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

severall pieces for the composition of it according as every simple or ingredient of Diacatholicon for example is not Diacatholicon but contains something in it of which it is to be made up and from which as from differing heterogeneall parcels collected and united by an artificiall mixtion it results and for want of putting this difference or restraint Sennertus his own doctrine and explication of Democritus may seem defective But though we may approve of Physicall Atomes for the composition of naturall bodies yet we do not thereby allow of Atomes Mathematicall or indivisibles with Zeno of which point see Arriaga and our learned countreyman and Philosopher Compton otherwise called Carleton Neither again do we with Epicurus and some other old Philosophers maintain any casual meeting or accidentall confluence of them but contrariwise an assembling of them in generation by the force of seminall or spermatick virtue descending from the forms into the sperme or seeds and by the Creatour infused at the first creation into the forms As for the composition it self abstracting from these particulars it was also taught by Anaxagoras when he affirmed all to be in all or every thing and to have a preexistence in the bosome of nature even before such time as by the operation of seminall causes forms be accomplished and made to appear in their own likenesse upon this theatre This is also the judgement of Athanas Kircherius a late learned writer l. 3. de magnete part 3. c. 1. where he shews how rich compounds earth and water be as Chymick industries for separation have discovered insomuch as he noteth there is contained in them a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or generall magazine the common matter being from the first creation not lean and hungry but foeta and praeseminata with forms partiall and incompleat This also is the inchoations of forms and the rationes seminales pre-existent which many learned men have often favoured expresly taught by the great Albertus 1. Phys tract 3. c. 15. 16. 1. part summae tract 3. q. 14. ar 2. memb 2. tract 6. q. 26. ar 2. memb 1. part 2. tract 1. q. 4. ar 1. memb 2. Which doctrine of his being explained in this sense declared lies no way within the danger of the objections of Gandavensis Durandus Dominicus de Flandria or Thomas de Argentina who all proceed against it according to a way of understanding though true in it self yet quite different from this and also as we may justly think from the true meaning of Albertus or of Jacobus de Viterbo related by the afore-nominated Argentina l. 2. sent dist 18. ar 2. and there impugned by him The same doctrine for inchoations of forms in the matter before generation I mean not in materia prima but in secunda praeseminata is largely declared proved and defended by our learned countreyman Jo. Bacon a Carmelite l. 1. Quodlibet q. 6. and also in 2. sentent dist 18. q. unica in which latter place he shews that this doctrine is according to the meaning of S. Augustine These same inchoations are the rationes primordiales concreated with the matter in whose bosome they lie as it were a sleep untill such time as by the genitall power and agency of forms which are in perfection and displaid they be called out and united not accidentally but substantially into one Compositum which Compositum when it is to be dissolved all those unfolded seminall reasons do shrink up again and withdraw themselves into the self same beds from which they came And this is the doctrine of Albertus and Bacon although they do not descend to such particulars as be expressed here but hold themselves aloof according to the custome of the Schools in more generall principles and expressions This lastly is nothing else but in a good sense an eduction of forms ex potentia materiae which is Aristotles and his Disciples Doctrine for it cannot be thought that Aristotle ever intended to presse or squeez any forms out of the dry skeleton of matersa prima which matter is a principle onely receptive and no promptuary out of which to educe a form by virtue of any naturall agent whatsoever for in such a spare entity as that what fecundity is imaginable And so much touching the original of forms which is one of the abstrusest and nicest points in all philosophy and that which by vulgar Authours is meanliest handled and by the wisest is known but by conjecture Thus his main argument is answered after which all the rest will fall down headlong with any light touch though but of a finger Immediately after this he argueth out of Gen. 3.19 where Adam is told that for his disobedience he must turn into that dust of which he was made out of which he concludes that all and every part of Adam must be converted into dust which if it be so as he saith then not onely his earthly particles but his aiery watery and fiery parts must to dust also and not onely his body but his soul if he have any must be turned into the same matter See what fine conclusions follow out of this mortall souls philosophy It sufficed then that so much of his body or of the whole man was to return to dust as had been made up of it And by this alone the commination of God is fulfilled without any more ado After this he comes upon us with his false Latine saying as followeth Death reduceth this productio entis ex non-ente ad Non-entens returns man to what he was before he was