Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	affection_n	understanding_n	will_n	4,333	5	5.6834	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67569	A philosophicall essay towards an eviction of the being and attributes of God. Immortality of the souls of men. Truth and authority of Scripture. together with an index of the heads of every particular part.	Ward, Seth, 1617-1689.	1652 (1652)	Wing W823; ESTC R203999	52,284	168

contemplation of themselves and in the scruting of the waies of their own internall operations is over-frequent and considering how little reason there is to expect it of those who by their way of living are more deeply engaged among things no way exceeding the affections and circumstances of bodies and bodily motions and perhaps may think themselves unconce●ned to be busy in the knowledge of themselves It will be requisite that we insist more particularly upon it that so the matter may be cleared even to the most vulgar apprehensions supposing only that they can but obtain so much of themselves as w●rily to attend to that which is to be delivered Now the substance of all that I shall speak towards the demonstration of the souls Immortality shall be summarily comprised in this one Syllogism Whatsoever substance is incorporeall it is immortall But the souls of men are incorporeall substances Ergo The former of these Propositions is indeed in it self undemonstrable as being a principle evident to a considering minde and so not resolvible into any former principles so that all that can be done to a further clearing of it will only be to examine and follow home the terms to their first originall notions which they are assigned to represent Indeed the word mortality as it is usually apprehended hath alwaies reference to a compounded substance or to a body which hath in it self some principle and cause of motion and signifies no more but a capacity of the materiall and passive part to be deprived of that inward active principle of its motions as is evident by those things which we use to say may die or are dead as men and beasts and plants but when the question is only of that active principle it cannot so justly be put in the terms of mortality as of corruptibility or a naturall tendency to a corruption so then that which we are to strive for is the true and accurate notion of corruption and when we have driven it to the highest we shall finde that corruption is nothing else but a dissolution of things joyned together and that this dissolution is nothing but a separation and that separation is nothing but division and that division is an immediate and â formall act of quantity and quantity is nothing else but a mode of corporeity so as you see that corruptibility doth even in the notion of it include corporeity whatsoever therefore is incorporeall it is incorruptible which was to be demonstrated SECT. II. A Proof of this Proposition that the souls of men are incorporeall substances by comparing the affections of bodies with those of souls BUt the souls of men are incorporeall substances That they are substances is evident seeing that they are subjects of certain properties and affections which is the very formall notion of a substance It remains only therefore that we demonstrate them to be incorporeall Now for the clearing of this it is requisite that we consider wherein consists the being of a body and wherein consists the being of an humane soul nor can we use any possible means to come to an apprehension of their being but by considering those primary passions and properties whereby they make discovery of themselves the first and primary affection of a body is that extension of parts whereof it is compounded and a capacity of division upon which as upon the fundamentall mode the particular dimensions that is the figures and the locall motions doe depend the figure being nothing but a particular and determined extension of the matter towards such and such parts and locall motion being nothing but division so that whatsoever may possibly be performed by any body it must have its originall ground-work in divisibility and its actuall being in division towards which the situation and figure and determined quantity of parts must make the disposition Again for the being of our souls if we reflect upon our selves we shall finde that all our knowledge of them resolves into this that we are beings conscious to our selves of severall kindes of cogitations that by our outward senses we apprehend bodily things present that by our Imagination we apprehend things absent that we oft recover into our apprehensions things past and gone that upon our perception of things we finde our selves variously affected sometimes with pleasure or pain for things present sometimes with hope or despair of things absent and the like Nay we are conscious to our selves of objects which could not by any bodily impressions be wrought in our fancies or our brain and of superiour passions answerable to those objects In one word we finde that our souls are a kinde of essences which are conscious or having a sence of things Now then we are to compare together these two properties of a body and a soul and so conclude either an agreement or a disagreement in the natures of those subjects And here upon the very first view of a considering minde it will appear that divisibility is not apprehension or judgement or desire or discourse that to cut a body into severall parts or put it into severall shapes or bring it to severall motions or mix it after severall waies will not serve to bring it to apprehend or desire it is not the hammering and filing and fitting of the wheels of a watch which can make it apprehend the end for which it serves or comprehend the motion of the sun which it is made to measure nor is it materiall whether we take an example in things naturall or artificiall or upon what principles of mixture we proceed the conclusion will be still the same for sence and perception and apprehension and desire c. they are as great strangers to the obscure notions of heat and cold and moisture and drought and of those elements to which they are assigned to fire and air and earth and water as they are to quantity and scituation and figure and motion and the like there is no man certainly that can clearly apprehend that combining any proportion of fire and air and water and earth should make the lump of it to know or comprehend what is done to it or by it we see not then any the least inducement in our notion of bodies simple or mixed or howsoever varied to bring us to an apprehension of cogitation Nor yet will our reflection upon our cogitation bring us to any apprehension of corporeity or divisibility the truth is our sense and apprehension of bodies cannot infallibly assure us that there are any bodies in the world but we must be forced to an higher principle whereon to ground that assurance so farre is cogitation and apprehension and the like from involving in its being any corporeity nay we see manifestly that upon the division of the body the soul remains entire and undevided it is not the losse of an hand or foot or eye that can maim the understanding or the will or cut off the affections so that we have not any the

