souls of all sincere Believers The raising of Souls to a Divine and Heavenly Disposition and Conversation to live to God and the common good in the comfortable hopes of an everlasting heavenly glory as purchased and given by our Redeemer conquering the allurements of the world and flesh the temptations of Satan and all the flatteries and frowns of the ungodly This is a work that none but God can do and will do which beareth his Image and superscription But now these Hypocrites obscure it to themselves and other unbelievers and tempt men to say Are not Christans as bad as Heathens and Mahometans Are they not as fleshly and worldly and false and perjured and malicious and hurtful and pernicious to others and themselves But I answer No They are not These are no more Christians than Images are men They are the Enemies of Christians that under Christs banner and in his livery and name do the most perfideously hate him and fight against him Who will tell them Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these you did it to me They betray him for money as Judas by Hail-master and a Kiss I challenge any Infidel to find me One that seriously believeth the Gospel of Christ as perceiving the certain Evidence of its truth who is not a person of a holy and obedient heavenly life How can a man sincerely believe that God sent his Son from Heaven in flesh to Redeem man and to bring us to Glory and that he sealed his Doctrine by all his miracles resurrection and ascensiâ—n and the Holy Ghost and that he is our Head in Heaven with whom we shall live in joy for ever and is the Author of eternal Salvation to all them that obey him I say How can a man believe this seriously and not esteem and choose and seek it before all the shadows and vanitie to this world It is not Christians but false hypocrites whose lives represent Christianity blasphemously as no better than Heathenism or Mahometanism It is but for worldly Interest and Reputation or because it is the Religion of the King Countrey or Ancestors that they take up so much as the name and badg of Christianity And will you judg of our Religion by its enemies Do you not see in their drunkenness sensuality covetousness ungodliness how unlike their lives are to the baptismal Vow and that they hate and seek to destroy them that are serious in keeping that Vow and living as Christians § 2. And as I publish this for the use of unbelievers so I must let the Reader know that it is become one of the usual tricks of the Popish deceivers to put on the Vizor of an Infidel and to dispute about the immortality of the Soul and the greatest difficulties of Religion And it is to puzzle men and convince them that by Reasoning they can never attain to satisfaction in these matters And then to infer You have no way left but to believe the Church we are that Church If you leave that easie quiet way you will never come to any certainty Why do they not try the same triek about all the difficulties in Philosophy Astronomy Physick History c For every Sâ—â—ence and Art hath its difficulties But are not all these as gaeat difficulties to the Pope and his Prelates as they are to us But God hath given us a more clear and satisfactory way of the solution of such Doubts § 3. I must further give notice to the Reader That it was the publishing of Dr. H. More 's answer to a Letter of mine which occasioned the publishing of this When I was put on the one I thought it not unprofitable to premise the other as being of much greater use It seemed good to the worthy Dr. to desire my thoughts of his Description of a Spirit which he laid down in the first Edition of Mr. Glanvile of Apparitions which I gave him in a hasty Letter which he thought meet without my knowledg to publish an answer to in his second Edition of Mr. Glanvile Our difference is scarce worth the Readers notice And our velitation is only friendly and Philosophical But yet it may possibly be useful to some at least to excite them to a more profitable search than I have made And it explaineth some passages in my Methodus Theologiae But I much more commend to the reading of the Sadduces and Infidels the Histories themselves of Apparitiins and Watchcrafts which Mr. Glanvile and Dr. More have there delivered many of them at least with undeniable evidence and proof To which if he will but add the Devil of Mascon and Bodin and Remigius of Witches he will scarce be able to deny belief to the existence and Individuation of Spirits and the future life of separated Souls SIR I Have Reason to judg you no Stranger to such Addresses as these and therefore have adventured more boldly to apply my self to you Others would it may be rigedly censure this Attempt but your more Christian Temper will induce you I hope to judg more charitably did you but understand with what reluctancy I undertook this task I have had many Disputes with my self whether or no I should stifle these Doubts or seek Satisfaction Shame to own such Principles bid me do the first but the weight of the Concern obliged me to the last For I could not with any chearfulness or with that vigor I thought did become me pursue those unseen Substances those Objects of Faith Religion holds forth except I did really believe their existence and my own capacity of enjoyning them I thought at first to satisfie my self in the certainty of the things I did believe to confirm and establish my Faith by these Studies that I might be able to render a Reason of the hope that is in me but instead of building up I am shaken and instead of a clearer evidence I am invironed with uncertainties Unhappy that I am I had better have taken all upon Trust could I so have satisfied my Reason than thus to have involved my self in an endless Study For such I am afraid it will prove without help for that I may not in this Concern rest without satisfaction and yet the more I consider and weigh things the more are my doubts multiplied I call them only doubts not to palliate any opinions for I have not yet espoused any but because they have not yet attained so much maturity or strength as to take me off those things my doubts being satisfied I should conclude of indispensable necessity they are but yet in the Womb assist to make them Abortives I have not been wanting to my self but in the use of all means to me known have sought satisfaction both by Prayer Reading and Meditation I have weighed and consulted things according to my Capacity I have been as faithful to my self in all my reasonings as I could and void of prejudice have passed impartial Censures on the things in debate so far as that
for the hand of God hath touched me The wicked live and become old yea they are mighty in power their seed is established in their sight with them and their off-spring before their eyes their houses are safe from fear neither is the rod of God upon them c. they are planted and take root they grew yea they bring forth fruit yet God is never in their mouth and far from their reins In vain then do I wash my hands in innocency seeing all things come alike to all There is one event to the righteous and to the wicked to the good to the clean and to the unclean to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not as is the good so is the sinner and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath I have now done tho I hardly know how lest I too far trouble you and only beg your perusal of these lines and two or three in answer of them by this Bearer who shall at your appointment wait on you for the same Let me farther â—eg these two things of you first That you would consider you have not to do with a Sophistick Wrangler or with one that would willingly err but with one that desires to know the Truth Let therefore your Answer be as much as you can void of Scholastick Terms or Notions that may lead me more into the dark And then as Job did beg That God would withdraw his hand far from him and that his dread might not make him afraid so I. And further That you would not awe me with his greatness nor suppress my Arguments with his Omnipotence Then call thou and I will answer or let me speak and