that is not to be c. and by and by citing impertinently two or three places of Scripture falls to another argument drawn from the resurrection As for the Latine word Non-entem whether it be right or no we will not examine but apply our selves to the consideration of the sense which is as faulty as the Latine can be know therefore in brief that death did not reduce Adam to non ens but to non Adam it did not cause him absolutely not to be but onely not to be man or Adam any longer And forasmuch as concerns his body it is confest and certain that it was not turned by death or mortality into nothing or non ens but into dust which is an ens or something that is to say his body was not annihilated but corrupted and to die is not wholly to be destroyed but partially onely which act is all one with dissolution Now if to the totall mortalizing of man it be not necessary that his body be destroyed then can it not be needfull that his soul should be so and thus our adversaries stout argument is more then mortalized for it comes to nothing which man by dying doth not We will not deny him but that the soul of man did die and die again as much as it was capable of death for first it died by the being separated from the body although indeed according to a philosophical propriety

of a spirit spiritually might peradventure be ascribed to the virtue or aptitude of the object but the understanding after a spiritual refined manner those objects that be grosse and materiall cannot be referred to any other thing then to the virtue of the faculty it self By this then it appears that in an eye corporeall there is a two-fold repugnancy against the seeing of a spirit viz. one because the power is materiall and therefore not intellective of any object at all spirituall or corporeall the other because every spirituall Entity is without the precincts of the visive faculty Wherefore on the contrary side the eye of the minde by the being in a state able to receive some notions of a spirit and to judge it to be an Entity devoid of matter may upon a two-fold evidence be determined to be spiritual Thus by these severall wayes the action of understanding in the Soul proves the incorruptibility thereof The first is by the being precisely intellective The second because intellective of spirituall entities The third because it understands materiall objects immaterially which act is done by abstracting of which act whether it be confused or distinct we are forthwith to consider more at large The second operation of the understanding is the knowing of spirituall things by abstraction from singularities and materiall objects after a manner immateriall and by penetrating into the quiddities or essences of things for of these conceal'd and hidden entities unto which our senses can have no accesse the soul of man gets some intelligence and attaineth of them notices though not perfect intuitive or comprehensive yet not contemptible or untrue neither are these essences temperatures as Basson and some others fondly and without probability do imagine as is elsewhere to be shewed A third is a reflection upon it self which acts are above the nature of matter as Albertinus Campanella in Phys and others doe suppose for certein Against abstraction some object that it is no perfection but rather an imperfection that manner of knowledge being confused But this objection is inefficacious for supposing the infirmity of humane understanding the force of our understanding things abstractedly is most perfect and distinct and of all other hath the least confusion in it though in such understandings as be above humane and are able with one view to comprehend abstraction is needlesse and no perfection As for humane understandings we finde by experience that the meaner and grosser they are the lesse they can abstract and indeed abstraction in the understanding is a subtle act and like to extraction in Chymistry which takes the purer parts from the faeculent and resolves bodies into their severall native parts which before did lie confused in one heape and mingled together For the preventing of objections we adde that there is a great and manifest difference betwixt a knowledge confused and an abstracted because the former of these two is done by making a commixture of the superiour differences with the inferiour that is to say of the genericall perfections with the specificall and individuall but the later is done by an intentionall or intellectuall separation of one from the other namely by the considering but one yet knowing more then one that is to say both the superiour and inferiour for we do notabstract from what we know not but from what we know so that according to the humane way of understanding this abstraction is not a confused way of knowledge but a distinct not an imperfect but an exquisite because by this the understanding doth as it were anatomize the object either pitching upon severall formalityes as they use to call them or else upon severall connotations to different effects as the Nominalls speak according to the different virtues conteined in the same object An abstractive knowledge makes Genus and Species by the drawing off from matter and singularity a confused does not so but fastens upon the inferiour degrees indistinctly and in grosse As for example a confused view if it perceive a figure or a tree does not distinguish the particulars as not whether it be round