to you as a Teacher But whereas you say that these make three no more than Animal Homo and Brutum or Cupiditas Desiderium and Fuga you silence me for it beseemeth me not to speak to you in a Teaching Language and there is no other to convince you And if all that I have said in Method Theol. will not do it I confess it will not easily be done Animal Homo and Brutum are three words containing only a Generical and specifick nature in two distinct species of Subjects If you think that in the Sun Virtus-motiva illuminativa calefactiva or in mans Soul a vegetative sensitive and Intellective power or in the latter mentally-active Intellective and Volitive Virtue are no other I will not persuade you to change your mind much less give you any Answer to your simile of cupiditas desiderium fuga save that you might almost as well have named any three Words § 3. But you say The Omission of Immaterial in your Conceptus formalis or which is all one of Penetrability and Indiscerpibility is not only a mistake but a mischief it implying that the Virtus Appetitiva perceptiva may be in a Substance though material which betrays much of the succours which Philosophy affords to Religion c. Ans Melancholy may cause fears by seeming Apparitions I hope no body will be damned for using or not using the Word Material or Immaterial It 's easie to use either to prevent such danger And I am not willing again to examine the sense of these words every time you use them You know I said not that Spirits are Material And you say they are Substances of Extension Amplitude Spissitude Locality and Subtilty as opposite to Crassitude And what if another think just so of them or not so grosly and yet call them Matter will the word undoe him But you say I omitt Immaterial Ans See my Append. to Reas of Christ Rel. whether I omit it But is a bare Negative Essential to a just definition here Why then not many Negatives more as invisible insensible c. To say that Air is not Water or Water is not Earth was never taken for defining nor any mischief to omit it But that the positive term Purissima doth not include Immaterial and is not as good you have not as yet proved Is Substantia purissima material Do not you by that intimation do more to assert the Materiality of Spirits than ever I did Have you read what I have answered to 20 Objections of the Somatists in the aforesaid Append. But you say It implyeth that Virtus perceptiva c. may be in a substance material Ans Negatur If I leave out 20 Negatives in my Definition it followeth not that the form may be with their positives But can you excuse your self from what you call a Mischief when you intimate that Substantia purissima may be material Because I only called it purissima you say I imply it may be material But I confess I am too dull to be sure that God cannot endue matter itself with the formal Virtue of Perception That you say the Cartesians hold the contrary and that your Writings prove it certifieth me not O the marvellous difference of mens Conceptions Such great Wits as Campanella Dr. Glisson c. were confident that no Matter in the world was without the una-trina Virtus viz. Perceptive Appetitive and Motive I agree not with them But you on the contrary say that Materia qualitercunque modificata is uncapable of Perception I doubt not materia qua materia or yet qua mere modificata hath no LIfe But that it is uncapable of it and that Almighty God cannot make perceptive living Matter and that by informing it without mixture I cannot prove nor I think you Where is the Contradiction that makes it impossible Nor do I believe that it giveth a man any more cause to doubt as you add of the Existence of God or the Immortality of the Soul than your Opinion that saith God cannot do this To pass by many other I will but recite the words of Micraelius Ethnophron li. 1. c. 13. p. 23 24. instancing in many that held the Soul to be Pure Matter Eam Sententiam inter veteres probavit apud Macrobium Heraclitus Physicus cui anima est Essentiae Stellaris scintilla Et Hipparchus apud Plinium cui est coeli pars Et Africanus apud Ciceronem qui detrahit animum ex illis sempiternis ignibus quae Sidera vocamus quaeque globosae rotundae divinis animatae mentibus circules suos orbesque conficiunt celeritate mirabili Et Seneca qui descendisse eam ex illo coelesti Spiritu ait Et Plato ipse qui alicubi animam vocat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 radians splendidum vehiculum Et Epictetus qui Astra vocat nobis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amica cognata elementa Ipseque cum Peripateticis Aristoteles qui eam quinta essentia constare 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in animabus inesse dicit Inter nostrates quoque Scaliger vocat animam Naturam coelestem quintam essentiam alia quidem à quatuor Elementis naturâ praeditam sed non sine omni materia Eadem Opinio arridet