them Idea's and Sentiments as it pleases by General Wills and universal and immutable Laws which it almost never departs from but in those extraordinary Occasions in the which it Acts as a particular Cause and works that which we call a Miracle We cannot be ignorant or insensible of this Empire which the Author and Master the Sovereign and the Lord of Nature Exercises over us for the Reasons which have been already observ'd and which S. Augustin had so well div'd into that he said That a reflective and an attentive Man would much rather doubt of the Union of his Body with the visible World to which it is tied by all its Parts than of that Union of his Soul with God since the Action thereof is never interrupted but it is sensible and visible for we know nothing if we do not know that it Acts in us and that it Rules us either by a lively and an involuntary Sentiment or by the Light wherewith it penetrates us since it is impossible not to acknowledge God in this Principle so Enlightning and so Vigilant of the one Part and on the other so Efficacious and so Commanding who Presides over all our Knowledges and over all our Sentiments and who makes them in us in spite of us with so admirable and so illuminating a Wisdom and so much the better as causing in us undoubtedly all the Pleasure and all the Pain which we resent by the occasion of our Bodies We see plainly that he is the Sovereign Arbiter as well as the
Heaven to favour our Ignorance for this is no ways to have recourse to Miracles thus to reduce things to their Essential Principle and to their Necessary and Immediate Causes on the one Part and on the other Part to the common and universal Experience of all Men and to the most constant Idea's of Religion which is what we are doing here when having caus'd to be observ'd that we receive the Sentiments and Idea's of particular Bodies by the only Passive Faculty of the Soul and by a Superior Power which Rules over us and which Enlightens us and having demonstrated that we cannot at all be Knowing Beings by our selves since that is the Priviledge of God alone but that we are Essentially Knowing by an Exterior and Superior Irradiation and Illumination and that this Illumination and Irradiation cannot come to us neither from other Bodies nor from our own by reason of the Impossibility that there is that a Body can be United to a Spirit to Act upon it and Enlighten or Affect and Modifie it we say that it comes from God from God the Author of our Being and the Necessary Cause and Principle of the Union and of the Meeting together of the two different and disproportion'd Parts which Compose us This is neither to have recourse to Miracle nor to call to God to descend to the help of Humane Weakness and Ignorance but on the contrary this is to mount up again to the true Principle of all the particular Idea's and all the Sentiments which we have of Bodies and of things Corporeal upon the Occasions of our Bodies This is to reduce the confus'd Idea of the Union which God makes of our Souls and Bodies to a clear and neat Idea This is to acknowledge the true Principle of our Light and to cut off all the false Idea's by the which we have been accustom'd either to make Our Selves God in Figuring to our selves that we have of our selves Pleasure and Pain and the Idea's of things or to make Gods of all the Bodies which environ us in believing that They are those which Enlighten and Illuminate us or which at the same time make us Happy by Pleasure and Unhappy by Pain and Dolor Not to be willing that we should refer to God the Action which unites our Souls to our Bodies is Not to be willing that we should refer to him the Creation of Souls and the Existence of the World And as the Passage which the Body makes in the Soul by Corporeal Impressions is either the necessary continuance or the very Act of the Union of our Souls and of our Bodies not to be willing that it is God who doth This Immediately is Not to be willing that it should be him who by himself Immediately unites both our Bodies and our Souls which is a Species of Atheism The happy Fecundity of this Principle for Morality Thus we are able to felicitate our selves and to rejoyce our selves in having found out together with the clear Idea and Notion of the manner how our Souls have their Idea's and their Sentiments upon the Occasion of the Body the Discovery of our Intimate Union with God and of our perpetual Dependence upon him of a continual Action of him in us of a living Source of Lights and of Pleasures which are in him and of a fruitful and of an abounding Source of the Duties of Love and Fear of Dependence and of Gratitude which ought to keep us continually united to him Let others study God in the visible World and Morality in the Books of the Doctors I will for my part neither study the one nor the other but in my own Soul and in the manner whereby she perceives and whereby she knows every thing that she doth know out of her self Let others make Efforts of Imagination and prescribe to themselves a thousand Practices for to keep themselves continually present to God I for my part will desire no more than my Principle and a moderate Attention to that which passes continually in me never to lose the sight of God but to have him always present Let other search into imperfect Reasonings for the Motives of the Love and the Fear which they owe to God for my part I will only reflect upon the Pleasures which I have in the very Acts even of the Animal Life for to see in God a Source of infinite Felicities and by consequence an immense and an infinite Loveliness for what should I more naturally love than that Living Source of Pleasure since it is nothing but Pleasure that I love But this is not all I will besides only reflect upon the Equality with which God Enlightens every moment all Men to conceive that he is the Father and the common Center in whom we are all united and in whom we ought all of us to love one another to honor one another and to support one another and to observe Fidelity and Justice towards one another There are moreover I see in this Knowledge of my Soul Incitements to Duty as well as Duties themselves Let others seek to fright their Concupiscences by the dreadful Paintings of Eternal Judgment for my part I need only a simple View and a moderate Reflection upon the Pains and Dolors which we resent upon the account of our Bodies by the efficacious Impression of that Power which keeps our Souls united to our Bodies For if to affectionate us to the preservation of our Bodies and to remove far from us the things which are hurtful to them it penetrates us with such lively Dolors what will those be wherewith it will transpierce our impure and rebellious Souls which shall render themselves deserving of his Anger And what Pains must he have establish'd to oblige us to watch after the conservation of our Souls since he takes so much pains to make us watch for the preservation of these miserable Bodies which are only a vile and despicable Garment of the Soul But let us not any farther enlarge here upon these Moral Consequences whose solid Principles and Foundation we shall discover in its proper place Let us advance and after having made clear the manner how our Souls have Idea's and Sentiments upon the occasion of our Bodies and after having cut off many Idea's and many Prepossessions full of Error with which it was impossible to conceive the manner how our Souls Are and Operate in our Bodies we must now endeavour to conceive it CHAP. VIII How our Souls Are in our Bodies THAT Evidence which we have of the manner how we have Sentiments and Idea's begins to give a Light to our Eyes which makes us see the manner how our Souls are in our Bodies and we have another Light which will completely let us see it and as it were touch it and This is the Experience of the manner how we move our Bodies We have a continual Experience That our Souls have Power to move our Bodies for there is nothing more certain in the
whereby two Spirits may be united we must not here imagine Embracings Penetration Minglings Extensions or Adjustments of Magnitude or of Quantity Wherein the union of a Spirit and a Body may consist It is in that precisely that the Union of two Spirits can consist and it is easie to conceive thereupon the Idea of the Union of a Body and of a Spirit for if we conceive a Mutual and Reciprocal Dependence caused by the Physical Action of a Superior Power between the movements of that Structure of Bone of Flesh and of Nerves which we call Humane Body And between the Thoughts the Sentiments the Wills or desires of a Spirit we conceive this Spirit and this Body united and as making no more than one single VVhole and one single Person Whatsoever other Things we may fancy to our selves we can never thereby at all conceive a Spirit united to a Body but in the moment that we have conceived that Thing only we have conceived them United For what is it to be United but to be One but to become one and the same Whole And who sees not that all This Results from the Mutual Dependence of the Operations of a Soul and of the Motions of the Body Let Us not then go about to make impossible Efforts of Imagination for to conceive the Union of the Soul with the Body by a kind of a Co-extension or Local Circumscription of the Soul with the Body by a Kind of Mingling of Penetration of Confusion and Immediation by an adjustment of Figure and Magnitudes c. All this would be well between Body and Body but concerning the Union of a Spiritual Nature with a Corporal Structure of Flesh of Bones of Muscles of Nerves all these material Ideas ought to be removed and banished a great way off God was pleased to do himself honor by this admirable Composition of Spirit and of Body and having found that it was agreeable to his Dignity of Universal Cause to tie together the determination of Ideas by the which he was willing that we should by little and little and successively be Enlightned to the diversity of Impressions which should be made upon our Brain by the divers Objects which should strike upon it and to tie together the Determination of divers Sentiments by the which he was willing that we should be Advertised by way of Instinct of that which should be good or evil to our Body to divers Impressions which should affect it he hath Established this mutual Relation That when these Impressions are received in the Body there is so soon and at the same time by his infinite Efficacy conformable Sentiments and Ideas which are determined in the Soul and on the contrary as often as there is in the Soul Thoughts and Sentiments or Wills that require that the Body should be moved if its Structure be well disposed the Motion is by the same Efficacy of his infinite Power determined in the Body The Creator hath thought fit to conserve thereby the Dignity of the Universal Cause and to unite our Souls to all the Visible World in tying Them to a particular Body by a Physical and Substantial Union Our Souls lose something thereby even very much of their Natural Liberty but they conserve some Character of their Grandeur by the Immensity by which their Union with the Body renders them present to all the Immensity of the Universe since by the contiguity of all Bodies which compose the World without any interruption of vacuity they continually receive a Thousand and a Thousand divers Ideas from all its parts in proportion as they come which they continually do by their Motions or by their Fluxes Either to strike or to affect some one of the Parts of our Body This Decision ought to pass for a Demonstration I will not stay here to prove that it is God the Author of Nature or acting as