Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	body_n	earth_n	see_v	7,359	5	3.8059	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A89326	The soules own evidence, for its own immortality. In a very pleasant and learned discourse, selected out of that excellent treatise entituled, The trunesse of Christian religion, against atheists, epicures, &c. / First compiled in French by famous Phillip Mornay, Lord of Plessie Marlie, afterward turned into English by eloquent Sir Phillip Sydney, and his assistant, Master Arthur Golden, anno Domini M D LXXX VII. And now re-published. By John Bachiler Master of Arts, somtimes of Emanuell Colledge in Cambridge. Published according to order.; De la verité de la religion chrestienne. English	Mornay, Philippe de, seigneur du Plessis-Marly, 1549-1623.; Sidney, Philip, Sir, 1554-1586.; Golding, Arthur, 1536-1606.; Batchiler, John, ca. 1615-1674.	1646 (1646)	Wing M2802; Thomason E324_3	62,858	73

one is as an appendant to the other And in very deed to what purpose were the World created if there were no body to behold it Or to what end behold wee the Creator in the world but to serve him And why should we serve him upon no hope And to what purpose hath he indewed us with these rare gifts of his which for the most part doe but put us to pain and trouble in this life if we perish like the brute Beast or the Hearbes which know him not Howbeit for the better satisfying of the silly Soules which go on still like witlesse Beastes without taking so much leysure in all their life as once to enter into themselves let us indevour here by lively reasons to paint out unto them againe their true shape which they labour to deface with so much filthinesse The Soule of man as I have sayd afore is not a body neyther doth it increase or decrease with the body but contrary wise the more the body decayeth the more doth the understanding increase and the neerer that the body draweth unto death the more freely doth the mind understand and the more that the body abateth in flesh the more workfull is the mind And why then should we think that the thing which becommeth the stronger by the weaknesse of the body and which is advanced by the decay of the body should returne to dust with the body A mans Sences fayle because his eyes fayle and his eyes fayle because the Spirits of them fayle but the blind mans understanding increaseth because his eyes are not buside and the olde mans reason becommeth the more perfect by the losse of his sight Therefore why say we not that the body fayleth the Soul and not the Soule the body and that the Glasses are out of the Spectacles but the eysight is still good Why should we deeme the Soule to be forgone with the Sences If the eye be the thing that seeth and the care the thing that heareth why doe we not see things double and heare sounds double seeing we have two eyes and two ears It is the soule then that seeth and heareth and these which wee take to be our sences are but the instruments of our sences And if when our eyes be shut or picked out we then behold a thousand things in our minde yea and that our understanding is then most quick-sighted when the quickest of our eysight is as good as quenched or starke dead how is it possible that the reasonable soule should be tyed and bound to the sences What a reason is it to say that the soule dyeth with the sences seeing that the true sences doe then grow and increase when the instruments of sense doe die And what a thing were it to say that beast is dead because he hath lost his eyes when we our selves see that it liveth after it hath forgone the eyes Also I have proved that the soule is neither the body nor an appertenance of the body Sith it is so why measure we that thing by the body which measureth all bodies or make that to die with the body whereby the bodies that die yea many hundred years agoe doe after a certain manner live still Or what can hurt that thing whom nothing hurteth or hindereth in the body Though a man lose an arme yet doth his soule abide whole still Let him forgoe the one halfe of his body yet is his soule as sound as afore for it is whole in it selfe and whole in every part of it selfe united in it selfe and in the own substance and by the force and power thereof it sheadeth it selfe into all parts of the body Though the body rot away by piecemeal yet abideth the Soule all one and undiminished Let the bloud dreyn out the moving wax weake the sences faile and the strength perish and yet abideth the minde neverthelesse sound and lively even to the end Her house must be pierced through on all sides ere shee be discouraged her walls must be battered down ere she fall to fleeting and she never forsaketh her lodging till no room be left her to lodge in True it is that the brute beasts forgoe both life action with their bloud But as for our soule if we consider the matter well it is then gathered home into it selfe and when our sences are quenched then doth it most of all labour to surmount it selfe working as goodly actions at the time that the body is at a point to fail it yea and often times far goodlier also than ever it did during the whole life time thereof As for example it taketh order for it selfe for our household for the Common-weale and for a whole Kingdome and that with more uprightnesse godlinesse wisdome and moderation than ever it did afore yea and perchance in a body so far spent so bare so consumed so withered without and so putrified within that whosoever looks upon him sees nothing but earth and yet to heare him speake would ravish a man up to heaven yea and above heaven Now when a man sees so lively a soule in so weake and wretched a body may he not say as is said of the hatching of chickens that the shell is broken but there commeth forth a chicken Also let us see what is the ordinary cause that things perish