Roherto de Fluctibus c. And what many Fathers say I have elsewhere shewed And yet on condition you will not make the name Substance to signifie no real Being but a meer Relation or Quality I think you and I shall scarce differ in sense § 4. But you magnifie our difference saying In this you and I fundamentally differ in that you omit but I include Penetrability and Indiscerpibility in the Conceptus formalis of a Spirit Ans I think you mean better than you speak and err not fundamentally 1. I do not think that your two hard words are fundamentals nor that one or both are Synonyma to Immaterial 2. I do not think but Purissima includeth all that is true in them and so leaveth them not out 3. I do not leave them out of the Dispositio vel modus Substantiae though I leave them out of the Conceptus formalis 4. Your self affirm the vital Virtue to be the Conceptus formalis And hath a Spirit more forms than one You know of no existent Spirit in the World that hath not its proper specifick form And if your two words had been a Generical Form that 's no form to the species but a Substantiae dispositio Doth he fundamentally err that saith Corpus humanum organicum is not forma hominis Or that the puritas vel subtilitas materiae is not forma â—gnis vel solis but only the materiae dispositio If our little self made words were so dangerous on either side I should fear more hurt by making the form of a Spirit 1. To be but the Consistence or mode of the Substance 2. And that to consist in divers accidents conjunct 3. And those uncertain in part or unintelligible 4. And Spirits
absurd and ridiculous But is not that a Monad and Atome which is one and indivisible though it be not minimum and if your Penetrability imply not that all the singular Spirits can contract themselves into a punctum yea that all the Spirit of the World may be so contracted I find it not yet sufficiently explained For you never tell us into how little parts only it may be contracted And if you put any limits I will suppose that one Spirit hath contracted itself into the least compass possible and then I ask cannot another and another Spirit be in the same compass by their Penetration If not Spirits may have a contracted Spissitude which is not penetrable and Spirits cannot penetrate contracted Spirits but only dilated ones If yea then quaero whether all created Spirits may not be so contracted And I should hope that your Definition of Spirit excludeth not God and yet that you do not think that his Essence may be contracted and dilated O that we knew how little we know And as to your rejection of Metaphors I say the very name Spiritus which you use is a Metaphor rhe first sense being our Breath à spirando or the Air or Wind Martinius nameth no fewer than Fifteen senses of it and Wisdom itself said 1 Cor. 15. There is a natural Body and there is a spiritual Body § 2. You add If you will say that if he should create such a Spirit with metaphysical Amplitude which though so large himself cannot divide and sever into parts he would thereby puzzle his own Omnipotency at this rate he shall be allowed to create nothing no not so much as matter nor himself indeed to be Ans I had rather tremble at this than boldly answer it Whatever is a contradiction cannot be and it is not for want of power that God cannot do it It is no work of power Had you proved it a Contradiction for God to make two Spirits of one or one of two you had done that part in an easier way which I should not gainsay But this Speech of yours is as if you said He denieth God to be the Creator or to be God who saith that God is able to divide an Ample spiritual Substance that is who saith that this is no contradiction and that God is Almighty when our Creed saith that God is the Father Almighty maker of Heaven and Earth Cannot he alter or annihilate his own works Before he made the World he could have made the ample Substance of the Spirit of the World into many Spirits And is he less able so to change it If Spirits be unified as the Bodies which they animate cannot God make many Bodies into one Cannot he make many Stars into one And then would that one have many unifying Spirits or but one It 's a thing so high as required some shew of proof to intimate that God cannot be God if he be Almighty and cannot conquer his own Omnipotency § 3. Your words like an intended Reason are For that cannot be God from whom all other things are not produced created Ans 1. Relatively as a God to us it 's true though quoad existentiam Essentiae he was God before the Creation 2. But did you take this for any shew of a proof The sense implied is this All things are not produced and created by God if a spiritual ample Substance be divisible by his Omnipotency that made it Yea then he is not God Negatur Consequentia Ad SECT XXIX XXX XXXI § 1. YOU say your definition is more informing than defining a Spirit by Fire viz. a