this to see whether I can find any such coincidences which a mans phancy dealing frequently in such matters might insensibly occasion If any there be let those that find them out pardon them as the slips of a too officious imagination or however else they treat them they shall not much displease the Author And now that this Discourse may pass with less controul among those that shall light on it I find my self ingag'd to speak a little to a double sort of Readers who are like to be offended at my design and averse to the Doctrine asserted in these Papers And 1 some will boggle at Praeexistence and be afraid to entertain it upon an apprehension that the Admission of this opinion will disorder and change the Frame of Orthodox Divinity which were there cause for such a jealousie were but a commendable caution but there 's hope this may prove but a panick fear or such a needless terrour as surpriseth Children in the dark when they take their best friends for some Bug-Bear that would carry them away or hurt them For 't is but supposing as I have somewhere intimated in the discourse it self that God created all souls together as he did the Angels That some of them sinned and fell with the other Apostate Spirits and for their disobedience were thrust into a state of silence and insensibility That the Divine goodness so provided for them that they should act a part again in terrestrial Bodies when they should fitly be prepared for them And that Adam was set up as our great Protoplast and Representative who had he continued in Innocence and Integrity we had then been sharers in that happiness which he at first was instated in but by his unhappy defection and disobedience we lost it and became thus miserable in our New life in these earthly bodies I say the Doctrine of Prae-existence thus stated is in nothing that I know of an enemy to common Theology all things hence proceeding as in our ordinary Systems with this only difference that this Hypothesis clears the divine Attributes from any shadow of harshness or breach of equity since it supposeth us to have sinned and deserved all the misery we suffer in this condition before we came hither whereas the other which teacheth that we became both guilty and miserable by the single and sole offence of Adam whenas we were not then in being or as to our souls as much as potentially in our great Progenitour bears somewhat hardly upon the repute of the Divine perfections So that if the wary Reader be afraid to venture upon the Hypothesis that I have drawn up at the end which I confess I would not give him the least incouragement to meddle with yet without danger he may admit of Praeexistence as accommodated to the Orthodox Doctrine Nor should I indeed have medled with the other scheme which is built upon the Principles of meer Reason and Philosophy but that those friends who drew the rest of the Discourâ—e from me ingag'd me to give them an Account of the Philosophical Hypothesis In which I know I have not in every particular followed the mind of the Masters of the Origenian Cabbala but kept my self to the conduct of those Principles that I judged most rational though indeed the things wherein I differ are very few and inconsiderable However for that reason I thought fit to intitle no body to the Hypothesis that I have made a draught of lest I should have affix't on any one what he would not have owned But for the main those that understand it know the Fountain and for others 't is no great matter if they be ignorant Now if any one judge me to be a Proselyte to those opinions because I call them not all to nought or damn not those that have a favour for them I know not how to avoid the doom of their severe displeasure having said as much in the place where I treat of those matters to purge my self of such a suspicion as I thought necessary to clear me in the opinion of any competently ingenuous As for others let me say what I can I shall be what their wisdoms think fit to call me And let that be what it will I am very well content to bear it I 'le only add to take off the ground of this uncharitable jealousie that among the favourers of Praeexistence I know none that are adherers to those opinions and therefore for me to have declaim'd against any on this account had been a piece of Knight-Errantry And those Dons that do so make Gyants of the Wind-mills of their own Imaginations But 2 There are another sort of Readers that I have a word to say to who contemn and laugh at every thing that their narrow noddles comprehend not This I confess is a good easie way of confutation and if we may take every fool's smile for a Demonstration Praeexistence will be routed But the best on 't is to call things by their right names this is but a vulgar childish humour arising from nothing but a fond doating on the opinions we were first instructed in For having made those the standard of truth and solidity these prepossest discerners presently conclude every thing that is a stranger to their ears and understandings and of another stamp from their Education-receptions â—alse and ridiculous just like the common people who judging all customs and fashions by their own account those of other Nations absurd and barbarous 'T is well for those smiling Coâ—â—uters that they were not bred in Mahumetism for then without doubt they would have made sport of Christianity But since they are so disposed let them laugh at the opinion I have undertaken for till they understand it I know who in the judgment of wise men will prove Ridiculous It was from this very principle that the most considerable truths that ever the