have no bodies at all Not to add that at the Resurrection we become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though we have bodies then which is a shrewd intimation that the Angels have so too and that there are no created Spirits but have so Thirdly Mr. Baxter pag. 6. wrongfully blames the Doctor for being so defective in his studies as not to have read over Dr. Glisson De Vita Naturae and says he has talk'd with diverse high pretenders to Philosophie and askt their judgment of that Book and found that none of them understood it but neglected it as too hard for them and yet contemned it His words to Dr. More are these I marvel that when you have dealt with so many sorts of Dissenters you meddle not with so subtile a piece as that of old Dr. Glissons De Vita Naturae He thinks the subtilty of the Book has deterred the Doctor from reading it as something above his Capacity as also of other high Pretenders to Philosophie This is a Book it seems calculated onely for the elevation of Mr. Baxters subtile and sublime wit And indeed by the benefit of reading this Book he is most dreadfully armed with the affrightful terms of Quoddities and Quiddities of Conceptus formalis and fundamentalis of Conceptus adaequatus and inadaequatus and the like In vertue of which thwacking expressions he has fancied himself able to play at Scholastick or Philosophick Quarter-staff with the most doughty and best appointed Wits that dare enter the Lists with him and as over-neglectful of his flock like some conceited Shepherds that think themselves no small fools at the use of the Staff or Cudgil-play take Vagaries to Fairs or Wakes to give a specimen of their skill so he ever and anon makes his Polemick sallies in Philosophie or Divinity to entertain the Spectators though very oft he is so rapt upon the knuckles that he is forced to let fall his wooden Instrument and blow his fingers Which is but a just Nemesis upon him and he would do well to interpret it as a seasonable reproof from the great Pastor of Souls to whom we are all accountable But to return to his speech to the Doctor I will adventure to answer in his behalf That I marvel that whenas Mr. Baxter has had the curâ—…osity to read so many Writers and some of them sure but of small concern that he has not read that sound and solid piece of Dr. More viz. his Epistola altera ad V. C. with the Scholia thereon where Spinozius is confuted Which if he had read he might have seen Volum Philosoph Tom. 1. pag. 604 605 c. that the Doctor has not onely read that subtile Piece of Doctor Glissons but understands so throughly his Hypothesis that he has solidly and substantially confuted it Which he did in a faithful regard to Religion For that Hypothesis if it were true were as safe if not a saâ—…er Refuge for Atheists than the mere Mechanick Philosophie is And therefore you may see there how Cuperus brought up amongst the Atheists from his very childhood does confess how the Atheists now-a-daies explode the Mechanick Philosophie as not being for their turn and betake themselves wholly to such an Hypothesis as Dr. Glissons Vita Naturae But God be thanked Dr. H. More in the fore-cited place has perfectly routed that fond and foul Hypothesis of Dr. Glisson and I dare say is sorry that so good and old a Knight errant in Theologie and Philosophie as Mr Richard Baxter seems to be should become benighted as in a wood at the Close of his daies in this most horrid dark Harbour and dismal Receptacle or Randevouz of wretched Atheists But I dare say for him it is his ignorance not choice that has lodged him there The fourth Disingenuity of Mr. Baxter towards the Doctor is in complaining of him as if he had wronged him by the Title of his Answer to his Letter in calling it an Answer to a Psychopyrist pag. 2. 82. As if he had asserted that materiality of Spirits which belongs to bodies pag. 94. In complaining also of his inconsistency with himself pag. 10. as if he one while said that Mr. Baxter made Spirits to be Fire or material and another while said he made them not Fire or material But to the first part of this Accusation it may be answered That if it is Mr. Baxter that is called the Learned Psychopyrist how is the thing known to the world but by himself It looks as if he were ambitious of the Title and proud of the civil treating he has had at the hands of the Doctor though he has but ill repai'd his civility in his Reply And besides this there is no more harshness in calling him Psychopyrist than if he had called him Psycho-Hylist there being nothing absurd in Psychopyrism but so far forth as it includes Psycho-Hylism and makes the Soul material Which Psycho-Hylism that Mr. Baxter does admit it is made evident in the Doctors Answer Sect. 16. And Mr. Baxter in his Placid Collation as he mis-calls it for assuredly his mind was turbid when he wrote it pag. 2. allows that Spirits may be called Fire Analogicè and Eminenter and the Doctor in his Preface intimates that the sense is to be no further stretched than the Psychopyrist himself will allow But now that Mr. Baxter does assert that Materiality in created Spirits that belongs to bodies in the common sense of all Philosophers appears Sect. 16. where his words are these But custom having made MATERIA but especially CORPUS to signifie onely such grosser Substance as the three passive Elements are he means Earth Water Air I yield says he so to say that Spirits are not Corporeal or Material Which plainly implies that Spirits are in no other sense Immaterial than Fire and Aether are viz. than in this that they are thinner matter And therefore to the last point it may be answered in the Doctors behalf that he assuredly does nowhere say That Mr. Baxter does not say that Spirits are Material as Material is taken in the common sense of all Philosophers for what is impenetrable and discerpible Which is Materia Physica and in opposition to which a Spirit is said to be Immaterial And which briefly and distinctly states the Question Which if Mr. Baxter would have taken notice of he might have saved himself the labour of a great deal of needless verbosity in his Placid Collation where he does over-frequently under the pretence of more distinctness in the multitude of words obscure knowledge Fifthly Upon Sect. 10. pag. 21. where Mr. Baxters Question is How a man may tell how that God that can make many out of one cannot make many into one c. To which the Doctor there answers If the meaning be of substantial Spirits it has been already noted that God acting in Nature does not make many substances out of one the substance remaining still entire for then Generation would be Creation And
as if it were originally proper With your Logicians in those Definitions Materia est Causa ex qua res est Forma est Causa per quam res est id quod est Materia and Forma are Metaphorical words but use has made them in those Definitions as good as proper nor does any sober and knowing man move the least scruple touching those Definitions on this account To which you may add that Aristotles caution against Metaphors in defining things is to be understood of the Definition it self not the Definitum but Spirit is the Definitum here not the Definition Thirdly Intrinsecally indued with life tells us not that it is the Form Qualities and proper Accidents are intrinsecal Ans. Mr. Baxter I suppose for clearness sake would have had Form written over the head of this part of the Definition as the old bungling painters were wont to write This is a Cock and this a Bull or as one wittily perstringed a young Preacher that would name the Logical Topicks he took his Arguments from saying he was like a Shoemaker that offered his Shoes to sale with the Lasts in them I thought Mr. Baxter had been a more nimble Logician than to need such helps to discern what is the Genus in the Definition what the Differentia or Forma And for intrinsecally indued I perceive he is ignorant of the proper force and sense of the word Intrinsecùs which signifies as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 onely which implies that this life is from the intimate Essence of a Spirit quatenus a Spirit and therefore can be no common qualitie nor a facultie clarted on as Mr. Baxter fancies God may clart on Life the specifick Form of Spirit as he himself acknowledges on Matter though Materia quatenus Materia implies no such thing but I say Spiritus quatenus Spiritus does which is both the Source and proper Subject of life But it is the effect of an ill perturbed sight to fancie flaws where there are really none And to fancie that a Vis Vitalis or Power of living can belong to Materia Physica immediately which power must necessarily be the Result of an Essence specifically distinct from Physical Matter I think may justly be called clarting of this Power on a Subject it belongs not to nor is intrinsecal to it there being no new specifick Essence from whence it should spring Fourthly The Facultie of motion saies he is either a Tautologie included in Life or else if explicatorie of Life it is defective Ans. It is neither Tautological nor Exegetical no more than if a man should define Homo Animal rationale risibile Risibile there is neither Tautological though included in Animal rationale nor Exegetical it signifying not the same with Rationale And the Definition is as true with Risibile added to it as if omitted But the addition of Risibile being needless is indeed ridiculous But it is not Ridiculous to add the faculty of motion in this Definition of a Spirit because it is not needless but is added on purpose to instruct such as Mr. Baxter that an intrinsecal facultie of motion belongs to Spirit quatenus Spirit and indued with Life whenas yet he pag. 35. will not admit that self-motion is an indication of Life in the subject that moves itself although it is the very prime argument that his beloved and admired Dr. Glisson useth to prove that there is universally life in Matter But it is the symptome of an over Polemical Fencer to deny a thing merely because he finds it not for his turn In the mean time it is plain the Doctor has not added the facultie of motion rashly out of oversight but for the instructing the ignorant in so important a truth That there is no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but there is Life and Spirit This is so great a truth that the Platonists make it to be the main Character of Soul or Spirit to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as you may see in Proclus Fifthly No man saith he can understand that the Negative Immaterial by the terms includeth Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie Ans. No man that rightly understands himself but must conceive that Immaterial signifies an opposite or contrary condition to Material and he knowing as who is ignorant of it that the proper and essential characters of Material in substantia materialis is to be Impenetrable and Discerpible he will necessarily even whether he will or no discover that Immaterial which signifies the opposite to these in substantia immaterialis must denote Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Sixthly You do not say here saith he that they are the Form but elsewhere you do and the Form