Spirit is an immaterial substance indued with Life and the faculty of Motion and virtually containing in it Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Ans 1. Your definition is common good and true allowing for its little imperfections and the common imperfection of mans knowledge of Spirits The same things need not be so very oft repeated in answer to you but briefly I say if by Immaterial you mean not without substance it signifieth truth but a negation speaketh not a formal essence 2. Spirit is itself but a Metaphor 3. Intrinsecal indued with Life tells us not that it is the form Qualities and proper accidents are intrinsecal 4. The faculty of motion is either a tautology included in life or else if explicatory of life it is defective or if it distribute Spirits into two sorts vital and motive it should not be in the common definition 5. No Man can understand that the negative Immaterial by the terms includeth Penetrability and Indiscerpibility 6 You do not say here that they are the form but elsewhere you do and the form should be exprest and not only virtually contained as you speak 7. They are not the form but the Dispositio vel conditio ad formam 8. If such modalities or consistence were the form more such should be added which are left out 9. Penetrability and Indiscerpibility are two notions and you should not give us a compound form 10. Yea you compound them with a quite different notion Life and the faculty of motion which is truly the form and is one thing and not compounded of notions so different as Consistence and Virtue or Power 11. You say Life intrinsecally issues from this immaterial substance But the form is concreated with it and issues not from it You mean well It is informing truth which you intend and offer to the world And we are all greatly beholden to you for so industrious calling foolish sensualists to the study and notion of invisible beings without which what a Carkass or nothing were the world But all our conceptions here must have their allowances and we must confess their weakness And you might have informed us of all that you know without fathering opinions on others which they never owned and then nicknaming them from your own fiction As if we said that Souls are fire and also took fire as you do for Candles and hot Irons c. only § 2. Now I that pretend not to a perfect definition repeat that which is the nearest to it that I understand And first I am for agreeing on the sense of words before we use them in definitions 1. I take not the word Spirit to be of univocal signification here but so analogical as to be equivocal God and Creatures are not univocally called Spirits 2. I know not and I think no other that all Created Spirits in the universe are so far of one substantial consistence as that the word Spirit univocally fits them all as a Genus among the 15 senses of the word before said mentioned by Martinius when we confine it to one men are apt to boggle at the ambiguity yet when we have defined it the name is to be used 3. Materia is as ambiguous as Spiritus and is oft used for Res or Substantia which is fundamental to modes and qualities and active forms and oft for substance of such a consistence as is
must needs know every Ingredient in his Physick and the Nature and Reason of it before he will take it when he should implicitly trust his Physician Man should have waited on God for all his Notices and sought to know no more than he revealed But a distrustful and a selfish knowledg and busy enquiring into unrevealed things is become our sin and misery § 36. You say Suppose all this answered what will it avail as to a life of Retribution if all return to one element and be there immerged as Brooks and Rivers in the Sea and we lose our individuation Ans I answer'd this in the Appendix to the Reas of the Christian Religion I add 1. Do you believe that each one hath now one individual Soul or not If not how can we lose that which we never had If we have but all one universal mover which moveth us as Engines as the Wind and Water move Mills how come some motions to be so swift as a Swallow and others so slow or none at all in as mobile a body Yea how cometh motion to be so much in our Power that we can sit still when we will and rise and go and run and speak when we will and cease or change it when we will A stone that falls or an arrow that is shot cannot do so Sure it is some inward formal Principle and not a material Mechanical mobility of the matter which can cause this difference Indeed if we have all but one Soul it 's easie to love our Neighbours as our selves because our Neighbours are our selves But it 's as easie to hate our selves as our Enemies and the good as the bad if all be one for forma dat nomen esse But it 's strange that either God or the Soul of the World shall hate it self and put it self to pain and fight against it self as in Wars