Fire doth either goe out for want of nourishment or is quenched by his contrary which is water Water is resolved into aire by fire which is his contrary The cause why the Plant dyeth is extremitie of cold or drought or unseasonable cutting or violent plucking up Also the living wight dyeth through contrarietie of humours or for want of food or by feeding upon some thing that is against the nature of it or by outward violence Of all these causes which can we choose to have any power against our Soule I say against the Soule of man which notwithstanding that it be united to matter and to a bodie is it selfe a substance unbodily unmateriall and only conceivable in understanding The contrarietie of things Nay what can be contrarie to that which lodgeth the contraries alike equally in himselfe which understandeth the one of them by the other which coucheth them all under one skill and to be short in whom the contrarieties themselves abandon their contrarieties so as they doe not any more pursue but insue one another Fire is hote and water cold Our bodies mislike these contraries and are grieved by them but our mind linketh them together without eithet burning or cooling it selfe and it setteth the one of them against the other to know them the better The things which destroy one another through the whole world do mainteine one another in our minds Againe nothing is more contrary to peace then warre is and yet mans mind can skill to make or mainteine peace in preparing for warre and to lay earnestly for warre in seeking or inioying of peace Even death it selfe which dispatcheth our life cannot bee contrary

here gather together their owne speeches one after another Hermes declareth in his Poemander how at the voyce of the everlasting the Elements yeelded forth all reasonlesse living wights as it had bin out of their bosomes But when he commeth to man he sayth He made him like unto himselfe he linked himselfe to him as to his Sonne for he was beautifull and made after his owne Image and gave him all his works to use at his pleasure Againe he exhorteth him to forsake his bodie notwithstanding that he wonder greatly at the cunning workmanship thereof as the very cause of his death and to manure his soul which is capable of immortality and to consider the originall root from whence it sprang which is not earthly but heavenly and to withdraw himselfe even from his sences and from their trayterous allurements to gather himselfe wholy into that minde of his which hee hath from God and by the which he following Gods word may become as God Discharge thy selfe sayth he of this body which thou bearest about thee for it is but a cloke of ignorance a foundation of infection a place of corruption a living death a sensible carryon a portable grave a household thief It flattereth thee because it hateth thee and it hateth thee because it envieth thee As long as that liveth it bereaveth thee of life thou hast not a greater enemie than that Now to what purpose were it for him to forsake this light this dwelling place this life if he were not sure of a better in another world as he himselfe sayth more largely afterward On the other side what is the soule The soule sayth he is the garment of the minde and the garment of the soule is a certain spirit whereby it is united to the body And this minde is the thing which we call properly the man that is to say a heavenly wight which is not to be compared with beasts but rather with the Gods of heaven if he be not yet more than they The heavenly cannot come down to the earth without leaving the heaven but man measureth the heaven without removing from the earth The earthly man then is as a mortall God and the heavenly God is as an immortal man To be short his conclusion is That man is double mortall as touching his body and immortall as touching his soule which soule is the substantiall man and the very man created immediately of God sayth he as the light is bred immediately of the Sunne And Chalcidius sayth that at his death he spake these words I goe home again into mine own countrey where my better forefathers and kinsfolke be Of Zoroastres who is yet of more antiquity than Hermes we have nothing but fragments Neverthelesse many report this argument to be one of his That mens souls are immortall and that one day there shall be a generall rising again of their bodies and the answers of the wise men of Chaldye who are the heirs of his Doctrine doe answer sufficiently for him There is one that exhorteth men to return with speed to their heavenly father who hath sent them from above a soule endowed with much understanding and another that exhorteth them to seeke paradice as the peculiar dwelling place of the soule A third sayth that the soule of man hath God as it were shut up in it and that it hath not any mortality therein For sayth he the soule is as it were drunken with God and sheweth forth his wonders in the harmonie of this mortall body And again another sayth It is a cleere fire proceeding from the power of the heavenly father an uncorruptible substance and the maintainer of life containing almost all the whole world with the full plenty thereof in his besom But one of them proceedeth yet further affirming that he which seteth his minde upon godlinesse shall save his body fraile though it be And by those words he acknowledgeth the very glorifying of the body Now all these sayings are reported by the Platonists and namely by Psellus and they refuse not to be acknowne that Pythagoras and Plato learned them of the Chaldees insomuch that some think that the foresaid Hermes and Zoroastres and the residue afore-mentioned are the same of whom Plato speaketh in his second Epistle and in his eleventh Book of Laws when he sayth that the ancient and holy Oracles are to be believed which affirme mens Souls to be Immortall and that in