world was acquainted with were to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness and 't was such a spirit as reigns in these Children of self-conâ—idence that call'd S. Paul a babbler And methinks till these narrow-scull'd people could boast themselves infallible and all their opinions an unerring Canon common modesty and civility should teach them better manners than at first dash to judge that a ridiculous absurdity which the greatest and wisest Sages that inlightned the antient World accounted so sound and probable a Conclusion Especially it being a matter not determin'd against but rather countenanc't in Scripture as will appear hereafter But Opinionative Ignorance is very weak and immoral And till those slight and Vulgar discerners have learn't that first principle of true wisdom To judge nothing till they throughly understand it and have weighed it in the Ballance of impartial Reason 't is to no purpose to spend ones breath upon them THE CONTENTS OF LVX ORIENTALIS Chap. 1. THE opinions proposed concerning the original of Souls pag. 1 Chap. 2. Daily creation of Souls is inconsistent
it shall go hard but that those whom their education or prejudice have engaged against this Hypothesis will light on some obscure pieces of texts and broken sentences or other that shall seem to condemn what they disapprove of But I am securely confident that there is not a sentence in the sacred volume from end to end that ever was intended to teach that all Souls were not made of old or that by a legitimate consequence would inferr it And if any there be that seem to look another way I dare say they are collateral and were never designed by the divine Authors for the purpose they are made to serve by the enemies of Praeexistence Wherefore not to conceal any thing that with the least shew of probability can be pretended from the sacred volume in discountenance of the Doctrine of Praeexistence I 'le bring into view whatever I know to have the least face of a Testimony to the contrary in the divine Revelations That so when it shall appear that the most specious Texts that can be alledg'd have nothing at all in them to disprove the souls praeexistence we may be secure that God hath not discovered to us in his written will that 't was not his pleasure to create all souls together Therefore 1. It may be pretended that the Doctrine of Praeexistence comports not with that innocence and integrity in which the Scripture determines Adam to have been made Since it supposeth the descent into these bodies to be a culpable lapse from an higher and better state of Life and this to be a state of incarceration for former delinquencies To this I answer 1 No one can object any thing to purpose against Praeexistence from the unconceiveableness of it until he know the particular frame of the Hypothesis without which all impugnations relating to the manner of the thing will be wide of the mark and but little to the business Therefore if the Objector would have patience to wait till we come to that part of our undertaking he would find that there was but little ground for such a scruple But however to prevent all cavillings in this place I 'le shew the invalidity of this objection Wherefore 2 There is no necessity from the Doctrine of Praeexistence to suppose Adam a Delinquent before his noted transgression in a terrestrial body for considering that his body had vast advantages above ours in point of Beauty Purity and Serviceableness to the Soul what harshness is there in conceiving that God might send one of those immaculate Spirits that he had made into such a Tenement that he might be his steward in the affairs of this lower Family and an overseer and ruler of those other Creatures that he had ordered to have their dwelling upon earth I am sure there is no more contrariety to any of the Divine Attributes in this supposition than there is in that which makes God to have sent a pure spirit which he had just made into such a body Yea 3 Supposing that some Souls fell when the Angels did which the process of our discourse will shew to be no unreasonable supposition this was a merciful provision of our Maker and a generous undertaking for a Seraphick and untainted Spirit For by this means fit and congruous matter is prepared for those Souls to reside and act in who had rendred themselves unfit to live and enjoy themselves in more refined bodies And so those Spirits that had sinned themselves into a state of silence and inactivity are by this seasonable means which the divine Wisdom and Goodness hath contrived for them put once more into a capacity of acting their parts anew and coming into play again Now if it seem hard to any to conceive how so noble a Spirit in such an advantagious body should have been imposed upon by so gross a delusion and submit so impotently to the first temptation He may please to consider that the difficulty is the same supposing him just then to have been made if we grant him but that purity and those great perfections both of will and understanding which orthodox theology allows him Yea again 4 I might ask What inconvenience there is in supposing that Adam himself was one of those delinquent Souls * which the divine pity and compassion had thus set up again that so so many of his excellent Creatures might not be lost and undone irrecoverably but might act anew though upon a lower stage in the universe A due consideration of the infinite foecundity and fulness of the divine goodness will if not warrant yet excuse such a supposition But now if it be demanded What advantage Adam's standing had been to his posterity had he