Universal Cause who makes and who entertains by his continual Action this Mutual Dependence and this Reciprocal Relation Since besides that I have already let you see clearly That it is He alone who can be the immediate and efficient Principle and Cause of the Union of our Souls and of our Bodies because the Body can neither subject the Soul to be united to it nor can the Soul be willing to submit to the Body which humbleth and constraineth it I have moreover proved very evidently That none but God alone can give to the Soul the Sentiments and Ideas which she hath from the occasion of the Impressions which are made upon the Body by other Bodies which environ Us and which Act perpetually upon Us. This continual Action of the Author of Nature who Enlightens Us by the Ideas which we receive upon the occasion of that Impression of exterior Objects and who affectionates Us to the Conservation of the Body by the agreeable or disagreeable Sentiments which he gives Us for to make Us know by way of Instinct that which is profitable or hurtful to the Conservation of our Bodies and of Human Species This Action I say joyned to that by which he Moves our Bodies when our Thoughts and our Wills require it is properly the Action by the which He unites our Bodies to our Souls and our Souls to our Bodies This is the active or actual Union This is what the Schools call the Unitive Action of God which joyned to the immutable Decree and Will by the which he hath determined to continue it so long as the Structure of the Body shall subsist makes in the Soul and in the Body that Estate of Union which we call Passive and formal Union Against them who say that this is to have recourse to a Miracle And you must not come here again to say that it is a manner very easie to explain every thing by a Miracle and to call God to the support of our Ignorance For so far it is from being contrary to Rules to make God the Author of our Union with the Body That this is the first Rule of good Reasoning That we acknowledge the Cause and the Principle in the Effect and to see that God alone can unite two Natures so opposite and disproportionate as are Spirit and Body as he only can Create them Moreover so far it is from having recourse to Miracles That it is on the contrary to reduce the Thing to all Common Laws to say that it is God the Author of Nature the necessary Principle of this Union who that he may conserve this Dignity of Universal Cause establishes in the divers Modifications of a certain Part of the Body the occasional Cause of the Idea's and of the Sentiments of the Soul which is the most Regular manner of Acting The most Natural and most conformable to his ordinary manner of Acting and by consequence the most contrary to Miracle which is not but when God changes his ordinary manner of Acting and departs from his general Will. The Action whereby God preserves the Union
part therein and the Body doth then feel Odor Corporeally and moves it self either by withdrawing or approaching according as the Odor withdraws or approaches Noise or the Pulsation of the Air causes the same thing in the Organ of Hearing The sudden noise of the Report of a Pistol or of a sudden Ruine makes us flie and tremble before the Soul perceives it The Body hath also its proper Action of Tasting and of Touching which precedes that of the Soul And this is that which makes the Sensitive Life and Knowledge proper to Beasts It is very truly said That they Taste that they Understand that they are Sensible provided that in so saying we do not at all understand that they see as we do with any certainty either of themselves or of their Objects or their Acts. Thus we may likewise place in Beasts all the Passions for there are in Us Corporeal Motions which precede and which accompany those Emotions of our Souls which we call Passions And as the Names of Passions may very well be given to these Corporeal Emotions which are in our Bodies before those of our Souls which are rais'd up upon their Occasion it is certain that it is not ill said That Animals have Joys Sorrows Desires c. since they have all the Corporeal Emotions which we have in the Resentments of Joy of Sorrow of Pleasure and of Pain with which our Soul is agitated Our Soul then doth not either do any thing of that which in our Senses precedes her Sensation or her Perception and Certainty or any thing of that which precedes in any part of the Body whatsoever her Emotion or her lively Resentment in her Passions The Soul doth never any thing but what is Spiritual she never doth any thing that is Corporeal Every Configuration of Body every Emotion of Body every Movement of Body is the proper Act or Passion of Body and is never the proper Act of the Soul We do not know in our Soul any Faculty of Acting out of her self but by the Will Every thing that she doth is Essentially in her she is not capable but of those sorts of Acts which the Schoolmen call Immanent and as all these Acts are of the same Nature with her since they are Essentially receiv'd in her so no Corporeal Act can ever be her proper and immediate Act A Corporeal Act may be an Act commanded by her but it can never be an Act done in her and by her which is that we call her Elicite Act And it is easie for us by this Principle infallibly to discern what the Body and what the Soul do in Us. A Rule to discern what the Body doth without any Cooperation with the Soul and what the Soul doth in the Body This Rule is certain and will never deceive That every Act by the which we formally have an indubitable Certainty of our selves is an Act and Operation of the Spirit and Every Act which do's not bear in us that Certainty but only makes some change in the Humors or in the solid Parts of our Bodies is an Act and Operation of Body And by this Rule as to Sleep to Digest to have Health or a Fever to have the Gout or the Stone c. are Acts or Operations or Passions and Alterations of Bodies So to Perceive Objects to be Passionated with any Desire with any Fear or with any like Emotion to be Sensible of Heat and Cold White and Black Sweet and Bitter to Imagine to Remember Judge Doubt Compare Reflect Infer Speculate Deliberate to Reason and Conceive the abstracted and universal Notions of things to be sensible of Duty to have Remorse to determine it self to Love or Hate c. are Essentially the Acts of the Soul That Pleasure and Pain are in the Soul and not in the Body It is very important well to observe this Rule because there are some who are so gross that they have not any neat distinct Idea that they know not in the least how to Explain the proper Operations of the Soul and the proper Operations of the Body How many are there of them likewise who confound these things so Essential to be distinguish'd How many are there who believe for Example that it is the Body that hath the Pleasure of Drinking of Eating and of being Warmed and generally all the Pleasures which are not in the Soul but upon the account of the Body If they had reflected they would have seen plainly that these sorts of Pleasures give us an entire Certainty of our selves and that so they are Acts of a Knowing Nature They will see moreover that they affect that part which Reasons and which Determines it self freely in us which all the World conceive as Spiritual and every one well knows it to be the Soul But what shall we do in this Case It is that Curse which being thrown upon the Serpent fell upon the Spirit and the Heart of Man and which Operates and will Operate aswel as the Benediction of Fruitfulness given to the Earth even to the end Men will have always an infinite difficulty to reflect upon themselves and to raise themselves up to the Knowledge of their Spiritual Nature Super ventrem tuum Gradieris Upon thy belly shalt thou go c. If Habits whether of Sciences or of Vertues are in the Body or in the Soul There presents it self here upon the occasion of what hath been said a Question which it imports us to clear up and decide which is To know in what part of the Soul or Body the Habits whether of Vertue or of Science do reside which ought to be a fruitful Principle of most important Moral Consequences For altho' there can be no Question made as to the Acts of Science and of Vertue which are indubitably in the Soul yet there is nevertheless a true Question which ought to be cleared as to the Subject of Habits The Habits of Sciences and of Vertues do indubitably subsist partly in the Body since it is certain with regard to Sciences that they subsist partly by the Memory and that the Memory depends upon the Corporeal Organ as shall be said more at large And so in the same manner with respect to Vertues It is sure that they are not setled into Habits but by the Faculty and the Disposition which the Soul acquires of Practising the Acts thereof and of fulfilling the Duties of them which she do's not acquire but by a certain profound Impression of the lively Images of Duties which deface the Images of the difficulty of their Acts which are commonly taken from the resistance of the Body or of the Inclinations which are entail'd upon the Body this is the cause that there must necessarily be some change which happens in the Brain and in the Corporeal Species and Images which determine the Thoughts and the Affections of the Soul as often as we establish in Us the Habit of one Vertue For Example It is impossible
affectionated for the conservation of the Body they would rather often times have made use of that Knowledge to suffer It to be destroyed and to deliver themselves from their Servitude if there had not been a Pain that is to say an afflicting Modification in the Soul annexed to that Alteration and that disranging of the Conjunction and of the legimitate Situation of the Fibres which compose the Flesh and the Nerves This here is the Secret and the Mystery of confused Operations and Knowledges or of pure Sentiments This is the Ligament of the Soul and the Body The Secret which the Creator hath found to associate the two Natures The Soul would never have been willing to apply the Body to the Act of Eating if the Sensible Modification of Pleasure which God gives the Soul upon the occasion of Eating had not been annexed to the Titillation of the Fibres of the Tongue and of the Palate which is caused by Salts and the Juices of Meats which insinuate themselves therein and moisten them It hath pleased him who hath thought fit to keep us in this Trial of Body to sweeten to us the Prison of it and it is by these Sensible Modifications he principally doth it There are a hundred kinds of them and there 's no doubt but God can multiply them yet more if he pleases as well those that are delightful as those that are afflicting and dolorous and it is certain that though we have them not now but upon the occasion of the Body yet they are independent of the Body and God can send them into Souls separated from the Body and into the Angels if he pleases altho' we do not know that he causes it in the Angels but when he punishes the Rebellious ones in Hell who are effectively burnt not by an Action of Fire which alters their Substances for that is impossible but by the Almighty Action of God who upon the occasion of material Fire destined to Act upon the Bodies of Men doth imprint upon them that Pain which we resent upon the occasion of Fire and which we call the Pain of Burning Moreover these Modifications of the Soul which render it certain of the good or ill Qualities of the Body not instructed knowing nor enlightned from their Composition are divers in the Sentiments which they give of themselves but all alike and all the same in the Genus and Species of Modification in as much as