Selected quad for the lemma: fire_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
fire_n	body_n	earth_n	part_n	2,436	4	4.8028	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29027	Some considerations about the reconcileableness of reason and religion by T.E., a lay-man ; to which is annex'd by the publisher, a discourse of Mr. Boyle, about the possibility of the resurrection.	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.; Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691. Some physico-theological considerations about the possibility of the resurrection.	1675 (1675)	Wing E42A; Wing B4024; ESTC R16715	73,261	198

again to life Lazarus and Christ of the latter of which particularly we have Proofs cogent enough to satisfie any unprejudiced Person that desires but competent Arguments to convince him And that the miraculous Power of God will be as well as his Veracity is engaged in raising up the Dead and may suffice if 〈◊〉 be so we may not difficultly gathe● from that excellent Admonition of ou● Saviour to the Sadduces where he tell● them as I elsewhere noted that th● two Causes of their Errors are their no● knowing the Scriptures wherein God hath declared he will raise the Dead nor the Power of God by which he is able to effect it But the engagement of Gods Omnipotence is also in that place clearly intimated by St. Paul Act. 26.8 where he asks King Agrippa and his other Auditors why they should think it a thing not to be believed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that GOD should raise the Dead And the same Truth is yet more fully exprest by the same Apostle where speaking of Christ returning in the Glory and Power of his Father to judge all Mankind after he has said that this divine Judge shall transform or transfigure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our vile Bodies speaking of his own and those of other Saints to subjoin the Account on which this shall be done he adds that 't will be according to the powerful working 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereby he is able even to subdue all things to himself Phil. 3.21 And now 't will be seasonable to apply what has been deliver'd in the whole past Discourse to our present purpose Since then a Humane Body is not so confin'd to a determinate Bulk but that the same Soul being united to a portion of duly organized Matter is said to constitute the same Man notwithstanding the vast differences of bigness that there may be at several times between the portions of Matter whereto the Humane Soul is united Since a considerable part of the Humane Body consists of Bones which are Bodies of a very determinate Nature and not apt to be destroyed by the operation either of Earth or Fire Since of the less stable and especially the fluid parts of a Humane Body there is a far greater expence made by insensible Transpiration than even Philosophers would imagine Since the small Particles of a resolved Body may retain their own Nature under various alterations and disguises of which 't is possible they may be afterwards stript Since without making a Humane Body cease to be the same it may be repaired and augmented by the adaptation of congruously disposed Matter to that which pre-existed in it Since I say these things are so why should it be impossible that a most intelligent Agent whose Omnipotency extends to all that is not truly contradictory to the nature of things or to his own should be able so to order and watch the Particles of a Humane Body as that partly of those that remain in the Bones and partly of those that copiously flie away by insensible Transpiration and partly of those that are otherwise disposed of upon their resolution a competent number may be preserved or retrieved so that stripping them of their disguises or extricating them from other parts of Matter to which they may happen to be conjoined he may reunite them betwixt themselves and if need be with particles of Matter fit to be contexted with them and thereby restore or reproduce a Body which being united with the former Soul may in a sense consonant to the expressions of Scripture recompose the same Man whose Soul and Body were formerly disjoined by Death What has been hitherto discours'd supposes the Doctrine of the Resurrection to be taken in a more strict and literal sense because I would shew that even according to that the difficulties of answering what is mentioned against the possibility of it are not insuperable though I am not ignorant that it would much facilitate the defence and explication of so abstruse a thing if their opinion be admitted that allow themselves a greater latitude in expounding the Article of the Resurrection as if the substance of it were That in regard the Humane Soul is the form of Man so that whatever duly organized portion of Matter 't is united to it therewith constitutes the same Man the import of the Resurrection is fulfilled in this that after Death there shall be another state wherein the Soul shall no longer persevere in its separate condition or as it were Widowhood but shall be again united not to an etherial or the like fluid Matter but to such a substance as may with tolerable propriety of speech notwithstanding its differences from our houses of Clay as the Scripture