continued in the state of innocence and how sin and misery is brought upon us by his Fall according to this Hypothesis I answer that then among many other great priviledges he had transmitted downwards by way of natural generation that excellent and blessed temper of body which should have been like his own happy crasis So that our apprehensions should have been more large and free our affections more regular and governable and our inclinations to what is good and vertuous strong and vigorous For we cannot but observe in this state how vast an influence the temper of our bodies hath upon our minds both in reference to intellectual and moral dispositions Thus daily experience teacheth us how that according to the ebb or flow of certain humours in our bodies our wits are either more quick free and sparkling or else more obtuse weak and sluggish And we find that there are certain clean and healthy dispositions of body which make us cheerful and contented others on the contrary morose melancholy and dogged And 't is easie to observes how age or sickness sowers and crabbs our natures I might instance in almost all other qualities of the mind which are strangely influenc't and modifyed according to the bodies constitution But none will deny so plain a truth and therefore I forbear to insist further on it Nor need I mention any more advantages so many and such great ones being consequent upon this But our great Protoplast and representative falling through his unhappy disobedience besides the integrity and rectitude of his mind he lost also that blessed constitution of Body which would have been so great a priviledg to his off-spring so that it became now corrupt weak and indisposed for the nobler exercises of the Soul and he could transmit no better to us than himself was owner of Thus we sell in him and were made miserable by his transgression We have bodies conveyed to us which strangely do bewitch and betray us And thus we all bear about us the marks of the first apostacy There are other sad effects of his defection but this may suffice for my present purpose Thus we see how that the derivation of original depravity from Adam is as clear in this Hypothesis as can be pretended in either of the
and course to pass through all these dispensations provided she keep her self sincere towards her Maker is not properly any lapse or sin but an harmless experiencing all the capacities of enjoying themselves that God has bestowed upon them Which will open a door to a further Answer touching the rest of the Planets being inhabited namely That they may be inhabited by such kind of â—ouls as these who therefore want not the Knowledge and assistance of a Redeemer And so the earth may be the onely Nosocomium of sinfully lapsed souls This may be an answer to such far-fetched Objections till they can prove the contrarie Pag. 118. Adam cannot withstand the inordinate appetite c. Namely after his own remissness and heedlessness in ordering himself he had brought himself to such a wretched weakness Pag. 121. The Plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken c. There are three Vital Congruities belonging to the Plastick of the Soul and they are to awake orderly that is to operate one after another downward and upward that is to say In the lapse the Aereal follows the Aethereal the Terrestrial the Aereal But in their Recovery or Emergency out of the lapse The Aereal follows the Terrestrial and the Aethereal the Aereal But however a more gross turgency to Plastick operation may haply arise at the latter end of the Aereal Period which may be as it were the disease of the soul in that state and which may help to turn her out of it into the state of Silence and is it self for the present silenced therewith For where there is no union with bodie there is no operation of the Soul Pag. 121. For it hath an aptness and propensity to act in a Terrestrial body c. This aptness and fitness it has in the state of Silence according to that essential order of things interwoven into its own nature and into the nature of the Spirit of the World or great Archeus of the Universe according to the eternal counsel of the Divine Wisdom By which Law and appoyntment the soul will as certainly have a fitness and propensity at its leaving the Terrestrial body to actuate an Aereal one Pag. 122. Either by mere natural Congruity the disposition of the soul of the world or some more spontaneous agent c. Natural Congruity and the disposal of the Plastick soul of the world which others call the Spirit of Nature may be joyned well together in this Feat the Spirit of Nature attracting such a soul as is most congruous to the predelineated Matter which it has prepared for her But as for the spontaneous Agent I suppose he may understand his ministry in some supernatural Birth Unless he thinks that some Angels or Genii may be imployed in putting souls into bodies as Gardiners are in setting Pease and Beans in the beds of Gardens But certainly they must be no good Genii then that have any hand in assisting or setting souls in such wombs as have had to do with Adulterie Incest and Buggery Pag. 123. But some apish shews and imitations of Reason Vertue and Religion c. The Reason of the unregenerate in Divine things is little better than thus and Vertue and Religion which is not from that Principle which revives in us in real Regeneration are though much better than scandalous vice and profaness mere pictures and shadows of what they pretend to Pag. 123. To its old celestial abode c. For we are Pilgrims and strangers here on the earth as the holy Patriarchs of old declared And