c. But if you think still That there is nothing but God and dead matter actuated by him I would beg your Answer to these few Questions 1. Do you really believe that there is a God that is an eternal infinite self-being who hath all that power knowledg and goodness of will in transcendent Eminency which any Creature hath formally and is the efficient Governor of all else that is If not all the world condemneth you for it is not an uncaused Being and can have nothing but from its Cause who can give nothing greater than it self 2. Do you think this God can make a Creature that hath a subordinate Soul or Spirit to be the Principle of its own Vital Action Intellection and Volition or not Cannot God make a Spirit If not it is either because it is a Contradiction which none can pretend or because God is not Omnipotent that is is not God and so there is no God and so you deny what you granted But if God can make a Spirit 3. Why should you think he would not Some of your mind say That he doth all the good that he can or else he were not perfectly good Certainly his goodness is equal to his greatness and is commmunicative 4. Hath he not imprinted his Perfections in some measure in his Works Do they not shew his glory Judg of his Greatness by the Sun Stars and Heavens and of his Wisdom by the wonderful Order Contexture and Goverument of all things Even the Fabrick of a Fly or any Animal poseth us And do you think that his love and goodness hath no answerable effect 5. Do you think that passive matter doth as much manifest Gods Perfection and honour the Efficient as vital and Intellectual Spirits If it be a far nobler Work for God to make a free vital mental Spirit to act under him freely mentally and vitally than to make meer atomes why should you think that God will not do it 6. And do you not dishonour or blaspheme the prime Cause by such dishonouring of his Work as to say he never made any thing more noble than Atomes and Compositions of them 7. Is there not in the Creature a communicative disposition to cause their like Animals generate their like Fire kindleth fire Wise men would make others wise God is essential infinite Life Wisdom and Love and can he or would he make nothing liker to himself than dead Atomes Yea you feign him to make nothing but by Composition while you say That matter it self is eternal 8. But when the matter of Fact is evident and we see by the actions that there is a difference between things moved by God some having a created Life and mind and some none what needs then any further proof § 31. But if you hold That we have now distinct Spirits which are individual Substances why should you fear the loss of our individuation any more than our annihilation or specifick alteration If God made as many substantial individual Souls as men is there any thing in Nature or Scripture which thteatneth the loss of Individuation I have shewed you and shall further shew you enough against it § 32. You say page 7. Every thing returneth to its element and loseth its individuation Earth to Earth Water to the Sea the Spirit to God that gave it What happiness then can we hope for more than deliverance from the present calamity or what misery are we capable of more than is common to all Ans 1. Bodies lose but their Composition and Spiritual forms Do you think that any Atome loseth its individuation If it be still divisible in partes infinitas it is infinite And if every Atome be infinite it is as much or more than all the world and so is no part of the world and so there would be as many Worlds or Infinites as Atomes It is but an aggregative motion which you mention Birds of a Feather will flock together and yet are Individuals still Do you think any dust or drop any Atome of Earth or Water loseth any thing of it self by its union with the rest Is any Substance lost Is the simple Nature changed Is it not Earth and Water still Is not the Haecceity as they call it continued Doth not God know every dust and every drop from the rest Can he not separate them when he will And if Nature in all things tend to aggregation or union it is then the Perfection of every thing And why should we fear Perfection 2. But Earth and Water and Air are partible matter Earth is easily separable The parts of Water more hardly by the means of some terrene Separaror The parts of Air yet more hardly and the Sun-beams or substance of fire yet harder than that tho it's contraction and effects are very different And Spirits either yet harder or not at all Some make it essential to them to be indiscerptible and all must say That there is nothing in the Nature of them tending to division or separation And therefore tho God who can annihilate them can divide them into parts if it