there are certain Passions of the Soul which intimately affect penetrate and modifie it These have all of them this in common that they have indeed an Object out of the Soul but that this Object is only an Object of Determination or of Occasion not an Object of Representation which they express and represent for the Heat and the Cold that we feel have not as we have already said any thing like them as far as we conceive out of us And that Modification wherewith we are intimately affected when we say we are Hot or Cold is no ways the Image and Representation of that which is in the Organ affected by the external Object or in the external Object it self This is not an Idea this is a pure Sentiment This is not a Representation which the Soul makes to it self but a certain Modification or Passion so determined as that she is affected against her Will that she hath it And we must say the same thing of Green and of Yellow of Bitter and of Sweet as of Hot and Cold There is indeed something far out of the Soul which otherwise affects the Retina or the Organ of Sight in that which is called Green than in that which is called Yellow But the Sentiment of Green and of Yellow have not any thing which represents that which is in the Object upon the occasion whereof we have it There is no Likeness betwixt the Green wholly Spiritual which I have in Me by my Sentiment and that material Green which is out of Me in the Object called Green CHAP. XVI Acts of Imagination and Acts of Intellection Libertinism and Heresie VVE have in the seventh place Knowledges of Imagination and Knowledges of Intellection of which it hath been so often spoken of but we must not fail to observe the difference of them because that one of the fruitful Principles of our Errors is to confound Objects Imaginable with Objects Intelligible or to apply the Imagination where we ought to make use only of the Intellection and to make use of the Intellection where we ought to employ the Imagination To desire to know by Imagination that which cannot be known but by Intellection is the Principle of the Essential Errors of Libertinism of Impiety and of Irreligion For thereby it is that there are some who are ignorant of God of Spirits of the Immortality and Spirituality of the Soul of Eternity of Paradise because not at all distinguishing the Intellection from the Imagination and not being able to believe things of which they cannot form to themselves the Idea they fancy that they cannot have an Idea but of things which they can Imagine or conceive with a Corporeal Image which represents some Bigness or Figure They believe that Figure and Extension are the Essential Attributes of things Real so that not being able to form to themselves any Corporeal Image of God of Spirits of Spiritual Souls of Paradise and of Eternity they fall into the Unhappiness of Libertinism and Incredulity whereas if they gave attention that there are things purely Intelligible which cannot be the Object of the Imagination as not being able to be conceiv'd under any Bulk and any Figure or Corporeal or Material Form but what ought to be conceiv'd by pure Intellection they will conceive the Idea of all those things at least a feeble and imperfect one And if this be the Principle of the Essential Errors against Religion To desire to know all by Imagination To desire to Explain and to know by Intellection the Visible and Corporeal Nature is a Principle of the Errors of Philosophy which reduces the Explication of Corporeal Nature to idle and abstracted Terms of Forms and of Qualities without descending to a more particular Examination of the Composition of Bodies which we call Mixt which are made of the Assembly of the Elements For as not being willing to comprehend and know things Spiritual but by the Imagination we must of necessity be ignorant of them so not being willing to Explain Corporeal things but by Idea's Intelligible we leave them eternally in those empty and abstracted Terms which give not any particular and distinct Idea of them It is of Importance therefore to Remark this Division of our Knowledges of Intellection and of our Knowledges of Imagination The Difference is That the One depends altogether upon the Body that is to say The Knowledge by Imagination which is not in Us but from the occasion of a certain Disposition of the Brain and of a certain Retracement of the
that the natural order and connexion of these Species cannot be observ'd and kept but are confusedly and tumultuously excited and stirr'd up by a tumultuous and irregular agitation of the Organ in which they reside There are divers sorts of Follies there are the Furious and the Peaceable there are the Rejoycing and the Melancholy and there are general ones and particular ones which are fastned to one single Object And all these diversities do proceed from the diverse manner whereby the Brain is disorder'd and it would be easie to Explain them particularly if there was occasion It is sufficiento say that in what manner soever Folly subsists it is the greatest Humiliation of our Nature and that which gives us the best Prospect of the Misery of the Servitude of our Souls in the present Estate of Union with the Body since they lose by Folly the Empire and the Liberty of their Thoughts being forc'd to follow the fantasticalness the perplexity the disorder and the confusion of the irregular Motion of the Brain either too much dry'd and burnt up by Choler and Melancholy or too much overflow'd or too much moistned by Phlegm without being able either to suspend or stop them or to hasten or advance them This lets us see the Limitation even of our Spiritual Nature which is Finite even in the most Divine Perfection that she possesses for this disorder of the loss of the Empire and of the Liberty of Thoughts happens in Man because he doth not possess as God doth an Infinite Liberty that is to say an Infinite Empire but only a Finite Liberty or a Finite Empire over himself For it is this which makes that God as the Universal Cause doth not respect this Liberty of Man but determines in his Soul Thoughts conformable to the Agitations of his Brain which is the Occasional Cause by which he is determin'd in this Quality of Universal Cause to give Thoughts and Idea's to the Soul God concurs with Fools as he doth with Natural Causes for the making of Monsters he follows the Motion of the Brain as a Necessary Cause Raving doth not differ from Folly but by the Intervals which it hath and because it is only an Accident and a transient Symptom of a Fever which too strongly agitates the Brain Frensie is but a violent Raving and both the one and the other let us see that there must be a Superior Power who with an absolute Empire Determines our Thoughts from the Occasion of the Motions of our Brain and Confirms by a sensible Argument all that we have said concerning the Union of our Souls with our Bodies and concerning the continual Action by which we believe that God Determines our Thoughts and our Sentiments from the Occasion of divers Impressions which are made on our Bodies either by External Objects or by the Fermentation of their proper Humors If we reflect seriously upon it we shall see that it is not at all possible to think that the Soul in these States of Folly and Frensie should make in her self her Thoughts We shall be persuaded that she receives them from that Superior Power which unites her to the Body and which Acting as an Universal Cause hath no regard to the incongruity of these Thoughts as it hath no regard to the incongruity of Monsters in the Motions which it gives to the common Matter of the Universe by its inviolable and infallible Laws but makes the Fortune of the Disorder and of the Disranging of the Harmony of the Body to follow and run upon the Soul not ceasing to determine her Thoughts according to the Occasion which that part gives her thereof and that common Center of the Organizanization which it hath establish'd for the occasional Cause of its Essential Concourse or of the Action by which it Enlightens us God Determines the Thoughts in Madmen and in Fools by the immutable Laws which he hath Establish'd in the Union of Bodies with Souls which is To give Idea's upon the Occasion of the Corporeal retracement of Objects which are made in the Brain without having regard either to the Order or to confusion of the Thoughts Visions The Illusions of the Imagination by which Men believe they see by Intervals Things which in effect they do not see are a kind of short and transient Folly and they are made by a deep and lively retracement of some particular Species which so occupie the Organ of the internal Sense that the other Species there remain as it were all of them defaced from whence it happens that the Imagination of it is livelily determined And as this is the effect of lively and strong Imaginations to represent Things absent as if they were just present and as if they actually struck the Senses so it happens from thence that Men do believe they see that which they do not see because they judge that the Image that they have of it is determined by the presence of the Object not minding that it comes from the Imagination only and thus it is that there are a thousand sorts of Illusions and vain and chymerical Visions in certain Spirits which we call feeble or weak tho' indeed they are too strong because that these sorts of Illusions proceed not but from an excessive force of the Imagination the which is a true and real weakness of Reason since the Imagination is never excessively strong but Reason is thereby as much weak because the Power of Reason is to rule over the Imagination to redress to correct it to suspend its Operations and to consider it nearly to see wherein it exceeds The supernatural Visions which come from God are when God as a particular Cause makes a miraculous and supernatural Impression in the Imagination that is to say which doth not at all come from the necessary consequences of the Course of the natural Motion of the Blood of the Humors and of the Spirits and those which come from good and evil Angels are made by the Natural Empire that Angels have over Bodies by vertue whereof they stir up Images in the Brain which determin God as an Universal Cause by the Law of the Union of the Soul with the Body to give Idea's and Thoughts of which the Corporeal Images are the occasional Cause for be it what it will an Angel or a Devil which retrace a certain Object in our Brain God gives us necessarily the Idea of it by that immutable Law of Union which we have often explained which is no other but the confused Idea which Philosophers commonly express by the Term of Concourse which they conceive as the Universal Influence and perpetual and necessary Action of the Creator acting as an Universal Cause and animating by his Intimate Co-operation and by the most efficacious influence of his Life and of his Power the whole Universe reduced to a clear and distinct Idea under the name of the Action by which God makes and entertains the Union of the Souls with Bodies The