they that speak such things saith the Apostle plainly shew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they seek their native country for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies And truly if they had been mindful of that earthly country out of which they came they might saith he have had opportunity of returning But now they desire a better to wit an heavenly Hebr. 11. Pag. 124. But that they step forth again into Airy Vehicles This is their natural course as I noted above But the examples of Enoch and Elias and much more of our ever Blessed Saviour are extraordinary and supernatural Pag. 125. Those therefore that pass out of these bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoyled weakened or orderly unwound according to the tenour of this Hypothesis c. By the favour of this ingenious Writer this Hypothesis does not need any such obnoxious Appendage as this viz. That souls that are outed these Terrestrial bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoiled weakned or orderly unwound return into the state of Inactivity But this is far more consonant both to Reason and Experience or Storie that though the Terrestrial Congruity be still vigorous as not having run out it may be the half part no not the tenth part of its Period the soul immediately upon the quitting of this body is invested with a bodie of Air and is in the state of Activity not of Silence in no sense For some being murdered have in all likelyhood in their own persons complained of their murderers as it is in that story of Anne Walker and there are many others of the same nature And besides it is far more reasonable there being such numerous multitudes of silent souls that their least continuance in these Terrestrial bodies should at their departure be as it were a Magical Kue or Tessera forthwith to the Aereal Congruity of life to begin to act its part upon the ceasing of the other that more souls may be rid out of the state of Silence Which makes it more probable that every soul that is once besmeared with the unctuous moisture of the Womb should as it were by a Magick Oyntment be carried into the Air though it be of a still-born Infant than that any should return into the state of Silence or Inactivity upon the pretence of the remaining vigour of the Terrestrial Congruity of life For these Laws are not by any consequential necessity but by the free counsel of the Eternal Wisdom of God consulting for the best And therefore this being so apparently for the best this Law is interwoven into the Spirit of the World and every particular soul that upon the ceasing of her Terrestrial Union her Aereal Congruity of life should immediately operate and the Spirit of Nature assisting she should be drest in Aereal robes and be found among the Inhabitants of those Regions If souls should be remanded back into the state of Silence that depart before the Terrestrial Period of Vital Congruity be orderly unwound so very few reach the end of that Period that they must in a manner all be turned into the state of Inactivity Which would be to weave Penelope's Web to do and undo because the day is long enough as the Proverb is when as it rather seems too short by reason of the numerosity of Silent souls that expect their turn of Recovery into Life Pag. 125. But onely follow the clew of this Hypothesis The Hypothesis
it but if by true vertue and unfeigned sanctity of mind that eye be opened the Mysteries of Philosophy are the more clearly discovered to it especially if points be studied with singular industry which Mr. Baxter himself acknowledges of the Doctor pag. 21. onely he would there pin upon his back an Humble Ignoramus in some things which the Doctor I dare say will easily admit in many things yea in most and yet I believe this he will stand upon that in those things which he professes to know he will challenge all the world to disprove if they can And for probable Opinions especially if they be useless which many Books are too much stuffed withal he caâ—â—s them out as the lumber of the mind and would willingly give them no room in his thoughts Firmness and soundness of Life is much better than the multiplicitie of uncertain Conceits And lastly whereas Mr. Baxter speaking of himself says And when I presume most I do but most lose my self He has so bewildered and lost himself in the multifarious and most-what needless points in Philosophy or Scholastick Divinity that if we can collect the measures of the Cause from the amplitude of the Effect he must certainly have been very presumptuous He had better have set up his Staff in his Saints everlasting Rest and such other edifying and useful Books as those than to have set up for either a Philosopher or Polemick Divine But it is the infelicity of too many that they are ignorant Quid valeant humeri quid ferre recusent as the Poet speaks or as the Pythagoreans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And so taking upon them a part in a Play which they are unfit for they both neglect that which they are fit for and miscarry by reason of their unfitness in their acting that Part they have rashly undertaken as Epictetus somewhere judiciously observes But if that passage And when I presume most I do but most lose my self was intended by him as an oblique Socratical reproof to the Doctor let him instance if he can where the Doctor has presumed above his strength He has medled but with a few things and therefore he need not envie his success therein especially they being of manifest use to the serious world so many as God has fitted for the reception of them Certainly there was