to have two Forms or one made up of divers things 5. And to place the form in a Negation of Matter What a jumble is here when the true definition of a Spirit is obvious § 5. You say Penetrability maketh it pliant and subtil and to a Substance of such Oneness and Subtility is rationally attributed whatever Activity Sympathy Synenergy Appetite and Perception is found in the world Ans There is Oneness in Matter in Atoms at least and doth Penetrability make Subtilty And is Subtilty the difference sure if you make any sense of this it must favour the conceit of Materiality more than my term Purissima But do you verily believe that Penetrability or Subtilty is a sufficient efficient or Formal Cause of Vitality Perception Appetite and so of Intellection and Volition I hope you do not It is the Essential Virtus Formalis including Potentiam activam Vim Inclinationem which must immediately cause the Acts Subtilty and Penetrability else will not do it No man will grant you that the Proposition is good ex vi Causalitatis Quodcunque penetrabile vel subtile est ideo necessario vivit percipit appetit unless it proceed à necessitate concomitantiae existentiae Yet where you are most out of the way you are at it again that This Mistake is a mischief Ad SECT III. IV. § 1. YOur Third Section I am not concerned in I tell you still I deny not your Penetrability and Indiscerpibility though I lay not the stress on them as to Certainty or Importance as you do and am past doubt that they do but defectively speak the Substantiality sub conceptu modali dispositivo and are unskilfully called the Forma Spiritus § 2. Your 4th Section I had rather not have seen 1. You dislike that I say that a self-moving Principle I dare not say is proper to a Spirit I hope Ignorance is never the worse for being confest All are not so wise as you I deny it not but I am not certain that Stones Earth and other heavy things move not to the Earth by a self-moving Principle I am not sure that if a Stone in the Air fall down it is by a Spirits motion and that God hath not made Gravitation and other aggravative motion of Passives to be an Essential self-moving Principle Few men I think have thought otherwise And yet I am not sure that all Stones and Clods are alive If you are bear with our Ignorance for that is no Errour § 3. When I say I consent not to Campanella de sensu rerum or Dr. Glisson that would make all things alive by an Essentiating Form in the very Elements Here you talk of foul play to make one part fish and the other flesh one part of Matter self-moved and other not Ans But worthy Sir the foul play is yours that seem to tell your Reader that I do so which I never do That is scant fair play I said not that Spirits are Matter and I do but say I am ignorant whether Gravitation be from the Motion of a Spirit thrusting down the Stone c. or from an Essential Principle in the Matter May not one be ignorant where he cannot chuse I cannot but much difference the motus aggregativus such as Gravitation causeth which is only the tendency of the parts to the whole that they may there rest from motion from the natural motion of known Life which abhorreth cessation I take Motus to be no Entity but a mode of Substance to be in motion or quiescence are several modes of it and that mode which is most stated most sheweth nature I see no contradiction in it that a Stone should fall without Life I dare not say that God cannot make a Rock or Clod to fall by an intrinsick Principle of Gravitation without vital motion And yet I am most inclined to your Opinion But the stream of Dissenters obligeth such a one as I am to more modesty than must be expected from one of your degree § 4. Next you complain of horrible Confusion What 's the matter why to include Life in the Conceptus Formalis of a Spirit of which Self-motion is certainly an Effect and yet say It is not proper to a Spirit Ans It 's worse than confusion to intimate that I said what I did not Your saying It 's certain is no conviction of me that there is no Self-motion but by Life You think not that Fire liveth and I am not sure that a Stone is a self-mover I only say I know not I never yet saw your proof that God is able to make no self-mover but vital And if he can how know I that he doth not The World suffers so much by mens taking on them to know more than they do that I fear it in my self as one of the worst Diseases of Mankind § 5. You conclude We are to deny Self-motion in the matter it self every where as not belonging thereto but to Spirit Ans No doubt but Materia qua talis est mere passiva But that God can put no motive inclination in it or that he cannot give a Spiritual Vitality to any matter are conclusions fitter for you than for me § 6. To shew why I oft neglect the name Material some taking it for the same with Substance and some only for Corporeit I said that the distinction of Natures into Active and Passive serveth as well To this you say Materiality is a Notion more strict distinct and steady Ans The contrary is commonly known and before and elsewhere