answer thou me Thus begging the Divine Influence to direct you and enlighten me I subscribe my self SIR § 1. IT is your wisdom in Cases of so great moment to use all just endeavours for satisfaction and I think you did but your duty to study this as hard as you say you have done But 1. I wish you had studied it better for then you would not have been a stranger to many Books which afford a just solution of your Doubts as I must suppose you are by your taking no notice of what they have said 2. And I wish you had known that between the solving of all your Objections and taking all on Trust from men or believing as the Church believeth there are Two other ways to satisfaction which must be conjunct 1. Discerning the unanswerable evidences in Nature and Providence of the Souls future Life 2. And taking it on trust from Divine Revelation which is otherwise to be proved than by believing as the Church by Authority requireth you I have written on this Subject so much â—â—ready that I had rather you had told me why you think it unsatisfactory than desire me to transcribe it while Print is as legible as Manuscript If you have not read it I humbly offer it to your consideration It is most in two Books The first which I intreat you to read is called The Reasons of the Christian Religion the other is called The Unreasonableness of Infidelity If you think this too much labour you are not so hard or faithful a Student of this weighty Case as it deserveth and you pretend to be If you will read them or the first at least and after come to me that we may fairly debate your remaining Doubts it will be a likelier way for us to be useful to each other than my going over all the mistakes of your Paper will be And I suppose you know that we have full assurance of a multitude of Verities against which many Objections may be raised which no mortal man can fully solve especially from Modes and Accidents Nay perhaps there is nothing in the World which is not liable to some such Objections And yet I will not neglect your writing § 2. When you were convinc'd That there is a first Cause it would have been an orderly progress to think what that Cause is and whether his Works do not prove his Infinite Perfection having all that eminently which he giveth formally to the whole World as far as it belongeth to perfection to have it For none can give more than he hath And then you should have thought what this God is to man as manifest in his Works and you should have considered what of man is past doubt and thence in what relation he stands to God and to his fellow-creatures And this would have led you to know mans certain duty and that would have assured you of a future life of Retribution Is not this a just progress § 3. But you would know a Definition of the Soul But do you know nothing but by Definitions Are all men that cannot define therefore void of all knowledg You know not at all what seeing is or what light is or what feeling smelling tasting hearing is what sound or odor is what sweet or bitter nor what thinking or knowing or willing or loving is if you know it not before defining tell you and better than bare defining can ever tell you Every vital faculty hath a self-perception in its acting which is an eminent sense Intuition also of outward sensible Objects or immediate perception of them as sensata imaginata is before all Argument and Definition or reasoning action By seeing we perceive that we see and by understanding we perceive that we understand I dare say That you know the Acts of your own Soul by acting tho when you come to reasoning or defining you say you know not what they are You can give no definition what substance is or Ens at least much less what God is And yet what is more certain than that there is Substance Entity and God § 4. But I 'le tell you what the Soul of mâ—n is It is a Vital Intellectual Volitive Spirit animating a humane organized Body When it is separated it is not formally a Soul but a Spirit still § 5. Qu. But what is such a mental Spirit It is a most pure Substance whose form is a Power or Virtue of Vital Action Intellection and Volition three in one § 6. I. Are you not certain of all these Acts viz. That you Act vitall understand and will If not you are not sure that you see that you doubt that you wrote to me or that you are any thing II. If you act these it is certain that you have the power of so acting For nothing doth that which it cannot do III. It is certain that it is a Substance which hath this power For nothing can do nothing IV. It is evident that it is not the visible Body as composed of Earth Water and Air which is this mental Substance Neither any one of them nor all together have Life Understanding or Will They are passive Beings and act not at all of themselves but as acted by invisible Powers They have an aggregative inclination to Uâ—ion and no other
must needs know every Ingredient in his Physick and the Nature and Reason of it before he will take it when he should implicitly trust his Physician Man should have waited on God for all his Notices and sought to know no more than he revealed But a distrustful and a selfish knowledg and busy enquiring into unrevealed things is become our sin and misery § 36. You say Suppose all this answered what will it avail as to a life of Retribution if all return to one element and be there immerged as Brooks and Rivers in the Sea and we lose our individuation Ans I answer'd this in the Appendix to the Reas of the Christian Religion I add 1. Do you believe that each one hath now one individual Soul or not If not how can we lose that which we never had If we have but all one universal mover which moveth us as Engines as the Wind and Water move Mills how come some motions to be so swift as a Swallow and others so slow or none at all in as mobile a body Yea how cometh motion to be so much in our Power that we can sit still when we will and rise and go and run and speak when we will and cease or change it when we will A stone that falls or an arrow that is shot cannot do so Sure it is some inward formal Principle and not a material Mechanical mobility of the matter which can cause this difference Indeed if we have all but one Soul it 's easie to love our Neighbours as our selves because our Neighbours are our selves But it 's as easie to hate our selves as our Enemies and the good as the bad if all be one for forma dat nomen esse But it 's strange that either God or the Soul of the World shall hate it self and put it self to pain and fight against it self as in Wars c. But if you think still That there is nothing but God and dead matter actuated by him I would beg your Answer to these few Questions 1. Do you really believe that there is a God that is an eternal infinite self-being who hath all that power knowledg and goodness of will in transcendent Eminency which any Creature hath formally and is the efficient Governor of all else that is If not all the world condemneth you for it is not an uncaused Being and can have nothing but from its Cause who can give nothing greater than it self 2. Do you think this God can make a Creature that hath a subordinate Soul or Spirit to be the Principle of its own Vital Action Intellection and Volition or not Cannot God make a Spirit If not it is either because it is a Contradiction which none can pretend or because God is not Omnipotent that is is not God and so there is no God and so you deny what you granted But if God can make a Spirit 3. Why should you think he would not Some of your mind say That he doth all the good that he can or else he were not perfectly good Certainly his goodness is equal to his greatness and is commmunicative 4. Hath he not imprinted his Perfections in some measure in his Works Do they not shew his glory Judg of his Greatness by the Sun Stars and Heavens and of his Wisdom by the wonderful Order Contexture and Goverument of all things Even the Fabrick of a Fly or any Animal poseth us And do you think that his love and goodness hath no answerable effect 5. Do you think that passive matter doth as much manifest Gods Perfection and honour the