some grand occasion for so grave a preliminary monition as he has given the Doctor You have it in the following Page p. 5. This premised says he I say undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed either as to any certainty or probability That all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter See what Heat and Hast or some worse Principle has engaged Mr. Baxter to do to father a down-right falshood upon the Doctor that he may thence take occasion to bestow a grave admonition on him and so place himself on the higher ground I am certain it is neither the Doctors opinion That all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter nor has he writ so any where He onely says in his Preface to the Reader That all created Spirits are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Souls in all probability and actuate some matter And his expression herein is both modest and true For though it is not certain or necessary yet it is very probable For if there were of the highest Orders of the Angels that fell it is very probable that they had corporeal Vehicles without which it is hard to conceive they could run into disorder And our Saviour Christs Soul which actuates a glorified spiritual Bodie being set above all the Orders of Angels it is likely that there is none of them is so refined above his Humane Nature as to have no bodies at all Not to add that at the Resurrection we become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though we have bodies then which is a shrewd intimation that the Angels have so too and that there are no created Spirits but have so Thirdly Mr. Baxter pag. 6. wrongfully blames the Doctor for being so defective in his studies as not to have read over Dr. Glisson De Vita Naturae and says he has talk'd with diverse high pretenders to Philosophie and askt their judgment of that Book and found that none of them understood it but neglected it as too hard for them and yet contemned it His words to Dr. More are these I marvel that â—hen you have dealt with so many sorts of Dissenters you meddle not with so subtile a piece as that of old Dr. Glissons De Vita Naturae He thinks the subtilty of the Book has deterred the Doctor from reading it as something above his Capacity as also of other high Pretenders to Philosophie This is a Book it seems calculated onely for the elevation of Mr. Baxters subtile and sublime wit And indeed by the benefit of reading this Book he is most dreadfully armed with the affrightful terms of Quoddities and Quiddities of Conceptus formalis and fundamentalis of Conceptus adaequatus and inadaequatus and the like In vertue of which thwacking expressions he has fancied himself able to play at Scholastick or Philosophick Quarter-staff with the most doughty and best appointed Wits that dare enter the Lists with him and as over-neglectful of his flock like some conceited Shepherds that think themselves no small fools at the use of the Staff or Cudgil-play take Vagaries to Fairs or Wakes to give a specimen of their skill so he ever and anon makes his Polemick sallies in Philosophie or Divinity to entertain the Spectators though very oft he is so rapt upon the knuckles that he is forced to let fall his wooden Instrument and blow his fingers Which is but a just Nemesis upon him and he would do well to interpret it as a seasonable reproof from the great Pastor of Souls to whom we are all accountable But to return to his speech to the Doctor I will adventure to answer in his behalf That I marvel that whenas Mr. Baxter has had the curiosity to read so many Writers and some of them sure but of small concern that he has not read that sound and solid piece of Dr. More viz. his Epistola altera ad V. C. with the Scholia thereon where Spinozius is confuted Which if he had read he might have seen Volum Philosoph Tom. 1. pag. 604 605 c. that the Doctor has not onely read that subtile Piece of Doctor Glissons but understands so throughly his Hypothesis that he has solidly and substantially confuted it Which he did in a faithful regard to Religion For that Hypothesis if it were true were as safe if not a safer Refuge for Atheists than the mere Mechanick Philosophie is And therefore you may see there how Cuperus brought up amongst the Atheists from his very childhood does confess how the Atheists now-a-daies explode the Mechanick Philosophie as not being for their turn and betake themselves wholly to such an Hypothesis as Dr. Glissons Vita Naturae But God be thanked Dr. H. More
another yet they demonstrate still their Spirituality by Self-Penetration haply a thousand and a thousand times repeated And though by a Law of life not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are kept from penetrating one another yet they both in the mean time necessarily penetrate Matter as undergoing the diverse measures of essential Spissitude in the same So that by the increase of that essential Spissitude they may approach near to a kind of Hylopathick disposition of Impenetrability and thence by the Matter of the Universe out of which they never are be curb'd from contracting themselves any further than to such a degree and I noted at first that spiritual Subtilty as well as Amplitude is given in measure to created Spirits So that Penetrabilitie is still a steadie Character of a Spiritual Essence or Substance to thâ— utmost sense thereof And to argue against Impenetrability its being the propertie of Matter from this kind of Impenetrability of contracted Spirits is like that quibbling Sophistrie against Indiscerpibility being the propertie of a Spirit because a Physical Monad is