A Philosophicall ESSAY Towards an Eviction of The Being and Attributes of God Immortality of the souls of men Truth and Authority of Scripture TOGETHER With an Index of the Heads of every particular Part. OXFORD Printed by Leonard Lichfield and are to be sold by John Adams and Edward Forrest 1652. To the READER THE Author of this Book although he had never suffered it to be published had he not been assured that it is not for the main much liable to just exception and although he hath no further care of the reception entertainment of it then the consequence of it may deserve whereof the Reader and not himself must be the Judge And so he is not moved by the common passions of such as use to make Epistles and Prefaces to their Readers yet some thing although but for custome only he was willing to premise and to acquaint the Reader with thus much by way of Apology for himself That this was written divers years since without any purpose of ever letting it go abroad that the chief end of it was to cleer to himself who is a lover of rationall knowledge an account of the grounds of his own belief and to that end to lay in order his scattered notions concerning that subject and this he intends as an Apology for the homelinesse of the stile That at the same time when it was written it was also delivered in a private course of religious exercise and that will be the excuse for such repetitions as might otherwise seem ill-favoured in the severall Sections of it That at the time of his composing it he was destitute of the assistance of his Bookes which is one cause that it is not adorned with Testimonies and citations out of Authors but comes out naked being supported onely by the order and plainnesse of reason that it trusts to That since the composing of this he knows that divers Bookes of the same Argument have been written by men farre more knowing then himselfe but that he hath not yet read any of them nor knows whether he doe agree with them or not which abstinence hath been caused partly for that he is himselfe satisfied by what is here delivered and partly for that he had no leisure or minde to alter this which he had done though possibly it might be for the better That whereas he speakes of Epicures Machiavelians and the like he makes use of those names onely in a popular way as they are names of Characters well known amongst us and that he intends not to traduce those Authors or cast any contumely upon them Lastly He must needs acknowledge that before the edition of this he hath seen M. Hobs his Leviathan and other Bookes of his wherein that which is in this Treatise intended as the main Foundation whereon the second Discourse Of the Souls Immortality insists is said to imply a contradiction viz. That there are any such things as Immateriall or Incorporeall substances Upon which occasion he thought good onely to say That he hath a very great respect and a very high esteem for that worthy Gentleman but he must ingenuously acknowledge that a great proportion of it is founded upō a belief expectation concerning him a belief of much knowledge in him and an expectation of those Philosophicall and Mathematicall works which he hath undertaken and not so much upon what he hath yet published to the world and that he doth not see reason from thence to recede from any thing upon his Authority although he shall avouch his discourse to proceed Mathematically That he is sure he hath much injured the Mathematicks and the very name of Demonstration by bestowing it upon some of his discourses which are exceedingly short of that evidence and truth which is required to make a discourse able to bear that reputation That in this case M.H. is onely a negative witnesse and his meaning in denying incorporeall substances can rationally import no more but this that he himself hath not an apprehension of any such beings and that his cogitation as to the simple objects of it hath never risen beyond imagination or the first apprehension of bodies performed in the brain but to imagine that no man hath an apprehension of the God-head because he may not perhaps think of him so much as to strip off the corporeall circumstances wherewith he doth use to fancy him Or to conclude every man under the sentence of being non-sensicall whosoever have spoken or written of Incorporeall substances he doth conceive to be things not to be made good by the Authority of M. Hobs. That whereas very many men do professe an apprehension of such beings and he in the mean time professes this to be impossible this Author is hard put to it to excuse this from much incivility and conceives the import of it to amount to thus much that he conceives himself in the highest and utmost bound of humane apprehension and that his reason is the measure of truth and that what he sees not is invisible I conceive the case in this to be alike as if whilest two men are looking at Jupiter one with his naked eyes the other with a Telescope the former should avow that Jupiter had no attendants and that it were impossible he should have any the reason why M.H. denies those beings whilest other men apprehend them is for that he lookes at them with his Fancy they with their minde Many more things he had to say for himself but he understands not fully the use or benefit of Apologies The Contents PART I. SECT. I. Preface SECT. II. OF the designe ad definition of Religion the prejudices and pretences against the Christian the sum of what is in controversie deduced to three Questions 1. Of the Being of God Attributes 2. Of the Immortality of the Souls of men 3. Of the Authority of Scriptures SECT. III. Of the being of God evicted by way of Demonstration from the Creatures pag. 11. SECT. IV. Of the Attributes of God those likewise evicted from the Creatures pag. 17. PART II. SECT. I. A Proposall of the Argument for the Immortality of the Soule and a manifestation of the major proposition that incorporeall substances are immortall pap 33. SECT. II. A Proof of this Proposition that the Souls of men are incorporeall substances by comparing the affections of bodies with those of souls p. 38. SECT. III. A further proof of it by the generall way of apprehension p. 43 SECE IV. The same further demonstrated from the severall acts of the Soule from simple apprehensions p. 51. SECT. V. From Judgment and Discourse p. 58. SECT. VI An Application of the former Propositions to the inference of a Religion in generall and a proposall of the third in order to the Christian p. 67. PART III. Concerning the truth and Authority of our Scripture SECT. I. Petitions and Cautions premised to the Question p. 75. SECT. II. The Assertion resolved into two Propositions the former