should be exprest and not onely vertually contained as you speak Ans. What would you have him in the very Definition it self which is so clear an one say This is the Genus this the Form as those bunglers I mentioned above writ the names of the Animals they had so badly drawn And that the Form should be exprest is true but it is sufficient it be exprest in such a comprehensive term as contains under it all that belongs to such a Species As when we have divided Vivens into Planta and Animal if we then define Animal to be Vivens sensu praeditum that one word sensus is sufficient because it reaches any Species of Animal and none but Animals And yet here the Doctor is not so niggardly as to pinch the expression of all the Form or Difference into that one word Immaterial whereby he here onely intimates Penetrability and Indiscerpibility but for fuller explication addeth Intrinsecally induced with Life and the facultie of motion But lastly For his elsewhere calling Penetrability and Indiscerpibility the Form of a Spirit he nowhere makes them the whole Form of a Spirit but makes the Logical Form or Differentia of a Spirit to be all that which he has expressed in this Definition viz. Immaterial which denotes Penetrability and Indiscerpibility and Intrinsecal life and motion And it is evident that when he calls this Differentia in his Definition Form that he does not mean the very specifick Substance or Essence whereby a Spirit is a Spirit but onely essential or inseparable Attributes which onely are known to us and which are only in an improper sense said to be the Form it self or specifick Nature They are onely the Result of the Form and Notes of an Essence or Substance Specifically distinct from some other Substance It is not so in substantial Forms as in Geometrical Forms or Figures as to Visibilitie or Perceptibilitie Dic tu formam hujus lapidis says Scaliger to Cardan Phyllida solus habeto But there are inseparable and essential Properties of a substantial Form necessarily resulting from the Form it self as there are in external Forms or Figures As for example from the form of a Globe which is a round Form defined from the equalitie of all lines from one point drawn
from whence we conclude distinct Species of things For 't is too coarse and slovenly to conceit that these are clarted on them but the Specifick Powers arise immediately and inseparably from the Specifick Nature of the thing else why might they not be other powers as well as these Twelfthly and lastly pag. 32. But do you verily believe saith he that Penetrability or Subtility is a sufficient Efficient or Formal cause of Vitalitie Perception and Appetite and so of Intellection and Volition I hope you do not Ans. I hope so of the Doctor too and before this I hoped that Mr. Baxter had more insight into the nature of a Formal cause and into the Laws of Logick than once to imagine that any one in his Wits could take Penetrability to be the Formal cause of Intellection and Volition For then every Spirit being Penetrable every Spirit even of a plant at least of the vilest Animalculum would have Intellection and Volition Nor for the same reason can any body think that Penetrability is a sussicient Esficient cause of Intellection and Volition Nor is it so much as the Essicient cause of Vitality Perception Appetite much less the Formal So infinitely is Mr. Baxter out in these things But the case stands thus The Substance of that species of things which we call a Spirit and is so by that intimate specifick Form which I named before this substance is the cause of Vitality in such a sense as the round Form of a Globe or any matter of that Form is quatenus of that Form the cause of its own rolling Mobilitie I say therefore that Vitality is as immediate and necessarie a Fruit or Effect of the real and intimate Form of a Spirit as that easie mobilitie is of the Form of a Sphere or Globe And such a kind of Vitality Vegetative Sensitive Intellective of such a Species of Spirit These kinds of Vitalities are the Fruits or Effects necessarie and immediate of the abovesaid so specificated Substances that is to say they are immediately Self-living and all of them Penetrable and Indiscerpible of themselves quatenus Spirits all these essential attributes arising from the simple essence or specificated substance of every Spirit of what Classis soever created according to its own Idea eternally shining in the Divine Intellect As for example In the Idea of a Plastick Spirit onely Penetrability Indiscerpibility and Plastick Vitality whereby it is able to organize Matter thus and thus are not three Essences clarted upon some sourth Essence or glewed together one to another to make up such an Idea But the Divine Intellect conceives in itself one simple specifick Essâ—…nce immediately and intrinsecally of it self indued with these essential Properties or Attributes So that when any thing does exist according to this Idea those three properties are as immediately Consequential to it and as eâ—…ectually as Mobility to the Form oâ—… a Globe It is the specifick Substance that is the necessary Source of them and that acts by them as its own connate or natural instruments sitted for the ends that the etâ—…rnal Wisdom and Goodness of God has conceivâ—…d or contrived them for For it is manifest that those essential Attributes of a Spirit contrarie to Matter are not in vain For whenas a Plastick Spirit is to actuate and organize Matter and inwardly dispose it into certain forms Penetrability is needful that it may possess the Matter and order it throughout As also that Oneness oâ—… Essence and Indiscerpibility that it may hold it together For what should make any mass of Matter one but that which has a special Oneness of Essence in it self quite diâ—…erent froâ—… that of Matter And fâ—…rasmuch as all Sâ—…uls are indued with the Plastick whether of Brutes or Men not to add the Spirits of Angels still there holds the same reason in all ranks that Spirits should be as well Penetrable and Indiscerpible as Vital And if there be any Platonick Niâ—… that have no Plastick yet Penetrability must belong to them and is of use to them if they be found to be within the verges of the Corporeal Universe and why not they as well as God himself and Indiscerpibility maintains their Supposital Unitie as it does in all Spirits that have to do with Matter and are capable of a vital coalescencie therewith But I have accumulated here more Theorie than is needful And I must remember that I am in a Digression To return therefore to the particular point we have been about all this while I hope by this time I have made it good that the Dr.'s Desinition of a Spirit is so clear so true so express and usefully instructive and that is the scope of the Doctors Writings that neither he himself nor any body else let them consider as much as they can will ever be able to mend it And that these affected Cavils of Mr. Baxter argue no defects or flaws in the Doctors Definition but the ignorance and impotencie of Mr. Baxters Spirit and the undue elation of his mind when notwithstanding this unexceptionableness of the Definition he pag. 82. out of his Magisterial Chair of Judicature pronounces with a gracious nod You mean well but all our Conceptions here must have their ALLOWANCES and we must confess their weakness This is the Sentence which grave Mr. Baxter alto supercilio gives of the Doctors accurate Definition of a Spirit to humble him and exalt himself in the sight of the populacie But is it not a great weakness or worse to talk of favourable allowances and not to allow that to be unexceptionable against which no just exception is found But to give Mr. Baxter his due though the extream or extimate parts of this Paragraph pag. 82. which you may fancie as the skin thereof may seem to have something of bitterness and toughness in it yet the Belly of the Paragraph is full of plums and sweet things For he saies And we are all greatly beholden to the Doctor for his so industrious calling foolish Sensualists to the study and notion of invisible Beings without which what a carcass or nothing were the world But is it not pity then while the Doctor does discharge this Province with that faithfulness and industrie that Mr. Baxter should disturb him in his work and hazzard the fruits and efficacie thereof by eclipsing the clearness of his Notions of Spiritual Beings for Bodies may be also invisible by the interposition or opposition of his own great Name against them who as himself tells the world in his Church-History has wrote fourscore Books even as old Dr. Glisson his Patron or rather Pattern in Philosophy arrived to at least fourscore Years of age And Mr. Baxter it seems is sor the common Proverb The older the wiser though Elihu in Job be of another mind who saies there I said Days should speak and multitude of Years should teach Wisdom But there is a Spirit in man and the Inspiration of the Almighty giveth him Understanding
it is plain that Justice and the execution thereof is for the best and that so Goodness not mere Will upon pretence of having a Supremacy over Goodness would be the measure of this sentencing such obdurate sinners to eternal punishment And this eternal punishment as it is a piece of vindicative Justice upon these obdurate sinners so it naturally contributes to the establishment of the Righteous in their Celestial Happiness Which this Opposer of Pre-existence objects somewhere if Souls ever fell from they may fall from it again But these eternal Torments of Hell if they needed it would put a sure bar thereto So that the Wisdom and Goodness also of God is upon this account concerned in the eternal punishments of Hell as well as his Justice That it be to the unreclaimable as that Orphick Hemistichium calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The fifth and last forcible Argument as he calls them for the proving the Soveraignty of Gods Will over his Goodness is this If Gods Goodness saith he be not under the command of his Will but does always what is best why did it not perpetuate the Station of Pre-existent Souls and hinder us if ever we were happy in a sublimer state from lapsing into these Regions of Sin and Death But who does not at first sight discern the weakness of this Allegation For it is plainly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an absurd thing and contrary to Reason to create such a species of Being whose nature is free and mutable and at the first dash to dam up or stop the exercise of that freedom and capacity of change by confining it to a fixt Station As ridiculous as to suppose a living Creature made with wings and feet and yet that the Maker thereof should take special care it should never flie nor go And so likewise that the mere making of such an Order of Beings as have a freedom of Will and choice of their Actions that this is misbecoming the Goodness of God is as dull and idiotical a conceit and such as implies that God should have made but one kind of Creature and that the most absolutely and immutably happy that can be or else did not act according to his Goodness or for the best Which is so obvious a Falshood that I will not confute it But it is not hard to conceive that