to be immortall naturally if they prove any thing at all as most wise Philosophers do conceive they do I prove the same out of holy Scripture against the assertion of Leviathan It is confest the Scripture saith the soul of man is immortall doth live after death not adding any where that this same immortality is out of grace of favour therefore in effect it sayes every where when it speaks of that point that it is immortall naturally The Antecedent is certain by the survey of those severall places cited by Valentia the Conimbricenses Nic. Baius The consequence I prove to be a good one therefore because words are ever to be understood in their usuall and proper signification except some adjoyning words or circumstances of the speaker do imply the contrary But in the Scripture wheresoever it teaches the immortality of the soul there is no such word or circumstance Ergo they are to be understood of such an incorruptibility as is naturall because that onely is the usuall meaning of such words as signifie an immortality as the term man uttered without limitation simply is to be understood for a reall and naturall man and not for a painted one or metaphoricall To this I adde that the verity of the soul 's immortall nature is not attested singly and simply but besides as a certainty and a verity not to be called into question even abstracting from those Philosophicall arguments commonly brought to prove it be demonstrative or no certainly their form at least is demonstrative because drawn ab effectis Thus much is in substance asserted by Aureolus 2. dist 19. That the soul saith he is immortall is a doctrine of saith to be held most firmely and is also the common conception of our understanding and a verity that is evident although it be not so easy to finde out a reason for it divers of those which are brought be not concluding Thus pronounceth he concerning the certainty of this doctrine even in case the arguments for it should not be thought convincing And that it may be so stands with great reason because we are very sure of many naturall verities for which neverthelesse we are not able to render any such reason as is compelling or demonstrative for we do not learn all we know by the force of formall arguments or syllogismes but rather by virtual proofs and a secret intelligence settled by nature betwixt our mindes and truth Yet this I do not say as if I did not judge the reasons for immortality to be efficacious but only to prevent evasions and in particular that one of Pontius who in the place before cited ventures to affirme that the immortality of the soul is not known for a certainty by the force of naturall reason therefore because he holds that the arguments brought in favour of it do not convince which assertion of his is not onely a disparagement of so noble and fundamentall a truth but besides seems very false and gives no small offense because admitting the arguments for it were as notconvincing as he himself pretends yet neverthelesse the truth it self may be very certain even by naturall reason as Aureolus a very great Master before hath signified and if it had not been so how could all nations have conspired about it And that they have done so we may finde both by the perusall of the Ethnick writers as also by the collections of Eugubinus l. 9. de Perenni Philosophia Menasse Ben Israel l. de Resurrectione c. 8. Moreover as infirme as Pontius judges the Arguments to be yet was not he able to give them any good Solutions although he endeavoured to do it and besides did not put them home as may be perceived by any indifferent survey The reasons however disparaged will be able to justify themselves and the easier because such as do undervalue and impugne them are driven into such streits as they are enforced to call in question sundry fundamental Truths which are acknowledged generally for certain and evident as for example That there is one Rectour of mankinde who according to justice will reward and punish secondly That the generall conceptions of humane understanding are true thirdly That the universal appetite of humane nature is rational and also possible to be satisfied These and such like although they doe not deny them to be true yet they will not grant them to be evident Against such dangerous rocks as these are they driven who will not yield that the reasons brought to prove the immortality be concluding from which inconvenience the other side of classical Doctours are very safe and free As for Holkot in Say cap. 2. lect 14. although he does not magnify those reasons which are usually urged for this immortality affirming of them that they do not presse more then those other doe which are commonly produced against the possible eternity of the world yet he himself confesses them to be good though not demonstrative adding three arguments of his own and also acknowledging that this same immortalitie is a doctrine delivered by the chiefest of the Philosophets maintained by the Catholick writers and proved for a truth by miracles innumerable Now admitting these arguments to be no lesse efficacious then those other against the eternity this cannot prejudice them much because many men of great learning and judgement are of opinion that these against the eternity be not onely good but also demonstrations Moreover allowing these for immortality be not in rigour demonstrations yet all particulars being cast up we shall finde that men generally do give a constant assent to sundry naturall verities upon lesse evidence then these Concerning Pomponatius we are to understand that he was troubled in conscience for what he formerly had written in prejudice of immortality and therefore like a good Christian did not onely relinquish that errour of his but besides made sute by a letter to Javellus a person of eminent learning that he would be pleased to give the world which he had abused a satisfaction for him which at his request was done accordingly as appeares by the said Javellus his learned work now exant De indeficientia animae in which tract remaines inserted a copie of the letter which Pomponatius wrote unto him for that end For the compleating of this businesse in hand I note that the Philosophers who lived before Christ had much greater difficulty for their embracing this capitall Truth of immortality then those other who flourished after by reason that they were destitute of all other light then what blind Gentilisme had left them and therefore might not easily perceive but that as it was ordinarily voiced Mors ultima linea rerum which saying was erected like the pillars of Hercules with this solemn inscription engraven upon them Nil ultra as if beyond those there was no region habitable and besides it was hard to believe as Pliny speaketh l. 7. c. 55. Iterari vitam à morte insomuch as they ought