another life they must come before a Judge that will require an account of all their doings The effect whereof commeth to this That the Soule of man proceedeth immediatly from God that is to say that the father of the body is one and the Father of the Soul is another That the Soul is not a bodily substance but a Spirit and a Light That at the departure thereof from hence it is to go into a Paradise and therefore ought to make haste unto death And that it is so far from mortality that it maketh even the body Immortall What can we say more at this day even in the time of light wherein we be Pherecydes the Syrian the first that was known among the Greeks to have written prose taught the fame And that which Virgill sayth in his second Eglog concerning the Drug or Spice of Assyria and the growing thereof every whereis interpreted of some men to be ment of the Immortalitie of the Soule the doctrine whereof Pherecydes brought from thence into Greece namely that it should be understood everywhere throughout the whole world Also Phocylides who was at the same time speaketh thereof in these words {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} That is to say The Soul of man immortall is and never weares away With any age or length of time but liveth fresh for aye And again {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The Remnants which remayn of men unburied in the grave Become as Gods and in the Heavens a life most blessed have For though their bodies turn to dust as daily we do see Their Souls live still for evermore from all corruption free And in another place he says again {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} We hope that we shall come agayn Out of the earth to light more playn And if ye aske him the cause of all this he will answer you in another verse thus {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Because the Soul Gods Instrument and Image also is Which saying he seemeth to have taken out of this verse of Sibil● {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} In very reason Man should be The Image and the shape of me Of the same opinion also are Orpheus Theognis Homer Hesiodus Pindar and all the Poets of old time which may answer both for themselves and their owne Countries and for the residue of their ages Likewise Pythagoras a disciple of

Pherecides held opinion that the Soule is a bodylesse and immortall substance put into this body as into a Prison for sinning And whereas the fleeting of soules out of one body into another is fathered upon him although the opinion be not directly against the immortality of the soul yet doe many men thinke that he hath wrong done unto him And his Disciple Timaeus of Locres reporteth otherwise of him For what punishment were it to a voluptuous man to have his Soule put into a beast that he might become the more voluptuous without remorse of sinne Soothly it is all one as if in punishment of murther or theft yee would make the murtherer to cut the throats of his own father and mother or the thiefe to commit treachery against God Howsoever the case stand he teacheth in his verses that man is of heavenly race and that as Jamblichus reporteth he is set in this world to behold God And his Disciple Arckitas sayth that God breatheth reason and understanding into him Likewise Philolaus affirmeth that the Divines and Prophets of old time bear record that the soule was coupled with the body for her sins and buried in the same as in a grave Of Epicharmus we have this saying If thou beest a good man in thy heart death can doe thee no harme for thy soule shall live happily in heaven c. Also of Heraclides we have this saying We live the death of them that is to say of the blessed his meaning is that we be not buried with our bodies and we dye their life that is to say we be still after this bodie of ours is dead Of the like opinion are Thales Anaxagoras and Diogenes concerning this point yea and so is Zeno too howbeit that he thought the soule to be begotten of man wherein he was contrary to himselfe To be short scarcely were there any to be found among the men of old time save onely Democritus and Epicurus that held the contrary way whom the Poet Lucre imitated afterward in his Verses Yet notwithstanding when Epicurus should dye he commanded an Anniversary or Yeerminde to be kept in remembrance of him by his Disciples so greatly delighted he in a vain shadow of immortality having shaken off the very thing itselfe And Lucrece as it is written of him made his book being mad at such times as the fits of his madnesse were off him surely more mad when hee thought himselfe wisest than when the fits of his phrensie were strongest upon him Whosoever readeth the goodly discourses of Socrates upon his drinking of poyson as they be reported by Plato and Xenophon himselfe cannot doubt of his opinion in this case For he not onely believed it himself but also perswaded many men to it with lively reasons yea and by his own death much more then by all his life And so yee see we be come unto Plato and Aristotle with consent of all the wise men of old time ungainsaid of any saving of a two or three malapart wretches whom the ungraciousnesse of our dayes would esteem but as drunken sots and disards Certesse Plato who might peradventure have heard speake of the Books of Moses doth in his Timaeus bring in God giving commandement to the under-gods whom he created that they should make man both of mortall and of immortall substances Wherein it may be that he alluded to this saying in Genesis Let us make man after our own image and likenesse In which case the Jews say that GOD directed his speech to his Angels but our Divines say he spake to himselfe But anon after both in the same book and in many other places Plato as it were commming to himselfe again teacheth that GOD created Man by himselfe