Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	eye_n	hear_v	see_v	6,309	5	3.8336	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51787	The immortality of the soul asserted, and practically improved shewing by Scripture, reason, and the testimony of the ancient philosophers, that the soul of man is capable of subsisting and acting in a state of separation from the body, and how much it concerns us all to prepare for that state : with some reflections on a pretended refutation of Mr. Bently's sermon / by Timothy Manlove.	Manlove, Timothy, d. 1699.	1697 (1697)	Wing M454; ESTC R6833	70,709	184

the Rules of Honesty and Order to preserve himself and rather sacrifice the Publick Interest to his own Concerns than act like a thorough Votary to the Common Interest of Mankind And if that Maxim govern him Dulce decorum pro patriâ mori aut agere yet is it his ambition of being famed in History which mainly prompts him to be so heroick So that in all it is but his own ambitious and aspiring Self which is his ultimate end and all that lies betwixt him and this End hath but an inferior and subordinate contribution thereunto And hence the Honour Safety and Felicity of his King and Country are only valued by him even as all Creatures serviceable to him are merely for his own sake So good Security and Service have Kings and Governments from him And let but this selfishness be every-where and every way the Regent Principle abstractedly from all sense of and references to Soul-good hereafter and then he that hath the sharpest Eye the greatest Reach and the longest Sword will have the most undoubted right to all that he can get and keep though vi armis And when another shall outwit or conquer him and call him to an account for all what is the rule and spirit of this Process but Selfishness engaged to satiate Revengeful Thirst § VI. But what is it that induces Persons to believe that Souls are material and mortal and so to perish physically with their Bodies is it because there is no God or that God is not able or not willing to create such Beings is it that either the production of such Beings implies a contradiction or that God judges it unworthy of and much below himself to make and uneasy and dishonourable to himself to mind them or to perpetuate their Beings to their Eternal Happiness or Misery as they behave themselves whilst in this World and Body Or do they think à posteriori that there want Evidences of their Immortality or that the present frame and state and course of things and Providence insinuates the contrary or that God is too good to eventuate the Eternal Misery of any Being As to the Existence of a God 1. If ever there was absolutely nothing then there never could be any thing existent For how could something be produc'd from nothing What an Effect without an Action or an Action without an Agent or Efficient 2. The Eternity of Life and Light and All-sufficiency is demonstrably more credible than the Eternity of meer Body or Matter For Matter in it self is universally passive and impressive from another Nature and all its Principles and Motions must be deriv'd from another and an higher Nature And surely that Essence must be very fine and excellent indeed which can comprehend and penetrate and so variously and harmoniously imprinciple and actuate so vast a Fahrick as the material Vniverse He that could so digest it into such an excellent and establish'd Order as we find it is must needs be Great Wise Good himself and infinitely so 3. But supposing there be an Invisible Infinite Spirit what greater more genuine and apt Evidences is his Existence capable of than what continually face us Rom 1.20 Can Taste be prov'd to the Eye or Sounds to the Palate or Colours and Light to the Ear All Faculties and Senses have their proper Objects and these Objects have their peculiar Evidences to their own Nature Vse and Ends as they respect their different Faculties and Senses Things Visible are best known by being seen things Audible by being heard Blind men will know Light much better if ever their Eyes shall be open'd by one glance thereat than by all the most accurate Discourses upon Light which before were or could be read to them and yet before they saw they apprehended there were such things as Light and Vision but not so satisfyingly as by their own actual seeing of it Now if seeing the vast visible bulk and compass of the Vniverse the evidently wise Contrivance of it with all the accurate dependencies and subserviencies of all the parts thereof as to their mutual usefulness each to other and all its furniture to maintain assist and please all its Inhabitants suit ably to their different Capacities Stations and Concerns be not sufficient to prove Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness in existence to the thinking mind what can As to God's Ability and Willingness to produce such Beings as Immortal Souls 1. There is no contradiction in the terms or thing let them demonstrate who assert the contrary if they can 2. Souls are produced by God's Creating Power and breathed into Humane Flesh And their constituent Faculties their vast Capacities their noble Functions and vivid Operations the vast Provisions which God hath made for