of speaking this same separation of it be no death or true manner of dying secondly by being subjected unto damnation which as we know is called in Scripture a second death But as for the annihilation of it or of the body that is it which we deny and so to do we have just reason In fine as Generation is nothing but the union of the parts and not the creation or absolute production of them so again Death and Corruption is nothing but the disunion or dissolution of them and in no wise the annihilation according as this wise Authour would perswade us As for the article of the Resurrection it proves nothing against the perpetuity of the soul for we never read of any resurrection besides that of the body wherefore to averre a resurrection of souls were a grand foolery and a doctrine never debateable or heard of amongst Christians till this silly Authour came to teach it And so much for his first chapter CHAP. III. Scripture no way a favourer of the souls mortality HIs places cited out of Scripture in favour of his errour are so impertinent as that it were no small piece of folly to examine them one by one They all of them signifie that man shall die or sometimes that for example Joseph or Simeon is not as Gen. 42.36 all which how they are to be expounded and understood may sufficiently appear by that which hath been said in the precedent chapter and how again they make nothing at all against the souls immortality Touching the words of Ecclesiastes c. 3. the answer is that they were no determinations or resolves but a history or an account given of what sometimes came into his thoughts and what obscurities and desolations of soul he had and what lastly was one of the first difficulties that troubled him and stirred him up unto a sollicitous enquiry for certainly this one verity of the immortality of mans soul is that which is to order mans designs to regulate his actions and to put life and vigour into them this being a truth most fundamentall Wee see this one was it which moved Clemens Rom. l. 1. recogn if he be the true Authour of that which passeth under his name to a serious inquiry and care for the finding out what he was to do whom to consult what to esteem most and in fine what to fear or hope most and how to order all the passages of his life This is the question that usually troubles men first of all till a resolution be had suffereth their hearts not to be at quiet every man at first suspiciously as Solomon did asking of himself as Seneca in Troade gallantly expresseth saying Verum est an timidos fabula decipit Vmbras corporibus vivere conditis Cum conjux oculis imposuit manum Supremusque dies Solibus obstitit Et tristes cineres Vrna coercuit Non prodest animam tradere funeri Sed restat miseris vivere longius An toti morimur nullaque pars manet Nostri cum profugo spiritus halitu Immistus nebulis cessit in aera Et nudum tetigit subdita fax latus Is it a truth or is' t our fears Have buzz'd a fable in our ears That mans hovering spirits do live And their interred corps survive When grieved consorts hands do close Their eyes and their last dayes oppose Our bright Hyperions beamy light And drowns the slender shades in night Then when our bones to ashes burn To be confin'd within an urn Be not the funeralls our fate But there must be a longer date For wretched man Or doth he die Intirely and intombed lie Or may he not forthwith consume And vanish all in slender fume Then when his wandring spirit flies And mingles with the aiery skies And when the dismall funerall torch His side insensible doth scorch After this sort do anxious and afflicted spirits oftentimes argue and dispute within themselves laying before their eyes all the doubts and difficulties imaginable before they descend to the making of any conclusion at all or to the determining of any setled doctrine Thus and no otherwise did Solomon when first revolving in his thoughts the matter of the souls condition and touching upon the various suspicions of men concerning it with no small sense and anguish of mind at length Eccles c. 12. drawing to a conclusion he determines saying Let the dust return unto the earth from whence it came and the spirit unto God who gave it And this text alone is sufficient to confound the Adversary and to confute whatsoever he hath endeavoured to draw out of Scripture for mans totall corruption and mortality I adde according to good Expositours that Solomon in this place representeth not what he himself did judge nor what a rationall man ought to judge but rather what Epicureans and voluptuous persons did or were wont to judge according either to the desires or at least to the apparences of sense for according to them man and beast do breathe out their lasts alike but this judgement of theirs Solomon absolutely condemns as appeareth plainly by that which before hath been alledged out of him CHAP. IV. His argument out of reason viewed and examined WHat the severall fancies were of heathen Philosophers touching the nature and definition of the soul is not much regardable sundry of them being so monstrous and absurd But it is a thing very considerable that amongst so many stragling and wild conceits all or most of all at least of the noblest and the best Philosophers have taught the immortality of the soul it self howsoever in other businesses concerning it they might sometimes disagree Permanere animos arbitramur saith Cicero Tuscul l. 1. consensu nationum omnium qua in sede maneant qualesque sint ratione discendum est and again in his Hortensius as witnesseth Saint Augustine l. 14. c. 19. de Trinitate Antiquis Philosophis hisque maximis longeque clarissimis placuit quod aeternos ammos divinosque habeamus We are perswaded by the consent of all nations that souls remain but must learn of reason of what quality they are and in what places they remain Again in Somnio Scipionis he determineth saying Infra Lunam nihil est nisi mortale caducum praeter animos generi hominum Deorum munere datos Beneath the Moon there is nothing which is not corruptible excepting souls alone bestowed upon mankind by the munificence of the Gods Thus Cicero who in his book de senectute delivers himself more at large as also in the first book of his Tusculan questions and also bringeth reasons for what he saith This assertion of Cicero for consent of Nations and Philosophers in this truth hath been shewed to the eye by the great diligence and learning of Augustinus Steuchus commonly called Eugubinus in the 9 book of his excellent work de perenni Philosophia in which he voucheth to this purpose the authorities of Phereâ—ides Syrus who as Cicero witnesseth was the first that delivered