proved when Materia is not only a very hard ambiguous word and you have not yet enabled me by all your words to know what you mean by it but even such great men as before named make the more general sense equal to Substance to be the more proper Had all used it as you do and you made us understand what you mean by it I would hold to it accordingly You say Passivity belongs to things Immaterial Ans 1. Passivity as exclusive of Activity or as predominant doth not 2. No Passivity belongeth to that which is not Matter in the foresaid large sense of Matter of which more anon Ad SECT V VI. § 1. I Confest my Ignorance of the Cause of the descensus gravium whether it be from a Principle made by God essential to the matter that descendeth or from an intrinsick compounding Active nature or only from an extrinsick Mover You here bid me not despair for it is demonstrable that the descensus gravium is not from any principle springing from their own Matter but from an Immaterial principle distinct therefrom Ans 1. All doth not demonstrate to me which some call demonstration I perceive you note not at all what is my doubt and how can you then solve it I do not think that the Gravitation is from a principle springing from the Matter How can a Principle of Motion spring from Matter But the doubt is of the several
Body which properties are as immediate to her as impenetrability and separability of parts to the matter and we are not to demand the cause of the one any more than of the other So here we have the true Form as sufficient notice And if voluntary Motion be proper to a Spirit I think meer Fire Solar or Aethereal is no Spirit But if all self-moving Power be proper to a Spirit Fire is a Spirit And from the Form will I denominate while you oft tell us that the Essence of Substance is unknown By Essence meaning somwhat else than that which I can fully prove to be the Form To conclude there are these different Opinions before us I. That the whole Entity or Conceptus realis of a Spirit is Virtus vitalis and is mera sorma or rather simplex actus Entitativus and that substantia is added not as a partial real Conceptus but as respective to notifie that this Virtus vitalis is no Accident but a thing that may subsist of itself Some hold this true only of God and some of all Spirits If this be true your notions of Penetrability and Indivisibility are most easily defended II. That Spirits have two inadequate real Conceptus and that Substantia is the fundamental as truly as materia is in meer Bodies and an incomprehensible purity of Substance or that it is Immaterial not having partes extra partes with the trine dimension is Substantiae dispositio yet that this hath degrees as the Forms have all Spirits not being of equal Purity And that Virtus vitalis is the partial Conceptus viz. Formalis And this I encline to as to created Spirits III. That the Conceptus formalis of Spirit is this Virtus vitalis vel motiva perceptiva appetitiva but that all Matter is essentially informed by that Vitality and so Matter and Vitality are the inadequate Conceptus of every Substance and that not by Composition but as of one simple thing And this is Dr. Glisson's and some others IV. That a Spirit is both a real Substance as the fundamental Conceptus and informed both by Immateriality Penetrability and Indiscerpibility and also by a vital and moving Power But that it existeth only in Bodies or Matter and so always makes up a Compound of two Substances saving that God is infinite beyond all Matter And that all such Spirits were at first made together indivisible Individuals both that of the least Creature and of the greatest but changed from Body to Body and so are parts of Animals This I suppose is your Opinion Our chief difference is that I profess to be ignorant of the Consistency and Incorporation which you talk of and must be so Though I am assured of the Substantiality and Form which satisfieth me for Christ knoweth all the rest for me FINIS OF THE IMMORTALITY OF Mans Soul And the Nature of it and other Spirits Two Discourses One in a Letter to an unknown Doubter The other in a Reply to Dr Henry Moore 's Animadversions on a private Letter to him which he published in his Second Edition of Mr Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus or History of Apparitions By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for B. Simons at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls 1682. The PREFACE § 1. THE Author of the Letter which I answer being wholly unknown to me and making me no return of his sense of my Answer I suppose it can be no wrong to him that I publish it I have formerly thought that it is safer to keep such Objections and false reasonings from mens notice than publickly to confute them But now in London they are so commonly known and published in open Discourse and Writing that whether silencing them be desirable