sweet and gay which dilate the Heart the Spleen the Brain and make the Blood and Spirits flow easily through every part and thereby occasion agreeable and joyful Thoughts do determin the Disposition of the Brain and the rest of the Body to be the occasion of the Reflections and Motions of Joy and Sadness Spiritual Joys and Sadnesses We have on the contrary Spiritual Joys and Sadnesses which are the true Passions or true Resentments of the Rational or Spiritual Appetite for altho' they are formed with much more Deliberation and Reflection than Corporeal Joy and Sadness they are truly Spiritual Passions because the Resentment that forms them is not an Act of the active or determinative Faculty of the Soul but of that kind of Power and passive Faculy from whence spring up all the Resentments of the Appetite Natural and Supernatural Joy and Sadness Spiritual Joy is sometimes a Joy purely Rational and which comes from the Knowledge of the sweetness of Repose of the good Order of Affairs and of the Society and Fidelity of Friends and sometimes it is a Celestial and Divine Joy as is that Joy which the Conscience and the Sentiments of Grace gives and of Eternal Hopes which St. Paul calls the Peace of God and the Joy of the Holy Ghost or in the Holy Ghost Penitence We must say the same thing of Sadness for there is also a Spiritual Sadness which doth not at all reach up to God but which regards nothing but the Natural State and there is a Holy and Supernatural Sadness which is caused by Penitence that lively Sentiment and that lively and penetrating Resentment of the unworthiness of Sin from whence flow those Sacred Tears which render the Soul so pure and so fair before God for they are like a vehement Fire which consumes in us all the Matter and all the Impurity of Sin But let Us generally remark the difference of our Natural and of our Supernatural Operations CHAP. XX. Acts Natural or Natural Operations and Acts Supernatural or Operations of Grace THERE is in the eleventh place a most essential and most important Division and Difference to be observed of which the Experience is constant and indubitable from our Operations and Acts which ought not here to be forgotten to wit the Distinction and the Difference of our Natural Acts or our Natural Operations and of our Supernatural Acts or our Supernatural Operations For there is incontestably in Us in all our Faculties besides their Natural Acts Operations Supernatural which make an Impression there of that almighty Vertue and of that invisible Force from above which we commonly call Grace This Eternal and Soveraign Power which Rules over us and which Acts continually in us enlightning us by all the Idea's and all the Images which we have of things penetrating us with a thousand divers Sentiments sometimes of Pleasure and sometimes of Pain is called Nature when by reason of the communication of Motions of the Corporeal Impressions which arrive as far as the Brain it Acts in us by the general Wills and the immutable Laws of its Natural Providence which have no other end but the beauty and the conservation of the visible World But when by other views and for other respects when for the final Building of its Eternal Temple when for the formation of its Eternal Court if we may be permitted to say so when for the accomplishment of the favourable Decrees of its Predestination freely made for the Consummation of its Elect which is the Object of a Providence entailed and combined in a thousand manners upon the former when in this View it Operates in Us for to correct the Corruption or to aid the weakness and insufficiency of Nature for our Sanctification it changes its Name and is called Grace Thus there is in us Nature and Grace or the Operations of Nature and the Operations of Grace and Grace is almost no less visible than Nature The Libertines those Foolish and Rash and at the same time Gross and Carnal Spirits who judge of every thing by their Senses under pretence that Grace is neither to be seen nor to be felt though it is felt inwardly as sensibly as the most Corporeal Objects and tho' it hath by the inward Sentiment an indubitable Evidence I say the Gross and Carnal Libertines will affirm That all that we say of Grace is nothing but a Dream and a Chimera because they pretend that Grace is a Fancy which hath no other Reality than that which the Fanatical Imagination of some superstitious and sick Spirits hath given it But the Judgment and Decision of such People ought not at all to put us to a stand but on the contrary it rather makes for the Truth and effective Reality of Grace that it should be called in Question by these Fanatic Enemies of all Truth Grace makes it self appear at all times in the World and especially since the accomplishment of the Mystery of God in the Flesh encompassed with a Light and a Brightness so evident that we may as well doubt whether there be a World as to doubt there hath been brought in by Christianity a New Light of the Mysteries and Precepts of Morality and Divine Truths We may also as soon doubt of that which is called Nature as of that which is called Grace or of a Supernatural Principle which contrary to the impure and corrupt Inclinations of Nature always inclined towards the Earth doth turn and elevate our Hearts and our Spirits towards God towards Eternity and towards Heaven and makes us find ineffable Tastes and unspeakable Delights in Humiliation and Sufferings and in the greatest Abnegation and the greatest Crucifixion of the Senses Christianity is Established in the World by a Force and a Vertue indubitably Heavenly and Divine which Operates more Miracles in the Spirit and in the Hearts of Men than in the Corporeal Nature whereof she appears so highly and so indubitably a Mistriss since she hath changed the Laws of it in all its Parts as she pleased with an Empire the most Absolute that ever was This Force and this Verture so unquestionably Heavenly and Divine which hath raised the Dead and imprinted the Marks of its Soveraign Power and Omnipotent Empire upon all Visible and Corporeal Nature hath Acted and Operated with the same Power and the same Empire upon the Hearts and upon the Spirits and it continues to Act and to Operate after the same manner And as its Operation is called a Miracle when it Acts and Operates extraordinarily upon Corporeal Nature so it is called Grace when it Acts and Operates upon our Souls for our Sanctification and our Salvation Grace then is incontestably something that is as Real as Nature and there are in us by consequence most real Operations of Grace which is of Importance to observe and to distinguish well and to keep unmixt by the inward and indubitable Sentiment which we have of it Grace Operates in Us in
the Invisible World against those unhappy Spirits who have been permitted to tempt and to try by their Assaults the Fidelity of Souls destined to fill up the places that their Rebellion had left empty in the Heavenly and Eternal Court. There you see Man in his present State there you see the best of Prospects in which he ought to be regarded for to know well his State in the Body and in the present Life from whence do arise all his Duties whether those which ought to Regulate us in Relation to God and our Selves or those which ought to put us into Order in Relation to other Men during the Course of this Mortal and Transitory Life There is nothing that Men do so ill comprehend and conceive as Life I speak here according to common usage which calls the present Life simply Life though it be only the Shaddow of the True Life which is to come as shall be said in its proper place We conceive the present Life as if it were all the Life of Man and as if we were not in the Body and in the present World but for Ambition and for Vanity and Pleasure to See and to be Seen to enjoy the present Good and to make to our selves a Felicity wholly Corporeal in the vain Honors and the vain Pleasures of this World Man blinded by Self-love and by his Pride looks upon himself in his Body to be in the midst of this Visible World as it were the Center of himself and of all things He makes to himself an Idea of Independency in Relation to every thing that is above him or about him He believes there is nothing but what is owing to him and his Passions and he believes all is reducible to him and that there is nothing but what ought to serve his Desires and his Pleasures He knows not any Duty He believes himself wholly Free and wholly Master of himself Se Liberum natum putat saith the Divine Writer and he believes it too But to undeceive himself he need only reflect upon what hath been Explained and Cleared of the manner how our Souls are in our Bodies for so far is He from finding himself Free and Disfranchised of Duties and of being Independent and Master of himself That he will find himself charged with all the Parts of Duty accountable to God to Himself and to all Mankind to the Future Life and to the World to come He will understand that That which he calls Life is but a Tryal or a Proof That Time is for Eternity and the present World for the World to come That all his Being is Essentially Relative to the Supream Being That he owes all to God That he owes a thousand things to himself contrary to his most lively Inclinations and that he owes no less to all Mankind Instead of his Imaginary Independence he will see in himself nothing but Dependence and Servitude And so far will he be from finding himself in the Body and in the Visible World as it were in that Garden of Pleasure which he Figures to himself as the Scripture saith into which he is only sent to gather the agreeable Flowers and Fruits he will find himself there as it were in an Enclosed Field or an Amphitheater where he hath nothing to do but to struggle and to combat but let us see from thence how the Particulars of our Duties do arise CHAP. XXIII How the Conviction of all our Duties and especially of our Duties towards God doth arise from thence ALL our Duties do arise from the Relation which we have with God from the Alliance which we have with Mankind whether it be by the Soul or by the Body or by God himself and from the Engagements which the Soul hath for the Body and the Body for the Soul for Duty is Essentially an Order of Relation and Respect of one thing to another and the manner how our Souls Are and Operate in our Bodies doth discover to Us all the Engagements of Order of Respect and of Relation which our Souls have towards our Bodies and our Bodies towards our Souls and which we have Essentially with God whether it be in the Soul or in the Body and accidentally with Mankind whether those which we generally have with all Mankind or those which we particularly have with some one or other amongst them partly by the Body and partly by the Soul Our Duties towards God We have as many Relations to God as he hath Regards in his Divine Attributes and Eternal Essence which have Relation to Us and as there is nothing in that Eternal and Sovereign Essence or Being which doth not regard Us either in respect of His Superiority Power and Authority or by the Rays of Charms of Attractions Amability and Loveliness or by the Chains and Bands of Dependence or by the Terrors and the Threatnings of his Vengance So we may say that there is not one single Perfection in God from which there doth not arise a thousand Duties in Relation to Us. There is not one single Point saith St. Agustin else where within the little Circumference of our Being upon which there doth not fall a Million as it were of Lines from all the Points if I may so say of this vast and immense Circumference of the Supream Nature and there is not one of these Lines or of these Relations of Dependence of Respect and of Union but what makes in us as many Duties All our Being is owing to God and it is owing to Him under a thousand and a thousand Regards and tho' it would be much more easie to count the Hairs of our Heads and the Sands of the Sea than to count the Number of the Essential Obligations wherein we are bound to him yet methinks we may reduce them to these Four General Heads To the Duties of Fear To the Duties of Affiance To the Duties of Dependence and To the Duty of Love whether it be of Union and of Holy Concupiscence or of Preference or of pure Complacency and entire Resignation And if we would reflect well upon the manner How God Acts and Operates continually in Us by an Omnipotent and Infinite Action by which he makes and entertains the Union of our Souls and of our Bodies we shall find That it discovers to Us and makes Us see more sensibly than any thing else the Love the Fear the Affiance and all the Sentiment of Dependence which we owe him The Fear of God We ought to fear him as he who can render our Souls irreparably unhappy according to the Word of the Wisdom Incarnate Fear not says he those who threaten to kill your Bodies but fear him who is able to deliver up your Souls to despair and plunge them into everlasting fire You see here the first Duty The first not in Dignity or by the order of Excellency and of Rank saith St. Augustin but the first in relation to our interessed Sensibility since it is thereby that it commonly