their materiality namely by conceiving them conformably unto it self that is to say after a manner abstracted and immateriall declaring thereby the spirituality of it's being for it is as great a signe of a spirituall Being to understand a matter immaterially as it is to understand a spirit that hath no matter Thirdly I answer that although our power apprehensive does attire spiritual substances in formes corporeall by reason of the imaginative faculty upon which it borders yet the judging and discursive faculties do not so for these two cast of all figures and resemblances corporeall determining Angels for example to be spirits purely and devoid of all figure and corporeity as also in like sort that privations though apprehended as positive entities yet are not so in so much as the soul by meanes of judgement and discourse goes further then the phantasy and findes out truths which the phantasy could not tell it by thus surmounting forms corporeall shewes her independency upon the body and that some of her acts be inorganicall By this then it appeares that the apprehension of spirituall objects under lineaments corporeall is but the first enterteinment of them which though it do argue some imperfection in the soul concerning her manner of being yet not in the being it self Wherefore as on the one side this imperfect way of apprehension argues the soul to be in a degree inferiour unto Angels or pure Intelligences so on the other side the acts of judgement and of discourse which it doth exercise afterward do sufficiently evict that it is in a degree superiour to corporeall entities I exemplify for declaration sake God when he first arrives in our understanding by the out-portalls of simple apprehensions appeares unto us in the habite of a body an Angel in the likenesse of a man Time drest up in wings in his hands a sithe and houre-glasse Death like a raw-bon'd sire armed with a dart c. but forthwith Judgement and Discourse do waite upon them dismissing Apprehension and being thus stepped in devest this Time for example pull of his strange disguize bid him lay down his sithe clippe his wings and break his houre-glasse and to appeare in no other likenesse but his own that is to say without colours or lineaments corporeall and thus having disrobed him of his borrowed attire the soul judges of him as he is and gathers new verities of him by discurring And as the understanding proceeds in this one example so it does in others of the same nature thus the difficulty which Melinaeus made hath found out a solution A fifth head of probation is from the appetite of man that can be satiated with nothing but eternity the desire of which is universall and infinite This desire being generall must needs be from Nature and therefore right and not a vicious rapacity or greedinesse as Pliny seems to make it and so being right cannot be frustrate This argument is urged earnestly by Alex. Valignanus l. contra Japonios apud Possevinum parte 1. Biblioth l. 10. c. 4. Thomas Carmelita l. 11. de salute omnium Gentium procur c. 12. and by sundry other learned men and it seems to be very efficacious because this same appetite of perpetuity is very vehement restlesse and incessant and besides universall yea Pliny himself acknowledgeth as much Wherefore as from the generall and pressing appetite of meat we do inferre rightly a convenient provision of sustenance ordered by nature so in like sort from this ingrafted longing after a perpetuity we may inferre no lesse rightly a provision of immortality ordeined for us One Pontius a late Scotist in his Philosophia universa secundum mentem Scoti excepteth against this argument and divers others also with whom not being willing to wrangle we returne him no other answer but this viz. that he who is more in love with the determinations of any one Master be he never so eminent then he is with truth especially in doctrines of concernment is not an Eagle of the right breed nor deserves the name of a Philosopher It may be here objected that if an appetite were a good argument to prove a satisfaction it would prove we should never dye because against death man hath a great and naturall aversion I graunt it proves that either we shall not dye or else at least should not have died if we had remained in that state of innocency in which Adam was created for death entred into the world onely by sinne but this punishment of death is not of the soul but of man and againe the death of man is no more but a separation of soul and body out of which the death of the soul does not follow but that of the body onely for although a body cannot live without a soul yet no reason can be given why a soul cannot live without a body nay on the contrary side though we may easily understand how a soul may be annihilated yet it is a thing hardly intelligible how it should dy The soul is a form assistent as well as an informant and therefore may well subsist without an actuall informing It appeares that this appetite is naturall First because it is universall and followes the whole species Secondly because it cannot be supprest from breaking out into actuall and vehement longings after immortality out of which it followes first that immortality is a thing possible because nature does not incline us to impossibilities secondly that the appetite is right and rationall and cannot be erroneous as Scotus