their Entertainment Employment and Improvement such as the Mysteries and Treasures of Nature the Exercise and Issues of Vniversal and Particular Providence the Openings and Advantages of a Gospel-day the even sensible Influences Impressions and Effects of Providence and Grace upon the Spirits of Men the Souls apparent Jurisdiction and Dominion over it self yet under Law to God and Christ whose dealings with it would yet admit of larger Thoughts did not the Impatient Press forbid them and its Ability to make all Tributary to its own advantage as to Self-conduct Government and Possession and to reflect upon discern approve or to censure its own Actions yea and to look beyond what Time and meer Matter can amount unto All these and much more make it evident both what Souls are and will hereafter be consigned to As to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or God-becomingness in the Case Why should it be thought unworthy of him seeing it is done so evidently by him who worketh all things after the counsels of his Will Eph. 1.11 Is it so unbecoming God to create Spirits in his own Image to impress the Signatures of his own Name upon them to put them into a State of Trial therein to govern them suitably to their Frame and State and so to suit their everlasting State to their present Choice Tempers and Carriages and from amongst the Sons of Men to chuse and cultivate a Seed for Heaven and there to take Eternal Pleasure in all the Accuracies of their compleated Beings their orderly Behaviour and infinite Satisfactions in himself and in the Triumphs of his Grace and Son over all the baffled Powers of Darkness What Attribute can these things disgracefully affect But how much more than all this and incomparably better laid together and more nervosely argued and more Pleas to the contrary impleaded with far greater strength will the Impartial tho' Critical Reader find in the ensuing Treatise To the Ingenious and Learned Author whereof we think the World greatly obliged and do offer our hearty Thanks to him whom with his Labours and the diligent Reader we commend to the special Grace and Providence of God in Christ John Howe Matth. Sylvester October 14. 1696. THE CONTENTS CHAP. I.

delight when it hath found it Contemplative Persons know this to be true which makes them so unwearied in their Studies and pleased with any discoveries they can make for the advancement of Knowledge This made divers of the Ancient Philosophers travel into remote Countries that they might converse with Learned Men and glean up any Fragments of Knowledge where-ever they could find them So did Apollonius Plato Pythagoras Thales c. and the Queen of Sheba came from the uttermost Parts of the Earth to hear the Wisdom of Solomon Seneca thought that Man buried alive who lived without Books And Lipsius thought himself on the top of Olympus when he read Seneca Aristippus thought a Man had better be a Beggar than unlearned Laert. in Arist 50. And what unaccountable delight had Julius Scaliger in Lu●●● who ●●ought twelve Verses in him better than all the German Empire So ravishing are intellectual Pleasures Impressions from without are made upon the Organs of Sense various according to the variety of Objects and hence correspondent Ideas are formed in the Imagination and laid up in the Memory But there is something higher which sports it self with these Phantasms compounds and divides them at pleasure and makes new ones out of them as of Centaurs Syrens little Boys with Wings and what the Painter pleaseth which have no pattern in rerum natura to answer them What is it which abstracting from the individuating Circumstances of singular Beings forms universal Notions entia Rationis inadequate Conceptions of those beings and so rangeth the World of Entities under the several Species to which they belong by observing wherein they agree or differ from each other and considering their mutual Analogies and Respects What is that which withdraws the Imagination from attending the Organs of Sense insomuch that a Person intent upon his Studies is sometimes as if h● 〈◊〉 in a Dream though awake 〈…〉 not what you say to hi● 〈…〉 the Time goes on though the Clock strike near him What is it that from suitable Premises infers certain Conclusions and thus argues it self into a firm assent to many things above the discovery of Sense yea and contrary to sensible appearance Of which more hereafter And what say you to Mathematical Speculations how far are they beyond the reach of Sense or Imagination The Ingenious Descartes in his Sixth Meditation de Primâ Philosophiâ sets himself to examine the difference betwixt Imagination and pure Intellection and thus proceeds I can imagine a Triangle as distinctly as if I saw it and with some more difficulty a Pentagone but when I come to consider a Figure with a thousand or ten thousand Angles I can form no such distinct Idea of it in my Imagination and yet I can easily understand that such a Figure there may be as well as either of the other and so he goes on Thus you see how soon the Imagination is jaded and tired out but the Understanding can demonstrate the Properties of those several Figures and argue it self into a satisfactory assurance of many