yea and even his Liver and his Brain and all his Sences that is to say the Soule of him not onely endued with reason and understanding but also with sence and ability of growing and increasing and also the instruments whereby the same doe worke Moreover he maketh such a manifest difference betweene the Soule and the Body as that he matcheth them not together as matter and forme as Aristotle doth but as a Pilot and a Ship a Common-weale and a Magistrate an Image and him that beareth it upon him What greater thing can there be than to be like God Now sayth Plato in his Phoedon The Soul of Man is very like the Godhead Immortall Reasonable Uniforme Undissoluble and evermore of one sort which are conditions sayth he in his matters of State that cannot agree but to things most divine And therefore at his departing out of the World hee willed his Soul to return home too her kinred and to her first originall that is to wit as he himself sayth there to the wise and Immortall Godhead the Fountain of all goodnes as called home from banishment into her own native Country Hee termeth it ordinarily {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that is to say of Kyn unto God and consequently {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that is to say Everlasting and of one self-same name with the immortall ones a Heavenly Plant and not a Earthly rooted in Heaven not in Earth begotten from above and not heer beneath and finally such as cannot dye heer for as much as it liveth still in another place To be short seeing sayth he that it comprehendeth the things that are Divine and Immortall that is to wit the Godhead and the things that are unchangeable and uncorruptible as truth is it cannot be accounted to be of any other nature than they The same opinion doth Plutarch also attribute unto him which appeareth almost in every leafe of his Writings As touching the ancienter sort of Platonists they agree all with one accord in the Immortality of the Soul saving that some of them derive it from God and some from the Soule of the World some make but the Reason or Mind onely to be Immortall and some the whole Soule which disagreement may well be salved if we say that the Soul all whole together is Immortall in power or ability though the execution and performance of the actions which are to be done by the body be forgone with the instruments or members of the body The disagreement concerning this point among such as a man may vouchsafe to call by the name of Phylosophers seemeth to have begun at Aristotle howbeit that his Disciples count it a commendation to him that he hath given occasion to doubt of his opinion in that behalfe For it is certain that his new found Doctrine of the eternity or everlastingnesse of the world hath distroubled his brain in many other things as commonly it falleth out that one error breedeth many other Because nature sayth he could not make every man particularly to continue for ever by himselfe therefore shee continueth him in the kinde by matching male and female together This is spoken either

the immortall spirit of our soule move and rule our frail body Hereunto consent all the writers of his time as Ovid Virgill and others whose verses are in every mans remembrance There wanted yet the wight that should all other wights exceed In lofty reach of stately minde who like a Lord indeed Should over all the res'due reign Then shortly came forth man Whom either he that made the World and all things else began Created out of seed divine or else the earth yet young And lately parted from the Skie the seede thereof uncloong Reteyned still in fruitfull wombe which Japets sonne did take And tempering it with water pure a wight thereof did make Which should resemble even the Gods which soverein state doe hold And where all other things the ground with groveling eye behold He gave to man a stately look and full of Majesty Commanding him with stedfast looke to face the starry skie Here a man might bring in almost all Senecaes writings but I will content my selfe with a few sayings of his Our Soules sayth he are a part of Gods Spirit and sparkes of holy things shineing upon the earth They come from another place then this low one Whereas they seeme to be conversant in the bodie yet is the better part of them in heaven alway neere unto him which sent them hither And how is it possible that they should be from beneath or f●om anywhere else than from above seeing they overpasse all these lower things as nothing and hold scorn of all that ever we can hope or feare Thus ye see how he teacheth that our souls come into our bodies from above But whether go they againe when they depart hence Let us here him what he sayes of the Lady Martiaes Sonne that was dead He is now everlasting sayth he and in the best state bereft of this earthly baggage which was none of his and set free to himselfe For these bones these sinewes this coate of skin this face and these serviceable hands are but fetters and prisons of the soule By them the soule is overwhelmed beaten downe and chased away It hath not a greater battell than with that masse of flesh For fear of being torn in peeces it laboureth to return from whence it came where it hath readie for it an happie and everlasting rest And again This soule cannot be made an Outlaw for it is a kin to the Gods equall to the whole world and to all time and the thought or conceit thereof goeth about the whole Heaven extending it selfe from the beginning of all time to the uttermost point of that which is to come The wretched course being the Iayle and fetters of the soule is tossed to and fro Upon that are torments murthers and diseases executed As for the soule it is holy and everlasting and cannot be layd hand on When it is out of this body it is at libertie and set free from all bondage and is conversant in that