he making such a free-willed Creature as the Souls of men simul cum mundo condito and that in an happy condition and yet not fixing them in that Station may excellently well accord with the Soveraignty of his Goodness nor any one be constrained to have recourse to the Supremacy of his Will over his Goodness as if he did it because he would do it and not because it was best For what can this freedom of Will consist in so much as in a temptableness by other Objects that are of an inseriour nature not so divine and holy as the other to which it were the security of the Soul to adhere with all due constancy and therefore her duty But in that she is temptable by other Objects it is a signe that her present enjoyment of the more Divine and Heavenly Objects are not received of her according to their excellency but according to the measure and capacity of her present state which though very happy may be improved at the long run and in an orderly series of times and things whether the Soul lapse into sin or no. For accession of new improvements increaseth Happiness and Joy Now therefore I say suppose several and that great numbers even innumerable myriads of pre-existent Souls to lapse into the Regions of Sin and Death provided that they do not sin perversely and obstinately nor do despight to the Spirit of Grace nor refuse the advantageous offers that Divine Providence makes them even in these sad Regions why may not their once having descended hither tend to their greater enjoyment when they shall have returned to their pristine Sâ—…tion And why may not the specifical nature of the Soul be such that it be essentially interwoven into our Being that after a certain period of times or ages whether she sin or no she may arrive to a fixedness at last in her heavenly Station with greater advantage to such a Creature than if she had been fixed in that state at first The thing may seem least probable in those that descend into these Regions of Sin and Mortality But in those that are not obstinate and refractorie but close with the gracious means that is offered them for their recoverie their having been here in this lower State and retaining the memorie as doubtless they do of the transactions of this Terrestrial Stage it naturally enhances all the enjoyments of the pristine selicitie they had lost and makes them for ever have a more deep and vivid resentment of them So that through the richness of the Wisdom and Goodness of God and through the Merits and conduct of the Captain of their Salvation our Saviour Jesus Christ they are after the strong conslicts here with sin and the corruptions of this lower Region made more than Conquerours and greater gainers upon the losses they sustained before from their own solly And in this most advantageous state of things they become Pillars in the Temple of God there to remain for ever and ever So that unless straying Souls be exceedingly perverse and obstinate the exitus of things will be but as in a Tragick Comedy and their perverseness and obstinacie lies at their own doors for those that finally miscarrie whose number this confident Writer is to prove to be so considerable that the enhanced happiness of the standing part of pre-existent Souls and the recovered does not far preponderate the infelicitie of the others condition Which if he cannot do as I am confident he cannot he must acknowledge That God in not forcibly fixing pre-existent Souls in the state they were first created but leaving them to themselves acted not from the Supremacy of his Will over his Goodness but did what was best and according to that Soveraign Principle of Goodness in the Deitie And now for that snitling Dilemma of this eager Opposer of Pre-existence touching the freedom of acting and mutabilitie in humane Souls whether this mutabilitie be a Specifick property and essential to them or a separable Accident For if it were essential says he then how was Christ a persect man his humane nature being ever void of that lapsabilitie which is essential to humanitie and how come men to retain their specifick nature still that are translated to Celestial happiness and made unalterable in the condition they then are To this I answer That the Pre-existentiaries will admit that the Soul of the Messiah was created as the rest though in an happie condition yet in a lapsable and that it was his peculiar merit in that he so faithfully constantly and entirely adhered to the Divine Principle incomparably above what was done by others
sent me I came forth from the Father and am come into the world again I leave the world and go to the Father Whereupon his Disciples said unto him Lo now speakest thou plainly and speakest no Parable But it were a very great Parable or Aenigm that one should say truly of himself that he came from Heaven when he never was there And as impossible a thing is it to conceive how God can properly be said to come down from Heaven who is alwaies present every where Wherefore that in Christ which was not God namely his Soul or Humane Nature was in Heaven before he appeared on Earth and consequently his Soul did pre-exist Nor is there any refuge here in the communication of Idioms For that cannot be attributed to the whole Hypostasis which is competent to neither part that constitutes it For it was neither true of the Humane Nature of Christ if you take away Pre-existence nor of the Divine that they descended from Heaven c. And yet John 3. 13 14. where Christ prophesying of his Crucifixion and Ascension saith No man hath ascended up to Heaven but he that came down from Heaven even the Son of man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who was in Heaven So Erasmus saith it may be rendred a Participle of the present tense having a capacity to signifie the time past if the sence require it as it seems to do here Qui erat in Coelo viz. antequam descenderat So Erasmus upon the place Wherefore these places of Scripture touching Christ being such inexpugnable Arguments of the Pre-existence of the Soul of the Messiah the Writer of No Pre-existence methinks is no where so civil or discreet as in this point Where he saies he will not squabble about this but readily yield that the Soul of Christ was long extant before it was incarnate But then he presently flings dirt upon the Pre-existentiaries as guilty of a shameful presumption and inconsequence to conclude the Pre-existence of all other Humane Souls from the Pre-existence of his Because he was a peculiar favourite of God was to undergo bitter sufferings for Mankind and therefore should enjoy an happy Pre-existence for an Anti-praemium And since he was to purchase a Church with his own most precious Bloud it was fit he should pre-exist from the beginning of the world that he might preside over his Church as Guide and Governour thereof which is a thing that cannot be said of any other soul beside This is a device which I believe the Pre-existentiaries good men never dreamt of but they took it for granted that the creation of all Humane Souls was alike and that the Soul of Christ was like ours in all things sin onely excepted as the Emperour Justinian in his Discourse to Menas Patriarch of Constantinople argues from this very Topick to prove the Non-pre-existence of our Souls from the Non-pre-existence of Christs he being like us in all things sin onely excepted And therefore as to Existence and Essence there was no difference Thus one would have verily thought to have been most safe and most natural to conclude as being so punctual according to the declaration of Scripture and order of things For it seems almost as harsh and repugnant to give Angelical Existence to a Species not Angelical as Angelical Essence For according to them it belongs to Angels onely to exist a mundo condito not to Humane souls Let us therefore see what great and urgent occasions there are that the Almighty should break this order The first is That he may remonstrate the Soul of the Messiah to be his most special Favourite Why That is sufficiently done and more opportunely if other souls pre-existed to be his corrivals But his faithful adhesion above the rest to the Law of his Maker as it might make him so great a Favourite so that transcendent priviledge of being hypostatically united with the Godhead or Eternal Logos would I trow be a sufficient Testimony of Gods special Favour to him above all his fellow Pre-existent Souls And then which is the second thing for his Anti-praemial Happiness though it is but an Hysteron Proteron and preposterous conceit to fancie wages before the work had he less of this by the coexistence of other souls with him or was it not rather the more highly encreased by their coexistencie And how oddly does it look that one solitary Individual of a Species should exist for God knows how many ages alone But suppose the soul of the Messiah and all other souls created together and several of them fallen and the Soul of the Messiah to undertake their recovery by his sufferings and this declared amongst them surely this must hugely inhance his Happiness and Glory through all the whole order of Humane souls being thus constituted or designed Head and Prince over them all Anâ—… thus though he was rejected by the Jews and despised he could not but be caressed and adored by his fellowsouls above before his descent to this state of humiliation And who knows but this might be part at least of that Glory which he says he had before the world was And which this ungrateful world denied him while he was in it who crucified the Lord of life And as for the third and last That the Soul of the Messiah was to pre-exist that he might preside over the Church all along from the beginning of it What necessity is there of that Could not the Eternal Logos and the Ministry of Angels sufficiently discharge that Province But you conceive a congruity therein and so may another conceive a congruity that he should not enter upon his Office till there were a considerable lapse of Humane Souls which should be his care to recover which implies their Pre-existence before this stage of the Earth And if the Soul of the Messiah united with the Logos presided so early over the Church that it was meet that other unlapsed souls they being of his own tribe should be his Satellitium and be part of those ministring Spirits that watch for the Churches good and zealously endeavour the recovery of their sister-souls under the conduct of the great Soul of the Messiah out of their captivity of sin and death So that every wâ—…y Pre-existence of other souls will handsomly fall in with the Pre-existence of the soul of the Messiah that there may be no breach of order whenas there is no occasion for it nor violence done to the Holy Writ which expressly declares Christ to have been like to us in all things as well in Existence as Essence sin onely excepted as the Emperour earnestly urges to the Patriarch Menas Wherefore we finding no necessity of his particular pre-existing nor convenience but what will be doubled if other Souls pre-exist with him it is plain if he pre-exist it is as he is an Humane soul not as such a particular soul and therefore what proves his soul to pre-exist proves others to pre-exist also Pag. 87.
