recapitulates his dispersed Soldiers into a Troop So that hereby is set forth that Soveraignty over Men and Angels which was acquired by the Death Resurrection and Ascension of the Captain of our Salvation to whom as Head and Lord the whole body of them is referred and under whom they shall not contend as of old the Angels of Persia and Graecia are said to have done Mr. Hobbes For Angels be they permanent created substances be they what they will this I am sure of that I have no Idea of them When I think of an Angel sometimes the Image of Flame sometimes of a beautiful Cupid with wings comes into my fancy which Image I am confident is not the similitude of an Angel and therefore is not the Idea of it But believing that they are certain Creatures ministring to God invisible and immaterial we impose upon the thing believed or supposed the name of Angels whilst in the mean time the Idea under which I imagin an Angel is compounded of the Ideas of visible things Stud. You here again are blindly fallen into the old mistake of an Idea for an Image If we suppose an Angel to be an understanding Essence either not united vitally to matter or only to the purest Aether and conceive it employed in such offices as are in Scripture ascribed to it we have a competent notion of it and that is an Idea But of these invisible Powers above us methinks we have spoken largely enough considering their nature as also the season of the night if we pursue our Subject much longer the morning will break in and affright away the Ghosts we talk of When Goddess Thou lifts up thy wakened head Out of the Morning 's Purple bed Thy Quire of Birds about thee play And all the joyful World salutes the rising Day The Ghosts and monster-monster-spirits that did presume A Bodie 's Priviledg to assume Vanish again invisibly And Bodies gain agâ—n their visibility So said the best of English Poets in his Hymn to Light Mr. Hobbes A Poet may talk of Ghosts but I 'm sorry you think that we have been seriously discoursing about them for then it seems we have talk'd about nothing It is not well that we render spirits by the word Ghosts which signifieth nothing neither in heaven nor earth but the imaginary inhabitants of mans brain Stud. Gast or Geast whence Ghost is a good old English word and signifieth the same with spirit and I could produce Verstegan to avouch it The word is good and the Poetry excellent and since I am fallen upon it I think it will not be amiss if we unbend a little and refresh and smooth our spirits with some Poetick numbers and dismiss our severer Reasonings 'till the morrow And now it comes into my mind that I have about me your Verses oâ— the Pâ—ak which are most agreeable to the place and circumstances in which we have been and in râ—peating which I might be satisfi'd concerning some expressions and particularly that of ninos sibi concolor Author Fallat Mr. Hâ—bbes For my Verses of the Peak they are as ill in my opinion as I believe they are in any mans and made long since I will by no means hear them Stud. Then let us get on the other side of our Curtains without any Epilogue at all for I begin to be as heavy as if the Mines of this Shire had a powerful influence upon me I would have been glad to have diverted the humour a little with something pleasant that we might have concluded as the Italians advise Con la bocca dolce But I will force none of my humour upon you Sir I return you thanks for your Conversation and I wish you most heartily a good night Mr. Hobbes Sir praying God to prosper you I take leave of you and am your humble Servant The End of the First Dialogue The Second Dialogue Art 5. Concerning the Soul of Man Stud. A Good morrow to you Mr. Hobbes I hope you slept well since I parted from you notwithstanding the heat of our Disputation Mr. Hobbes Very well as quietly as if I had been rocked by one of those good Genii which we spake of a little before we took our leaves Stud. I thank God I slept so soundly that the passed time is esteemed by me â—ong upon no other account than that it hath kept me some hours from debating such further matters in Philosophy and Religion as we at first propounded Mr. Hobbes Let us then delay no longer but enter immediately upon our second Conference Stud. I am ready to wait upon you and setting aside the time of sleep as nothing to connect this part of our life with that wherein we were awake conferring about Angels and because we said as much as we intended upon that Subject let us descend to the Fifth Article which concerns those Beings next in order the Souls of Men of them I would gladly hear your thoughts seeing it is a matter which relates so closely to the greatest interest of man Mr. Hobbes By the Soul I mean the Life of Man and Life it self is but motion so that the Soul or Life is but a motion of Limbs the beginning whereof is in some principal part within Stud. By this means you will make of Man an excellent piece of Clock-work which though you have been