or triangular an Elme or an Oake but an abstractive knowledge supposes a particular sense of all for otherwise there could be no abstraction of one from the other Campanella in his Metaphysicks and some other also related by Carleton alias Compton disp 25. would have it that the eye abstracts though but a power materiall then namely when it sees confusedly as when it perceives for example a man but discernes not whether he be Socrates or Plato This objection is prevented already because the sense cannot abstract from what it sees not in particular nor yet draw off from individualls compleat or incompleat Againe the not-knowing of a perfection is not an abstraction from it and therefore the eye seeing colour and not sweetnesse doth not abstract from that sweetnesse as Campanella did imagine it to doe A fourth is the eminency of the acts of understanding which argue a principle nobler and higher than any mortall entity This argument is largely prosecuted by Lessius Mariana and Campanella and before these by Cicero A confirmation hereof is that some acts of humane understanding be inorganicall But Molinaeus in his Summe of Philosophy lately published will not agree to this objecting that it is contrary unto experience because saith he even at that time when the understanding doth abstract most and contemplates objects that be spirituall it makes them as it were materiall ascribing extension both to God and Angels circumscribing them in places and assigning lines and limits to them Againe there is nothing saith he in the understanding which hath not been formerly in the sense Thus objecteth he Our answer is to this Maxime of Philosophie that according to the learned Thom. de Argentina q. 3. Prologi ar 4. it is to be understood with limitation namely that whatsoever is in the understanding hath been formerly in the sense some way at least or other that is to say either immediatly or mediatly in it self or in the cause effect or signe It 's true accidents may enter by themselves into the sense so forward into the understanding but substances whether materiall or immateriall doe not so nor yet things absent in time or place whether they be substances or not Actions and events of ages past also of people absent of verityes supernaturall we know by testimonies as by signes and not by our senses immediatly we know a future Eclipse by the cause the soul of man by the effects and so also doe we know God namely by his word and by his works one as by a signe the other as by an effect neither hath God ever been known unto our senses Secondly we answer that the soul being in the middle region betwixt pure bodies without spirit and pure spirits without body as on the one side it cloathes pure spirits with some corporeall vestures so on the other it doth devest materiall objects of

be common unto all mankind This phantasie of his is generally exploded as absurd and convinced for such by Albertus Magnus in his Summe and S. Thomas in his other Summe contra Gent. as also by divers others and therefore needs not to be considered anew The generall Tenet of all classicall Philosophers and the better sort of Christians is that the soul is spirituall immortall and incorruptible and that there be as many individualls thereof as there be men yea and besides that this incorruptibility thereof is not of meer grace and bestowed on it after the creation but contrariwise of nature and involved within the principles of constitution Sennertus in his Paralip holds it to be a perfection added to the nature merely out of favour and in favour of his opinion cites Damascen l. 2. c. 3. but cites the greek text lamely and Stapulensis is mistaken wholly in his translation for Damascen doth not say there as they impose upon him that Angels be incorruptible not by nature but by grace but rather the quite contrary namely That they by grace or favour have a nature that is immortall for so the Greek Text hath it By which words he teacheth us that they have their nature not by right or of themselves but by grace as all other creatures have and their immortality from nature as all other creatures have not according to which account Angels are immortall by nature that is to say by a favour antecedent to their naturall being and not subsequent unto it For the better clearing of which verity let us consider what is properly meant or signified by this terme incorruptible or immortall I note then that of this terme there are three different acceptions one proper but not ordinary a second both proper and ordinary a third neither proper nor ordinary Immortality in the first sense is supereminent that is to say such a one as hath so firm principles of constitution as be superiour to any agency and therefore whatsoever is thus immortall can neither be dissolved nor annihilated And this kinde of superexcellent immortality is proper unto God alone and no created entity can lay any claim unto it and therefore 1 Tim. 6. he is called Solus immortalis c. and of this we are not in this place to entreat In the second sense an entity is called immortall when as the principles though they be not proof against the power that can annihilate yet are not subject to dissolution or corruption therefore being once produced are to remain ever there being no reason why the cause that preserves them should at any time withdraw his sovereign influence nor any second can do them harm and so they are