variety may well seem an addition to the felicity of their state And the shadowyness of the Night may help them in the more composing Introversions of their contemplative mind and cast the soul into ineffably pleasing slumbers and Divine extasies so that the transactions of the Night may prove more solacing and beatifick sometimes than those of the day Such things we may guess at afar off but in the mean time be sure that these good and serious Souls know how to turn all that God sends to them to the improvement of their Happiness To the fourth Argument we answer That there are not a few reasons from the nature of the thing that may beget in us a strong presumption that souls recovered into their Celestial Happiness will never again relapse though they did once For first it may be a mistake that the Happiness is altogether the same that it was before For our first Paradisiacal Bodies from which we lapsed might be of a more crude and dilute Aether not so full and saturate with Heavenly glory and perfection as our Resurrection-body is Secondly The soul was then unexperienced and lightly coming by that Happiness she was in did the more heedlessly forgo it before she was well aware and her mind roved after new adventures though she knew not what Thirdly It is to be considered whether Regeneration be not a stronger tenour for enduring Happiness than the being created happie For this being wrought so by degrees upon the Plastick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with ineffable groans and piercing desires after that Divine Life that the Spirit of God co-operating exciteth in us when Regeneration is perfected and wrought to the full by these strong Agonies this may rationally be deemed a deeper tincture in the soul than that she had by mere Creation whereby the soul did indeed become Holy innocent and happie but not coming to it with any such strong previous conflicts and eager workings and thirstings after that state it might not be so firmly rooted by far as in Regeneration begun and accomplished by the operation of Gods Spirit gradually but more deeply renewing the Divine Image in us Fourthly It being a renovation of our Nature into a pristine state of ours the strength and depth of impression seems increased upon that account also Fifthly The remembrance of all the hardships we underwent in our lapsed condition whether of Mortification or cross Rancounters this must likewise help us to persevere when once returned to our former Happiness Sixthly The comparing of the evanid pleasures of our lapsed or terrestrial life with the fulness of those Joys that we find still in our heavenly will keep us from ever having any hankering after them any more Seventhly The certain knowledge of everlasting punishment which if not true they could not know must be also another sure bar to any such negligencies as would hazard their setled felicity Which may be one reason why the irreclaimable are eternally punished namely that it may the better secure eternal Happiness to others Eighthly Though we have our triple Vital Congruity still yet the Plastick life is so throughly satisfied with the Resurrection-body which is so considerably more full and saturate with all the heavenly richness and Glorie than the former that the Plastick of the soul is as entirely taken up with this one Bodie as if she enjoyed the pleasures of all three bodies at once Aethereal Aereal and Terrestrial And lastly Which will strike all sure He that is able to save to the utmost and has promised us eternal life is as true as able and therefore cannot fail to perform it And who can deny but that we in this State I have described are as capable of being fixed there and confirmed therein as the Angels were after Lucifer and others had faln And now to the fifth and last Argument against the state of Silence I say it is raised out of mere ignorance of the most rational as well as most Platonical way of the souls immediate descent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For the first Mover or stirrer in this matter I mean in the formation of the Foetus is the Spirit of Nature the great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Universe to whom Plotinus somewhere attributes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first Predelineations and prodrome Irradiations into the matter before the particular soul it is preparing for come into it Now the Spirit of Nature being such a spirit as contains Spermatically or Vitally all the Laws contrived by the Divine Intellect for the management of the Matter of the World and of all Essences else unperceptive or quatenus unperceptive for the good of the Universe we have all the reason in the world to suppose this Vital or Spermatical Law is amongst the rest viz. That it transmit but one soul to one prepared conception Which will therefore be as certainly done unless some rare and odd casualty intervene as if the Divine Intellect it self did do it Wherefore one and the same Spirit of Nature which prepares the matter by some general Predelineation does at the due time transmit some one soul in the state of Silence by some particularizing Laws that fetch in such a soul rather than such but most sure but one unless as I said some special casualty happen into the prepared Matter acting at two places at once according to its Synenergetical vertue or power Hence therefore it is plain that there will be no such clusters of Foetus's and monstrous deformities from this Hypothesis of the souls being in a state of Silence But for one to shuffle off so fair a satisfaction to this difficulty by a precarious supposing there is no such Being as the Spirit of Nature when it is demonstrable by so many irrefragable Arguments that there is is a Symptome of one that philosophizes at random not as Reason guides For that is no reason against the existence of the Spirit of Nature because some define it A Substance incorporeal but without sense and animadversion c. as if a spirit without sense and animadversion were a contradiction For that there is a Spirit of Nature is demonstrable though whether it have no sense at all is more dubitable But through it have no sense or perception it is no contradiction to its being a Spirit as may appear from Dr. H. Mores Brief Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit To which I direct the Reader for satisfaction I having already been more prolix in answering these Arguments than I intended But I hope I have made my presage true that they would be found to have no force in them to overthrow the Hypothesis of a threefold Vital Congruity in the Plastick of the soul. So that this fourth Pillar for any execution they can do will stand unshaken Pag. 103. For in all sensation there is corporeal motion c. And besides there seems an essential relation of the Soul to Body according to Aristotles definition thereof he
defining it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which actuates the boby Which therefore must be idle when it has nothing to actuate as a Piper must be silent as to piping if he have no Pipe to play on Chap. 14. pag. 113. The ignobler and lower properties or the life of the body were languid and remiss vâ—… as to their proper exercises or acting for themselves or as to their being regarded much by the Soul that is taken up with greater matters or as to their being much relished but in subserviency to the enjoyment of those more Divine and sublime Objects as the Author intimates towards the end of his last Pillar Pag. 114. And the Plastick had nothing to do but to move this passive and easie body c. It may be added and keep it in its due form and shape And it is well added accordingly as the concerns of the higher faculties required For the Plastick by reason of its Vital Union with the vehicle is indeed the main instrument of the motion thereof But it is the Imperium of the Perceptive that both excites and guides its motion Which is no wonder it can do they being both but one soul. Pag. 114. To pronounce the place to be the Sun c. Which is as rationally guessed by them as if one should fancy all the Fellows and Students Chambers in a Colledge to be contained within the area of the Hearth in the Hall and the rest of the Colledge uninhabited For the Sun is but a common Focus of a Vortex and is less by far to the Vortex than the Hearth to the Ichnographie of the whole Colledge that I may not say little more than a Tennis-ball to the bigness of the earth Pag. 115. Yet were we not immutaâ—…ly so c. But this mutability we were placed in was not without a prospect of a more full confirmation and greater accumulation of Happiness at the long run as I intimated above Pag. 116. We were made on set purpose defatigable that so all degrees of life c. We being such Creatures as we are and finite and taking in the enjoyment of those infinitely perfect and glorious Objects onely pro modulo nostro according to the scantness of our capacity diversion to other Objects may be an ease and relief From whence the promise of a glorified body in the Christian Religion as it is most grateful so appears most rational But in the mean time it would appear most irrational to believe we shall have eyes and ears and other organs of external sense and have no suitable Objects to entertain them Pag. 117. Yea methinks 't is but a reasonable reward to the body c. This is spoken something popularly and to the sense of the vulgar that imagine the body to feel pleasure and pain whenas it is the soul onely that is perceptive and capable of feeling either But 't is fit the body should be kept in due plight for the lawful and allowable corporeal enjoyments the soul may reap therefrom for seasonable diversion Pag. 117 That that is executed which he hath so determined c. Some fancy this may be extended to the enjoying of the fruits of the Invigouration of all the three Vital Congruities of the Plastick and that for a soul orderly and in due time and course to pass through all these dispensations provided she keep her self sincere towards her Maker is not properly any lapse or sin but an harmless experiencing all the capacities of enjoying themselves that God has bestowed upon them Which will open a door to a further Answer touching the rest of the Planets being inhabited namely That they may be inhabited by such kind of souls as these who therefore want not the Knowledge and assistance of a Redeemer And so the earth may be the onely Nosocomium of sinfully lapsed souls This may be an answer to such far-fetched Objections till they can prove the contrarie Pag. 118. Adam cannot withstand the inordinate appetite c. Namely after his own remissness and heedlessness in ordering himself he had brought himself to such a wretched weakness Pag. 121. The Plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken c. There are three Vital Congruities belonging to the Plastick of the Soul and they are to awake orderly that is to operate one after another downward and upward that is to say In the lapse the Aereal follows the Aethereal the Terrestrial the Aereal But in their Recovery or Emergency out of the lapse The Aereal follows the Terrestrial and the Aethereal the Aereal But however a more gross turgency to Plastick operation may haply arise at the latter end of the Aereal Period which may be as it were the disease of the soul in that state and which may help to turn her out of it into the state of Silence and is it self for the present silenced therewith For where there is no union with bodie there is no operation of the Soul Pag. 121. For it hath an aptness and propensity to act in a Terrestrial body c. This aptness and fitness it has in the state of Silence according to that essential order of things interwoven into its own nature and into the nature of the Spirit of the World or great Archeus of the Universe according to the eternal counsel of the Divine Wisdom By which Law and appoyntment the soul will as certainly have a fitness and propensity at its leaving the Terrestrial body to actuate an Aereal oâ—…e Pag. 122. Either by mere natural Congruity the disposition of the soul of the world or some more spontaneous agent c. Natural Congruity and the disposal