to neglect the Business and the Duties of Life and of the Republic but even to hasten on their own Deaths It is not to be questioned here whether this Prudence were not a little too Precautious it is not our business our business is to Remark the Effect which the Notion of a Knowing Nature hath produced to make Men believe That their Souls subsist and live after their Death The Conviction hereof is effectively Lively and Sensible by that alone independently of all the Regards of Religion and it is incredible how much Force and Evidence it receives from all the Foundations and Circumstances of Religion of which this New Life which our Souls ought to have out of our Bodies is as it were the Point in View and the only and perpetual Object All the Old and all the New Testament All the Law and all the Gospel Moses and Jesus Christ The Prophets and the Apostles All the Miracles and all the Mysteries have no other Essential Termination and End than this New and Immortal Life of our Souls after our Death Both the Old and the New Testament under the Names of the New World the Future World the Age to come the Life Everlasting the Heavenly Jerusalem do not speak almost of any thing else And these cannot be Fables and Fictions for if they were nothing else but Fables then this Sovereign Power which hath been manifested to the World with a thousand Characters of Wisdom of Holiness of Truth and of Goodness by that Miraculous Train of Prodigious Events which make what we call the Holy History and the Body of Religion must have laboured for above these Six thousand Years to deceive the Word and to laugh at Mankind which is the most impossible thing in the World The Conviction then which is lively and penetrating independently of Religion is yet much more so by Religion The Faithful knows much better than the Philosopher That when this House of Clay which he Inhabits at present shall fall and crumble into Dust He shall pass out of this Melancholy and obscure Habitation into a New and an Heavenly Habitation not made with Mens hands into the proper Habitation and the Eternal Palace where God himself dwells The Philosopher knows it because he knows That the Souls of Men departing from the Body do pass into a New Life full of Darkness or of Light of Happiness or of Misery according as they have rendred themselves worthy in their Bodies either of the Love or the Anger of Him who is essentially the Life and by consequence the Punishment or the Reward of all Intelligent Natures according as they have deserved that He should Act in them and Reward or Punish them Socrates having already the Mortal and Deadly Draught in his Hand spake after this manner Says the Roman Orator and Philosopher That it did not seem to him that they led him to Death but that he was going to mount up to Heaven Cato was Transported with Joy at the sight and at the presence of Death The Wise Man saith Plutarch goes with Pleasure out of the Darkness of the Earth to enjoy in Heaven an Immortal Light with the Gods Have Courage saith this Other Let not Death affright Us since after Death we shall either be Gods or like Gods Let us not fear that our Bodies will bury our Souls under their Ruins When the Heavens shall fall and Corporeal Nature shall entirely perish and disappear There is a necessity that the Spirit which Animates Us and which is the Foundation of our Being must subsist and remain under those Ruins without being hurt or endamaged by them Such is the Conviction and Certainty of the Philosopher But the Faithful is much more enflamed and Transported with this so animated and so lively Certainty and Persuasion He sees with St. Stephen the Heavens open over his Head and he is taken and wrapt up thither like St. Paul with unspeakable Joys and Extasies He hath this Certainty and this Persuasion so lively and so animated by two divers Principles He hath it by the Impression of Faith and of Grace which makes him See and Feel if I may say so this New Life without Reasoning by way of Supernatural Inspiration and Illumination and He hath it when he will Reflect and Reason by an evident Conviction which the Reflection upon the Mysteries and Miracles of Christianity and upon all Religion give him of it for tho' there were none but that Historical single Fact of the Mystery of the Incarnation of God the truth of which is incontestably Established by so many Miracles and so many sensible Convictions it would be impossible to call into doubt that New and Immortal Life of this New State we are speaking of into which our Souls must enter when they go out of our Bodies because it is not possible to conceive That if there was no other for Men but this present Life that God would have become Man upon the Earth to undergo all that Train of humbling and dolorous Mysteries which he hath undergon Since it is certain That if there was no other Life for Men there would be no advantage neither for God nor for Men in those Mysteries which do no wise Regard the present Life but only the Life to come God can do nothing in Vain and in vain would He have bin Born as he was Born in vain would He have Lived as he did Live in vain would He have Died as he did Dye if He had not been Born if He had not Lived and if He had not Dyed to Redeem Men from Eternal Death and to give them that Happy and Immortal Life which the First Man had lost them God Incarnate came not to make this Present Life neither more agreeable nor more fortunate or more happy to Us He came not to spread abroad Treasures and Riches to give Honors and great Employments to Distribute Dignities to give Pleasures to the Senses and to the Cupidinous Desires of this Present Life St. Paul calls him the High Priest of Goods to come and the Prophets who Prophecied of Him called Him the Father of the Ages to come and King of the Future World but I must not enlarge here any more upon this on the contrary I must shut it up and return to the Point we proposed to Illustrate in this Third Part which is The manner how our Souls Are to be out of our Bodies CHAP. II. What is to be Illustrated in this Third Part concerning the Future State of our Souls out of our Bodies and first whether our Souls when they go out of our Bodies do pass into a true Corporeal Place THAT which we already said Teaches Us That our Souls Are and Subsist out of our Body That they Live and have Essential Acts and Proprieties inseparable from their Knowing Nature but we do not learn from thence How our Souls Are out of the Body which is however what we have proposed to Illustrate To satisfie our Curiosity
soon as their Union with the Body ceaseth they begin to be nowhere but in God only because they have no more Relation but with God only there is nothing of an Intervention there is no more of a Partitionary Occasion and Condition between God and the Soul which determines or suspends the Influence of his Divine Action in us and by which we receive all the Idea's and all the Sentiments that we have CHAP. IV. What this Immediate Union is which our Souls have with God when they go out of the Body which makes us say that they go to God THUS it is that we ought to Conceive the Place where our Souls Are after they are gone out of the Body We must Conceive that they Are in God not only as S. Augustin saith as the World is in God For saith he you must Answer to him who shall Ask you where the World is That it is in God since there is no other Place out of the World where the World can be and since it is God alone who penetrates and environs it by the Immensity of his Operation but because Spirits have no other Place than their Relation of Dependence and Activity and that after the going out of the Body our Souls do no more depend either upon any Corporeal Nature or upon any Spiritual Nature which ought to be the Occasion or Condition of the Idea's with which they ought to be Enlightned or of the Sentiments with which they ought to be Affected but immediately from God only who gives them as he pleases to them It is God therefore who immediately Enlightens them it is God immediately who without being Determined by any thing Exterior Determines all the Sentiments which they have This is it which makes us evidently see the necessary Consequence and Connexion of the incontestable Principles which have been hitherto Establish'd for we must say nothing of our Souls nor of any Matter whatsoever but that which we know of it by a Certain Light And as we have no such Light by which we can judge that our Souls when they go out from the Dependence upon the Body ought to enter into another Servitude and another sort of Dependence upon any Created Nature so we have not any Reason to Conceive any other Relation of Dependence in our Souls which they ought to have when they are gone out of the Body than that which they have Essentially with God and by consequence we ought to say in Terms purely Natural That it is in God only that our Souls Are that moment that they go out of the Body We say it by the only Lights of Reason and we ought extreamly to rejoyce that Philosophy is agreed here with the Divine Word which gives us entirely the same Idea This Notion of the Immediate Union of our Souls with God Establish'd and Prov'd by Scripture For besides that the Scripture saith we return to God and into God it saith expresly also That our Habitation shall not be after this Life in Houses made with Hands or in Corporeal Spaces for this is what St. Paul means when he calleth it Domum non manufactam à Deo aeternam He tells us That there will be no more Sun and Moon which we might have need of because the Brightness of God will Enlighten us Civitas non eget Sole neque Luna ut luceant in ea nam Claritas Dei illuminabit eam Nox non erit illic non egebunt lumine lucernae neque lumine Solis quoniam Dominus Deus illuminabit illos It saith That after this Life we shall dwell with God and God with us Ecce Tabernaculum Dei cum hominibus habitabit cum eis It is very full of these sorts of Expressions and if we will reduce them to neat Idea's we shall find that they mean nothing else than what we have said That after the going out of our Bodies there is no more any thing betwixt God and our Souls to suspend or to diminish the Essential Union of them or to be the Occasional Cause of his Operation and of his Influence in Us but that it is only He immediately who determins our Thoughts our Idea's and all the Essential Acts of our New Life for this is what St. John means when he saith That in this New Life and New Estate after our Death it is God himself who shall Enlighten Us without our having any need either of the Sun or the Moon or of any other sort of Light which is at present but the Occasional Cause of his Illumination by which we See How we must understand That Holy Souls Ascend into