did object it might for at least in the generalities the works of nature be the works of a high intelligence thirdly that this immortality is not onely possible to be obteined but also shall be atteined Neither if this argument from naturall appetite be a good one would it follow thence as Abulensis in c. 22. Matth. q. 224. conceiveth it would namely that the Resurrection would be a naturall effect and might be proved by reason this I say doth not follow because as Aquinas teacheth 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 1. lib. de veritate q. 24. a. 10. ad 1. in supplement q. 75. a. 3. Ferrariensis l. 4. con Gen. c. 79. the inclination of nature and her power be both of one latitude and therefore because no naturall efficient is able to reunite a body once separated nature does not incline unto it and so not unto the resurrection Wherefore that unto which nature does incline us is onely to a continuance of the soul with the body and not to a restitution of it after it is once separated from it in so much that if any longing do remaine still in man to have a body by way of resurrection it is but as hote embers the remnants of an ancient fire It is then in this case as it is in the desiring of having all our limbs perpetually entire for if by chance any be cut off as it is not then in the power of nature
from the starres and the Poets in relation also to this did feign that Prometheus stole fire from heaven wherewith he gave life to his men of clay which he had made Now fire as we know is an element alwayes in action yea even then when it is raked up in ashes for even then it works both upon the food that maintains it and also on the adjoyning bodies Wherefore no charm no medicine soporiferous can cast the spirit of man into such a dull and deadly heavinesse as it shall not so much as have a feeling of it self nor be awaked by any other voice then that of the last trumpet which shall with a dreadful found call all to judgement and which noise shall be heard even by bodies then which there is nothing more dead or more corrupted nothing farther off from life as having the atomes of which they were composed now all disordered and scattered with the wind and therefore that soul which can be rouzed up by a voice no lower must needs be more then a sleep or laid down to rest Sleep is a thing different from Death though nearly allied unto it as Seneca doth signifie in the Prosopopeia following Et tu somne domitor laborum Pars humanae melier vitae c. Sharp sorrows tamer steep that art Of life humane the choicer part Astrea's off-spring here beneath Faint brother unto pallid Death Consanguineus Lethi Sopor saith another Sleep is Death's kinsman but how near we will not examine and yet so near we are sure as to a spirituall or intellectuall substance they are both one and one of them as destructive of life in it as the other because though they in themselves be things distinct yet sleep is as deadly to the soul as death it self is to the body and can agree as little with it because though sense can rest from action yet reason cannot in regard there is a greater and a more eminent kinde of vivacity in the one then in the other If the Authours of this phantasie would be understood let them declare first what kinde of Entity they take a spirit to be secondly seeing a spirit hath no body to rest nor senses to shut up nor vitall or animall spirits to repair what this sleep of a spirit is I mean how they will define it If they cannot do this then are they bunglers and speak they know not what and therefore not regardable If they say it is a cessation from action and from possibility immediate of action then hath a spirit no life left in it more then a stone or a dead body and so in this case to sleep and to dy signify the same thing though in terms that are different Yet say that they indeed could tell us what kind of thing this sleep should be that same is not enough unlesse besides they do prove it strongly for such extravagancies as this is are not to be admitted without convincing arguments to make them good Let us hear then what their arguments be and let us consider also of what weight CHAP. IX Volkelius his Arguments for this Errour examined and refuted VOlkelius a known man and a most principall Socinian is the stoutest Champion in this attempt therefore let us hear him what he saith Holy men saith he after their change of this present life with death are said in the Scripture not to be any longer Psal 39.14.37.10 Jerem. 21.15 Matth. 2.18 Thren 5.6 and being dead do neither live actually nor understand c. And though the spirits of men return to him that gave them as shall be demonstrated elsewhere yet that those same spirits be persons which do any thing or be sensible or do now enjoy pleasures everlasting is a thing so farre off from being taught us by the holy Scripture as on the contrary side it is easily shewed to be repugnant to them and that also by reasons very evident For Paul affirmeth that if the resurrection of the dead were not to be hoped for a vain thing it were to think of piety or for the Truth 's sake to undergo so manifold calamities and that of all men the Christians would be the most miserable Which assertion of his could not be true of the souls of men without the resurrection were setled in such pleasures and authority as that they did not onely enjoy a good eternall but were also in a state to give assistance unto others because that same felicity of theirs would be so great as scarcely no accession might be made unto it by the resurrection Thus reasoneth Volkelius My answer to the first part is by denying it to be said in Scripture simply and absolutely that souls departed or men departed have no Being at all but onely that they have no being upon the earth in regard that by dying they cease not only to be men any longer of this world but even to be men as before death they had been and this must needs be the true meaning of the places quoted by the Adversary in the Margin and not that other which he pretendeth because it is a thing most evident both in reason and in holy Scripture also that the parts of which men are composed be not annihilated by death without any remnant of Being left them but that they cease onely to be united or to be men