of the Plastick soul of the world which others call the Spirit of Nature may be joyned well together in this Feat the Spirit of Nature attracting such a soul as is most congruous to the predelineated Matter which it has prepared for her But as for the spontaneous Agent I suppose he may understand his ministry in some supernatural Birth Unless he thinks that some Angels or Genii may be imployed in putting souls into bodies as Gardiners are in setting Pease and Beans in the beds of Gardens But certainly they must be no good Genii then that have any hand in assisting or setting souls in such wombs as have had to do with Adulterie Incest and Buggery Pag. 123. But some apish shews and imitations of Reason Vertue and Religion c. The Reason of the unregenerate in Divine things is little better than thus and Vertue and Religion which is not from that Principle which revives in us in real Regeneration are though much better than scandalous vice and profaness mere pictures and shadows of what they pretend to Pag. 123. To its old celestial abode c. For we are Pilgrims and strangers here on the earth as the holy Patriarchs of old declared And they that speak such things saith the Apostle plainly shew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they seek their native country for so 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies And truly if they had been mindful of that earthly country out of which they came they might saith he have had opportunity of returning But now they desire a better to wit an heavenly Hebr. 11. Pag. 124. But that they step forth again into Airy Vehicles This is their natural course as I noted above But the examples of Enoch and Elias and much more of our ever Blessed Saviour are extraordinary and supernatural Pag. 125. Those therefore that pass out of these bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoyled weakened or orderly unwound according to the tenour of this Hypothesis c. By the favour of this ingenious Writer this Hypothesis does not need any such obnoxious Appendage as this viz. That souls that are outed these Terrestrial bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoiled weakned or orderly unwound return into the state of Inactivity But this is far more consonant both to Reason and Experience or Storie that though the Terrestrial Congruity be still vigorous as not having run out it may be the half part no not the tenth part of its Period the soul immediately upon the quitting of this body is invested with a bodie of Air and is in the state of Activity not of Silence in no sense For some being murdered have in all likelyhood in their own persons complained of their murderers as it is in that story of Anne Walker and there are many others of the same nature And besides it is far more reasonable there being such numerous multitudes of silent souls that their least continuance in these Terrestrial bodies should at their departure be as it were a Magical Kue or Tessera forthwith to the Aereal Congruity of life to begin to act its part upon the ceasing of the other that more souls may be rid out of the state of Silence Which makes it more probable that every soul that is once besmeared with the unctuous moisture of the Womb should as it were by a Magick Oyntment be carried into the Air though it be of a still-born Infant than that any should return into the state of Silence or Inactivity upon the pretence of the remaining vigour of the Terrestrial Congruity of life For these Laws are not by any consequential necessity but by the free counsel of the Eternal Wisdom of God consulting for the best And therefore this being so apparently for the best this Law is interwoven into the Spirit of the World and every particular soul that upon the ceasing of her Terrestrial Union her Aereal Congruity of life should immediately operate and the Spirit of Nature assisting she should be drest in Aereal robes and be found among the Inhabitants of those Regions If souls should be remanded back into the state of Silence that depart before the Terrestrial Period of Vital Congruity be orderly unwound so very few reach the end of that Period that they must in a manner all be turned into the state of Inactivity Which would be to weave Penelope's Web to do and undo because the day is long enough as the Proverb is whenas it rather seems too short by reason of the numerosity of Silent souls that expect their turn of Recovery into Life Pag. 125. But onely follow the clew of this Hypothesis The Hypothesis requires no such thing but it rather clashes with the first and chietest Pillar thereof viz. That all the Divine designs and actions are laid and carried on by Infinite Goodness And I have already intimated how much better it is to be this way that I am pleading for than that of this otherwise-ingenious Writer Pag. 125. Since by long and hard exercise in this body the Plastick Life is well taâ—…ned and debilitated c. But this is not at all necessary no not in those souls whose Plastick may be deemed the most rampant Dis-union from this Terrestrial body immediately tames it I mean the Terrestrial Congruity of Life and its operation is stopt as surely as a string of a Lute never so smartly vibrated is streightways silenced by a gentle touch of the finger and another single string may be immediately made to sound alone while the other is mute and silent For I say these are the free Laws of the Eternal Wisdom but fatally and vitally not intellectually implanted in the Spirit of Nature and in all Humane Souls or Spirits The whole Universe is as it were the Automatal Harp of that great and true Apollo and as for the general striking of the strings and stopping their vibrations they are done with as exquisite art as if a free intellectual Agent plaid upon them But the Plastick powers in the world are not such but onely Vital and Fatal as I said before Pag. 126. That an Aereal body was not enough for it to display its force upon c. It is far more safe and rational to say that the soul deserts her Aereal Estate by reason that the Period of the Vital Congruity is expired which according to those fatal Laws I spoke of before is determined by the Divine Wisdom But whether a soul may do any thing to abbreviate this Period and excite such symptoms in the Plastick as may shorten her continuance in that state let it be left to the more inquisitive to define Pag. 128. Where is then the difference betwixt the just and the wicked in state place and body Their difference in place I have sufficiently shewn in my Answer to the third Argument against the triple Congruity of Life in the Plastick of Humane Souls how fitly they may be disposed of in the Air. But to the rude Buffoonry of that crude Opposer of the Opinion of Pre-existence I made no Answer It being methinks sufficiently answered in the Scholia upon Sect. 12. Cap. 3. Lib. 3. of Dr. H. Mores Immortalitas Animae if the Reader think it worth his while to consult the place Now for State and Body the difference is obvious The Vehicle is of more pure Air and the Conscience more pure of the one than of the other Pag. 130. For according to this Hypothesis the gravity of those bodies is less because the quantity of the earth that draws them is so c. This is an ingenious invention both to salve that Phaenomenon why Bodies in Mines and other deep subterraneous places should seem not so heavy nor hard to lift there as they are in the superiour Air above the earth and also to prove that the crust of the earth is not of so considerable a thickness as men usually conceive it is I say it is ingenious but not so firm and sure The Quick-silver in a Torricellian Tube will sink deeper in an higher or clearer Air though there be the same Magnetism of the earth under it that was before But this is not altogether so fit an illustration there being another cause than I drive at conjoyned thereto But that which I drive at is sufficient of it self to salve this Phaenomenon
Air to him and to some wicked or unregenerate souls promiscuously with him though there be subterraneous Receptacles for the worst and most rebellious of them and not send them all packing thither Pag. 132. That they are driven into those Dungeons by the invisible Ministers of Justice c. He speaks of such Dungeons as are in the broken Caverns of the Farth which may be so many vexatious Receptacles for rebellious Spirits which these invisible Ministers of Justice may drive them into and see them commited and being confined there upon far severer penalties if they submit not to that present punishment which they are sentenced to they will out of fear of greater Calamity be in as safe custody as if they were under lock and key But the most dismal penalty is to be carried into the Abyss the place of the Rephaim I above described This is a most astonishing commination to them and they extreamly dread that sentence Which makes the Devils Luke 8. 31. so earnestly beseech Christ that he would not command them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to pack away into the Abyss This punishment therefore of the Abyss where the Rephaim or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 groan is door and lock that makes them whether they will or no submit to all other punishments and confinements on this side of it Michael Psellus takes special notice how the Daemons are frighted with the menaces 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the menaces of the sending them away packing into the Abyss and subterraneous places But these may signifie no more than Cavities that are in the ruptues of the earth and they may steal out again if they will adventure unless they were perpetually watched which is not so probable Wherefore they are imprisoned through fear of that great horrid Abyss above described and which as I said is an iron lock and door of brass upon them But then you will say What is the door and lock to this terrible place I answer The inviolable Adamantine Laws of the great Sandalphon or Spirit of the Universe When once a rebellious Spirit is carried down by a Minister of Justice into this Abyss he can no more return of himself than a man put into a Well fortie fathoms deep is able of himself to ascend out of it The unlapsed Spirits it is their priviledge that their Vehicles are wholly obedient to the will of the Spirit that inactuates them and therefore they have free ingress and egress every where and being so little passive as they are and so quick and swift in their motions can perform any Ministries with little or no incommodation to themselves But the Vehicles of lapsed Spirits are more passive and they are the very chains whereby they are tyed to certain Regions by the iron Laws of the Spirit of the Universe or Hylarchick Principle that unfailingly ranges the Matter everie where according to certain orders Wherefore this Serjeant of Justice having once deposited his Prisoner within the Concave of the Aqueous Orb he will be as certainly kept there and never of himself get out again as the man in the bottom of the Well above-mentioned For the Laws of the same Spirit of Nature that keeps the man at the bottom of the Well that everie thing may be placed according to the measure of its consistencie will inhibit this Captive from ever returning to this Superiour Air again because his Vehicle is though foul enough yet much thinner than the Water and there will be the the same ranging of things on the Concave side of the Aqueous Orb as there is on the Convex So that if we could suppose the Ring about Saturn inhabited with any living creatures they would be born toward the Concave of the Ring as well as toward the Convex and walk as steadily as we and our Antipodes do with our feet on this and that side of the earth one against another This may serve for a brief intimation of the reason of the thing and the intelligent will easily make out the rest themselves and understand what an ineluctable fate and calamity it is to be carried into that duskish place of dread and horrour when once the Angel that has the Keys of the Abyss or bottomless pit has shut a rebellious Spirit up there chained him in that hideous Dungeon Pag. 133. Others to the Dungeon