speaks be call'd a Humane Body Job 4.19 They that assent to what has been hitherto discours'd of the Possibility of the Resurrection of the same Bodies will I presume be much more easi●y induc'd to admit the Possibility of the Qualifications the Christian Religion ascribes to the glorified Bodies of the raised Saints For supposing the Truth of the History of the Scriptures we may observe that the Power of God has already extended itself to the performance of such things as import as much as we need infer sometimes by suspending the natural actings of Bodies upon one another and sometimes by endowing humane and other Bodies with preternatural Qualities And indeed Lightness or rather Agility indifferent to Gravity and Levity Incorruption Transparency and Opacity Figure Colour c. being but Mechanical affections of Matter it cannot be incredible that the most free and powerful Author of those Laws of Nature according to which all the Phaenomena of Qualities are regulated may as he thinks fit introduce establish or change them in any assign'd portion of Matter and consequently in that whereof a Humane Body consists Thus though Iron be a Body above eight times heavier bulk for bulk than Water yet in the case of Elisha's helve its native Gravity was render'd ineffectual and it emerg'd from the bottom to the top of the water And the gravitation of St. Peters Body was suspended whilst his Master commanded him and by that command enabled him to come to him walking on the Sea Thus the Operation of the activest Body in Nature Flame was suspended in Nebuchadnezar's fiery Furnace whilst Daniels three Companions walked unharm'd in those Flames that in a trice consum'd the kindlers of them Thus did the Israelites Manna which was of so perishable a Nature that it would corrupt in little above a day when gather'd in any day of the Week but that which preceded the Sabbath keep good twice as long and when laid up before the Ark for a Memorial would last whole Ages uncorrupted And to add a Proof that comes more directly home to our purpose the Body of our Saviour after his Resurrection though it retained the very impressions that the Nails of the Cross had made in his hands and feet and the wound that the Spear had made in his side and was still call'd in the Scripture his Body as indeed it was and more so than according to our past discourse it is necessary that every Body should be that is rejoin'd to the Soul in the Resurrection And yet this glorified Body had the same Qualifications that are promised to the Saints in their state of Glory St. Paul informing us that our vile Bodies shall be transform'd into the likeness of his glorious Body which the History of the Gospel assures us was endow'd with far nobler Qualities than before its Death And whereas the Apostle adds as we formerly noted that this great change of Schematism in the Saints Bodies will be effected by the irresistible Power of Christ we shall not much scruple at the admission of such an effect from such an Agent if we consider how much the bare slight Mechanical alteration of the Texture of a Body may change its sensible Qualities for the better For without any visible additament I have several times chang'd dark and opacous Lead into finely colour'd transparent and specifically lighter glass And there is another instance which though because of its obviousness 't is less heeded is yet more considerable For who will distrust what advantageous changes such an Agent as God can work by changing the Texture of a portion of Matter if he but observe what happens meerly upon the account of such a Mechanical change in the lighting of a Candle that is newly blown out by the applying another to the ascending smoke For in the twinkling of an Eye an opacous dark languid an stinking smoke loses all its stink and is changed into a most active penetrant and shining Body FINIS

that I need not to accommodate them to it alter one of them and therefore shall transcribe them just as they lie Si fortè nobis Deus de seipso vel aliis aliquid revelet quod naturales Ingenii nostri vires excedat qualia sunt mysteria Incarnationis Trinitatis non recusabimus illa credere quamvis non clarè intelligamus nec ullo modo mirabimur multa esse tum in immensa ejus natura tum etiam in rebus ab eo creatis quae captum nostrum excedant And let me add on this occasion that whereas the main Scruples that are said to be suggested by Philosophy against some mysterious Articles of Religion are grounded upon this that the Modus as they speak of those things is not clearly conceivable or at least is very hardly explicable these objections are not always so weighty as perhaps by the confidence wherewith they are urg'd you may think them For whereas I observ'd to you already that there are divers things maintain'd by School Divines which are not contained in the Scripture that observation is chiefly applicable to the things we are considering since in several of these nice Points the Scripture affirms only the thing and the Schoolmen are pleas'd to add the Modus And as by their unwarrantable boldness the School Divines determine many things without Book so the scruples and objections that are made against what the Scripture really delivers are usually grounded upon the Erroneous or