Efficient as vital and Intellectual Spirits If it be a far nobler Work for God to make a free vital mental Spirit to act under him freely mentally and vitally than to make meer atomes why should you think that God will not do it 6. And do you not dishonour or blaspheme the prime Cause by such dishonouring of his Work as to say he never made any thing more noble than Atomes and Compositions of them 7. Is there not in the Creature a communicative disposition to cause their like Animals generate their like Fire kindleth fire Wise men would make others wise God is essential infinite Life Wisdom and Love and can he or would he make nothing liker to himself than dead Atomes Yea you feign him to make nothing but by Composition while you say That matter it self is eternal 8. But when the matter of Fact is evident and we see by the actions that there is a difference between things moved by God some having a created Life and mind and some none what needs then any further proof § 31. But if you hold That we have now distinct Spirits which are individual Substances why should you fear the loss of our individuation any more than our annihilation or specifick alteration If God made as many substantial individual Souls as men is there any thing in Nature or Scripture which thteatneth the loss of Individuation I have shewed you and shall further shew you enough against it § 32. You say page 7. Every thing returneth to its element and loseth its individuation Earth to Earth Water to the Sea the Spirit to God that gave it What happiness then can we hope for more than deliverance from the present calamity or what misery are we capable of more than is common to all Ans 1. Bodies lose but their Composition and Spiritual forms Do you think that any Atome loseth its individuation If it be still divisible in partes infinitas it is infinite And if every Atome be infinite it is as much or more than all the world and so is no part of the world and so there would be as many Worlds or Infinites as Atomes It is but an aggregative motion which you mention Birds of a Feather will flock together and yet are Individuals still Do you think any dust or drop any Atome of Earth or Water loseth any thing of it self by its union with the rest Is any Substance lost Is the simple Nature changed Is it not Earth and Water still Is not the Haecceity as they call it continued Doth not God know every dust and every drop from the rest Can he not separate them when he will And if Nature in all things tend to aggregation or union it is then the Perfection of every thing And why should we fear Perfection 2. But Earth and Water and Air are partible matter Earth is easily separable The parts of Water more hardly by the means of some terrene Separaror The parts of Air yet more hardly and the Sun-beams or substance of fire yet harder than that tho it's contraction and effects are very different And Spirits either yet harder or not at all Some make it essential to them to be indiscerptible and all must say That there is nothing in the Nature of them tending to division or separation And therefore tho God who can annihilate them can divide them into parts if it
to have two Forms or one made up of divers things 5. And to place the form in a Negation of Matter What a jumble is here when the true definition of a Spirit is obvious § 5. You say Penetrability maketh it pliant and subtil and to a Substance of such Oneness and Subtility is rationally attributed whatever Activity Sympathy Synenergy Appetite and Perception is found in the world Ans There is Oneness in Matter in Atoms at least and doth Penetrability make Subtilty And is Subtilty the difference sure if you make any sense of this it must favour the conceit of Materiality more than my term Purissima But do you verily believe that Penetrability or Subtilty is a sufficient efficient or Formal Cause of Vitality Perception Appetite and so of Intellection and Volition I hope you do not It is the Essential Virtus Formalis including Potentiam activam Vim Inclinationem which must immediately cause the Acts Subtilty and Penetrability else will not do it No man will grant you that the Proposition is good ex vi Causalitatis Quodcunque penetrabile vel subtile est ideo necessario vivit percipit appetit unless it proceed à necessitate concomitantiae existentiae Yet where you are most out of the way you are at it again that This Mistake is a mischief Ad SECT III. IV. § 1. YOur Third Section I am not concerned in I tell you still I deny not your Penetrability and Indiscerpibility though I lay not the stress on them as to Certainty or Importance as you do and am past doubt that they do but defectively speak the Substantiality sub conceptu modali dispositivo and are unskilfully called the Forma Spiritus § 2. Your 4th Section I had rather not have seen 1. You dislike that I say that a self-moving Principle I dare not say is proper to a Spirit I hope Ignorance is never the worse for being confest All are not so wise as you I deny it not but I am not certain that Stones Earth and other heavy things move not to the Earth by a self-moving Principle I am not sure that if a Stone in the Air fall down it is by a Spirits motion and that God hath not made Gravitation and other aggravative motion of Passives to be an Essential self-moving Principle Few men I think have thought otherwise And yet I am not sure that all Stones and Clods are alive If you are bear with our Ignorance for that is no Errour § 3. When I say I consent not to Campanella de sensu rerum or Dr. Glisson that would make all things alive by an Essentiating Form in the very Elements Here you talk of foul play to make one part fish and the other flesh one part of Matter self-moved and other not Ans But worthy Sir the foul play is yours that seem to tell your Reader that I do so which I never do That is scant fair play I said not that Spirits are Matter and I do but say I am ignorant whether Gravitation be from the Motion of a Spirit thrusting down the Stone c. or from an Essential Principle in the Matter May not one be ignorant where he cannot chuse I cannot but much difference the motus aggregativus such as Gravitation causeth which is only the tendency of the parts to the whole that they may there rest from motion from the natural motion of known Life which abhorreth cessation I take Motus to be no Entity but a mode of Substance to be in motion or quiescence are several modes of it and that mode which is most stated most sheweth nature I see no contradiction in it that a Stone should fall without Life I dare not say that God cannot make a Rock or Clod to fall by an intrinsick Principle of Gravitation without vital motion And yet I am most inclined to your Opinion But the stream of Dissenters obligeth such a one as I am to more modesty than must be expected from one of your degree § 4. Next you complain of horrible Confusion What 's the matter why to include Life in the Conceptus Formalis of a Spirit of which Self-motion is certainly an Effect and yet say It is not proper to a Spirit Ans It 's worse than confusion to intimate that I said what I did not Your saying It 's certain is no conviction of me that there is no Self-motion but by Life You think not that Fire liveth and I am not sure that a Stone is a self-mover I only say I know not I never yet saw your proof that God is able to make no self-mover but vital And if he can how know I that he doth not The World suffers so much by mens taking on them to know more than they do that I fear it in my self as one of the worst Diseases of Mankind § 5. You conclude We are to deny Self-motion in the matter it self every where as not belonging thereto but to Spirit Ans No doubt but Materia qua talis est mere passiva But that God can put no motive inclination in it or that he cannot give a Spiritual Vitality to any matter are conclusions fitter for you than for me § 6. To shew why I oft neglect the name Material some taking it for the same with Substance and some only for Corporeit I said that the distinction of Natures into Active and Passive serveth as well To this you say Materiality