and some to the most intolerable Hell the Abyss of fire The Dungeon here if it were understood with an Emphasis would most properly denote the Dungeon of the Rephaim of which those parts nearest the Centre may be called the Abyss of Fire more properly than any Vulcano's in the Crust of the earth Those souls therefore that have been of a more fierce and fiery nature and the Causers of Violence and Bloodshed and of furious Wars and cruel Persecutions of innocent and harmless men when they are committed to this Dungeon of the Rephaim by those inevitable Laws of the subteraqueous Sandalphon or Demogorgon if you will they will be ranged nearest the Central Fire of this Hellish Vault For the Vehicles of souls symbolizing with the temper of the mind those who are most haughty ambitious fierce and fiery and therefore out of Pride and contempt of others in respect of themselves and their own Interest make nothing of shedding innocent bloud or cruelly handling those that are not for their turn but are faithful adherers to their Maker the Vehicles of these being more thin and fiery than theirs who have transgressed in the Concupiscible they must needs surmount such in order of place and be most remote from the Concave of the Aqueous Orb under which the Rephaim groan and so be placed at least the nearest to that Abyss of Fire which our Author terms the most intolerable Hell Pag. 133. Have a strict and careful eye upon them to keep them within the confines of their Goal c. That this as it is a more tedious Province so a needless one I have intimated above by reason that the fear of being carried into the Abyss will effectually detain them in their confinements From whence if they be not released in time the very place they are in may so change their Vehicles that it may in a manner grow natural to them and make them as uncapable of the Superiour Air as Bats and Owls are as the ingenious Author notes to bear the Suns Noon-day-Beams or the Fish to live in these thinner Regions Pag. 134. Under severe penalties prohibit all unlicensed excursions into the upper World though I confess this seems not so probable c. The Author seems to reserve all the Air above the earth to good souls onely and that if any bad ones appear it must be by either stealth or license But why bad souls may not be in this lower Region of the Air as well as Devils I understand not Nor do I conceive but that the Kingdom of Darkness may make such Laws amongst themselves as may tend to the
Atoms then every created Spirit especially particular ones are so many subtil living Puppets made up of spiritual rags and clouts But if God can divide them neither into spiritual Atoms nor larger spiritual parcels he can't divide them at all And so according to what the Doctor contends for they will be as they ought to be absolutely indiscerpible I omit here to take notice of another absurdity of Mr. Baxters That though the substance of a Spirit he will have to be divisible yet he will have the form indivisible pag. 50 99. and yet both parts to be Spirit still which implies a contradiction For then one of the parts will be without the form of a Spirit and consequently be no Spirit and yet be a Spirit according to Mr. Baxter who makes Spirits divisible into parts of the same denomination as when water is divided into two parts each part is still water pag. 53. Ninthly That which occurrs pag. 48. is a gross Disingenuity against the Doctor where Mr. Baxter says And when you make all Spirits to be Souls and to animate some matter you seem to make God to be but Anima Mundi How unfair and harsh is this for you Mr. Baxter who has been so tenderly and civilly handled by the Doctor in his Answer to your Letter he constantly hiding or mollifying any thing that occurred therein that might overmuch expose you to represent him as a savourer of so gross a Paradox as this That there is no God but an Anima Mundi which is the Position of the Vaninian Atheists which himself has expresly confuted in his Mystery of Godliness and declared against lately in his Advertisements on Jos. Glanvils Letter to himself in the second Edition of Saducismus Triumphatus This looks like the breaking out of unchristian rancour in a Reply which bears the Specious Title of a Placid Collation Which is yet exceedingly more aggravable for that this odious Collection is not made from any words of the Doctor but from a siction of Mr. Baxter For the Doctor has nowhere Written nor ever thought that all Spirits but only all Created Spirits might probably be Souls that is to say actuate some matter or other And those words are in his Preface to his Answer to the Letter of the Psychopyrist as I noted before I might reckon up several other Disingenuities of Mr. Baxters towards the Doctor in this his Placid Collation but I have enumerated enough already to weary the Reader and I must remember I am but in a Digression I shall onely name one Disingenuity more which was antecedent to them all and gave occasion both to Mr. Baxters Letter and to the Doctors Answer thereto and to this Reply of Mr. Baxter And that was That Mr. Baxter in his Methodus Theologiae as he has done also in a little Pamphlet touching Judge Hales without giving any reasons which is the worst way of traducing any man or his sentiments slighted and slurred those two essential Attributes of a Spirit Penetrability and Indiscerpibility which for their certain Truth and usefulness the Doctor thought fit to communicate to the World But forasmuch as Mr. Baxter has in this his Reply produced his Reasons against them I doubt not but the Doctor will accept it for an amends And I as I must disallow of the Disingenuity of the omission before yet to be just to Mr. Baxter I must commend his discretion and judgment in being willing to omit them they appearing to me now they are produced so weak and invalid But such as they are I shall gather them out of his Reply and bring them into view First then pag. 13. It is alledged That nothing hath two forms univocally so called But if Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie be added to the Virtus Vitalis to the Vital Power of a Spirit it will have two forms Therefore Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie are to be omitted in the notion of a Spirit See also p. 22. Secondly pag. 14. Penetrable and Indiscerpible can be no otherwise a form to Spirits than Impenetrable and Discerpible are a form to Matter But Impenetrable is onely a modal Conceptus of Matter and Discerpible a Relative notion thereof and neither one nor both contrary to Virtus vitalis in a Spirit Thirdly pag. 14. He sees no reason why Quantity and the Trina Dimensio may not as well be part of the form of Matter as Discerpibilitie and Impenetrabilitie Fourthly pag. 15 16. Nothing is to be known without the mediation of Sense except the immediate sensation itself and the acts of intellection and volition or nolition and what the Intellect inferreth of the like by the perception of these Wherefore as to the modification of the substance of Spirits which is contrary to Impenetrabilitie and Divisibilitie I may grope says he but I cannot know it positively for want of sensation Fifthly pag. 16 17. If Indiscerpibilitie be the essential character of a Spirit then an Atom of matter is a Spirit it being acknowledged to be Indiscerpible Wherefore Indiscerpibilitie is a false character of a Spirit Sixthly pag. 17 18. Penetrable whether actively or passively understood can be no proper Character of a Spirit forasmuch as Matter can penetrate a Spirit as well as a Spirit Matter it possessing the same place See pag. 23. Seventhly pag. 40 41. Immaterialitie says he Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie in your own judgment I think are none of them proper to Spirit For they are common to diverse Accidents in your account viz. to Light Heat Cold. And again in his own words Eighthly pag. 77. If your Penetrabilitie says he imply not that all the singular Spirits can contract themselves into a Punctum yea that all the Spirits of the world may be so contracted I find it not yet sufficiently explained See also pag. 52 78 89 90. Ninthly pag. 50. Seeing says he you ascribe Amplitude Qâ—…antitie and Dimensions and Logical Materialitie to the Substantialitie of Spirits I see not but that you make them Intellectually divisible that is that one may think of one part as here and another there And if so though man cannot separate and divide them if it be no contradiction God can Tenthly and lastly pag. 90. The putting of Penetrability and Indiscerpibility into the notion of a Spirit is needless and hazardous it being sufficient to hold that God hath made Spirits of no kind of parts but what do Naturally abhor Separation and so are inseparable unless God will separate them and so there is no fear of losing our Personality in the other State But Penetrability and Indiscerpibility being hard and doubtful words they are better left out lest they tempt all to believe that the very Being of Spirits is as doubtful as those words are Thus have I faithfully though briefly brought into view all Mr. Baxters Arguments against the Penetrability and Indiscerpibility of Spirits which I shall answer in order as they have been recited To the first therefore I say that the Doctors Definition of
yet harder And if God have made a Creature so stongly inclined to the unitie of all the parts that no Creature can separate them but God onely as if a Soul were such it is plain that such a Being need not fear a dissolution by Separation of parts Ans. This is well said for an heedless and credulous multitude but this is not to Philosophize but to tell us that God works a perpetual Miracle in holding the small tenuious parts of the Soul together more pure and fine than those of Fire or Aether but here is no natural cause from the thing it self offered unless it be that in every Substance or rather Matter the parts according to the tenuitie and puritie of the Substance incline to a closer Contact and inseparable Union one with another which is a conceit repugnant to experience and easily confuted by that ordinarie accident of a Spinner hanging by its weak thread from the brim of ones Hat which seeble line yet is of force enough to divide the Air and for that very reason because it consists of thinner parts than Water or Earth As also we can more easily run in the Air than wade in the Water for the very same reason These things are so plain that they are not to be dwelt upon But Mr. Baxter is thus pleased to shew his Wit in maintaining a weak Cause which I am perswaded he has not so little judgment as that he can have any great confidence in And therefore in sundry places he intimates that he does allow or at least not deny but that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie is contained in the Notion of a Spirit but not as part of the Conceptus formalis but as Dispositio or Modus substantiae but yet withal such a Dispositio as is essential to the substance that with the Conceptus formalis added makes up the true Notion of a Spirit See pag. 30 32 61 85. And truly if Mr. Baxter be in good earnest and sincere in this agreement without all equivocation that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie is Essential to the true Notion of a Spirit onely they are to be admitted as Dispositio Substantiae not as Pars Formae I confess as he declares pag. 94. That the difference betwixt him and the Doctor lyeth in a much smaller matter than was thought and the Doctor I believe will easily allow him to please his own fancy in that But then he must understand the terms of Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie in the Doctors sense viz of a Spirits penetrating not inter partes but per partes materiae and possessing the same space with them And of an Indiscerpibleness not arising from thinner and thinner parts of matter as he imagines Air to be more hardly discerpible than Earth or Water forasmuch as by reason of its thinness its parts lye closer together as was above noted but from the immediate essential Oneness of substance in a Spirit according to the true Idea of an Indiscerpible Being in the Divine Intellect which whether