also indiscerpible The ninth Objection is against the Indiscerpibility of Spirits and would infer that because the Doctor makes them intellectually divisible therefore by Divine Power if it imply no contradiction a Spirit is Discerpible into Physical parts But this is so fully satisfied already by the Doctor in his Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit and its Defence to say nothing of what I have said already above to prove it does imply a contradiction that I will let it go and proceed To the tenth and last Allegation which pretends That these two terms Penetrable and Indiscerpible are needless and hazardous in the Notion of a Spirit But how useful or needful Penetrability is is manifest from what we have said to the eighth Objection And the needfulness of Indiscerpibility is also sufficiently shewn by the Doctor in his Defence of the true Notion of a Spirit Sect. 30. But now for the Hazardousness of these terms as if they were so hard that it would discourage men from the admitting of the Existence of Spirits It appears from what has been said to the eighth Objection That Penetrability is not onely intelligible and admittable but necessarily to be admitted in the Notion of a Spirit as sure as God is a Spirit and that there are Spirits of men and Angels and that the Souls of men are not made of Shreds but actuate their whole grown bodie though at first they were contracted into the compass of a very small Foetus And that there is no Repugnancie that an Essence may be ample and yet indiscerpible Mr. Baxter himself must allow who pag. 51. plainly declares That it is the vilest contradiction to say that God is capable of division So that I wonder that he will call Penetrable and Indiscerpible hard and doubtful words and such as might stumble mens belief of the Existence of Spirits when they are terms so plain and necessary Nor can that Vnitie that belongs to a Spirit be conceived or understood without them especially without Indiscerpibilitie And indeed if we do not allow Penetrability the Soul of a man will be far from being one but a thing discontinued and scatter'd in the pores of his corporeal consistencie We will conclude with Mr. Baxters Conceit of the Indivisibleness of a Spirit and see how that will corroborate mens faith of their Existence and put all out of hazard Various Elements saith he pag. 50. vary in Divisibility Earth is most divisible Water more hardly the parts more inclining to the closest contact Air yet more hardly and in Fire no doubt the Discerpibility is yet harder And if God have made a Creature so strongly inclined to the unitie of all the parts that no Creature can separate them but God onely as if a Soul were such it is plain that such a Being need not fear a dissolution by Separation of parts Ans This is well said for an heedless and credulous multitude but this is not to Philosophize but to tell us that God works a perpetual Miracle in holding the small tenuious parts of the Soul together more pure and â—ine than those of Fire or Aether but here is no natural cause â—â—om the thing it self offered unless it be that in every Substance or rather Matter the parts according to the tenuitie and puritie of the Substance incline to a closer Contact and inseparable Union one with another which is a conceit repugnant to experience and easily confuted by that ordinarie accident of a Spinner hanging by its weak thread from the brim of ones Hat which â—eeble line yet is of force enough to divide the Air and for that very reason because it consists of thinner parts than Water or Earth As also we can more easily run in the Air than wade in the Water for the very same reason These things are so plain that they are not to be dwelt upon But Mr. Baxter is thus pleased to shew his Wit in maintaining a weak â—ause which I am perswaded he has not so little judgment as that he can have any great confidence in And therefore in sundry places he intimates that he does allow or at least not deny but that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie is contained in the Notion of a Spirit but not as part of the Conceptus formalis but as Dispositio or Modus substantiae but yet withal such a Dispositio as is essential to the substance that with the Conceptus formalis added makes up the true Notion of a Spirit See pag. 30 32 61 85. And truly if Mr. Baxter be in good earnest and sincere in this agreement without all equivocation that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie is Essential to the true Notion of a Spirit onely they are to be admitted as Dispositio Substantiae not as Pars Formae I confess as he declares pag. 94. That the diâ—â—erence betwixt him and the Doctor lyeth in a much smaller matter than was thought and the Doctor I believe will easily allow him to please his own fancy in that But then he must understand the terms of Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie in the Doctors sense viz of a Spirits penetrating not inter partes but per partes materiâ—â— and possessing the same space with them And of an Indiscerpibleness not arising from thinner and thinner parts of matter as he imagines Air to be more hardly discerpible than Earth or Water forasmuch as by reason of its thinness its parts lye closer together as was above noted but from the immediate essential Oneness of substance in a Spirit according to the true Idea of an Indiscerpible Being in the Divine Intellect which whether in Idea or in Actual Existence it would cease to be or rather never was such if it were discerpible and therefore implies a contradiction it should be so But if a Spirit be not Penetrable in the Doctors sense it is really Impenetrable and if not Indiscerpible in his sense