in respect of which deficiency alone it might be truely affirmed of men as it is in Scripture that after death they are not in being To the second part I say that although the soul after separation from the body be not a person humane or an entity compleat yet still hath it a stable subsistence and leaveth not to be a substance intellectuall or a spirit Wherefore it doth not follow that because the soul is not a person or a compleat entity after separation that therefore it can have no action but must either sleep or dy The soul be it separated or united is a spirit a spirit is intellective an intellective substance can neither dy nor wholly cease from action as before hath been proved and therefore is not capable either of sleep or slumber or in any danger of being benummed and much lesse of death To the third I answer that the Apostle speaketh there not of Christian souls being miserable but of Christian mens being so and therefore let the souls be never so happy after death yet if there should be no resurrection the men could be never otherwise then miserable yea farre more miserable then any other men because in this life they should be afflicted in a higher degree then others and in the next they should not be at all You will say What matter is it if the men be miserable in this world and never happy in any world so the souls in the next world be made happy In opposition to this I say Yes it is a matter and a very great matter also if we will weigh things rightly for to be miserable in
it is necessary that properly they alwayes understand Forasmuch as the understanding is not a power that is subject to wearinesse then when it is separated from the body therefore it shall never be tired as having no coherence with the conditions of an organe corporeall Thus defineth he CHAP. X. An estimate of the reasons for the souls immortality THere have not wanted both in this time and also in former ages some Icarian wits who I know not why have laboured to extenuate and to diminish the force of the arguments usually brought in favour of the souls indeficiency not doubting to give it out that they be not demonstrative But this exception of theirs failes more of being demonstrative then the reasons do against which they except for admit they be not properly demonstrative yet neverthelesse may they be proofes very sufficient and able to persuade any man that is unpartiall and governed by reason and also much stronger than any which hitherto have been brought against it and so are to carry the cause on their side I will not deny but that those same reasons may not be so cleare and perspicuous as some are which we have for sundry other verities the cause whereof may seem to be the souls immuring within corporeall organs as in a dark house or prison in which it being shut up although it may behold out at the windows of the body objects abroad illustrated with light yet at home by reason of the domestick obscurity it cannot do the like This same difficulty moreover is increased because the soul of man is an entity placed in the confines betwixt the two regions of substances spiritual and corporeal and so of nature more ambiguous and hard to be discerned by reason that in this posture it may sometimes seem to be belonging to one side and sometimes again unto the others and so much also the easier because the soul while it is in the body discharges a two-sold duty viz. one of a form informing as Philosophers use to call it such namely as is performed by the souls inferiour conformably to the doctrine of Aristotle the other of a form assistent agreeable to the School of Plato unto which Campanella doth subscribe Such a form as this is God unto the world and is therefore stiled Anima mundi by very many the Soul of the Universe of which sort Intelligences be according to the Peripateticks in respect of their severall Orbes and a Pilote in a ship as also other movers and directers of that nature And this double office the soul performeth because even as it is rationall it doth not onely animate the body and is it self also a formall ingredient and constitutes man in his specificall degree of being and thereby distinguishes him essentially from all other creatures which functions belong unto the soul as it is a form informing but besides all this acts the part of a form assistent residing in the body as a high Dictatour controlling it commanding and countermanding prescribing laws inflicting punishments exercising acts of jurisdiction and absolute soveraignty thereby resembling a Judge upon the bench or Prince upon his throne more then a form meerly informing whereas contrariwise the soul of a Beast lives in subjection to the body being therein compelled to follow the prescription of every sensuall appetite after a servile or slavish manner without any power to make resistance Wherefore not without good cause did Fl. Josephus stile the power of reason a Soveraignty or Empire In consideration also of this two-old office of the soul seemed it to have two names given it one relating to it as it is a form informing namely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Anima the other to it as a form assistent viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Animus or Mens In the former sense it is a Soul in the later a Minde which preeminence of being a Minde over and above that other of a Soul Juvenal expresseth saying Sat. 15. venerabile soli Sortiti ingenium divinorumque capaces Atque exercendis capiendisque artibus apti Sensum è coelesti demissum traximus arce Cujus egent prona terram spectantia mundi Principio indulsit Communis conditor illis Tantum animas nobis animum quoque c. For arts a wit to man was lent Afarre from heavenly towers sent Which shining light prone creatures want Nature it seems to them was scant A soul on each to us more kinde Besides a soul bestow'd a minde How inconsiderate an act it is in men of learning to seek evasions from the usuall arguments brought in favour of immortality we have noted before out of our learned countriman Mr. Carleton and again with what ill successe men do impugne both those arguments and other received doctrines in Philosophy the experience of this last age hath taught us in which we have seen the fall of many soaring spirits that