in Idea or in Actual Existence it would cease to be or rather never was such if it were discerpible and therefore implies a contradiction it should be so But if a Spirit be not Penetrable in the Doctors sense it is really Impenetrable and if not Indiscerpible in his sense it is really Discerpible and consequently divisible into Physical Monads or Atoms and therefore constituted of them and the last Inference will be that of the Epigrammatist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And thus the sairest and firmest structures of Philosophical Theorems in the behalf of the Providence of God the Existence of Spirits and the Immortality of the Soul will become a Castle of Come-Down and fall quite to the ground Whence it was rightfully done of the Doctor to lay such stress upon these two terms Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie they being the essential Characteristicks of what is truly a Spirit and which if they were taken out of the world all would necessarily be Matter I mean Physical Matter to prevent all quibblings and fiddlings about words and phrases and this Physical Matter would be the Subject and Source of all Life whatever Intellective Sensitive and Vegetative And Mr. Baxter did ill in not onely omitting these terms himself in his Notion of a Spirit but in publickly slighting and disgracing of the Doctors using of them and afterwards in so stomaching his vindication of the same in publick whenas we see that without them there can be nothing but Physical Matter in the world and God and Angels and the Souls of men must be such Matter if they be any thing at all and therefore in such an errour as this Mr. Baxter with Christian patience might well have born with the Doctors calling it not onely a Mistake but a Mischief And I hope by this time he is such a proficient in that Vertue that he will chearfully bear the publication of this my Answer in the behalf of the Doctor to all his Objections against these two essential and necessarie Characters of a Spirit and not be offended if I briefly run over his smaller Criticisms upon the Doctors Definition of the same which do occur pag. 80 81. and elsewhere as I shall advertise The Doctors Definition of a Spirit in his Discourse of that Subject Sect. 29. is this A Spirit is a Substance immaterial intrinsecally indued with life and the facultie of motion where he notes that Immaterial contains virtually in it Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Now let us hear how Mr. Baxter criticizes on this Definition First saies he pag. 80. Your Definition is common good and true allowing for its little imperfections and the common imperfection of mans knowledge of Spirits If by Immaterial you mean not without Substance it signifieth truth but a negation speaketh not a formal Essence Ans. How very little these imperfections are I shall note by passing through them all and for the common imperfection of mans knowledge of Spirits what an unskilful or hypocritical pretence that is the Doctor hath so clearly shewn in his Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit Sect. 16 17 18 19. that it is enough to send the Reader thither for satisfaction But as for Immaterial how can any one think that thereby is meant without Substance but those that think there is nothing but Matter in the Physical sense of the word in the world As if Substance Immaterial was intended to signifie Substance without Substance And lastly the Doctor will denie that In in Immaterial signifies negatively here more than in Immortal Incorruptible or Infinite but that it is the indication of opposite properties to those of Physical Matter viz. Impenetrability and Discerpibility and that therefore Immaterial here includes Indiscerpibility and Penetrability Secondly pag. 81. Spirit it self saies he is but a metaphor Ans. Though the word first signified other things before it was used in the sense it is here defined yet use has made it as good
thence to the Superficies From this form does necessarily and inseparably result the Character of an easie rouling Mobilitie That a bodie of this Form is the most easily moved upon a Plain of any bodie in the world And so from the Form of a piece of Iron made into what we call a Sword Fitness for striking for cutting for stabbing and for defending of the hand is the necessarie result from this Form thereof And so I say that from the intimate and essential Form of a Spirit suppose essentially and inseparably result such and such properties by which we know that a Spirit is a distinct Species from other things though we do not know the very specifick essence thereof And therefore here I note by the by that when the Doctor saies any such or such Attributes are the Form of a Spirit he does datâ operâ balbutire cum balbutientibus and expresses himself in the language of the Vulgar and speaks to Mr. Baxter in his own Dialect For it is the declared opinion of the Doctor that the intimate Form of no Essence or Substance is knowable but onely the inseparable Fruits or Results thereof Which is a Principle wants no proof but an appeal to every mans faculties that has ordinarie wit and sinceritie Seventhly They are not the Form saith he but the Dispositio vel Conditio ad formam Ans. You may understand out of what was said even now that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie are so far from being Dispositio ad formam that they are the Fruits and Results of the intimate and Specifick Form of a Spirit and that they suppose this Specifick Form in order of nature to precede them as the Form of a Globe precedes the rouling mobilitie thereof In vertue of a Spirits being such a Specifick substance it has such inseparable attributes resulting from it as a Globe has mobilitie And as the Globe is conceived first and mobilitie inseparably resulting from it so the Specifick Nature of a Spirit which is its true and intimate Form and made such according to the eternal Idea thereof in the Intellect of God being one simple Specifick substance or Essence has resulting from it those essential or inseparable properties which we attribute to a Spirit itself in the mean time remaining but one simple self-subsistent Actus Entitativus whose Penetrabilitie and Indivisibilitie Mr. Baxter himself pag. 99. says is easily defendible And the Doctor who understands himself I dare say for him defends the Penetrabilitie and Indivisibilitie of no Essences but such Eighthly If such Modalities says he or Consistence were the Form more such should be added which are left out Ans. He should have nominated those which are left out He means I suppose Quantity and Trina Dimensio which it was his discretion to omit they being so impertinent as I have shewn above in my Answer to his third Objection against the Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie of a Spirit Ninthly Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie are two Notions and you should not give us says he a compound Form Ans. This implies that Penetrability and Indiscerpibility are the Form of a Spirit but I have said again and again they are but the Fruits and Result of the Form A Spirit is one simple Specifick Essence or substance and that true Specifickness in its Essence is the real and intimate Form or Conceptus formalis thereof but that which we know not as I noted above out of Julius Scaliger though we know the essential and inseparable Attributes thereof which may be many though in one simple specifick Substance as there are many Attributes in God immediately and inseparably resulting from his most simple specifick Nature Tenthly Yea you compound saith he Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie with a quite disserent notion life and the faculty of motion which is truly the Form and is one thing and not compounded of notions so difseâ—…ent as Consistence and Vertue or Power Ans. I say agâ—…in as I said before that neiâ—…her Penetrability nor Indiscerpibility nor Life nor Motion are the specifick Form it selâ—… of a Spirit which is a simple Substance but the Fruits and Results of this specifick Form and all these have a proper Cognation with one another as agreeing in Immateriality or Spirituality and how the common sagacitie of mankind has presaged that the most noble functions of life are performed by that which is most subtile and most one as Penetrability and Indiscerpibility makes the consistence of a Spirit to be the Doctor has noted in his Discourse of the true notion of a Spirit Mr. Baxter in reading Theological Systems may observe That Attributes as much dissering among themselves as these are given to the most simple Essence of God Eleventhly You say says he pag. 82. Life intrinâ—…ecally issues from this Immaterial Substance But the Form is concreated with it and issues not from it Ans. I grant that the Form is concreated with the Spirit For a Spirit is nothing else but such a specifick simple Substance or Essence the Specifickness of whose nature onely is its real intimate Form And if we could reach by our Conception that very Form it self it would be but the Conceptus inadaequatus of one simple Substance and be the true Conceptus formalis thereof and the Conceptus fundamentalis to speak in Mr. Baxters or Dr. Glissons language would be Substance in general which is contracted into this Species by this real intimate Form which both considered together being but one simple Essence they must needs be created together according to that Idea of a Spirit which God has conceived in his eternal mind And life will as naturally and necessarily issue from such a Species or Specifick Essence or from Substance contracted into such a Species by the abovesaid Form as Mobility does issue from the form of a Globe From whence it is plainly understood how Life does intrinsecally issue from immaterial Substance nor is the Form it self but the Fruit thereof And as it were but trifling to say that the power of easie rolling every way on a Plain were the very Form of a Globe the word Power or Vertue being but a dark loose general dilute term and which belongs to every thing and is restrained onely by its Operation and Object but it is the Form or Figure of the Globe that is the immediate cause that that Vertue or Power in general is so restrained to this easie rolling so it is in Mr. Bâ—…xters pretended Form of a Spirit which he makes Virtus vitalis a power of living Power there is such a dark dilute term loose and general But that it is determined to life it is by that intimate specifick Form which we know not but onely this we know That it is to the Power of living as the Figure of a Globe is to the Power of easie rolling and that in neither one can be without the other There must be a Specifick Essence which is the root of those Powers Properties or Operations