is a Notion more strict distinct and steady Ans The contrary is commonly known and before and elsewhere proved when Materia is not only a very hard ambiguous word and you have not yet enabled me by all your words to know what you mean by it but even such great men as before named make the more general sense equal to Substance to be the more proper Had all used it as you do and you made us understand what you mean by it I would hold to it accordingly You say Passivity belongs to things Immaterial Ans 1. Passivity as exclusive of Activity or as predominant doth not 2. No Passivity belongeth to that which is not Matter in the foresaid large sense of Matter of which more anon Ad SECT V VI. § 1. I Confest my Ignorance of the Cause of the descensus gravium whether it be from a Principle made by God essential to the matter that descendeth or from an intrinsick compounding Active nature or only from an extrinsick Mover You here bid me not despair for it is demonstrable that the descensus gravium is not from any principle springing from their own Matter but from an Immaterial principle distinct therefrom Ans 1. All doth not demonstrate to me which some call demonstration I perceive you note not at all what is my doubt and how can you then solve it I do not think that the Gravitation is from a principle springing from the Matter How can a Principle of Motion spring from Matter But the doubt is of the several
the truly pious Conclusion in your 34. Sect. I not only agree with you but in my own name and many others humbly tender you unfeigned Thanks § 3. And because I would not seem more distant from you than I am I shall first tell you that on these Subjects your thoughts and mine have been so long working to the same ends much in the same way that 1655. your Book against Atheism and my popular discourses of the unreasonableness of Infidelity coming out together we both used many of the same Histories of Apparitions Witches c. for Confirmation and in that Book of yours you have these following words which if they are not as I think they are not mischievous it 's like mine of the same importance are not so nor are more so proved by you than your own Antid Li. 1. p. 17. The parts of a Spirit can be no more separated though they be dilated than you can cut off the Rays of the Sun by a pair of Scissars made of pellucide Chrystal Appen p. 304. Suppose a point of Light from which rayes out a luminous Orb according to the known Principles of Optiques This Orb of Light doth very much resemble the Nature of a Spirit which is diffused and extended and yet indivisible For wee 'l suppose in this Spirit the Center of Life to be indivisible and yet to diffuse itself by a kind of circumscribed Omnipotency as the point of Light is discernible in every point of the luminous Sphere And yet supposing that central lucid point indivisible there is nothing divisible in all that Sphere of Light For it is ridiculous to think of any Engine or Art whatsoever to separate the luminous Raies from the shining Center and keep them apart by themselves as any man will acknowledge that does but consider the thing we speak of Now there is no difficulty to imagine such an Orb as this as Substance as well as a Quality And indeed this Sphere of Light itself it not inhering in any Subject in the place it occupieth looks far more like a Substance than any Accident And what we fanry unadvisedly to befal Light and Colours that any point of them will thus ray orbicularly is more rationally to be admitted in spiritual Substances whose central Essence spreads out into a secondary Substance as the luminous Rays are conceived to shoot out from a lucid point From whence we are enabled to return an Answer to the greatest difficulty in the foregoing Objection viz. That the conceived parts in a Spirit have an inseparable dependance on the central Essence from which they flow and in which they are radically contained and therefore though there be an extension of this whole substantial power yet one part is not separable or discerpible from another but the entire Substance as well secondary as primary or central is indivisible But let us again cast our Eyes on this lucid point and radiant Orb we have made use of It is manifest that those Raies that are hindered from shooting out so far as they would need not lose their Virtue or Being but only be reflected back toward their shining Center and the Obstacle being removed they may shoot out to their full length again so that there is no Generation of a new Ray. And p. 357. When I speak of Indivisibility that imagination create not new troubles to her self I mean not such an Indivisibility as is fancied in a Mathematical point but as we conceive in a Sphere of Light made from one lucid point or radiant Center For that Sphere or Orb of Light though it be in some sense extended yet it is truly indivisible supposing the Center such For there is no means imaginable to discerpe or separate any one Ray of this Orb and keep it apart by itself disjoined from the Center Now a little to invert the Property of this luminous Orb when we would apply it to a Soul or Spirit As there can be no alteration in the radiant Center but therewith it is necessarily in every part of the Orb so there is also that Vnity and Indivisibility of the exterior parts if I may so call them of a Spirit or Soul with their inmost Center that if any of them be affected the Center of Life is thereby also necessarily affected and these exteriour parts of the Soul being affected by the parts of the Object with such Circumstances as they are in the inward Center receives all so circumstantiated that it hath necessarily the entire and unconfused Images of things without though they be contrived into so small a compass and are in the very Center of this spiritual substance This Symbolical Representation I used before and I cannot excogitate any thing that will better set off the nature of a Spirit c. Here is the same and more than I have said unless you think Light here to be no Fire but take Light for a Substance and Fire but for Motion which if you say I am willing to believe you will recal And that a Spirit is in its Contraction impenetrable let your words testifie p. 312. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I define thus A Power in a Spirit of offering so near to a corporeal Emanation from the Center of Life that it will so perfectly fill the Receptivity of Matter into which it has penetrated that it is very difficult or impossible for any other Spirit to possess the same and of hereby becoming so firmly and closely united to a Body as both to actuate and be acted upon to affect and be affected thereby So here is a Spirit when it hath filled a Body that can no more be penetrated by another Spirit or Body and so in this contracted state is impenetrable So that this is but bringing diffused parts closer together and then no other can be in the same place And is this the necessary Form of a Spirit But may not this extension and Indivisibiliâ—y also be omitted as too hard without all the mischief mentioned by you and a truer notifying Form found out Let us hear your self p. 359. To prevent all such Cavils we shall omit the Spinosities of the Extension or Indivisibility of a Soul or Spirit and conclude briefly thus That the manifold Contradictions and Repugnancies we find in the nature of matter to be able to either think or spontaneously to move itself do well assure us that these operations belong not to it but to some other substance Wherefore we finding those operations in us it is manifest that we have in us an immaterial Being really distinct from the Body which we ordinarily call a Soul The speculation of whose bare Essence though it may well puzzle us yet those properties that we find incompetible to a Body do sufficiently inform us of the different Nature thereof for it is plain she is a Substance indued with the power of Cogitation that is of perceiving and thinking of Objects as also of penetrating and spontaneously moving of a