were of this opinion Wherefore I think we owe so much at least to the Memory of those grave Sages as to examine this Doctrine of theirs and if neither of the later Hypotheses can ease our anxious minds or free themselves from absurdities and this Grey Dogma fairly clear all doubts and be obnoxious to no such contradictions I see no reason but we may give it a favourable admittance till something else appear more concinnous and rational Therefore let us take some account of what the two first opinions alledge one against another and how they are proved by their promoters and defendants Now if they be found unable to withstand the shock of one anothers opposition we may reasonably cast our eyes upon the third to see what force it brings to vouch its interest and how it will behave it self in the encounter CHAP. II. Daily creation of Souls is inconsistent with the Divine Attributes THe first of these opinions that offers it self to Tryal is that God daily creates humane souls which immediately are united unto the bodies that Generation hath prepared for them Of this side are our later Divines and the generality of the Schoolmen But not to be born down by Authorities Let us consider what reason stands against it Therefore 1 If our Souls came immediately out of the hands of God when we came first into these bodies Whence then are those enormously brutish inclinations that strong natural proclivity to vice and impiety that are exstant in the children of men All the works of God bear his image and are perfect in their kind Purity is his nature and what comes from him proportionably to its capacity partakes of his perfections Every thing in the natural world bears the superscription of his wisdom and goodness and the same fountain cannot send forth sweet waters and bitter Therefore 't is a part of our allegiance to our Maker to believe * that he made us pure and innocent and if we were but just then framed by him when we were united with these terrestrial bodies whence should we contract such degenerate propensions Some tell us that this impurity was immediately derived from the bodies we are united to But how is it possible that purely passive insensible Matter should transfuse habits or inclinations into a Nature that is quite of another Make and Quality How can such a cause produce an effect so disproportionate * Matter can do nothing but by motion and what relation hath that to a moral contagion How can a Body that is neither capable of sense nor sin infect a soul as soon as 't is united to it with such vitious debauched dispositions But others think to evade by saying That we have not these depravities in our natures but contract them by Custome education and evil usages How then comes it about that those that have had the same care and industry used upon them and have been nurtured under the same discipline and severe oversight do so vastly and even to wonder differ in their inclinations * How is it that those that are under continual temptations to vice are yet kept within the bounds of vertue and sobriety And yet that others that have strong motives and allurements to the contrary should violently break out into all kinds of extravagance and impiety Sure there is somewhat more in the matter than those general causes which may be common to both and which many times have quite contrary effects 2. This Hypothesis that God continually Creates humane souls in these bodies consists not with the honour of the Divine Attributes For 1. How stands it with the goodness and benignity of that God who is Love to put pure and immaculate spirits who were capable of living to him and with him into such bodies as will presently defile them deface his image pervert all their powers and faculties incline them to hate what he most loves and love what his Soul hateth and that without any knowledge or concurrence of theirs will quite marre them as soon as he hath made them and of dear Children render them rebels or enemies and in a moment from being like Angels transform them into the perfect resemblance of the first Apostates Devils Is this an effect of those tender mercies that are over all his works And 2. Hath that Wisdom that hath made all things to operate according to their natures and provided them with whatever is necessary to that end made myriads of noble Spirits capable of as noble operations and presently plunged them into such a condition wherein they cannot act at all according to their first and proper dispositions but shall be necessitated to the quite contrary and have other noxious and depraved inclinations fatally imposed upon their pure natures Doth that wisdom that hath made all things in number weight and measure and disposed them in such exact harmony and proportions use to act so ineptly And that in the best and noblest pieces of his Creation Doth it use to make and presently destroy To frame one thing and give it such or such a nature and then undo what he had done and make it another And if there be no such irregular methods used in the framing of inferiour Creatures what reason have we to suspect that the Divine Wisdom did so vary from its self in its noblest composures And 3 Is it not a great affront to the Divine Jâ—stice to suppose as we are commonly taught that asâ—oon as we are born yea and in the Womb we are obnoxious to eternal wrath and torments if our Souls are then immediately created out of nothing For To be just is to give every one his due and how can endless unsupportable punishments be due to innocent