beautifull place wheresoever it be which receiveth mens soules into the blessed rest thereof as soone as they be delivered from hence To be short he seemeth to pricke very nere to the rising againe of the dead For in a certain Epistle to Lucillus his words are these Death whereof we be so much afraid doth not bereve us of life but only discontinew it for a time and a day will come that shall bring us to light againe This may suffice to give us knowledge of the opinion of that great personage in whom we see that the more he grew in age the nerer he came still to the true birth For in his latest bookes he treateth alwaies both more assuredly and more evidently thereof Also the saying of Phavorinus is notable There is nothing great in earth sayth he but Man and nothing great in Man but his soule if thou mount up thether thou mountest above Heaven And if thou stoope downe againe to the bodie and compare it with the Heaven it is lesse than a Fly or rather a thing of nothing At one word this is as much to say as that in this clod of clay there dwelleth a divine and uncorruptible nature for how could it els bee greater than the whole world As touching the Nations of old time we reade of them all that they had certain Religions and divine Services so as they beleeved that there is a Hell and certain fieldes which they call the Elysian fields as we see in the Poets Pindarus Diphilus Sophocles Euripides and others The more superstitious that they were the more sufficiently doe they witnesse unto us what was in their Conscience For true Religion and Superstition have both one ground namely the soule of man and there could be no Religion at all if the soule lived not when it is gone hence We read of the Indians that they burned themselves afore they came to extreme oldage terming it the letting of men loose and the freeing of the soule from the bodie and the sooner that a man did it the wiser was he esteemed Which custome is observed still at this day among the people that dwell by the River Niger otherwise called the people of Senega in Affricke who offer themselves willingly to be buryed quicke with their Masters All the demonstrations of Logicke and Mathematicke sayth Zeno have not so much force to prove the immortalitie of the soule as this only doing of theirs hath Also great Alexander having taken prisoners ten of their Philosophers whom they call Gimnosophists asked of one of them to try their wisedome whether there were moe men alive or dead The Philosopher answered that there were more alive Because sayd he there are none dead Ye may well think they gave a dry mocke to all the arguments of Aristotle and Callisthenes which with all their Philosophie had taught their scholer Alexander so evill Of the Thracians we reade that they sorrowed at the brith of men and reioyced at the death of them yea even of their owne childen And that was because they thought that which we call death not to be a death in deede but rather a very happie birth And these be the people whom Herodotus reporteth to have been called the Neverdying Getes and whom the Greekes called the Neverdying Getes or Thracians Who were of opinion that at their departing out of this world they went to Zamolxis or Gebeleizie that is to say after the interpretation of the Getish or Gotish tongue to him that gave them health saluation or welfare and gathered them together The like is sayd of the Galles chiefly of the inhabiters about Marsilles and of their Druydes of the Hetruscians and their Bishops and of the Scythians and their Sages of whom all the learning and wisedome was grounded upon this poynt For looke how men did spread abroad so also did this doctrine which is so deeply printed in man that he cannot but carie it continually with him Which thing is

body groweth in greatnesse by further inlarging Again if the Soule were the body it should lose her strength and soundnesse with the body so as the maimed in body should therewith feele also a mayme in his understanding as well as in his members whosoever were sick of any disease should also be sick in his reason he that limpeth or halteth should therewith halt in soule also the blinde mans soule should bee blinde and the lame mans soule should be lame But we see contrariwise that the maymed and the sick the cripples and the blinde have their soules whole and sound and their understanding perfect and cleer-sighted in itselfe To be short many a man dyeth whose body is sound and differeth not a whit in any part from that it was when it was alive and yet notwithstanding both life moving sense and understanding are out of it Let us say then that in the body there was a thing which was not of the body but was a far other thing than the body Some wilfull person will object here that the force and strength of the soule groweth with the body as appeareth in this that a man grown will remove that which a child cannot and that a child of two years old will goe which thing a babe of two moneths old cannot doe But he should consider also that if the selfesame man or the selfesame child should have a mischance in his leg or in his arme he should thereby forgoe the strength and moving thereof whereas yet notwithstanding his soule should have her former force and power still to move the other as shee did afore Therefore it is to be said not that the childs soul is grown or strengthened by time but rather that his sinews are dryed and hardened which the soule useth as strings and instruments to move withall and therefore when age hath loosened and weakned them a man hath need of a staffe to help them with although he have as good a will to run as he had when he was young The soule then which moveth them all at one beck hath the selfesame power in infancie which it hath in age and the same in age which it hath in the prime of youth and the fault is onely in the