But whither am I going I would conclude here according to promise having rescued the Doctors Definition of a Spirit from Mr. Baxters numerous little Criticisms like so many shrill busie Gnats trumpeting about it and attempting to infix their feeble Proboscides into it and I hope I have silenced them all But there is something in the very next Paragraph which is so wrongfully charged upon the Doctor that I cannot sorbear standing up in his justification The Charge is this That he has fathered upon Mr. Baxter an Opinion he never owned and nick-named him Psychopyrist from his own â—…ction As if says he we said that Souls are â—…re and also took Fire as the Doctor does for Candles and hot Irons c. onely But I answer in behalf of the Doctor as I have a little toucht on this matter before That he does indeed entitle a certain Letter which he answers to a Learned Psychopyrist as the Author thereof But Mr. Baxters name is with all imaginable care concealed So that he by his needless owning the Letter has notched that nick-name as he calls it of Psychopyrist upon himself whether out of greediness after that alluring Epithet it is baited with I know not but that he hangs thus by the gills like a Fish upon the Hook he may thank his own self for it nor ought to blame the Doctor Much less accuse him for saying that Mr. Baxter took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like For in his Preface he expresly declares on the Psychopyrists behalf that he does not make this crass and visible Fire the Essence of a Spirit but that his meaning is more subtile and refined With what conscience then can Mr. Baxter say that the Doctor affirms that he took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like and that he held all Souls to be such Fire whenas the Doctor is so modest and cautious that he does not affirm that Mr. Baxter thinks any to be such though even in this Placid Collation he professes his inclination towards the Opinion that Ignis and Vegetative Spirit is all one pag. 20 21. I have oft professed saith he that I am ignorant whether Ignis and Vegetative Spirit be all one to which I most incline or whether Ignis be an active nature made to be the instrument by which the three spiritual natures Vegetative Sensitive and Mental work on the three passive natures Earth Water Air. And again pag. 66. If it be the Spirit of the world that is the nearest cause of illumination by way of natural activity then that which you call the Spirit of the World I call Fire and so we differ but de nomine But I have saith he as before professed my ignorance whether Fire and the Vegetative nature be all one which I incline to think or whether Fire be a middle active nature between the spiritual and the mere Passive by which Spirits work on bodie And pag. 71. I doubt not but Fire is a Substance permeant and existent in all mixt bodies on Earth In your bloud it is the prime part of that called the Spirits which are nothing but the igneous principle in a pure Aereal Vehicle and is the organ of the Sensitive faculties of the Soul And if the Soul carry any Vehicle with it it 's like to be some of this I doubt you take the same thing to be the Spirit of the world though you seem to vilifie it And pag. 74. I suppose you will say the Spirit of the world does this But call it by what name you will it is a pure active Substance whose form is the Virtus motiva illuminativa calefactiva I think the same which when it operateth on due seminal Matter is Vegetative And lastly pag. 86. I still profess my self in this also uncertain whether Natura Vegetativa and Ignea be all one or whether Ignis be Natura Organica by which the three Superiour he means the Vegetative Sensitive and Intellective Natures operate on the Passive But I incline most to think they are all one when I see what a glorious Fire the Sun is and what operation it hath on Earth and how unlikely it is that so glorious a Substance should not have as noble a formal nature as a Plant. This is more than enough to prove that Mr. Baxter in the most proper sense is inclined to ' Psychopyrism as to the Spirit of the world or Vegetative soul of the Universe that that Soul or Spirit is Fire And that all created Spirits are Fire analogicè and eminenter I have noted above that he does freely confess But certainly if it had not been for his ignorance in the Atomick Philosophie which he so greatly despiseth he would never have taken the Fire it self a Congeries of agitated particles of such figures and dimensions for the Spirit of the world But without further doubt have concluded it onely the instrument of that Spirit in its operations as also of all other created Spirits accordingly as the Doctor has declared a long time since in his Immortalitas Animae Lib. 2. Cap. 8. Sect. 6. And finding that there is one such universal Vegetative Spirit properly so called or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the world he could not miss of concluding the whole Universe one great Plant or if some obscure degree of sense be given to it one large Zoophyton or Plant-animal whence the Sun will be endued or actuated as much by a Vegetative Nature as any particular Plant whatsoever whereby Mr. Baxter might have took away his own disficultie he was entangled in But the truth is Mr. Baxters defectiveness in the right understanding of the Atomick Philosophy and his Aversness therefrom as also from the true System of the world which necessarily includes the motion of the Earth we will cast in also his abhorrence from the Pre-existence of Souls which three Theories are hugely necâ—…ssary to him that would Philosophize with any success in the deepest points of natural Religion and Divine Providence makes him utter many things that will by no means bear the Test of severer Reason But in the mean time this Desectiveness in sound Philosophie neither hinders him nor any one else from being able Instruments in the Gospel-Ministrie if they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a due measure If they have a firm Faith in the revealed Truths of the Gospel and skill in History Tongues and Criticism to explain the Text to the people and there be added a sincere Zeal to instruct their Charge and that they may appear in good earnest to believe what they teach they lead a life devoid oâ—… scandal and osfence as regulated by those Goâ—…pel-Rules they propose to others this though they have little of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly so called that reaches to the deepest account of things but instead thereof Prudence and Ingenuity will
sufficiently enable them to be Guides to the people especially by adhering in Matters of moment to the Ancient Apostolick and unapostatized Church and presuming nothing upon their private spirit against the same Such questionless will prove able and safe Pastors and will not fail of being approved of by our Lord Jesus the great Shepherd and Bishop of our Souls But if any such as I noted above for that they conceit themselves also dapper fellows at Cudgils or Quarter-stafs shall leaving their Flocks solitary in the fields out of an itch after applause from the Country-Fry gad to Wakes and Fairs to give a proof of their dexterity at those Rural exercises if they shall I say for their pains return with a bruised knuckle or broken pate who can help it it will learn them more wit another time Thus much by way of Digression I thought fit to speak not out of the least ill-will to Mr. Baxter but onely in behalf of the Doctor hoping though it is far from all that may be said that yet it is so much and so much also to the purpose that it will save the Doctor the labour of adding any thing more thereto So that he may either enjoy his Repose or betake himself to some design of more use and moment In the mean time I having dispatcht my Digression I shall return to the main business in hand I think it may plainly appear from what has been said that it is no such harsh thing to adventure to conclude That the Truth of the Divine Intellect quatenus conceptive speculative or observative which a Platonist would be apt to call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Divine Intellect exhibitive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for though it be but one and the same Intellect yet for distinctness sake we are fain to speak as of two does consist in its Conformity with the Divine Intellect exhibitive with the immutable Idea's Respects and References of things there In conceiving and observing them as I may so speak to be such as they are represented in the said Intellect quatenus necessarily and unalterably representing such Idea's with the immediate Respects and References of them In this consists the Truth of the Divine Intellect Speculative But the Transcendental Truth of things consists in their Conformity to the Divine Intellect Exhibitive For every thing is true as it answers to the immutable Idea of its own nature discovered in the Divine Intellect Exhibitive To which also the same Divine Intellect quatenus Conceptive Speculative or Observative gives its suffrage steadily and unalterably conceiving these immutable Idea's of things in their Objective Existence what their natures will be with their necessary references aptitudes or ineptitudes to other things when they are produced into act From whence we may discern how that saying of this ingenious Author of the Discourse of Truth is to be understood Where he writes It is against the nature of all Understanding to make its Object Which if we will candidly interpret must be understood of all understanding quatenus merely conceptive speculative or observative and of framing of its Object at its pleasure Which as it is not done in the setled Idea of a Sphere Cylinder and Pyramid no more is it in any other Idea's with their properties and aptitudes immediately issuing from them but all the Idea's with their inevitable properties aptitudes or ineptitudes are necessarily represented in the Divine Intellect Exhibitive immutably such as they are a Triangle with its three Angles equal to two right ones a right-angled Triangle with the power of its Hypotenusa equal to the powers of the Basis and Cathetus both put together Which things seem necessary to every sober man and rightly in his wits our understanding being an Abstract or Copy of the Divine Understanding But those that say that if God would he might have made the three Angles of a Triangle unequal to two right ones and also the powers of the Basis and Cathetus of a right-angled Triangle unequal to the power of the Hypotenusa are either Bussoons and Quibblers or their Understandings being but creatural huffiness of mind and an ambition of approving themselves the Broachers and maintainers of strange Paradoxes has crazed their Intellectuals and they have already entred the suburbs of down-right Phrensie and Madness And to conclude Out of what has been insinuated we may reconcile this harsh sounding Paradox of our Author that seems so point-blank against the current doctrine of the Metaphysical Schools who make Transcendental Truth to depend upon the Intellectual Truth of God which they rightly deem the Fountain and Origine of all Truth whenas he plainly declares That the Divine Understanding cannot be the Fountain of the Truth of things But the seeming absurdity will be easily wiped away if we take notice of our distinction touching the Divine Understanding quatenus merely conceptive speculative or observative and quatenus necessarily through its own infinite and immutable pregnancie and foecundity Exhibitive of the distinct and determinate Idea's or natures of things with their immediate Properties Respects or Habitudes in their Objective Existence representing them such as they certainly will be if reduced into act His assertion is not to be understood of the Divine Understanding in this latter sense but in the former But being it is one and the same Understanding though considered under this twofold Notion our Author as well as the ordinarie Metaphysicians will agree to this truth in the sense explained That the Divine Understanding is the Fountain of the truth of things and that they are truly what they are as they answer to their Idea's represented in the Exhibitive Intellect of God How the Author himself comes off in this point you will better understand when you have read the fifteenth sixteenth and seventeenth Sections of his Discourse Let this suffice in the mean time for the removing all stumbling-blocks from before the Reader Pag. 168. Nor the foundation of the references one to another that is to say The Divine Understanding quatenus Conceptive or Speculative is most certainly not the Foundation of the references of things one to another but the Divine Understanding quatenus Exhibitive that represents the Idea's or natures of things in their Objective Existence such as they would be if reduced really into act represents therewith all the references and habitudes they have one to another Which habitudes are represented not as flowing from or arbitrariously founded in any Intellect whatsoever but as resulting from the natures of the things themselves that respect one another and are represented in the Exhibitive Understanding of God Which is the main thing that this ingenious Author would be at and such as will serve all his intents and purposes Pag. 168. It is the nature of Understanding ut moveatur illuminetur c. namely of Understanding quatenus Conceptive or Speculative not quatenus Exhibitive Pag. 169. No Idea's or Representations either are or make the things they