Heaven and Criminal Souls Descend into Hell We must therefore conceive our Souls to be united immediately to God that moment that they go out of the Body and we must cut off all the Idea of any Corporeal Place in which we might conceive them to be after the fashion of Bodies For when the Scripture makes us conceive That the Saints are carried up into Heaven before the Corporeal Resurrection after which there will be a real Local Transportation of Bodies it would only make us conceive That God who Unites these Holy Souls to Jesus Christ and to His Glory makes himself and all Heaven wherein he Reigns to be as present to them as the Objects which we now see feel and perceive more nearly are at present to Us. We should very illy conceive Heaven wherein Jesus Christ Reigns in Body and in Soul if we should conceive it as including and containing God and discovering and manifesting Him to the Saints we must on the contrary saith St. Augustin Conceive Heaven and Jesus Christ also to be in God who contains All and who is contained of Nothing who manifests and discovers All and whom Nothing neither manifests nor discovers and Holy Souls are not in Heaven but in as much as they are in God in whom and by whom they are united and present to Heaven and to Jesus Christ by the lively and distinct Idea which they have of His glorious Presence like to those Idea's which the most present Objects give Us by their immediate Impression by which they strike our Senses For we must not go about to imagine That they are in Heaven by any sort of Extension or Corporeal Dimension and Local Circumscription after the manner of Bodies How the Souls of the Wicked are in God And we must Reason after the same manner concerning the Souls of the Wicked They are most really in Hell but this is because they are in God who fastens them there and unites them to the Fire of his Wrath as He doth the Souls of the Just to Jesus Christ and to that part of the Heavens where He Reigns There is indeed this great Difference That the Immediate Union which is between the Souls of the Just and God is an Union of Love of Tenderness and of Favour or good Liking and the Immediate Union which is between God and the
Reprobated Souls is a Union of Wrath of Enmity and of Implacable Vengeance They are in God and God say the Holy Fathers is their First and True Hell if it may be permitted to use an Expression so strong Not that there is not an Hell or a Corporeal Place wherein the Bodies of the Wicked Are to be shut up after the Resurrection and where we are to conceive their Souls before hand but we must say that they are in such a Place where God keeps the Fire of His Wrath continually Burning and they are there Effectively after the manner that Spirits are in Corporeal Places as really as it is possible God gives them perpetually the Idea thereof and by the Occasion of that Idea he Impresses on them a dolorous Sentiment of real Burning that is to say The same Sentiment which we have upon the Occasion of Elementary Fire when by its too great Activity it Disranges Agitates and violently Scorches up the Fibres of those Parts of our Bodies upon which it Acts and the Vertue and Efficacy of His Power by his Irrevocable Decree fixeth them there and is a Chain which no force can break and which no length of Duration can wear out but it is always truly said That it is in God who contains Hell as well as Heaven as St. Augustin further saith And who unites Impure Souls to Fire Everlasting in the manner as hath been said that properly and chiefly the Reprobate Souls Are as well as the Holy Souls They are only but Accessorily if I may so say either in Heaven or in Hell within these Material Places and Spaces of which God gives them that lively Idea which renders Them present to them CHAP. VI. Whether Jesus Christ be the Occasional Cause of these Idea's and Sentiments of Holy Souls out of the Body THAT which we have been saying concerning the Fire of Hell might give Occasion here to some to Imagin That it is not perhaps so certain as we would have them believe it to be That the Union of Souls with God and of God with the Souls is Immediate from the Moment that they go out of the Body because They may Imagine That as God unites Impure Souls to Hell Fire Establishing it as the Occasional Cause of that particular Torment and of that That Pain of Burning with which he Afflicts them with so he Establishes also an Occasional Cause of the agreeable Idea's and Sentiments which he gives to the Saints And there are some who would willingly conceive That the Soul of Jesus Christ might very well be the Occasional Cause of all the Ineffable Pleasures of Holy Souls so much the rather because the Analogy of the Divine Conduct inspires us to acknowledge an Occasional Cause of their Joy and their Felicity as there is an Occasional Cause of the Torment of the Reprobates But this ought not to shake a Truth so well Established and Proved as is that of the Immediate Union of God with our Souls and of our Souls with God from the Moment that they go out of our Body This Union is without doubt Immediate and without the Intervention of any thing and without Dependence upon any Occasional Cause for the Foundation and Essentiality of this New State For tho' there may be some Occasional Cause of the Accessory Pain of Reprobated Souls and of the Accessory Felicity of Holy Souls yet it is certain That there is none at all for their Essential Pain and their Essential Felicity St. Paul speaks it expresly of Holy Souls when he says That God shall be all in them Erit Deus Omnia in Omnibus The whole Scripture says so likewise when it says We shall see God Face to Face for these Expressions do import an Immediate Union of God with us Since it would not at all be to see him Face to Face but to see him thro' a Veil if we did only receive from him Idea's and Lights upon the occasion of some Things that was extraneous to Him Let then the Adorable Humanity of Jesus Christ be with all my heart an Occasional Cause of a thousand Joys and a thousand Accessory Felicities to Holy Souls as St. John says it expresly enough in the Description he makes us of our State out of our Bodies under the Name of the New City or of the Heavenly Jerusalem where the Holy Lamb gives a thousand Pleasures But as to the Foundation of this New State as to the Lights and Idea's the Sentiments and the Joys which constitute it and are the Essence of it they depend not upon any Occasional Cause they come from the Immediate Union of God with the Holy Souls Independently of all Exterior Occasional Determination God penetrates them with His Glorious Light and with the Intimate Impression of His Beatifick Presence and he fills them full with his Ineffable Joys and Pleasures How Impure Souls are united to Hell Fire We need only say The same thing in Proportion of Reprobate Souls Let then the Action of the Terrible Element which God makes to be Serviceable to His Anger be the Occasional Cause of the Accessory Pain of the Wicked for as the Impurity of the Reprobate Souls is a perpetual Object of Horror wherewith the Sovereign Purity of the Divine Eyes is sensibly hurt so it is not improbable That the Terrible Element which naturally Cleanses and Purifies all things should be likewise Employed as an Occasional Cause to a Particular Action by which the Eternal Sanctity applies it self to make them feel the Horror of their Impure State But that do's not at all hinder but that for the Ground of this unhappy State it should be intirely Independent of all sort of an Occasional Cause for it is certain That God is immediately united to the Reprobates by his Anger as He is immediately united by His Love to the Just Souls God is the Principal Fire which burns them and His Anger is the Fire and Brimstone that Feeds their Chief and Principal Torment We commonly conceive very ill That which we call The Pain of the Damned when we conceive it as a simple Privation or a Partition Wall betwixt God and the Reprobated Souls There may well be an Eternal Wall of Separation but there is also an Eternal and Immediate Union There is a Wall of Separation betwixt Gods Goodness and Sinners that is a Wall which stops all the Influences of Mercy of Grace and of Glory but it is likewise an Union which nearly attracts all the Characters of his Anger and his Vengeance God also makes himself to be felt as nearly and as immediately to the Reprobates as to the Saints The Unhappy see God Face to Face but it is only his Terrible Face which they see It is not that Illuminating Face which Enlightens the Just and wherein he promised to Moses to let him see and find All Good It is a Face Sparkling with Thunder which penetrates them with Fear and covers them with Horror and Darkness They are Eternally
himself and by which he Enlightens us in the Body and out of the Body by all the Idea's which he gives us There is the Wisdom which being once Incarnate by a Personal Union with a singular Humanity to be the Light of the World is Incarnated in some manner a thousand and a thousand times every moment by a Transient and Accidental Union with all Created Spirits to be their Actual Light This is that Eternal and Universal Idea from whence do spring all the particular Idea's which Enlighten us and it is certain that the Souls see either in it or by it for I will not here decide this Point all that which they see and all that which they know either in their present State of Union with the Body or in that of their Liberty and Separation from the Body And this lively and Eternal Idea from whence all the rest do arise serves instead of Memory and Species to Souls separated and disengag'd from Body for all that which we would that they should Recollect The Acts of Intellection Since the Souls have out of the Body the Exercise of the Faculties of Perceiving of Imagining and of Recollecting which they do not Exercise here but dependent upon the Body there is no doubt but that they Exercise by a greater Reason the Acts of the Inorganick Faculties Thus we may say without difficulty That they compare one thing with another That they conceive the Nature of Bodies by pure Intellection That thty form Universal Notions That they draw Consequences from thence That they Extend their Knowledge of Intellection I say Intellection for as to those Idea's whether confus'd or distinct which appertain to the Passive Faculty of the Soul whether Sensitive or Imaginative the Soul cannot Extend them or Augment them of her self either in the Body or out of the Body She hath no more as to that than what she receives but as to the Knowledge of Intellection it is certain That the Soul can perpetually Extend them Encrease them and Augment them in the Body and out of the Body I do not at all doubt but that Holy Souls have an Ineffable Pleasure in perpetually Extending their Knowledge of Intellection by Consequences and Lights always New which they draw from their Light and their Knowledge already acquir'd They always find something to discover in the Immense Spaces of Truth They always find something to be Enlightned of the Perfection of the Supream Essence which they always see All-entire and All expos'd to their Eyes and which they never know so perfectly but that there always remains something to be known and discover'd It is a Sea of which they can never sound the Bottom and in which they always make a Progress They always Drink of this Eternal and lively Spring and they are always Thirsty They Drain from thence every moment by a full and entire Knowledge of the Intuitive Vision but they always find it full and inexhaustible to Reason and Intellection They always find something to be known in