Body which properties are as immediate to her as impenetrability and separability of parts to the matter and we are not to demand the cause of the one any more than of the other So here we have the true Form as sufficient notice And if voluntary Motion be proper to a Spirit I think meer Fire Solar or Aethereal is no Spirit But if all self-moving Power be proper to a Spirit Fire is a Spirit And from the Form will I denominate while you oft tell us that the Essence of Substance is unknown By Essence meaning somwhat else than that which I can fully prove to be the Form To conclude there are these different Opinions before us I. That the whole Entity or Conceptus realis of a Spirit is Virtus vitalis and is mera sorma or rather simplex actus Entitativus and that substantia is added not as a partial real Conceptus but as respective to notifie that this Virtus vitalis is no Accident but a thing that may subsist of itself Some hold this true only of God and some of all Spirits If this be true your notions of Penetrability and Indivisibility are most easily defended II. That Spirits have two inadequate real Conceptus and that Substantia is the fundamental as truly as materia is in meer Bodies and an incomprehensible purity of Substance or that it is Immaterial not having partes extra partes with the trine dimension is Substantiae dispositio yet that this hath degrees as the Forms have all Spirits not being of equal Purity And that Virtus vitalis is the partial Conceptus viz. Formalis And this I encline to as to created Spirits III. That the Conceptus formalis of Spirit is this Virtus vitalis vel motiva perceptiva appetitiva but that all Matter is essentially informed by that Vitality and so Matter and Vitality are the inadequate Conceptus of every Substance and that not by Composition but as of one simple thing And this is Dr. Glisson's and some others IV. That a Spirit is both a real Substance as the fundamental Conceptus and informed both by Immateriality Penetrability and Indiscerpibility and also by a vital and moving Power But that it existeth only in Bodies or Matter and so always makes up a Compound of two Substances saving that God is infinite beyond all Matter And that all such Spirits were at first made together indivisible Individuals both that of the least Creature and of the greatest but changed from Body to Body and so are parts of Animals This I suppose is your Opinion Our chief difference is that I profess to be ignorant of the Consistency and Incorporation which you talk of and must be so Though I am assured of the Substantiality and Form which satisfieth me for Christ knoweth all the rest for me FINIS OF THE IMMORTALITY OF Mans Soul And the Nature of it and other Spirits Two Discourses One in a Letter to an unknown Doubter The other in a Reply to Dr Henry Moore 's Animadversions on a private Letter to him which he published in his Second Edition of Mr Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus or History of Apparitions By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for B. Simons at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls 1682. The PREFACE § 1. THE Author of the Letter which I answer being wholly unknown to me and making me no return of his sense of my Answer I suppose it can be no wrong to him that I publish it I have formerly thought that it is safer to keep such Objections and false reasonings from mens notice than publickly to confute them But now in London they are so commonly known and published in open Discourse and Writing that whether silencing them be desirable or not it is become impossible And tho I have said so much more especially in two Books The Reasons of the Christian Religion and the Unreasonableness of Infidelity as may make this needless to them that read those yet most Infidels and Sadduces being so self conceited and fastidious as to disdain or cast by all that will cost them long reading and consideration it may be this short Letter may so far prevail against their sloth as to invite them to read more I would true Christianity were as common as the profession of it There would then be fewer that need such Discourses But alas how numerous are thâ—se Christians that are no Christians no more than a Carcass or a Picture is a man yea worse Christians who hate Christianity whose Godfathers and Godmothers not Parents but Neighbours did promise and vow three things in their Names 1. That they should renounce the Devil and all his Works the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World and all the sinful lusts of the flesh 2. That they should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith 3. That they should keep Gods holy Will and Commandments and walk in the same all the days of their lives Yea before they could speak the mouth of these Godfathers speaking for them did not only promise that they should believe but profess in the Infants name That even then they did stedfastly believe the Articles of the Christian Faith The Infant is said to make both the Promise and Profession by these Godfathers who also undertake to provide that they shall learn all things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his Souls health and shall be virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life Whether these Godfathers ever intend to perform this or the Parents use to expect it of them I need not tell you But how little most of the baptized perform of it is too notorious And what wonder is it if we have Christians that in Satans Image fight against Christ even PERJURED MALIGNANT PERSECUTING Christians haters of those that seriously practice the baptismal Vow when they are PERJURED and Perfidious Violaters of it themselves as to the prevalent bent of heart and life These Hypocrite nominal Ceremony Christians become the great hinderance of the cure of Infidelity in the world It is the SPIRIT by its supernatural Works which is the great Witness of Christ and the infallible proof of supernatural Revelation These witnessing works of the Spirit are these five 1. His Antecedent Prophecies 2. His inherent Divine impress on the Person Works and Gospel of Christ 3. His concomitant Testimony in Christs uncontrolled numerous Miracles Resurrection and Ascension 4. His subsequent Testimony in the numerous uncontrolled Miracles of the Apostles and supernatural gifts to the Christians of that Age. But tho the History of these be as infallibly delivered to us as any in the world 〈◊〉 the distance hindereth the belief of some who have not this history well opened to them 5. Therefore God hath continued to the end of the world a more excellent Testimony than miracles thought not so apt to work on sense even the special regenerating sanctifying work of the Spirit of Christ on the
light I have would enable me and what to do more I know not except this course I now take prove effectual you inclining to assist me that I know have studied these things My request to you therefore is If your more publick Studies will permit you That you would condescend to satisfie me in the Particulars I shall mention I assure you I have no other design but to know the Truth which in things of such moment certainly cannot be difficult tho to my unfurnished Head they have proved so I hope my shaking may prove my establishment That I may therefore put you to as little trouble as I can I will first tell you what I do believe and then what I stick at First therefore I do really believe and am very well satisfied That there is a God or a first Cause that hath created all things and given to every thing its Being For I am not acquainted with any independent Being I know not any thing that is able to subsist without the Contribution of its Fellow-Creatures I am conscioâ—s to my self when sickness invades me and death summons my Compound to a dissolution I can do nothing to the preservation of the Being I enjoy And if I cannot preserve my self as I am much less could I make my self what I am For when I was nothing I could do nothing And Experience and Sense tells me As it is with me so it is with others as there is none can preserve their Beings so there is none could acquire to themselves the Being they