or not it is become impossible And tho I have said so much more especially in two Books The Reasons of the Christian Religion and the Unreasonableness of Infidelity as may make this needless to them that read those yet most Infidels and Sadduces being so self conceited and fastidious as to disdain or cast by all that will cost them long reading and consideration it may be this short Letter may so far prevail against their sloth as to invite them to read more I would true Christianity were as common as the profession of it There would then be fewer that need such Discourses But alas how numerous are thâ—se Christians that are no Christians no more than a Carcass or a Picture is a man yea worse Christians who hate Christianity whose Godfathers and Godmothers not Parents but Neighbours did promise and vow three things in their Names 1. That they should renounce the Devil and all his Works the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World and all the sinful lusts of the flesh 2. That they should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith 3. That they should keep Gods holy Will and Commandments and walk in the same all the days of their lives Yea before they could speak the mouth of these Godfathers speaking for them did not only promise that they should believe but profess in the Infants name That even then they did stedfastly believe the Articles of the Christian Faith The Infant is said to make both the Promise and Profession by these Godfathers who also undertake to provide that they shall learn all things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his Souls health and shall be virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life Whether these Godfathers ever intend to perform this or the Parents use to expect it of them I need not tell you But how little most of the baptized perform of it is too notorious And what wonder is it if we have Christians that in Satans Image fight against Christ even PERJURED MALIGNANT PERSECUTING Christians haters of those that seriously practice the baptismal Vow when they are PERJURED and Perfidious Violaters of it themselves as to the prevalent bent of heart and life These Hypocrite nominal Ceremony Christians become the great hinderance of the cure of Infidelity in the world It is the SPIRIT by its supernatural Works which is the great Witness of Christ and the infallible proof of supernatural Revelation These witnessing works of the Spirit are these five 1. His Antecedent Prophecies 2. His inherent Divine impress on the Person Works and Gospel of Christ 3. His concomitant Testimony in Christs uncontrolled numerous Miracles Resurrection and Ascension 4. His subsequent Testimony in the numerous uncontrolled Miracles of the Apostles and supernatural gifts to the Christians of that Age. But tho the History of these be as infallibly delivered to us as any in the world 〈◊〉 the distance hindereth the belief of some who have not this history well opened to them 5. Therefore God hath continued to the end of the world a more excellent Testimony than miracles thought not so apt to work on sense even the special regenerating sanctifying work of the Spirit of Christ on the
souls of all sincere Believers The raising of Souls to a Divine and Heavenly Disposition and Conversation to live to God and the common good in the comfortable hopes of an everlasting heavenly glory as purchased and given by our Redeemer conquering the allurements of the world and flesh the temptations of Satan and all the flatteries and frowns of the ungodly This is a work that none but God can do and will do which beareth his Image and superscription But now these Hypocrites obscure it to themselves and other unbelievers and tempt men to say Are not Christans as bad as Heathens and Mahometans Are they not as fleshly and worldly and false and perjured and malicious and hurtful and pernicious to others and themselves But I answer No They are not These are no more Christians than Images are men They are the Enemies of Christians that under Christs banner and in his livery and name do the most perfideously hate him and fight against him Who will tell them Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these you did it to me They betray him for money as Judas by Hail-master and a Kiss I challenge any Infidel to find me One that seriously believeth the Gospel of Christ as perceiving the certain Evidence of its truth who is not a person of a holy and obedient heavenly life How can a man sincerely believe that God sent his Son from Heaven in flesh to Redeem man and to bring us to Glory and that he sealed his Doctrine by all his miracles resurrection and ascensiâ—n and the Holy Ghost and that he is our Head in Heaven with whom we shall live in joy for ever and is the Author of eternal Salvation to all them that obey him I say How can a man believe this seriously and not esteem