the Foundation of its infinite Incomprehensibility and they do there always know something that 's New and something yet to be known The Reprobate Souls do also find by the Exercise of their Reasonings a thousand and a thousand new Despairs in their State of Reprobation and Misery The Prophets say that they always remain awake to the end that they may see always Evigilabunt ut videant semper and that do's well enough express the Exercise of the Active Faculty in unhappy Souls After having given an Account of the Perceptive Faculties we ought to take care to know how the Appetitive Faculties are out of the Body We are able to say in a very few words all that one can wish to know thereof and all that can certainly be decided of them CHAP. XII How the Will is in Just Souls and in those that are Reprobate THE Will which is that invincible and insurmountable Movement which pusheth on All-knowing Natures towards Good Is without doubt and Operates perpetually in Just Souls and in Reprobated Souls but it Is there and it Operates there very diversly The Just Souls have found the Good they sought They are arriv'd to the Term which they have so long pursu'd They embrace it They possess it They lose themselves They plunge themselves They drown themselves and They ingulph themselves in it They are arriv'd to the Place of their Repose to the Center of their Desires to the Port of their Wishes They have nothing more to follow or to search after In this fortunate State they possess and they taste with an inexplicable Tranquillity and an incomprehensible Satiety the Sovereign Good They are contented they are at quiet But this Tranquillity and this Satiety do's not lull them asleep nor ever cloy them The Will satisfi'd and arriv'd to its Term do's not cease proceeding on always It Operates and stirs up it self eternally in a most happy Repose These Holy Souls are always satiated and always a Hungry always at quiet and always stirr'd up They Will and Desire always that which they have they would always have more of it and being intimately and immediately united to the Sovereign Good and to all his Joys they are always still vehemently desirous of being more united to it Thus the Will hath its Exercise in Holy Souls and it hath it in all its Perfection without any of the Imperfections to which it is at present subject It is no more floting and wavering between the false Images of Good which the Imagination and the Senses present to it in the present State and between the true and solid Goods which Instinct and Reason which Philosophy and Religion propose to it It is happily drawn in by the Evidence or to say better by the presence and enjoyments of the Sovereign Good That kind of Liberty of being able to ballance it self between true and false Goods which we so illy conceive as a great perfection of Liberty in Man is an Imperfection which the Will is delivered from It cannot be turned aside by any Image of false Goods which do now in so deadly a manner turn aside our Wills it is a Repose an Acquiescency and an Eternal Satiating of the Soul in God and in the Assemblage of all the Goods which it finds in God which do not at all leave it the liberty of loving false Goods This is a perpetual Attraction always insurmountable and invincible This is a Charm always Almighty and a strong and robust Chain by which God draws them carries them away by force and fastens them to his Sovereign Beauty and to his Sovereign Delights The Will in the Reprobate Souls It is not at all after the same manner with Reprobate Souls The Will it is true remains in them They conserve that Movement which draws all Created Spirits and even the Increated towards Good for the Will is also in God but it is not in Him as the love of Good is in us but
the Body is Time so our Future State out of the Body is Eternity and there is the Principal clear Light by which we ought to Judge of the difference of our Present and of our Future State All may Change and all ought to have an End in out Present State but nothing ought to Change nor have an End in our Future State whether it be Happy or Unhappy This is as every one may see a fruitful Source and abounding with strong and pressing Consequences which ought to penetrate Us and to cause a General and Universal Change in our Idea's Our Present State which is called Time is likewise called the Present Life and our Future State the Life to come because that tho' in the two States it is only the same Soul which in each State is essentially Living yet it is very much to the purpose that we distinguish these two Lives by their divers Objects and Conditions altho' there be but one and the same Foundation of Life in the two States The Present Life doth not Exercise it self but upon the false and perishable Objects of Time and its deceitful and deceiving Oeconomy The Future Life Exercises it self upon Objects wholly True and wholly Solid The Present Life is a perpetual alternativeness of real Cares and Torments and of false Shadows of Repose of effective Business and of seeming Riches of the agitations and Fevers of the Passions and lucid Intervals of Reason a Theater of Eternal Mutations a Chain enterlinck'd with short and transitory Felicities and long and durable Miseries a rapid and precipitous Torrent which amongst some slender and false Pleasures and some but always bitter drops of Pleasure rouls on with cruel Pains and tormenting Briers A vehement and impetuous Whirlwind of hurry and Ambition Which after having much tormented and agitated the Body and the Soul after having raised a thousand Storms in the Heart and in the Spirit is dissipated into Air and Smoak The Future Life on the contrary is either but one Day all Uniform all united to everlasting Triumphs and Felicities or one eternal Night of Horror and Despair In fine Our Present State is also called the Present World and our Future State the World to come because our Present State ties us and affixes us to the Visible and Corporeal World much more sensibly than to the Spiritual and Intelligible World and our Future State ought to break off our Union and our Relation to the Visible World and to unite us wholly and solely to God and to the pure Spirits which make together with God that which we call the Intelligible World And all these Idea's ought equally to make us undervalue our Present State for such as it is and infinitely to esteem our Future State for that which it ought to be for whether we conceive our Present State under the Idea of Life under the Idea of Time or under the Idea of the Present and Visible World and on the contrary Whether it be that we conceive our Future State under the Idea of Eternity under the Idea of a Future Life or under the Idea of the World to come the one appears infinitely Precious and Essential and the other infinitely Despisable They ought moreover to make us conceive clearly the Crime and the going astray of our Love of Time of the Present Life and World and that of our indifference and forgetfulness for the Future Life the World to come and for Eternity There are some who wonder that the Gospel should be a perpetual Condemnation of the World And who would that the Divine Redeemer had more complaisance for our Appetites and our Inclinations thereto and that he had not found it so ill that we should love an Appearance so amiable and which hath so many Charms and Enchantments But they need only consider what this Love or the Love of the World is upon which he lets fall his so terrible Condemnations and Curses 'T is this World the Gospel condemns and thunders out so many Anathema's and Curses against It is this Love of Time of Life and of the present World which blinds which besots and enchants Men and makes them forget the World to come or the future State of Souls out of Bodies It is not at all that Assemblage of Elements which makes the World that is condemn'd It is not that Society of Men whether Natural Civil or Politick which is sometimes also call'd the World which is render'd Criminal But it is the Corruption of Hearts blinded and enchanted by the Figure of this transitory World from whence is form'd that over-ruling love of Vanity which makes Eternity to be forgotten which is that impure and detestable World which the Man-God High-Priest of future Happiness and Father and Monarch of the Age to come hath necessarily cry'd down to recall Men from this wandring of Vanity to the Essential Station of Eternity He could not but condemn the World in every Part in that Sence in its Conceits in its Opinions in its Maxims in its Customs in its Prosperities and in its Goods in its Joys and in its Pleasures because there could nothing flow from so impure a Source but what must be impure But this is not a Place to enlarge upon it it is enough to have compris'd the Judgment which we ought to make of our two States and the Preference which we ought to give to the one above the other we must now see the Obligations which come to us from thence CHAP. XV. The General Order betwixt Time and Eternity the present and the future Life and the present World and the World to come which follows from the Knowledge which we have been now acquiring THERE is without doubt a real Order of Duties between Time and Eternity the present Life and the future the present World and the World to come We will not take notice of it but it is certain that Time is indebted to Eternity the present Life to the future the present World to the World to come our present State to the future State Time is indebted to Eternity for it Is not but for the sake of Eternity And that which it owes to Eternity is that it ought to refer all unto it The Order of Time is that it should be carry'd back to the Point of Eternity All that is done in Time and which is not carry'd back to Eternity States with an absolute Power and with a Sovereign Authority to gain Battels to Conquer Provinces to make all the Neighbouring Thrones and Kingdoms shake around us to give what Motion and Impression we will to the Universe to reduce to an effective Reality that Idea of an Universal Monarchy the Vision and Chimerical Ambition of which we have reproached in the last Age in our Neighbors We believe that it is something very fine and it is true that nothing in Human Affairs is greater but even That if it be not in the Order of Eternity or if it be not made for