have adventured upon them Telesius Patritius Ramus Basson Gassendus though in a manner but newly sprung yet are grown already into neglect and the like destiny may Des Cartes Henricus Regius Campanella expect the last of which three though he have many strange conceptions and novelties as for example touching the sense of things insensible and also his three Primalities as he calls them which he will hardly persuade unto the world and again many trifling objections against Aristotle yet by his largenesse of contemplating starts many notable Truths which other great Wits who have gone on in a streight line have not espied in regard of which verities his labours may continue longer them other of that sort are like to do We see Aristotle yet lives and lives also in esteem and his adversaries lie buried in contempt It is an old saying Qui vult infestare fortem Perit atque quaerit mortem Those who with the strong contend Must expect untimely end Those who will be ever quarrelling with Aristotle and his School about those doctrines which have passed the Test after so many examinations by the most able Wits for no small number of ages may peradventure be overmatched and return out of the fray with broken heads To impugne this or that single doctrine this or that one argument may passe for currant and peradventure also prove successfull but he that will undertake to raise a whole new frame of Philosophy and encounter with Aristotle at every turn stands in need to have the wit of Aristotle which as it appeares few of these new undertakers have had yea such bold attempts do shew the adventurers capacities not to have been very great Let the quarrellers go on and try their fortune and by experience they may finde that the arguments for immortality had deeper roots then they imagined Surely that doctrine to which the most intelligent persons of the very Heathens gave their assent either wanted not good arguments to prove it or else bad arguments had very strange and incredible successe It could not be but those proofes were
very forcible which were able to enforce an opinion of life even after the ruines made upon man by death at which time no power in nature was able to make a restauration and then also when few or no messengers came to them from the dead but contrariwise man after his departure was heard of no more nor any news was sent them from the other life It is true that Epicurus stood astonisht at the sight of death and of the many disorders and disturbances in this world and therefore wickedly denyed both providence divine and also immortality which was a consequent thereof But other Philosophers were wiser and more considerate then so and would not forsake the Truths of providence and of immortality because of an encountring difficulty which they could not overcome and therefore touching the other world Aristotle held it the wisest way to be silent Plato had recourse to fictions of his own touching circulations and Palingenesiae after every of his great yeares to be accomplished Pythagoras fled for succour to his transmigrations or Metempsychoses the Stoicks to open falshoods and improbabilities telling us contrary to the expresse determinations of Aristotle and Theophrastus that men might be happy by vertue alone and that no corporeall miseries were evills In fine here Ethnick Philosophy was deficient not being able to satisfie or come home unto us nor to resolve us in our greatest doubts but these great vacancies of Philosophy were to be supplyed by Christian religion alone just as the doubts about the Antipodes were to be cleared by the discoveries of adventurous navigatours for it is Christian religion alone which doth solve this Gordian knot Et caeteri tanquam umbrae vagantur and all the rest like shadows do wander up and down It was Christ the Lamb of God who opened the books of providence which formerly had been sealed up and the contents hidden from the eyes of any mortall man Against the Antipodes and the habitation of the burning Zone great difficulties were urged yet notwithstanding them the reasons on the contrary side were so considerable as they carried many of the wisest with them as by name Polybius the historian Clemens Romanus as we may see in his Epistle to the Corinthians Virgilius B. of Saltzburg which Virgil. being miss-understood by his unskilfull auditours that made a false report of what he taught he had like to have incurred a heavy censure for it Aventin l. 3. hist The two cases viz. of the torrid zone and of immortality be not much unlike for as the Antipodes were denied by many because they were beyond the torrid zone which for the extremity of heat was esteem'd unpassable so the beatitude of man unto which immortality is addressed was held in doubt by many by reason of the frozen zone of death which lyes between our present life and that which icye climate by reason of the extremity of cold could not as it was thought be passed over by any mortall man All which difficulty was encreased by the seeming deficiency of providence over the affaires of man the consideration of which did move even the ablest and the best men as namely Job David Salomon Jeremy and amongst later men Seneca and Boetius although it prevailed not with them as it had done with Epicurus who if he had pleased might have perceived easily that the want of some order and equalities in this life did plainly argue another to come after it and againe the admirable contrivement of the world for the naturall part does evict as carefull a provision also for the morall What shall we think that the great Authour of things was a better naturall Philosopher then a morall or that he was more powerfull then he was good no greater an absurdity then this could be swallowed down by any and so Epicurus while he sought to fly a seeming inconvenience sell into a reall and for the avoyding of a lesser dissiculty fell into a greater This world is the Stage men the Actours our life the Play An action must not be judged by one Scene but by all together and chiefly by the last and before that be shewed no condemnation can passe nor Plaudue be given God then being so great an Artist in composing and also in continuall ordering of this Theatre and of the various lights that hang about it may be presumed