Mathematical Truths which at first seem extravagant and unreasonable And ho●e it spends upon its own 〈…〉 and deaves Sense and Imag●●●● 〈…〉 it and many of the Precepts of Geometry are utterly unimitable in the purest matter that Phansy can imagine And yet with what unspeakable satisfaction doth the Mind acquiesce in these Demonstrations so abstract from matter and incompetible to it And when it hath thus by abstraction as it were unbodied them it takes them for its own and hath a perfect understanding of them and makes both Sense and Imagination know their distance and if they will be too busy it silenceth and controlls them by its Sovereign Power and pursues its search with so much earnestness that it knows not how to give over Hence the Mathematical Sciences are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Purifications of the Reasonable Soul Archimedes was so intent upon it that when the City was taken he observed it not and when the Soldier that killed him came into the Room where he was busy at it he bids him have a care of disordering his Figure It were easy to enlarge much on this Particular but I am very confident that no Mathematician who seriously considers what hi● 〈◊〉 ●●s when intent upon Demons●●●● 〈…〉 possibly persuade himself 〈…〉 a piece of folly as 〈…〉 ●●●●le Wheat-meal in two or three days time should become capable of such Speculations as these It were every jot as irrational as to conclude with the Comedian That if the Blood of an Ass was transfused into a Virtuoso there would be small difference between the Emittent Ass and the Recipient Philosopher Shadwell But follow me a little further and you shall see yet greater things than these The Understanding is not satisfied with the knowledge of lower or less important Truths but it riseth up from visible Effects to the invisible Causes and Springs of Action and resteth not till it come to the Ens Entium the Cause of Causes the Fountain of Being and so contemplates him who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One and Truth it self as Plato speaks Crit. pag. 57. It considers its Relation to God its Dependence upon him its Duty to him It understands moral Good and Evil Right and Wrong Vertue and Vice which fall not under the Laws of Matter and Motion It studies the Nature of Spiritual Substances ad intimas rerum Spiritualium quidditates penetrat aut penetrare contendit Scheibler's Metaph. ●●b ● ●●g 272. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈…〉 of the Understanding differ 〈…〉 sensible Objects as the I 〈…〉 ●om Sense Max. Tyr. Dissert 1. pag. 9. We have many abstracted Notions and Idea's of immaterial things which depend not on Bodily Figures And in what Subject can these Notions be lodged but in one that is Immaterial Therefore I say Si renunciatur tanto bono Immortalitatis c. If we renounce the Immortality of the Soul so great a good we must also renounce our Wit Reason and Mind by which we are Immortal Lud. Viv. de ver Fidei Lib. 1. pag. 147. And now let the whole Herd of our Epicurean Novelists who cry up the unconceivable power of Matter and Motion muster up their Forces and fairly deduce from the Principles of their Hypothesis a rational intelligible account of those Operations of the Intellect which are so spiritual and abstract from Matter What say you Can Matter and Motion contemplate the Glorious Attributes of God Can a Spiritual Object be apprehended without a Spiritual Act And can such an Act be produced without a Spiritual Power And can such a Power be radicated in meer Matter ●●●●●●r modified or moved Must 〈…〉 be an Analogy between the 〈…〉 the Object Can any Eye 〈…〉 ●●●h is spiritual and In●●● 〈…〉 ●ho is a Spirit and Invisible Can Matter and Motion contemplate that Perfection which excludes all Corporeal Imperfection Is not this to act extra Sphaeram Does not

all page 18. With God all things are possible and it seems he who made Matter out of nothing can make any thing out of Matter And to the same purpose page 14. he enumerates several Miracles As of Aaron 's blossoming Rod the staying of the Waters of Jordan the multiplication of Loaves and Fishes c. Thus you see he is so conscious of the weakness of his own Hypothesis that he is forced to fly to a miraculous Power to uphold it This is a ready way of explaining the Phaenomena of Nature But I reply 1st Is not the same Almighty Power able to uphold the Soul in a State of Subsistence separate from the Body 2dly Are the ordinary works of God in Nature and his extraordinary miraculous Works to be confounded 3dly Is it a valid way of arguing from the Power of God to his Will I readily grant That he can do all things which are Works of Power He can do all things which his infinite Wisdom sees fit to do he can do all things that he will do But doth it therefore follow that he will do all things that he can do Is it not horrid prophaneness to prostitute the Doctrine of the Divine Power to serve the ends of every trifling Hypothesis falsly called Philosophy Do we not know that ordinarily God works upon and by his Creatures in a way agreeable to the Natures which he has given them And what is there in a little Wheat-meal suitable to the production of Sense or Reason or Religion It is the part