the End or Prospect and for the Scope of Eternity all that is nothing but a great and vast Folly but a great and frightful Wandring from the Mark and from the End a Childish Illusion and Amazement a Sport of Ants and a Triumph of those little Insects that we see roll and remove with so much Effort one Grain of Sand or one little Clod of Earth without any solid Profit We must redress our Conduct by those Lights and those Knowledges which discover to us equally our Duties and the Motives and Incentives to our Duties The Holy Fathers have said That the Eternity was a Light which is no sooner risen in a Spirit and in a Heart but that it causes more Instructions and more Lights of Duties to arise than there flows Rays from the Body and the Globe of the shining Sun who is all Light and all Rays and what sort of Expression soever this may be it doth not come up to the Truth Good God! what crowd of Rays doth not this beautiful Sun of Eternity spread over all our Ways What an Ocean of them doth not he pour upon us against our so Excessive and so Idolatrous an Esteem of the World and of its Vanity against our Adoring of vain Beauties against the Illusions of Riches against the Phantôme of Grandeur against the Chimera's of Fortune against the Enchanting and Bewitching of Pleasures against the Vanity of our Enterprises against the Inutility of our violent Transports against the Foolishness of our Leagues and Alliances against the Blindness of our Maxims and the Errors of our Opinions One of the Ancients said That the Contemplation of Wisdom did cause in the Spirit and in the Hearts of Men that which the fixed looking upon the Sun causes in Corporeal Eyes which being blinded with his great Light see not any thing more in the World But it is the Knowledge of the future State of our Souls out of the Body and in the Eternal World which marvellously causeth this Effect When we have well view'd the World to come and the new State of our Souls we see nothing in this World but Darknesses and Shadows but a great and vast Nothingness but a perpetual Illusion For this is not only a Light which obscures all the present Advantages and all the Objects of Human Passions but 't is a Day that annihilates them and effaces them entirely From thence there springs together with the clear Knowledge and Conviction of a thousand and a thousand Obligations a thousand and a thousand Incitements to Vigilance whether it be on the side of Fear or on the side of Hope The fear of the infinite Ills of the unhappy Fortune of this new Place doth not leave us any thing in the Pains of Vertue which we might fear nor any thing in the Pleasure of the World and of Sin with which we might be affected The short and little Interval which is between the Pleasure of Passions and of Sin and between these so affrighting Ills doth not permit us one single moment to have the least rest The Thunder rumbles over our Head and is ready to break upon us we touch the End of the present Life as it were with Foot and Hand we see it before us as a high and lofty Wall which stops our further Progress in spite of us and which presents it self like an unsurmountable Wall against which our exorbitant Desires ought to dash themselves in pieces and which ought to give a violent Interruption to our Covetousness and at the same time a large and vast Gate open to our Souls and to our Sins for to procure them the Passage to Eternity and to make them enter into a new Career of Unhappiness or of Felicity the sort of which ought to be decided by the Disposition and Situation of the Order or Disorder in which we die We see in the End of our Lives which is so near and so inevitable this Gate and this Wall all at once and the greatness of the Despair which we see so near us if we remain so carelesly Sleeping is so powerful an Incitement to Vigilance and at the same time so fruitful a Principle of so many Duties and of so many Obligations of Attention concerning our selves of Reflection of Deliberation and of Consultation concerning the End and Event of Lise concerning the Means and the Help of Innocence that if I would here give a particular Account of them I should be forc'd to make a great Volume whereas I will only shew and give an Overture to the particular Reflections of every one I cannot however but remark That the Duty of Vigilance or of the Cooperation of Salvation do's include them altogether and that it is together with the Misprisal of this present Life and the lively and ardent Desire of the future Life the most Essential Duty of the Order of Time and of Eternity which deserves here a particular Reflection CHAP. XVI The Duty of the Cooperation of Salvation and what Divine Predestination and what Divine Reprobation is on Gods part ALTHO' there are some amongst Men more particularly call'd to that which we call Salvation which is that which we mean by Divine Predestination Men more particularly favour'd and cherish'd for the happy End and the favourable Event of that Alternativeness of Happiness or Unhappiness which is determin'd in Time for Eternity Men with whose Salvation God charges himself as a particular Cause if you will for it is thus that some few conceive it Yet it is nevertheless certain and indubitable That all Men are generally Call'd to Salvation to that happy Lot of Eternity which Associates Man to all the Felicities of God Even those themselves which Men conceive as Reprobates antecedently as they say on Gods part who are those whom God abandons to the common Graces of the general Vocation and with whose Salvation he doth not charge himself or to say better he doth not meddle as to the Success and the Event but as Universal Cause This is call'd his Reprobation for on his part there is not any other which comes purely from him or which can be imputed to him Even those very Men I say which others conceive as Reprobated on Gods part are really Call'd to Salvation God generally prepares for them Means not only sufficient but abounding and he would withal his Heart that they should put no Obstacle to the sincere Intentions which he hath of Associating all Men to his Felicity and his Glory in his most happy Eternity It is true he will not use all his Power to surmount the Obstacles which Men may put there he will not charge himself with the making the Salvation of all Men to succeed at what Price soever it be which is the Sence in which St. Augustin says in some places That God will not Save all Men he will not charge himself with the Effective Success and Event of the Salvation of all which if he should do it would be impossible that
constrain'd but by Accident and by particular Rencounters for whether God gives them for Recompence of their Hope or the Attention of their Spirit as some conceive Or whether the Spirit makes them it self by the Light which it hath once received from God to discover the Essences of Things in separating that which is Essentially agreeable to them from those which they have not but by Accident and as it were Accessorily as well as the Proportions and Relations of Equality or Inequality which are in them as others have more willingly conceiv'd it It is hower always true to say That the Soul forms these Idea's and these Notions Since it is certain that she forms them at least by her Attention that is to say that she renders her self Attentive by her self and by her own proper Choice and Determination from whence there comes to her afterwards these Idea's and these Notions as hath been said already That God Acts perpetually in Us in our Perceptive Faculty and in our Appetitive Faculty After this particular Account I do not see that one could wish for any thing more to be fully instructed of the manner how our Souls Are and Operate in our Bodies unless it be that there is this general Reflection to spread over all that hath been said That it is God who is indubitably our Light and our Life who Operates in Us in all these divers Acts of our Perceptive Faculty and of our Appetitive Faculty in the same manner that he perpetually Acts in our Spirits and in our Hearts in our Spirits by the Act of his continual Illumination and in our Hearts by that of his insurmountable and invincible Attraction for that which we call in Us the Heart and the Will or the Appetitive Faculty is but a vehement and an invincible Desire by which God draws us to himself under the confused Idea of Good of Pleasure and of Happiness which are not to be found but in him And as all the Acts of the Perceptive Faculty are but only different Modifications of his Eternal Illumination which Operate in Us in an hundred divers manners So all these divers Acts of our Appetitive Faculty all these divers Resentments of our Passions are but the divers Modifications of that Desire and of that Motion of that Attraction and of that Ardor so enflamed with Pleasure and with Soveraign Good by which he perpetually draws us to himself which is the Principle of that Insatiability of Desires and of that perpetual Emptiness of Heart which nothing can satisfie and fill till it be filled by Himself Him of whom St. Paul hath so well said That a time will come and that He shall be All in All. Erit Deus Omnia in Omnibus It is in God that we See and Perceive all that we See and Perceive And it is in God that we Love and we Desire all that we Love and all that we Desire It is from God that we receive all our Light and it is in God that all the Motions of our Heart do center We know not at all that it is He that searcheth us but it is He who is the true Object and the true End of all our Pursuits as He is the Principle and the Mover of them It is He that drives us on and who Stimulates Us in all our Desires and it is He who is the Center and Term of all our Desires Our Poor Soul goes groping through all the Bodies which environs it searching for a Pleasure and Contentment which should satisfie it and it is God who is that Soveraign Pleasure which makes the Soul thus search after it Our Soul regards God by all its Being and by all its Motion and God regards the Soul as it were by all the Rays of his Infinite Essence She holds fast to God on every side if we may be permitted to say so God ties Himself to her by a thousand Regards of his Puissance of His Bounty and of His intimate and continual Influence We cannot separate our Souls from God nor God from our Souls We can know nothing clear of them but as far as we see and know God wholly united and wholly applied to her and that we do not see them all turned towards God either to receive from Him their Light or to dart themselves towards him to the end they may find in Him their Satisfaction and their Joy their Contentment and their Soveraign Felicity The Body doth a little interpose betwixt them but this is it which compleatly gives us Knowledge of our State upon Earth CHAP. XXII Man upon Earth and the visible Point wherein He ought to regard himself for to comprehend His State and his Duties of this present Life OUR Souls being the chiefest part of Us as we have seen that are in Relation to God Our Bodies are given to them for a Trial and for a Matter to Exercise themselves upon Our Souls are Essentially United to God and God removes them as it were from Him for a time placing them and keeping them in the Bodies to see if they can pierce the Vail of them and break thro' the Wall to go to Him by their Free and Voluntary Union which He would have them add to their Essential Union The Bodies which he gives them as it were a Burden and for a House upon the Rode of Eternity are the only thing that can stop them and make them to wander and be lost in that Course The Bodies which are to God in the Quality of the immediate Cause of the Union of Soul and Body the occasion of the determination of Idea's and Sentiments which He gives to the Souls are to the Souls the perpetual occasion of their Ruin and the obstacle of their Free and Voluntary Union with God Man is thereby a Composition of Body and of Soul which holds to God both by the one and by the other and to Men thro' God chiefly who unites us all in Himself one to the other as in the common Center and Principle of our Being and of our Life and afterwards by the Body which unites all of us again the one to the other by a thousand Relations either of Duties or of Businesses into a Natural Society first of all and then into a Politic Society Such is Man or to say better such is the Soul in the Body she is there equally a Tenant to the Visible World by the Body and to the Intelligible World by her Self a Tenant to God Essentially by her Self and accessorily and accidentally as it were to all the Visible World by the Body and even to created Intelligences to whom is committed some Intendance or some Direction over the Visible World who are able to Act upon her in Acting upon the Body She is there a Tenant for God as it were in a Inclosed Field and Amphitheater of the Body against the Flesh and the Senses and against all the Visible World c. Even against that Rebellious part of