have and if none then not the first man And indeed that was it I enquired after from whence every species had at first their Beings the way how and means by which they are continued I know not any Cause of the Being of any thing of which again I may not enquire the Cause and so from Cause to Cause till through a multitude of Causes I necessarily arrive at the first Cause of all Causes a Being wholly uncaused and without Cause except what it was unto it self My next Enquiry was into my self and my next business to find what Concern I have with my Creator which I knew no better way to attain than by searching the bounds of humane Capacity For I concluded it reasonable to judg those attainments I was capable of in my Creation I was designed for Now if man is nothing more than what is visible or may be made so by Anatomy or Pharmacy he is no Subject capable of enjoying or loving God nor consequently of a life of Retrobution In this Enquiry I found Man consisted of something visible and invisible the Body which is visible and something else that invisibly actuates the same For I have seen the Body the visible part of man when the invisible either through indisposition of its Orgains or its self or being expelled its Mansion hath ceased to act I speak as one in doubt the Body hath been left to outward appearance the same it was yet really void of Sense and wholly debilitated of all power to act But then what this invisible is what to conclude of it I know not Here I am at a stand and in a Labyrinth without a Clue For I find no help any where Many have I acknowledg defended the Souls Immortality but none have proved the existence of such a Being and a life of Retrobution and that copiously enough but none have proved a Subject capable of it I know all our Superior Faculties and Actings are usually attributed to the Soul but what it is in man they call so they tell us not To say it is that by which I reason or that now dictates to me what I write is not satisfactory For I look for a definition and such an one as may not to ought else be appropriated Is it therefore a real Being really different from the Body and able to be without it or is it not If not whatever it be I matter not If it be is it a pure Spirit or meerly material If meerly material and different only from the Body gradually and in some few degrees of subtilty it is then a question whether or not that we call Death and suppose a separation of the Compound be not rather a Concentration of this active Principle in its own Body which through some indisposition of the whole or stoppage in its Orgains through gross Corporeity hath suffocated its actings If it be a pure Spirit I would then know what is meant by Spirit and whether or no all things invisible and imperceptable to Sense are accounted such If so it is then only a term to distinguish between things evident to Sense and things not If otherwise how shall I distinguish between the highest degree of material and the lowest degree of spiritual Beings or know how they are diversified or be certain the Being of the Soul is rightly appropriated For to me an immaterial and spiritual Being seems but a kind of Hocus and a Substance stript of all materiality a substantial nothing For all things at first had their Origine from the deep dark Waters witness Moses Philosophy in the 1st of Genesis on which the Spirit of God is said to move I am far from believing those Waters such as that Element we daily make use of but that they were material appears by those multitudes of material Productions they brought forth And if those Waters were material such were all things they dâ—d produce among which was Man of whom the Text asserts nothing more plain for it saith God created man of the dust of the earth the most gross part and sedement of those Waters after all things else were created Now the Body only is not Man for Man is a living Creature it is that therefore by which the Body lives and acts that constitutes the Man Now the Apostle mentioneth Man to consist of Body Soul and Spirit My Argument then is this God created man of the dust of the earth But Man consists of a Body Soul and Spirit Therefore Body Soul and Spirit are made of the dust c. and are material The major and minor are undeniable and therefore the conclusion Yet do I not therefore conclude its annihilation for I know all matter is eternal but am rather perswaded of its concentration as afore in its own body But of its real Being purely spiritual and stript of all materiality really distinct from its body I doubt Because that by several accidents happening to the body the man is incapacited from acting rationally as before as in those we call Ideots there is not in some of them so much a sign of a reasonable Soul as to distinguish them from Bruits Whereas were the Soul such as represented it would rather cease to act than act at a rate below it self Did it know its Excellencies such as we make them it would as soon desert its being as degrade its self by such bruitish acts It is not any defect in
its Organs could rob the Soul of its Reason its Essential Faculty Tho the Workman breaks his Tools his hands do not lose their skill but ceaseth to act rather than to do ought irregularly so likewise would the Soul then act contrary to its own nature Secondly Because all the species both of the Mineral Vegitable and Animal Kingdoms appear to me but as the more eminent Works of a most excellent Operator as Engines of the most accurate Engineer they all live and have a Principle of Life manifest in their growth and augmentation and so far as they are living weights as I can perceive from the same source But then comes in those Natures and Faculties whereby each is distinguished from other even like several pieces of Clock or Watch-work the one shews the hour of the day and no more the next shews the hour and minutes another shews both the former and likewise the Age of the Moon another hath not only the three former motions but an addition of the rise and fall of Tides yet all this and many more that in that way are performed are several distinct motions arising all from the same Cause the Spring or Weight the Principle of motion in them So among living Weights the first do only grow and augment their bulk and have no possibility in nature to augment their kind the next to wit Vegitables do not only grow and increase their bulk but likewise have a power of propagating their like the third Family I mean the Animal Kingdom do not only live and encrease their kind but likewise are made sensative And lastly we our selves that are not only possest of all the former but of something I know not what we think more excellent and call Reason and all this from the same source namely that we live which if we did not we could not perform any of these acts For life in us is the same as the Spring or Weight in the Watch or Clock which ceasing all other motion ceaseth as in a Watch or Clock the Spring or Weight being down As Life therefore is the Cause of all Motion and all natural Operation and Faculties yet those multifarious Operations and Faculties manifest in and proper to the particular species of the Three Kingdoms requires not divers Principles of Life no more than divers motions specified in a Watch or Clock requires divers Weights or Springs And as the diversity of motion in Watch or Clock ariseth not from diversity of Weights or Springs but rather from other means so those diversities of Natures and Faculties manifest throughout the Three Kingdoms arise not from divers Principles of Life but from one Principle of Life manifesting its power in Bodies diversly organized So that a Tree or Herb that only vegitates and propagates its kind hath no other Principle of Life than an Animal that hath Sense and more eminent Faculties The difference only as I conceive is this Principle of Life in the vegitable is bound up in a Body organized to no other eud by which Life is hindred exerting any other power but in the Animal it 's kindled in a purer matter by which it 's capacitated to frame more excellent Orgains in order to the exerting