not to have been lesse provident in the Action which is to be represented on it then he was about the Theatre it self unlesse we would admit that the Stage should be more artificiall then the Play and that the Architect was better and more skilfull then the Poet. By the actions then of God in his works of Nature he hath given us a most sufficient security for his works of Moralitie and neither Epicurus nor any other had cause sufficient to call it into question Wherefore the other lise must be the last scene and that one must bring all to order and make amends for all the defects and disturbances in the former and so consequently for the finishing of all a succeeding life and a continuated immortality must be allowed us This inference seems so cleare and evident that if no ship of nature could passe the line of death but after a tempestuous voyage and a perilous poor laboursome mortality it must be thrown over board into the deeps and there perish everlastingly then if humane understanding might presume to give a judgement the spectatours of this tragedy would not doubt to say this play was neither worth the acting nor the making yea and besides that so curious and well-built a stage was ill-bestowed upon so mean a historie If all that is of man must end in death and come unto a totall dissolution we can scarce withhold from setting upon it this censure namely That in the Architecture there wanted much symmetry or proportion because the gate was made bigger then the city and besides that mighty were the preparations but the feast was hungry and penurious It was not then the false and flattering desire in man of living ever and of surviving his short and transitory pleasures of this world which did persuade him immortality according as Pliny vainly did surmise but Nature her self it was which did rise up in us for vindicating of her own right of which the unadvised school of Epicurus did labour to dispossesse her And doubtlesse those arguments in favour of immortality could not be otherwise then very powerfull and weighty that in the midst of Ethnicisme were of ability to prevail and by their force to stemme the violent tides of so many advancing difficulties as daily did arise and also to charme the Furies which out of the dark retreats of humane ignorance and imbecillity did incessantly molest them For in very deed it was the unknown and then undiscovered hemisphere of the other life which caused many but the Epicurcans especially utterly to despaire and to conclude our little light and joyes within the
to have been arguments well steeled that should be of power sufficient to force theirway through the brazen wall of death and to rear up a huge pile or fabrick of another life after corruption and rottennesse of which life they could perceive few or no signes appearing in the world Wherefore although the arguments for immortality were very weighty yet they having such a strong barre laid to crosse their way no marvell if sundry of those Ancients should be brought unto a stand and the arguments as forcible as they were benummed and though not killed yet cast into a slumber For indeed because men then knew not how to dispose of souls after their separation from the body therefore they might have license granted them to speak doubtfully not knowing what to determine or to say nothing at all either pro or contra Some few we finde did contradict as by name Epicurus and Lucretius yet notwithstanding this maine obstacle the generall sense of the world was for the immortality and much more then when the other hemisphere of life came creditably to be discovered by the Messias for at that time those old reasons for immortality awaked and recovered their naturall vigour and vivacity and no wonder because this truth of immortality and that other of a life to come are mutuall inductives one unto the other and conspire so friendly as whosoever denies either of them doth disparage and weaken the other and again they give so great aides to each other as that the notice of another life made ready way for the entertainment of immortality and contrariwise the doctrine of immortality added reputation to the doctrine of the other life Moreover The incorruptible nature of the reasonable soul The state of felicity or infelicity in a life to come That God is the high Rectour of the Universe extends his providence over all and is a just and bountifull rewarder be all of them symbolizing verities and of a strict confederacy both offensive and defensive and so can hardly be overthrown I conclude this small labour as Pythagoras and Philolaus concluded their golden verses wherein the ancient doctrine is declared plainly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sic ubi deposito jam corpore libera coeli Templa penetrâris Deus immortalis omni Spretus ab illuvie terrarum eris integer avi And having once laid down our dust Through spacious aiery Lawnes we must And free in those large circles move Immortall like the Gods above 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Hierocles the Commentatour limiting and qualifying the higher expression of the verse by admonishing his reader that albeit Gods we must be yet not simply and absolutely as the words do sound but onely so farre forth as it is possible for a separated soul to be FINIS POST-SCRIPT OVer and above those reasons brought by the Authour of the precedent work all which do prove an immortalitie naturally belonging to the soul there want not divers others that do the same as amongst the rest for example this one viz. Such as the physick and food of the soul is for curing of the maladies thereof and for the strengthening and cherishing of it such is the nature of the soul it self But the physick and food of the soul is wholly immateriall and intellectuall that is to say Reasons and Truths eternall and incorruptible Therefore the nature of the soul is such I prove the minor proposition by experience for when the minde is troubled and out of peace and order by reason of some losse or misfortune then all the Materia medica of Dioscorides or of Horstius will not make a cure if so the body be not diseased or out of tune no physicians skill will be able to prevail we must not seek in such cases as these to Galen or Celsus or Paracelsus