Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
virtue_n	oil_n	spirit_n	vitriol_n	831	5	13.3907	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A86451	The grand prerogative of humane nature namely, the souls naturall or native immortality, and freedome from corruption, shewed by many arguments, and also defended against the rash and rude conceptions of a late presumptuous authour, who hath adventured to impugne it. By G.H. Gent.	Holland, Guy, 1587?-1660.	1653 (1653)	Wing H2417; Thomason E1438_2; ESTC R202443	95,057	144

seems to be an Entity not capable of being produced by generation Secondly from the nature of the things out of which it is to be educed Thirdly by the inhability of those actions which are exercised in generation for the production of any spirituall substance or intellective faculty although the soul in it self were a thing producible and that the elements might afford sufficient materialls for the composing of it For the first I argue thus No entity which is simple and unmixt can be produced by generation but such is the intellective part of man therefore that part is not to be produced by generation and if ingenerable then is it incorruptible also That it is simple and unmixt needs no probation because it is a thing wholly improbable that an intellective power or substance should be a temperature or mixture as our Adversary conceived it to be for though a temperature and mixture may remotely or a farre off concerne understanding in as much as they belong unto the Organs yet is not an intellective Entity therefore a compound or a bodily temperature as by and by we are futher to declare That no simple Entity is producible by generation is evident because the effect or terminus of that action is the composition or compound which thing it performeth not by producing the Entity of the parts but by making a substantiall union between them and by the making those severall entities to be parts which although they were before yet were they not parts of that compounded body which by this newer generation did accrue Besides this is the cleare and expresse doctrine of Aristotle in sundry places of his works For the second head of probation I affirme that no lumpish matter or earthly concretion can yield materialls for the building up of an understanding or minde Chymists by their curious arts of dissolving bodies have found out salts sulphures oyles spirits quintessences elixirs they again can draw tinctures and magisteries and out of metalls a vitriol which shall contain in it the essence of them and have the virtue of transmutation of other metalls into their own nature but yet never any knew how to extract out of them any one dramme of understanding or to fill the least phiall with it nor could they ever finde metall or oar which contained wit and understanding in it Arnoldus de villa nova as Mariana recounteth in his Spanish story of Spain attempted by mixtures and furnaces to make a man but his art failed him and he was confounded all his ingredients could not afford him an intellective spirit wherewith he might be animated and informed You will say Sense cannot be extracted any more than reason True but sense arising from things divisible may come by a resultancy from things united as being materiall which our reason being immateriall cannot especially in the principall acts thereof which be wholly inorganicall as by name the acts of judgement be touching objects immateriall and à fortiori all such of them as transcend the spheare of Nature Cicero toucheth chiefely upon this point and his argumentation seemeth to be very solid and irresistible if pressed to the uttermost The third head of argumentation is from the improportion and imbecillity of the actions of humane generation For first the actions of vegetation and sense are of an inferiour nature and so unable to produce any thing higher and perfecter then themselves and for this cause each entity is to be produced by actions that be of its own classe and order namely per actiones congeneres cognatas therefore the soul if it were to be generated could not be so otherwise than by actions of understanding or of the intellective but it is certain that generation is not performed by acts of wit or understanding but contrariwise by acts of vegetation and sense which actions be of an inferiour degree and a man generates with his body and not with his minde so that the generation of man is no more any act elicite of reason than his eating or walking is which actions be no acts of the understanding though prescribed and directed by it Now though the act of the divine understanding be subsistent yet the acts of created understandings be only accidents for such and no better is the verbum mentis in all created understandings humane or Angelicall and therefore humane understandings beget no understandings nor any children like themselves It followeth then that the soul neither generates a soul nor again is generated by any and for this cause must be incorruptible and by the principles of nature immortall By this it appeareth that the non-generation or traduction of the soul is a verity so evident that by it the immortality may be proved and it stands not in need to be it self proved by immortality Besides all this it is plain that every substance incorporall being voyd of composition physicall hath no passive principles of corruption in it and therefore is not susceptible of any physicall generation or corruption nor is resolvable into parts and this argument is urged by Scaliger excercit 307. n. 20. Again the soul hath no contrariety of qualities within it nor is there any thing abroad which is contrary thereunto I know well that many things may cease to be and yet not by corruption as for example sundry sorts of accidents and the souls of Beasts but yet these are consequents of corruption for therefore the soule for example of a Beast perishes because the organicall body which it inhabited was destroyed or corrupted and again therefore an accident ceased to be because by a corruptive action of a contrary agent it was thrust out of doors and had nothing left it whereupon to rest no basis to sustein it any longer And by this the argument of Petrus Molinaeus l. 9. Phys c. 12. is answered by which he laboured to infringe the ancient doctrine namely That every immateriall substance and incorporeall was incorruptible and immortall and that consequently the soul of man being such a substance could not be corrupted or otherwise naturally cease to be of which point see Merat tom 1. tract de Ang. disp 9. sect 2. and Bagotius tom 2. Instit l. 1. disp 4. c. 8. To tell us here as some new masters do that a spirit may be compounded of a certain spiritual matter and of a form thereunto correspondent and that therefore every spirituall substance may not be simple but contrariwise resolvable into parts essentiall according as corporeall substances be is to tell dreames and fancies of the night instead of probabilities and therefore desiring them to dream again and to enjoy their own imaginations I leave them to their rest But howsoever this new device of theirs might have some truth in Angels which are compleat substances and abstracted from corporeall materiality yet in the soul of man it could not because the soul it self is a form a substance incompleat and therefore a prodigious thing it must needs