more eminent Acts. For the Principle of Life can no more act rationally in matter capable of naught but vegitation for it acts in matter according to the nature thereof advancing it to its utmost excellency than a man can saw with a Coult-Staff or file with an Hatcher or make a Watch with a Betle and Wedges I am apt to believe those rare Endowments and eminent Faculties wherewith men seem to excel meer Sensatives are only the improvement of Speech wherein we have the advantage of them and the result of reiterated Acts until they become habits For by the first we are able to communicate our Conceptions and Experiments each to other and by the other we do gradually ascend to the knowledg of things For is all the knowledg either in the acts Liberal or Mechanical any more than this acts reiterated until they become habits which when they are we are said to know them And what is all our reasoning but an Argument in Discourse tossed from one to another till the Truth be found like a Ball between two Rackets till at last a lucky blow puts an end to the sport We come into the World hardly men and many whose natures want cultivation live having nothing to distinguish them from Brutes but the outward form speech and some little dexterity such as in Apes or Monkeys in the things they have been taught and the Affairs they have been bred to And could we imagine any man to have lived Twenty or Thirty years in the World without the benefit of Humane Converse What would appear then think you of a rational Soul which the wise man well saw when he asserted the Condition of Men and Beasts to be the same what a meer Ignorant hath Moses himself made of Adam that in his supposed best state knew not that he was naked but I believe the Nine Hundred and Thirty years Experience of his own and the continual Experiments of Posterity in that time communicated to him might quicken his Intellect So that he died with more Reason than he was created and humane nature in his posterity The next Generation was imbellished with his attainments to which their own Experiences still made a new addition The next Generation built on their Foundation and the next on their and so on and we are got on the shoulders of them all So that it 's rather a wonder that we know no more than that we know so much So that what we have seems rather times product through the means aforesaid than what our Natures were at first enricht with The which appears likewise in those whose memory fails and in whom the vestigia of things is wore out the habits they had contracted and manner of working in their several acts being forgotten what silly Animals are they Whereas were the Soul such as represented who could rob it of its Endowments It 's true the debilitating of a hand may impead a manual labour but rase what hath formerly been done out of the Memory and you render Man a perfect Bruit or worse for he knows not how to give a signification of his own mind And indeed I know not any thing wherein Man excels the Beasts but may be referred to the benefit of Speech and Hands capable of effecting its Conceptions nor find any better way to attain a right knowledg of our selves but by beholding our selves in Adam and enquiring what Nature had endued him with which will fall far short of what we now admire in our selves But now supposing all this answer'd what will it avail us to a Life of Retrobution if all return to one Element and be there immerged as Brooks and Rivers in the Sea If we lose our Individuation and all the Souls that have
usually taken for corporeal or gross and impenetrable and divisible substance uncapable of essential vital self-moving perception and appetite If this seems nothing to you God seems nothing to you and true Nature which is Principium motus seems nothing to you And all that performeth all the action which you see in the world seems nothing to you It 's pity that you have converst so little with God and your self as to think both to be nothing § 14. What you say out of Gen. 1. is little else but mistake when you say all was made out of the deep waters by the spirit of God The Text nameth what was made of them It saith nothing of the Creation of Angels or Spirits out of them no nor of the Light or Earth or Firmament And whereas you say God made man of the dust of the ground but the body only is not man ergo Ans You use your self too unkindly to leave out half the words Gen. 2. 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul when the Text tells us the two works by which God made man will you leave out one and then argue exclusively against it What if I said The Chandler made a Candle of Tallow and then by another kindled it or a man made an house of Bricks and cemented them with Mortar c. will you thence prove That he made a Candle burning without fire or the House without Mortar Words are useless to such Expositors § 15. Page 4. you say You know all matter is eternal But you know no such thing If it be Eternal it hath one Divine perfection and if so it must have the rest and so should be God But what 's your proof You again believe the Souls concentration in its body Ans Words insignificant It 's Idem or Aliud If Idem then dust is Essentially Vital and Intellectual Deny not spiritual forms if every clod or stone have them If Aliud how prove you it to be there rather than elsewhere And if you considered well you would not believe essential substantial life and mind to lye dead and unactive so long as the dust is so § 16. You come to the hardest Objecti The Souls defective acting in infants ideots the sick c. and say It would rather not act if it were as represented Ans 1. It cannot be denied but the Operations of the Soul here are much of them upon the organized body and tho not organical as if they acted by an Organ yet organical as acting on an Organ which is the material Spirit primarily And so there go various Causes to some Effects called Acts. 2. And the Soul doth nothing independently but as dependent on God in Being and Operation and therefore doth what God knoweth and useth it too as his Instrument in the forming of the body and in what it knoweth not it self And as God as fons naturae necessitateth the natural agency of the Soul as he doth the Soul of Bruits But as the wise and free Governor of the world he hath to moral acts given mans Soul free-will and therefore conducting Reason which it needs not to necessitated acts as digestion motion of the blood formation of the body c. And as it is not made to do all its acts freely and rationally so neither at all times as in Apoplexies Infancy Sleep c. It is essential to the Soul to have the active power or virtue of Intellection and Free-will but not always to use it As it is essential to the substance of fire tho latent in a flint to have the power of motion lighe and heat And its considerable that as a traveller in his journey thinking and talking only of other things retaineth still a secret act of intending his end else he would not go on when he perceiveth and observeth it not at all He that playeth on the Lute or Harpsical ceaseth when his Instrument is out of tune because he acteth by free-will But the Soul of an Idiot or mad-man acteth only per modum naturae not by free-acts but necessitated by God by the order of nature Only moral acts are free and that some other are but brutish and some but vegitative is no-more a wonder than that it should understand in the head and be sensible only in the most of the body and vegitative only in the hairs and nails It operateth in all the body by the Spirits as calid but about the eyes and open sensoria by Spirits also as lucid for that use § 14. But never forget this That nothing at any time doth what it cannot do but many can do that which they do not Tho the Soul in the Womb or Sleep remember not or reason not if ever it do it that proveth it had the power of doiug it And that power is not a novel accident tho the act may be so § 18. To your Explications p. 4. I say 1. None doubts but all the world is the work of one prime operating Cause Whom I hope you see in them is of perfect power