of a Philosopher humbly to contemplate what God hath done and to admire his Perfections shining forth in his Works and not to lay down Hypotheses contrary to the common Sense and Reason of Mankind and then to tell us that God can if he please make these Suppositions good Thus you see that our Author's Philosophy Anatomy and Theology are all alike absurd and that he hath made Miracles so common as will render them in a great measure useless for those extraordinary purposes whereunto they have mostly been designed and that he owns his Philosophy to be weak and impertinent when he is forced to have recourse to a supernatural miraculous Power to support it CHAP. V. Some subservient Considerations for the further establishment of the Doctrine of the Soul's Immortality BEsides the forementioned Arguments there are several other Particulars which may justly render the Opinion of the Soul 's dying with the Body odious to all Men who have either the due use of Reason or any sense of Religion 1st This Opinion is highly injurious to Human Nature carrying in it a vile Depression of that whole Species or rank of Beings to which we belong What an unnatural thing is it for a Man to abuse his Reason in vilifying and degrading the reasonable Nature it self as if he repented that God had made him a Man and was ambitious to herd himself among the more ignoble Animals Praeclarum autem nescio quid adepti sunt qui didicerunt se cum tempus mortis venisset totos esse peritos Cic. Tusc lib. 1.339 This is to bid defiance to the Common Interest of Humanity and such a Person should be looked upon as a Traytor against the Prerogative and Dignity of all Mankind And which is more it is contrary to that Obligation and Duty which we owe to the Common Parent and Author of our Beings an ungrateful contempt of that Power Wisdom and Goodness which hath given us so excellent a Nature a casting Dirt upon the Master-piece of the visible Creation and so a robbing God of that Honour which belongs to him upon the account of so noble a Production Let us therefore be more just to our selves more thankful to our Great Creator than so bruitishly to abandon our hopes of Immortality and basely desert the Common Interest and Honour of Humane Race 2dly The whole frame of this unmanly Philosophy is built upon the most precarious unsatisfying Principles imaginable They beg the Question all along and then pretend they have solved the Phaenomena of Nature Cicero told their Predecessors long ago That they assigned Provinces to Atoms without proof And Gassendus is fain to confess that Objection to be true And Dr. Willis himself in whose Authority our Philosopher seems so much to acquiesce rejects the Atomical Hypothesis because it supposeth its Principles without proof and is not suited to the Solution of Natural Appearances See his Book de Fermentatione But because these are but General Charges we will descend to Particulars and shew briefly what a knack they have at Philosophizing upon difficult Points If you ask them how the Soul comes to be so quick and active in its Operations and to turn it self with such wonderful vivacity and readiness from one Object to another Democritus Epicurus and after them Lucretius will tell you That the Atoms prepared for this purpose are of a smooth Spherical Figure See Diog. Laert. in Democ. Epicur Lucret. lib. 3. de Natura rerum and so you know they must needs be very fit for quick motion If you desire an account of Sensation according to their Hypothesis they will tell you of a vis Mobilis Motus sensiferi and something else which they confess they know not what to call from whence it proceeds If you would have the Liberty of the Will explained they tell you It ariseth from a Motion of Declination whereby the Atoms always moving downwards by their own weight towards the Center of the World are carried somewhat obliquely towards some Point different from it And this you must know is the Clinamen Principiorum as Lucretius calls it Ac nos ideo conati sumus declinationem motuum asserere Atomis ut deduceremus qui posset fortuna humanis rebus intervenire ac illud quod in nobis est sive Liberum arbitrium minime periret In a word if you ask what the Soul is they can tell you It is Efflorescentia Materiae and compare it to the Spirit of sweet Oyntment or that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some sort of Spirit they know not what Nihil enim est apud ipsos quod non Atomorum turba conficiat Cic. Tusc Quaest lib. 1. Such nonsensical Gibberish as this they call Philosophy and pretend to explicate the great Works of Nature by it and would needs forsooth be accounted Wits into the bargain when they have amused their inconsiderate Admirers by such an empty sound of unintelligible words But can any Sober Impartial Enquirer be satisfied with such Answers as these And must we let go the Doctrine of the Soul's Immortality that we may fall down and worship that Image of Philosophy which these Men have set up No surely we ought rather to be affected with a generous resentment of so vile an Indignity done to the Nature of Man and with just abhorrence to oppose such wild and impertinent Extravagancies 3dly Such absurd Notions as these expose Philosophy it self to