safe on both sides whatsoever Arriaga imagineth to the contrary Immortality taken in this sense is properly so and this is the usuall signification of the word and again in this sense it is to be understood except some other terme or some circumstance do shew the contrary The third last acception is when it is ascribed to such things which although according to the naturall principles they ly exposed to destruction either by annihilation or corruption yet are continued by the favour of some externall preservatour This improper kind of immortality our bodies should have enjoyed before the fall of Adam and shall after the resurrection and it is rather a contingent perpetuity than any naturall immunity from mortality and corruption so that a body in that state is still corruptible though not corrumpendum This difference of acception of the terme being noted I observe that our businesse here is not to inquire in the first or third sense about the souls incorruptibility but in the second onely as namely whether it be incorruptible according to the exigence and virtue of the naturall principles of constitution without recourse to externall courtesie or favour The question being stated on this sort it appeares thereby that we are not to dispute point-black the souls immortality but presupposing it to be immortall some way or other whether that same immortality be an endowment that is naturall Pomponatius and Sennertus will not grant it to be naturall and now lately one Mr. Hobbes in a prodigious volume of his called by him as prodigiously Leviathan is of opinion that no other immortality of the soul can be proved out of Scripture if any at all can besides that one of the lowest classe which is of grace and favour merely For eviction of the contrary both out of reason and Scripture I note first that the soul of man is an entity or substance intellectuall and secondly that every such entity is capable of a true felicity and is unquiet untill it do attain thereunto and thirdly that every such sublimer entity is made in a manner for it self that is to say as Adam Godham judgeth 1. Sent. q. 2. some way or other to enjoy its own being and to be settled in a full possession of it self reserving alwayes the subordination to the supremest entity and a continuall dependence thereupon This appears plainly because the whole species of man that is to say all mankinde doth earnestly desire felicity the fruition of a good so great as may give it a full content satisfaction after a subordinate way for the pleasing and rejoicing of it self In this limited sense the doctrine of Eudoxus Gnidius and of Epicurus subscribed lately and explained by Gassendus seems to draw very near the truth namely that mans felicity did consist in some high and refined pleasure not corporeal but such as is intellectuall and pure from which opinion Aristotle and Albertus in their Ethicks seem not to dissent and Aureolus is of the same mind with them In relation to this same contenting of our selves Aristotle describes humane felicity in generall terms without including God in any other terms then those of the sublimest entitie And though in reality it be God that is our Summum bonum and is that goodnesse onely which can make us happy and moreover that we stand bound to love him above our selves to observe and please him yea even although we were to reap no benefit thereby yet neverthelesse such a transcendent relation we have unto felicity and content under that very title as that abstracting from whether there were a God or no we should as earnestly defire to be happy and to enjoy our selves as we now do and again as we desire to please God in all we do and suffer and are so also we do desire felicity for the pleasing of our selves yea even independently upon any other consideration and so although we were principally made for God yet secondatily and subordinately we were made for our selves and therefore for our selves because we were made intellectuall I argue then from hence as followeth Every entity framed for the enjoying of it self and so for it self is to be perpetuall according to the exigence of nature But such is the reasonable soul and every nature

of speaking this same separation of it be no death or true manner of dying secondly by being subjected unto damnation which as we know is called in Scripture a second death But as for the annihilation of it or of the body that is it which we deny and so to do we have just reason In fine as Generation is nothing but the union of the parts and not the creation or absolute production of them so again Death and Corruption is nothing but the disunion or dissolution of them and in no wise the annihilation according as this wise Authour would perswade us As for the article of the Resurrection it proves nothing against the perpetuity of the soul for we never read of any resurrection besides that of the body wherefore to averre a resurrection of souls were a grand foolery and a doctrine never debateable or heard of amongst Christians till this silly Authour came to teach it And so much for his first chapter CHAP. III. Scripture no way a favourer of the souls mortality HIs places cited out of Scripture in favour of his errour are so impertinent as that it were no small piece of folly to examine them one by one They all of them signifie that man shall die or sometimes that for example Joseph or Simeon is not as Gen. 42.36 all