wisdom aud goodness the chief efficient dirigent and final cause of all 2. I doubt not but the created universe is all one thing or frame and no one atome or part totally separated from and independent on the rest 3. But yet the parts are multitudes and heterogeneous and have their Individuation and are at once many and one in several respects And the unity of the Universe or of inferior universal Causes as the Sun or an anima telluris c. are certainly consistent with the specifick and individual differences of the parts E. g. Many individual Apples grow on the same Tree yea Crabs and Apples by divers grafts nourished on the same stock One may rot or be sower and not another Millions of Trees as also of Herbs and Flowers good and poysonous all grow in the same earth Here is Unity and great Diversity And tho self-moving Animals be not fixed on the earth no doubr they have a contiguity or continuity as parts with the Universe But for all that a Toad is not a Man nor a man in torment undifferenced from another at ease nor a bad man all one with a good § 19. And if any should have a conceâ—â— That there is nothing but God and matter I have fully confuted it in the Appendix to Reas of Christian Religion Matter is no such omnipotent sapiential thing in it self as to need no cause or maker any more than Compounds And to think that the infinite God would make no nobler Creature than dead matter no liker himself to glorifie him is antecedently absurd but consequently notoriously false For tho nothing be acted without him it 's evident that he hath made active Natures with a principle of self-moving in themselves The Sun differs from a clod by more than being matter variously moved by God even
by a self-moving power also Else there were no living creature but bodies in themselves dead animated by God But it would be too tedious to say all against this that 's to be said § 20. When you tell us of One life in all differenc'd only by diversity of Organs you mean God or a common created Soul If God I tell you where I have confuted it It 's pity to torment or punish God in a murderer or call him wicked in a wicked man or that one man should be hang'd and another prais'd because the Engines of their bodies are diverse But the best Anatomists say That nothing is to be seen in the brain of other Animals why they might not be as rational as Men. And if it be an Animâ— creata communis that you mean either 〈◊〉 think it is a universal Soul to the universâ—â— world or only to this Earth or Vortex If to all the World you feign it to have 〈◊〉 Prerogative If to part of the world 〈◊〉 each Vortex Sun Star c. have a distâ—â—â— individuate superior Soul why not 〈◊〉 so inferiors And why may not millions of individual Spirits consist with more common or universal Spirits as well as the life 〈◊〉 Worms in your belly with yours That which hath no Soul or Spirit of its own 〈◊〉 not fit for such reception and communion with superior Spirits as that which hath Communion requireth some similitude We see God useth not all things alike because he makes them not like § 21. But if the difference between Beasts Trees Stones and Men be only the organical contexture of the body then 1. Either all these have but one Soul and 〈◊〉 are but one save corporeally 2. Or 〈◊〉 very Stone Tree and Beast hath an Intellectual Soul for it is evident that man hath by its Operations I. Had you made but Virtue and Vice to be only the effects of the bodies contexture sure you would only blame the maker â—f your body and not your self for any of your Crimes For yon did not make your own body if you were nothing Is the common light and sense of Nature no Evidence Doth not all the world difference Virtue and Vice moral good and evil Is it only the difference of an Instrument in Tune and out of Tune Either then all called sin is good or God or the universal Soul only is to be blamed Then to call you a Knave or a Lyar or Perjured c. is no more disgrace than to say that you are sick or blind Then all Laws are made only to bind God or the Amima mundi and all punishment is threatned to God or this common Soul And it is God or the common Soul only in a body which sorroweth feareth feeleth pain or pleasure II. And if you equal the Souls of Beasts Trees Stones and Men you must make them all to have an Intellectual Soul If man had not he could never understand And if they have so also frustra fit potentia quae nunquam producitur in actum It is certain that it is not the body Earth Air or Water that feeleth much less that understandeth or willeth If therefore all men have but one Soul why is it not you that are in pain or joy when any or all others are so Tour suffering and joys are as much theirs You hurt your self when you hurt a Malefactor Why are you not answerable for the Crimes of every Thief if all be one § 22. You vainly liken several Natures and Faculties to several pieces of Clock-work For Natures and Faculties are self-acting Principles under the prime Agent but a Clock is only passive moved by another Whether the motus gravitationis in the poise be by an intrinslck Principle or by another 〈◊〉 active Nature is all that 's controvertible there All that your similitude will infer is this That as the gravitation of one poise moves every wheel according to its receptive aptitude so God the universal Spirit moveth all that is moved according to their several aptitudes passives as passive actives as active vitals as self-movers intellectuals as intellectual-free-self-movers under him No Art can make a Clock feel see or understand But if the world have but one soul what mean you by its concentring in the Carcass Is the universal Soul there fallen asleep or imprisoned in a Grave or what is it § 23. Add page 5. You well say That Life is the cause of all motion Yea infinite Life Wisdom and Love is the cause of all but there be second Causes under it Plurima ex uno And it maketh things various which it moveth variously and maketh them vital sensitive or mental which he will move to vital sensitive and mental acts Operari sequitur esse § 24. You are apt to believe That those eminent Faculties wherewith men seem meer Sensitives are only the improvement of Speech and reiterated Acts till they become Habits Ans 1. I had a Parrot that spoke so very plainly that no Man could discern but he could have spoke as well as a Man if he had but had the Intellect of a Man and quickly would learn new words but shewed no understanding of them 2. Many men born deaf and dumb are of a strong understanding enquire of a Brother of Sir Richard Dyett's a Son of Mr. Peter Whalley of Northampton a Son in Law of the Lord Wharton's c. 3. The Faculty and the Habit are Two things The Faculty is the Essential form of the Substance The Habit or Act is but an Accident The Faculty is nothing but the active Power And the Power goeth before the Act. Doth acting without Power to act cause the Power What need you the Power if you can act without it And what 's a Contradiction if this be not to say I do that which I cannot do or I can do that which I have no power to do You are not a man without the Faculty but you are without the Act or else you are no man in your sleep The act then is but the Faculties act and Habits are nothing but the Faculties promptitude to act And this indeed is caused sometime by very strong acts and sometime and usually by frequent acts and sometime suddenly by a special Divine Operation No doubt but Oratory and all Arts and Sciences are caused by frequent acts and their Objects But those acts are caused by humane Faculties under God the first Cause You can never cause a Carcass or a Parrot or any Bruit to think of God and the glory to come nor to do any proper humane act Credible History assureth us That Devils or separate Souls have acted Carcasses and discoursed in them and seemed to commit Fornication in them and left them dead behind them and they were known to be the same that were lately executed or dead and were re-buried Here the dead Organ was capable when a Spirit did but use it You too much confound Intelléction and Ratiocination The prime acts of