hammering out more than thirty years may methinks like the artificial man of Albertus Magnus be broken in sunder in a moment I know that you may set the wheels of your machin a going but what is there within that shall understand when it goes well or ill or feel and number the repeated strokes You mean surely by your description the mechanism of the Body set on work and not the Soul perceiving its operations Mr. Hobbes Perception or Imagination depends as I think upon the motion of Corporeal Organs and so the Mind will be nothing else but a motion in certain parts of an Organized Body Stud. If you can clearly and distinctly both explain and prove that which you have now proposed in gross you shall then be esteemed that great Apollo whom every one that has feigned any singular Hypothesis does in the absence of good Neighbours boast himself to be Mr. Hobbes Before I undertake this I will remove out of your way that prejudice which you may have against the notion of the Soul as consisting in Life by proving most effectually to an Ecclesiastick that the Scripture giveth countenance to my definition The Soul in Scripture signifieth always either the life or the living creature and the Body and Soul jointly the body alive In the first day of the Creation God said Let the Waters produce Reptile animae viventis The creeping thing that hath in it a living soul the English translate it That hath life And again God created Whales Et omnem animam viventem which in the English is Every living
notion which may be delivered in another form of words And moreover when you say that Plato and Aristotle could not conceive a spirit by reason that with them it signified a wind to be incorporeal therein also you ought not to have used such confidence in your assertion for if wind be motion and motion be so unglued and loose as to pass from Body to Body I know not whether the nâ—me of wind may not more promote than obstruâ—t the apprehension of an incorporeal Being We are informed by Sextus Empiricus that some of the Antients contended expresly for the incorporeity of motion I mean by motion that force so little yet understood which is the cause of the translation of bodies and not as you somewhere speak the relinquishing of one place and acquiring another But leaving this subtiler Consideration I will proceed to shew that neither the Scripture nor the School of Plato or Aristotle is wholly unacquainted with the Doctrine of an incorporeal spirit Concerning the holy Scripture it saith that God created all things and filleth all things and therefore it teacheth that he is immaterial And for the very term we may perhaps meet with it in the words of our blessed Lord who appearing to the doubting and amazed Disciples encouraged and confirmed their faith by saying to them Lay hold of me handle me and see that I am not an incorporeal Daemon you will now tell me that I follow not the true Copy of the New Testament in the translation of this produced Text. I defend my self by answering that I follow holy Ignatius who in his undoubted Epistle to those of Smyrna cited both by Eusebius and St. Hierome bringeth in our Lord using these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This excellent person who saw our Lord after his resurrection did either cite the words exactly or else which also strengtheneth my cause he eâ—press'd the sence of them according as it was received in the incorruptest Age of the Christian Church Concerning the Philosophy of Plato in relation to the Question which lay before us there is nothing more received than that he affirmed the most celestial parts of matter neither to be God or Angel or spirit of man but to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as is the phrase of Hierocles the spiritual Chariots of prae-existing Angels or of departed minds In the beginning of the Dialogue with the Jew Trypho Iustin Martyr at large relating his small proficiency under the Tutorage of a Stoick a Peripatetick and a Pythagorean adds also that he adjoyn'd himself at last to a Platonist of great fame that he improved daily by his instruction that he was extreamly pleas'd amongst other parts of science by him taught with the notion of incorporeal beings and if I well remember the great admirer of Plato Psellus has call'd the Soul an immaterial and incorporeal fire And touching Plato himself I am sure that I have read this Maxime in his Politicus that incorporeal Beings which are of all others the most glorious and great are only conspicuous to the faculty of Reason which though it be there said by Hospes yet it is approved of by Plato himself under the name of Socrates who reply'd that he had excellently spoken Neither will I pass by the testimony of Aristotle who by his separate Intelligences meaneth saith Ben Maimon the same with those who maintain the existence of incorporeal Angels And concerning the rational soul he teacheth that it is separable from the body because it is not the Entelech of any