and choose and seek it before all the shadows and vanitie to this world It is not Christians but false hypocrites whose lives represent Christianity blasphemously as no better than Heathenism or Mahometanism It is but for worldly Interest and Reputation or because it is the Religion of the King Countrey or Ancestors that they take up so much as the name and badg of Christianity And will you judg of our Religion by its enemies Do you not see in their drunkenness sensuality covetousness ungodliness how unlike their lives are to the baptismal Vow and that they hate and seek to destroy them that are serious in keeping that Vow and living as Christians § 2. And as I publish this for the use of unbelievers so I must let the Reader know that it is become one of the usual tricks of the Popish deceivers to put on the Vizor of an Infidel and to dispute about the immortality of the Soul and the greatest difficulties of Religion And it is to puzzle men and convince them that by Reasoning they can never attain to satisfaction in these matters And then to infer You have no way left but to believe the Church we are that Church If you leave that easie quiet way you will never come to any certainty Why do they not try the same triek about all the difficulties in Philosophy Astronomy Physick History c For every Sâ—â—ence and Art hath its difficulties But are not all these as gaeat difficulties to the Pope and his Prelates as they are to us But God hath given us a more clear and satisfactory way of the solution of such Doubts § 3. I must further give notice to the Reader That it was the publishing of Dr. H. More 's answer to a Letter of mine which occasioned the publishing of this When I was put on the one I thought it not unprofitable to premise the other as being of much greater use It seemed good to the worthy Dr. to desire my thoughts of his Description of a Spirit which he laid down in the first Edition of Mr. Glanvile of Apparitions which I gave him in a hasty Letter which he thought meet without my knowledg to publish an answer to in his second Edition of Mr. Glanvile Our difference is scarce worth the Readers notice And our velitation is only friendly and Philosophical But yet it may possibly be useful to some at least to excite them to a more profitable search than I have made And it explaineth some passages in my Methodus Theologiae But I much more commend to the reading of the Sadduces and Infidels the Histories themselves of Apparitiins and Watchcrafts which Mr. Glanvile and Dr. More have there delivered many of them at least with undeniable evidence and proof To which if he will but add the Devil of Mascon and Bodin and Remigius of Witches he will scarce be able to deny belief to the existence and Individuation of Spirits and the future life of separated Souls SIR I Have Reason to judg you no Stranger to such Addresses as these and therefore have adventured more boldly to apply my self to you Others would it may be rigedly censure this Attempt but your more Christian Temper will induce you I hope to judg more charitably did you but understand with what reluctancy I undertook this task I have had many Disputes with my self whether or no I should stifle these Doubts or seek Satisfaction Shame to own such Principles bid me do the first but the weight of the Concern obliged me to the last For I could not with any chearfulness or with that vigor I thought did become me pursue those unseen Substances those Objects of Faith Religion holds forth except I did really believe their existence and my own capacity of enjoyning them I thought at first to satisfie my self in the certainty of the things I did believe to confirm and establish my Faith by these Studies that I might be able to render a Reason of the hope that is in me but instead of building up I am shaken and instead of a clearer evidence I am invironed with uncertainties Unhappy that I am I had better have taken all upon Trust could I so have satisfied my Reason than thus to have involved my self in an endless Study For such I am afraid it will prove without help for that I may not in this Concern rest without satisfaction and yet the more I consider and weigh things the more are my doubts multiplied I call them only doubts not to palliate any opinions for I have not yet espoused any but because they have not yet attained so much maturity or strength as to take me off those things my doubts being satisfied I should conclude of indispensable necessity they are but yet in the Womb assist to make them Abortives I have not been wanting to my self but in the use of all means to me known have sought satisfaction both by Prayer Reading and Meditation I have weighed and consulted things according to my Capacity I have been as faithful to my self in all my reasonings as I could and void of prejudice have passed impartial Censures on the things in debate so far as that