instrument which is unable to execute the operations thereof like as the cunning of a Lute-player is not diminished by the moistnesse or slacknesse of the Lutestrings nor increased by the over high straining and tight standing of them but indeed in the one he cannot shew his cunning at all and in the other he may shew it more or lesse Likewise the speech of children commeth with their teeth howbeit that the speech doe manifestly utter it selfe first in that they prattle many things which they cannot pronounce and in old men it goeth away again with their teeth and yet their eloquence is not abated thereby As for Demosthenes although hee surmounted all the Orators of his time yet were there some letters which he could not pronounce Give unto old age or unto infancie the same sinews and teeth and as able and lusty limbs and members as youth hath and the actions which the soule doth with the body and by the body I meane so farre forth as concerne the abilities of sence and livelynes shall be performed as well in one age as in another But haddest thou as great indifferencie in iudging of the force and power of thyne owne soule as of the cunning of a Lute-player I say not by the nimblenes of his fingers which are perchance knotted with the gout but by the playne and sweet Harmonie of his Tabulatorie as they terme it which maketh thee to deeme him to have cunning in his head although hee can no more utter it with his hands so as thou wouldest consider how thou hast in thy selfe a desire to go though thy feet be not able to beare thee a discretion to iudge of things that are spoken though thyne eyes cannot convey it unto thee a sound eloquence though for vvant of thy teech thou cannot vvell expresse it and vvhich is above all the rest a substantiall quicke and heavenly reason even vvhen thy body is most earthly and drooping Thou vvouldest soone conclude that the force and power of quickning moving and perceiving is vvhole and sound in thy soule and that the default is altogether in thy body Insomuch that if she had a nevv body and nevv instruments given unto her she vvould be as lusty and cheerely as ever she vvas and that the more she perceiveth the body to decay the more she laboureth to retire into her self vvhich is a plaine proofe of that she is not the body nor any part of the body but the very life and in worker of the body And sith it is so there needeth no long scanning vvhether the soul be a substance or a qualitie For seeing that qualities have no being but in another thing than themselves the life vvhich causeth another thing to be cannot be a qualitie Forasmuch then as the Soul maketh a man to be a man who otherwise should be but a carcasse or carion doubtlesse unlesse we will say that the onely difference which is betwixt a man and a dead carcasse is but in accidents we must needs grant that the soule is a forming substance and a substantiall forme yea and a most excellent substance infinitely passing the outward man as which by the power and vertue thereof causeth another thing to have being and perfecteth the bodily substance which seemeth outwardly to have so many perfections But hereupon inseweth another controversie whether this substance be a bodily or an unbodily substance which cause requireth somewhat longer examination Soothly if we consider the nature of a body it hath certain measurings and comprehendeth not any thing which is not proportioned according to the greatnesse and capacity thereof For like as it selfe must be fain to have a place in another thing so must other things occupie some certain place in it by reason whereof it commeth to passe that things can have no place therein if they be greater then it without annoying the one the other To be short if the thing be lesse than the body that containeth it the whole body shall not contain it but onely some part thereof And if it be greater then must some part thereof needs be out of it for there is no measuring of bodies but by quantity Now we see how our soule comprehendeth heaven and earth without annoying either other and likewise time past present and to come without troubling one annother and finally innumerable places persons and towns without cumbering of our understanding The great things are there in their full greatnesse and the small things in their uttermost smallnesse both of them whole and sound in the soule whole and sound and not by piecemeale or onely but in part of it Moreover the fuller it is the more it is able to receive the more things that are couched in

perceiving by the Sences I think I have proved the contrary already neverthelesse let us examine their reasons yet further The forme or shape of every thing say they doth perish with the matter Now the soule is as you would say the forme or shape of the body therefore it corrupteth with the body This argument were rightly concluded if it were meant of the materiall forme But I have proved that the soule is unmateriall and hath a cōtinuance of ir self And indeed the more it is discharged of matter the more it retaineth his own peculiar forme Therfore the corruption of the matter toucheth not the foule at all Again if mens souls live say they after their bodies then are they infinite for the world is without beginning without ending and as we know nature can away with no infinite thing therefore they live not after their bodies Yes say I for I have proved that the world hath a beginning and that with so substantial reasons as thou art not able to disprove Therfore it followeth that the inconvenience which thou alledgest can have no place Another sayth If dead mens souls live stil why come they not to tell us so And he thinketh he hath stumbled upon a wonderfull subtle device But how doth this follow in reason There hath not come any man unto us from the Indies a long time ergo there be no Indies May not