body having a while before enquired whether it be endued with any peculiar function not arising from this compounded estate He also denieth that motion can arise from a body Mr. Hobbes It is manifest by your thick quotations that you are much in love with Authority to that therefore in the second place I will refer you Know then that whatsoever can be inferr'd from the denying of incorporeal substances makes Tertullian one of the antientest of the Fathers and most of the Doctors of the Greek Church as much Atheists as my self Stud. You have not by this means advanc'd your hopes of victory for I shall make it evident that the Forces in whose numbers you trust are falsly muster'd The Fathers of the Greek Church believe in the same sence with the Doctors of our own that God is a Spirit for Ignatius and Iustin Martyr you have heard already on what side they stand Athenagoras in his Embassie in behalf of the Christians to M. Aurelius Antoninus and L. Aurelius Commodus discourseth to this purpose The Athenians did most justly condemn Diagoras for sacrilegious impiety who rather than his Coleworts should remain unboylâ—d would cut in pieces the Statue of Hercules who also did expresly affirm that there was no God at all But as for us who separate God from matter and teach that God is one thing and matter another the reproach of Atheism is most unreasonably and injuriously charg'd upon our Creed The same Athenagoras in a few Pages after this discourse again professeth not as his private opinion but as the faith of the Christians of that Age that God admitteth not of any division neither consisteth of any parts Then for Theophiluâ— the Patriarch of Antioch who likewise writeth not as a private man but as a common Apologist for the Christians he tells Antolycus the Heathen that God is every where and that every thing is in God Had he believed God to have been a Body he would not have placed all other Beings in his boundless Essence unless we shall take the boldness to accuse the holy Patriarch of that fault which Des-Cartes imagined he had espied in your self of failing whatsoever the Premisses be in the Illations deduced from them If we consult Tatianus in his Oration contra Graecos we shall likewise obtain his suffrage for the immateriality of the first cause There are said Tatianus who do maintain that God is a Body I am not of the same belief with them for my perswasion is that he is incorporeal Eâ—sebius may be produc'd in the same place both against your self touching the materiality and against Idolaterâ— touching the worship of Angels for thus he speaks We have learn't to honour the incorporeal powers according to the degree of their dignity ascribing divine honour to God alone St. Athanasius tells the Followers of Sabellius that it is a very childish and foolish conceit by the eye or by the circumscription of place to comprehend that which is incorporeal understanding this speech of the infinite Majesty of Almighty God St. Chrysostome in the same place affirmeth God and the soul of man to be incorporeal I might here subjoyn in favour of the common opinion St. Irenâ—eus St. Basil St. Gregory Nazianzen St. Gregory Nyssen St. Epiphanius and a long order of others if it were not a needless labour and would
consequent to plurality of representers that there be a plurality of persons though of one and the same substance Stud. You surprize me here with such an explication of the Trinity as has not been invented by any Heretick of the unluckiest wit for these sixteen hundred years And now I am guided after the manner of the multitude whose curiosity leads them to see the deformed births and mishapen effects of miscarrying nature rather than to contemplate the Master-pieces of the Creation it is not so much the goodness as the prodigiousness of this novel doctrine which enticeth me to consider it And in truth this conception of a Trinity seems to me more a Monster than the head of Cerberus that is death it self which head would have been call'd four-fold if the fourth part of the world America had been then discover'd but this conception as will by and by appear may multiply it self an hundred fold and be rather a Century than a Trinity There is also in it this inconvenience that before the dayes of Moses you must affirm one only natural person to have been in the divine nature Mr. Hobbes There was but one from whence we may gather the reason why those names Father Son and Holy Spirit in the signification of the Godhead are never used in the Old Testament for they are Persons that is they have their names from representing which could not be till divers men had represented Gods Person in ruling or in directing under him Our Saviour both in teaching and reigning representeth as Moses did the person of God which God from that time forward but not before is called the Father Stud. Where is now your will to pay a reverence to the Law by whose Authority you are taught in the first Article of the Church