or Avicenna no druggists shop no physick-garden can furnish us with remedies against the raging sorrows or bewitching pleasures of the minde Non est medicamen in hortis Tollere nodosum nescit medicina dolorem A sick body physicians can sometimes cure but a sick mind never If so the body be then in health and that the infirmity do not proceed from thence Philosophy in that case must do the deed and not Medicina Philosophy saith Hierocles in Proem ad aureos versus Pythagora is the purger of humane life and the perfection the purger it is because it delivers it from all corruption contrary to reason and from the mortall body the perfecter because by the recovery of the true naturall constitution it reduceth it to a similitude with the divine which two things being to be done by vertue and verity by one of them it takes away the distempers of perturbations and by the other induces a God-like form into it Thus he conformably to whom determineth the wise Emperour Marcus Aurelius Antoninus l. 2. de vita sua § 15. when having numbred up a world of miseries and perplexities which haunt this life he addeth saying What is it then that must conduct us through all these Philosophia Also the great Aegyptian King Osmanduas as we find it recorded by Diodorus Siculus l. 1. p. 2. raised a goodly structure which had graven on it this inscription Medicatorium Animi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say a store-house for curing of the minde and this same was not an Apothecaries-shop but a Library well furnished with books wherewith to charme mens cares and cure both the vain delights and bitter anguishes of the mind whose tranquillity is not procurable by medicines or receipts but contrariwise by the good documents for example of Epictetus of Seneca or Marcus Antoninus and where all Pagan doctrines and consolations be deficient by the instructions and good counsels to be found for us in the Holy Bible in Thomas de Kempis Peraldus Petrarch de remediis utrinsque fortunae and other such like The Recipes taken from hence will work when all the materiall compounds quintessences extractions and Elixirs can do nothing as not having vertue in them nor yet subtility to penetrate Now albeit the Ethnick Moralists can do much for pacifying our disordered affections and introducing a content yet do they not come home for though they be able to persuade a generous contempt of all transitory delights and fading glories and also how to draw on a kinde of sad or disconsolate way of resolution for a constant suffering of all adversities telling us that Quidquid erit superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est and read us many such melancholy lectures yet do not they assigne us any solid reasons whereupon to build content or whereby we might receive true satisfaction but contrariwise endeavour to feed us with shadows as namely by their telling us that vertue is an ample reward unto it self and again that the miseries and affliction of this present life are not evills really though we do think them so and with such empty phantasies as these would make us give our own experience the lie Moreover they sometimes speak faintly and fearfully of the life to come and the rewards thereof by means of which alone the inequalities and the great disorders of this can be made up and reconciled with providence On this sort spake Tacitus concerning the soul of his Father in law Julius Agricola then late deceased Si quis piorum manibus locus sit si ut Sapientibus placet non cum corporibus extinguuntur magnae animae placidè quiescas If saith he to the spirits of the pious there be any place remaining if as wise men are persuaded great souls be not extinguished with their bodies mayest thou sweetly rest To strong and pressing sorrows such feeble remedies did many of the Ethnicks bring but this sovereign medicine was left for Christianity to compose and shew unto the world by the belief of which those cold sweats with which many before had been sore afflicted were prevented wholly Another naturall track whereby to trace out immortality is the universall shamefastnesse of mankinde of the own nakednesse which passion is not found to be in brute beasts and the reason of the difference between them seems to be because beasts are corruptible and are so to be but men though now they also be corruptible yet it seems they were not so to be but onely by a misadventure or mischance for mans body because composed of severall disagreeing parcells is dissolvable and may be taken in sunder by the very same way that it was put together and therefore by the own right cannot lay any just claim to a perpetuity more then other composed bodies can yet it seems that by right of the being matched with a substance intellectuall it might pretend unto it and therefore holds it a disparagement and disgrace to be reputed mortall which without such a title it could not do and seeing nakednesse betrayes it to be a piece of corruption a condition so abject and inferiour it is ashamed to be seen forasmuch as sexes be the evident marks and tokens of mortality for why are sexes but to propagate and what need of propagation but onely to provide a substitute and none provides a successour or a substitute who is not himself to be turned out and to be gone of which mean and inferiour condition as not befitting men are ashamed and in relation to this grand imperfection we finde that men labour to conceale even as much and as long as possible their amorous affections as springing out of a root of corruption Thus we see that men once in high fortunes and cast down and grown into necessity are abashed at their poor and present state whenas others that were poor and low alwayes be not so And this I conceive to be the principal reason why men doe blush at businesses of corporeall love and are ashamed of their nakednesse although hitherto I do not know any that in particular have taken notice of it Now finally how immortality is consistent with the principles of Aristotle and also how it doth follow upon them is not my intention to examine as being a long and intricate piece of work and performed by others as namely by Javellus l. de indeficientia anima and of late by Card. Augustinus Oregius in a work peculiarly intended for that purpose