the same argument serve as well to prove that we our selves are not because we never went thither Again what intercourse is there between things that have bodies and things that have no bodies or between heaven and earth considering that there is so smal intercourse even between men which live under one selfesame Sun He that is made a Magistrate in his own Countrey doth not willingly return to the place of his banishment Likewise the Soule that is lodged in the lap of his God and come home into his native soyle forgoeth the desire of these lower things which to his sight beholding them from above and lesse then the point of a needle On the other side he that is put in close prison how desirous soever he be cannot goe out so that soule which is in the Jarle of his soveraign Lord God hath no respit or sporting time to come tell us what is done there Unto the one the beholding of the everlasting God is as a Paradice wherein he is willing to remain and unto the other his own condemnation is an imprisonment of his will But we would have God to send both the one the other unto us to make us to believe As who would say it stood him greatly on hand to have us to believe and not rather us that we should believe And in effect what else is all this but a desiring that some man might return into his mothers womb again to incourage young babes against the pinches and pains which they abide in their birth wherof they would be as shie as we be of death if they had the like knowledge of them But let us let such vanities passe and come to the ground Yee beare us on hand say they that the soul of man is but one though it have divers powers Whereof we see the sensitive and the growing powers to be corrupted and to perish therefore it should seeme that the understanding or reasonable power also should doe the like At a word this is all one as if a man should say you tell mee that this man is both a good man a good Sword-player and a good luteplayer altogether and that because his sword falls out of his hand or his hand it selfe becommeth lame therefore he cannot be a good or honest man still as you reported him to be Nay though he lose those instruments yet ceaseth he not therefore to be an honest man yea and both a Sword-player and a Lute-player too as in respect of skill Likewise when our soules have forgone these exercises yet cease they not to be the same they were afore To inlighten this point yet more of the powers of our Soule some are exercised by the instruments of the body and othersome vvithout any help or furtherance of the body at all Those vvhich are exercised by the body are the sences and the powers of the sences and the powers of the grovving vvhich may carrie the sime likenesse that is between a Luter and a Lute Breake the Luters Lute and his cunning remaineth still but his putting of it in practice faileth Give him another Lute and hee falls to playing new again Put out a mans eye and yet the ability of seeing abideth still with him though the very act of seeing be disappointed But give unto the oldest Hag that is the same eyes that he had when he was young and he shall see as well as ever he did After the same manner is it with the growing or thriving power Restore unto it a good stomack a sound liver and a perfect heart and it shall execute his functions as well as ever it did afore The power that worketh of it selfe and without the body is the power of reason or understanding which if we will we may call the mind And if thou yet still doubt thereof consider when thou mindest a thing earnestly what thy body furthereth thy minde therein thou shalt perceive that the more fixedly thou thinkest upon it the lesse thou seest the things before thee and the more thy minde wandereth the more thy body resteth as who would say that the workings of the body are the greatest hinderance and impediment that can bee to the peculiar doings of the minde And this ability of understanding may be likened to a man which though he have lost both his hand and his lute ceaseth not therefore to bee a man still and to doe the true deeds of a man that is to wit to discourse of things to minde them to use reason and such like yea and to be both a Luter and a man as he was afore notwithstanding that he cannot put his Lute-playing in exercise for want of instruments Nay which more is this understanding part groweth so much the stronger and greater as it is lesse occupied and busied about these base and corruptible things and is altogether drawn home wholy to it selfe as is to be seen in those which want their eyes whose mindes are commonly most apt to understand and most firme to remember Doe we debate of a thing in our selves Neither our body nor out sences are busied about it Doe we will the same As little doe they stir for that too To understand and to will which are the operations of the minde the soule hath no need of the body and as for working and being they accompany one another sayth Aristotle Therefore to continue still in being the soule hath not to doe with the body nor any need of the body but rather to worke well and to be well the soule ought either to be without the