of England that there be three persons of one substance power and eternity But you will say that your Leviathan was published in those dayes when the King by your doctrine was no King when the Parliament having the supreme strength had for that very reason the reason which you give and I may consider in its assigned place the sovereign Right by which they preferred their own Ordinances and the Constitutions of the Assembly to the Canons and Articles of the Convocation And indeed you have told us in that Book that you submitted in all Questions whereof the determination dependeth on the Scriptures to the interpretation of the Bible authorized by the Commonwealth whose Subject you were that is to say to the Annotations of the Assembly of Divines wherein no doubt you might have read the Doctrine of an eternal Trinity asserted seeing in their shortest Catechism 't is not omitted But Law and Scripture like the servants of an hard and selfish Master are used by you whilest they have strength to serve your purpose but when you cannot work your design by them they are cast off with utter neglect But to proceed you your self together with the Law have affirmed Jesus to be God-man and Arrius granted to him a duration before the world and Eusebius who had some favour for the Arrian Doctrine supposeth him often to have appeared before and under the times of the Law And a very late Writer who has not fear'd in his Rhapsodie of Ecclesiastick Stories to deny the Eternal God-head of Christ hath yet maintained it to he very dangerous to deny his Pre-existence There were then and it follows from the sense of your own confession at least two natural persons of the Father and of Christ before this world was founded Further if every one representing the Person of God in ruling or directing under him addeth a person to the God-head then may it be thence concluded as Enjedinus speaks in relation to Pope Alexander who would infer three persons from the three Attributes of Fecit dixit benedixit at the beginning of Genesis that there are not only three but six hundred For all Civil Powers are Representatives of the King of the Universe and you your self affirm that any Civil Sovereign is Lieu-tenant of God and representeth his person To speak with propriety Moses was rather a Mediator betwixt God and the People who were under a Theocracy and not a Sovereign on earth And Saul who was appointed them in the place of God whom in their unreasonable wishes out of an apish imitation of the Heathen Models they had deposed seems the first Person representing God among the Iews It is also to be noted that the Apostles were Representers not strictly of Gods Person but of Christ God-man from whom they received commission in his name to teach and baptize after all power was given to him Wherefore the Bishop of Rome has presumed to call himself rather falsly than improperly the servant of the servants of God and Vicar of Christ. But if you are not willing to multiply Persons in the Godhead by the number of Vicegerents but chuse to understand this three-fold representation of a three-fold state of People under Moses Christ and the Apostles which yet is an evasion not at all suggested by you even by this artifice you will not find a back door open out of which you may escape For besides that the Apostolical times are but the continuation of the state begun by Christ and that the Reign of Christ at his second coming will be a state perfectly new we must remember that there were two states before the dayes of Moses the one to be computed from Adam who in most eminent manner represented God being appointed by him Universal Monarch of the Earth the other from the Revelation made to Abraham who may be said the first person with whom God made a formal Covenant Sealed by the Rite of Circumcision and by Promises guarded from violation Again whereas you have affirmed that the names of Father and Son in the signification of the God-head are never used in the Old-Testament therein you consulted not your Concordance For seeing Christ is called the Son in the second Psalm the cor-relative Father is as directly pointed out as if the very name had in Capital Letters been written down Neither do I here create by my Fancy as is the manner of such who deal in Allegories of Scripture a mystical sense because the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews ha's expounded the words of our blessed Lord and not of David Saint Matthew likewise ha's made the same interpretation if Iustin Martyr was not deceived either by his memory or by oral Tradition or a spurious Copy for in stead of those words from Heaven at the baptism of Jesus This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased he ha's in two places affirmed the voice to have been this Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee Mr Hobbes Let us not labor any longer in a particular sifting of such mysteries as are not comprehensible nor fall under any rule of natural