which how they are to be expounded and understood may sufficiently appear by that which hath been said in the precedent chapter and how again they make nothing at all against the souls immortality Touching the words of Ecclesiastes c. 3. the answer is that they were no determinations or resolves but a history or an account given of what sometimes came into his thoughts and what obscurities and desolations of soul he had and what lastly was one of the first difficulties that troubled him and stirred him up unto a sollicitous enquiry for certainly this one verity of the immortality of mans soul is that which is to order mans designs to regulate his actions and to put life and vigour into them this being a truth most fundamentall Wee see this one was it which moved Clemens Rom. l. 1. recogn if he be the true Authour of that which passeth under his name to a serious inquiry and care for the finding out what he was to do whom to consult what to esteem most and in fine what to fear or hope most and how to order all the passages of his life This is the question that usually troubles men first of all till a resolution be had suffereth their hearts not to be at quiet every man at first suspiciously as Solomon did asking of himself as Seneca in Troade gallantly expresseth saying Verum est an timidos fabula decipit Vmbras corporibus vivere conditis Cum conjux oculis imposuit manum Supremusque dies Solibus obstitit Et tristes cineres Vrna coercuit Non prodest animam tradere funeri Sed restat miseris vivere longius An toti morimur nullaque pars manet Nostri cum profugo spiritus halitu Immistus nebulis cessit in aera Et nudum tetigit subdita fax latus Is it a truth or is' t our fears Have buzz'd a fable in our ears That mans hovering spirits do live And their interred corps survive When grieved consorts hands do close Their eyes and their last dayes oppose Our bright Hyperions beamy light And drowns the slender shades in night Then when our bones to ashes burn To be confin'd within an urn Be not the funeralls our fate But there must be a longer date For wretched man Or doth he die Intirely and intombed lie Or may he not forthwith consume And vanish all in slender fume Then when his wandring spirit flies And mingles with the aiery skies And when the dismall funerall torch His side insensible doth scorch After this sort do anxious and afflicted spirits oftentimes argue and dispute within themselves laying before their eyes all the doubts and difficulties imaginable before they descend to the making of any conclusion at all or to the determining of any setled doctrine Thus and no otherwise did Solomon when first revolving in his thoughts the matter of the souls condition and touching upon the various suspicions of men concerning it with no small sense and anguish of mind at length Eccles c. 12. drawing to a conclusion he determines saying Let the dust return unto the earth from whence it came and the spirit unto God who gave it And this text alone is sufficient to confound the Adversary and to confute whatsoever he hath endeavoured to draw out of Scripture for mans totall corruption and mortality I adde according to good Expositours that Solomon in this place representeth not what he himself did judge nor what a rationall man ought to judge but rather what Epicureans and voluptuous persons did or were wont to judge according either to the desires or at least to the apparences of sense for according to them man and beast do breathe out their lasts alike but this judgement of theirs Solomon absolutely condemns as appeareth plainly by that which before hath been alledged out of him CHAP. IV. His argument out of reason viewed and examined WHat the severall fancies were of heathen Philosophers touching the nature and definition of the soul is not much regardable sundry of them being so monstrous and absurd But it is a thing very considerable that amongst so many stragling and wild conceits all or most of all at least of the noblest and the best Philosophers have taught the immortality of the soul it self howsoever in other businesses concerning it they might sometimes disagree Permanere animos arbitramur saith Cicero Tuscul l. 1. consensu nationum omnium qua in sede maneant qualesque sint ratione discendum est and again in his Hortensius as witnesseth Saint Augustine l. 14. c. 19. de Trinitate Antiquis Philosophis hisque maximis longeque clarissimis placuit quod aeternos ammos divinosque habeamus We are perswaded by the consent of all nations that souls remain but must learn of reason of what quality they are and in what places they remain Again in Somnio Scipionis he determineth saying Infra Lunam nihil est nisi mortale caducum praeter animos generi hominum Deorum munere datos Beneath the Moon there is nothing which is not corruptible excepting souls alone bestowed upon mankind by the munificence of the Gods Thus Cicero who in his book de senectute delivers himself more at large as also in the first book of his Tusculan questions and also bringeth reasons for what he saith This assertion of Cicero for consent of Nations and Philosophers in this truth hath been shewed to the eye by the great diligence and learning of Augustinus Steuchus commonly called Eugubinus in the 9 book of his excellent work de perenni Philosophia in which he voucheth to this purpose the authorities of Phere●ides Syrus who as Cicero witnesseth was the first that delivered