to be seene yet more in that which we read concerning the hearers of Hegesias the Cyrenian who dyed willingly after they had heard him discourse of the state of mens soules after this life and likewise concerning Cleombrotus the Ambraciot who slew himselfe when hee had read a certain treatise of the immortalitie of the soule For had it not been a doctrine most evident to mans wit they would never have bin caried so farre by it as to the hurting of their bodies And if among so many people there be perchance some fewe wretched caytifes that have borne themselves on hand the contrarie which thing neverthelesse they could never yet fully perswade themselves to be out of all doubt or question surely we may beleeve that they had very much adoe and were utterly besotted like Drunkards afore they could come to that poynt so as we may well say of them as Hierocle the Pythagorist sayd namely That the wicked would not have their souls to be immortall to the intent they might not bee punished for their faults But yet that they prevent the sentence of their Judge by condemning themselves unto death afore hand But if they will neither heare God nor the whole world nor themselves let them at leastwise hearken to the Devill as well as they doe in other things who as saith Plutark made this answer to Corax of Naxus and others in these verses It were a great wickednesse for thee to say The Soule to be mortall or for to decay And unto Polytes he answered thus As long as the Soule to the body is tyde Though loth yet all sorowes it needes must abyde But when fro the body Death doth it remove To heaven by and by then it flyes up above And there ever youthfull in blisse it doth rest As God by his wisedome hath set for the best Not that any saying of the Devills owne is to be alledged in witnesse of the truth further foorth than to shew that hee speakes it by compulsion of Gods mightie power as wicked men divers times doe when they be upon the Racke Now we be come to the time or nere to the time that the heavenly doctrine of Jesus Christ was spred over the whole world unto which time I have proved the continuall succession of that doctrine which could not but be unseparably ioyned with the succession of men But from this time forth it came so to light among all Nations all persons that Saint Austin after a short tryumphing over ungodlinesse cryeth out in divers places saying Who is now so very a foole or so wicked as to doubt still of the immortalitie of the Soule Epictetus a Stoikphilosopher who was had in very great reputation among all the men of his time is full of goodly sayings to the same purpose May we not be ashamed sayth he to leade an unhonest life and to suffer our selves to be vanquished by adversitie we be alyed unto God we came from thence and we have leave to returne thether from whence we came One while as in respect of the soule he termeth man the ofspring of GOD or as it were a branch of the Godhead and another while he calleth him a divine Impe or a spark of God by all which words howbeit that they be somewhat unproper for what words can a man finde to fit that matter he sheweth the uncorruptiblenesse of the substance of mans soule And whereas the Philosopher Simplicius hath so diligently commented upon his bookes it doth sufficiently answer for his opinion in that case without expressing his words here Plotinus the excellentest of all the Platonists hath made nine treatises expressely concerning the nature of the soule besides the things which he hath written dispersedly heere and there in other places His chiefe conclusions are these That mens soule proceede not of their bodies nor of the seede of the Parent but come from above and are as ye would say grafted into our bodies by the hand of God That the soule is partly tyed to the body and to the instruments thereof and partly franke free workfull and continuing of it selfe and yet notwithstanding that it is neither a body nor the harmonie of the body but if we consider the life and operation which it giveth to the body it is after a sort the perfection or rather the perfector of the body if we have an eye to the understanding whereby it guydeth the movings and doings of the body it is as a Governour of the body That the further it is withdrawne from the Sences the better it discourseth of things insomuch that when it is utterly separated from them it understandeth things without discoursing reasoning or debating yea even in a moment because this debating is but a certain lightening or brightnesse of the minde which now taketh advisement in matter whereof it doubteth it doubteth wheresoever the body yeeldeth any impedements unto it but it shall neither doubt nor seek advisement any more when it is once out of the body but shall conceive the truth without wavering That the soule in the body is not properly there as in a place or as in a ground because it is not contained or comprehended therein and may also be separated from it but rather if a man had eyes to see it withall he should see that the bodie is in the soule as an accessary is in a principall or as a thing contained in a container or a sheding or liquid thing in a thing that is not liquid because the Soule imbraceth the body and quickneth it and moveth it equally and alike in all parts That every abilitie thereof is in every part of the bodie as much in one part as in another as a whole soule in every part notwithstanding that every severall abilitie thereof seeme to be severally in some particular member or part because the instruments thereof are there as the sensitive abilitie seemeth to rest in the head the irefull in the heart and the quickning in the liver because the sinews heart-strings and veins come from those parts Whereas the reasonable power is not in any part saving so far forth as it worketh and hath his operation there neither hath it any need of place or instrument for the executing of it selfe And to be short that the soule is a life by it selfe a life all in one unpaitable which causeth to grow and groweth not it selfe which goeth through the bodie and yet is not contained of the body which uniteth the sences and is not divided by the Sences and therefore that it is a bodilesse substance which cannot be touched neither from within nor from without having no need of the body either outwardly or inwardly and consequently is immortall divine yea and almost a very God Which things he proveth by many reasons which were too long to be rehearsed here Yea. he proceedeth so far as to say that they which are passed into another