Precarious Assertions of the School Philosophers who often give the Title of Metaphysical Truths to Conceits that do very little deserve that name and to which a rigid Philosopher would perhaps think that of Sublime Nonsense more proper But of this I elsewhere say enough and therefore shall now proceed to the consideration I chiefly intended viz. That from hence That the Modus of a revealed Truth is either very hard or not at all explicable it will not necessarily follow that the thing it self is irrational provided the positive Proofs of its Truth be sufficient in their kind For ev'n in Natural things Philosophers themselves do and must admit several things whereof they cannot clearly explicate or perhaps conceive the Modus I will not here mention the Origine of Substantial Forms as an instance in this kind because though it may be a fit one as to the Peripatetick Philosophy yet not admitting that there are any such Beings I will take no further notice of them especially because for a clear Instance to our present purpose we need go no further than our selves and consider the Union of the Soul and Body in man For who can Physically explain both how an immaterial Substance should be able to guide or determine and excite the motions of a Body and yet not be able to produce motion in it as by dead Palsies great Faintnesses c. it appears the Soul cannot and which is far more difficult how an incorporeal Substance should receive such Impressions from the motions of a Body as to be thereby affected with real pain and pleasure to which I elsewhere add some other properties of this Union which though not taken notice of are perhaps no less difficult to be conceiv'd and accounted for For how can we comprehend that there should be naturally such an intimate Union betwixt two such distant Substances as an Incorporeal Spirit and a Body as that the former may not when it pleases quit the latter which cannot possibly have any strings or chains that can tye or fasten to it that which has no Body on which they may take hold And I there shew that 't is full as difficult Physically to explicate how these so differing Beings come to be united as how they are kept from parting at pleasure both the one and the other being to be resolv'd into the meer appointment of God And if to avoid the abstruseness of the Modus of this Conjunction betwixt the Rational Soul and the Humane Body it be said as 't is by the Epicureans that the former is but a certain Contexture of the finer and most subtle parts of the latter the formerly propos'd abstruseness of the Union betwixt the Soul and the Body will indeed be shifted off but 't will be by a Doctrine that will not much relieve us For those that will allow no Soul in Man but what is Corporeal have a Modus to explain plain that I doubt they will alwayes leave a Riddle For of such I desire that they would explain to me who know no effects that Matter can produce but by Local Motion and Rest and the consequences of it how meer Matter let them suppose it as fine as they please and contrive it as well as they can can make Syllogisms and have Conceptions of Universals and invent speculative Sciences and Demonstrations and in a word do all those things which are done by Man and by no other Animal and he that shall intelligibly explicate to me the Modus of matters framing Theories and Ratiocinations will I confess not only instruct me but surprize me too And now give me leave to make this short Reflection on what has been said in this Section compar'd with what formerly I said in the first Section That if on the one hand we lay aside all the Irrational Opinions that the Schoolmen and other bold Writers have unwarrantably father'd on Christian Religion and on the other hand all the Erroneous Conceits repugnant to Christianity which the Schoolmen and others have prooflesly father'd upon Philosophy the seeming Contradictions betwixt solid Divinity and true Philosophy will appear to be but few as I think the Real ones will be found to be none at all SECT VI. The next Consideration I shall propose is That a thing may if singly or precisely consider'd appear Unreasonable which yet may be very Credible if consider'd as a Part of or a manifest Consequence from a Doctrine that is highly so Of this I could give you more Instances in several Arts and Sciences than I think fit to be here specifi'd and therefore I shall content my self to mention three or four When Astronomers tell us that the Sun which seems not to us a foot broad nor considerably bigger than the Moon is above a hundred and threescore times bigger than the whole Globe of the Earth which yet is forty times greater than the Moon the thing thus nakedly propos'd seems very Incredible But yet because Astronomers very skilful in their Art have by finding the Semidiameter of the Earth and observing the Parallaxes of the Planets concluded the proportion of these three Bodies to be such as has been mention'd or thereabout ev'n Learn'd and Judicious Men of all sorts Philosophers Divines and others think it not Credulity to admit what they affirm So the relations of Earthquakes that have reach'd divers hundreds of miles of Eruptions of fire that have at once overflown and burn'd vast Scopes of Land of the blowing up of Mountains by their