Spirits who but the last moment came righteous pure and immaculate out of their Creators hands and have not done or thought any thing since contrary to his will or Laws nor were in any the least capacity of sinning I but the first of our order our General head and Representative sinned and we in him thus we contract guilt as soon as we have a Being and are lyable to the punishment of his disobedience This is thought to solve all and to clear God from any shadow of unrighteousness But whatever truth there is in the thing it self I think it cannot stand upon the Hypothesis of the Souls immediate Creation nor yet justifie God in his proceedings For 1. If I was then newly Created when first in this body what was Adam to me who sinned above 5000 years before I came out of nothing If he represented me it must be as I was in his Loins that is in him as an effect in a cause But so I was not according to this Doctrine for my soul owns no Father but God its immediate progenitour And what am I concern'd then in his sins which had never my will or consent more than in the sins of Mahomâ—t or Julius Caesar Nay than in the sins of Beelzebub or
of one monstrous body And of such prodigious productions there is mention in History That 's a remarkable instance in Sennertus of a Monster born at Emmaus with two hearts and two heads the diversity of whose appetites perceptions and affections testified that it had two souls within that bi-partite habitation Now to conceive the most wise Maker and Contriver of all things immediately to create two souls for a single body rather than suffer that super-plus of matter which constitutes the monstrous excrescence to prove effoete inanimate is methinks a derogatory apprehension of his wisdom and supposeth him to act more ineptly in the great and immediate instances of his power than in the ordinary course of nature about less noble and accurate productions Or if it be pretended that Souls were sent into them while the bodies were yet distinct but that afterwards they grew into one This I say will not heal the breach that this Hypothesis makes upon the divine Wisdom it tacitely reflecting a shameful oversight upon Omniscience that he should not be aware of the future coalescence of these bodies into one when he made souls for them or at least 't is to suppose him knowingly to act iâ—eptly Besides that the rational soul is not created till the body as to the main stroaks of it at least is framed is the general opinion of the Assertors of daily creation So that then there is no room for this evasion And now one would think that an opinion so very obnoxious and so lyable to such grand inconveniences should not be admitted but upon most pressing reasons and ineludible demonstrations And yet there is not an argument that I ever heard of from reason to inforce it but only such as are brought from the impossibility of the way of Traduction which indeed is chargeable with as great absurdities as that we have been discoursing of 'T is true several Scriptures are prest for the service of the cause but I doubt much against their intent and inclination General testimonies there are to prove that God is the Father and Creator of Souls which is equally true whether we suppose it made just as it is united to these bodies or did praeexist and was before them But that it is just then created out of nothing when first it comes into these earthly bodies I know not a word in the inspired Writings that speaks it For that saying of our Saviour My Father worketh hitherto and I work is by the most judicious understood of the works of preservation and providence Those of creation being concluded within the first Hebdomade accordingly as is exprest in the History * that God on the seventh day rested from all his works Nor can there an instance be given of any thing created since or is there any pretended but that which hath been the subject of our inquiry which is no inconsiderable presumption that that was not so neither since the divine way of working is not parti-colour or humoursome but uniform and consonant to the laws of exactest wisdom So that for us to suppose that God after the compleating of his Creation and the laws given to all things for their action and continuance to be every moment working in a quite other way in one instance of beings than he doth in all besides is methinks a somewhat odd apprehension especially when no Reason urgeth to it and Scripture is silent For such places as this the God of the Spirits of all flesh the Father of Spirits The spirit returns to God that gave it The souls which I have made We are his off-spring Who formeth the spirit of man within him and the like signifie no more but that our souls have a nearer relation to God than our bodies as being his immediate workmanship made without any creature-interposal and more especially regarded by him But to inferr hence that they were then produced when these bodies were generated is illogical and inconsequent So that all that these Scriptures will serve for is only to disprove the Doctrine of Traduction but makes not a tittle for the ordinary Hypothesis of Daily Creation against Praeexistence CHAP. III. 2 Traduction of souls is impossible the reasons for it weak and frivolous the proposal of Praeexistence THus then we have examin'd the â—irst way of stating the Soul's original that of continual Creation and finding no sure resting place for our inquiry here we remove to the second The way of Traduction or seminal Propagation And the adherers to this Hypothesis are of two sorts viz. either such as make the Soul to be nothing but a purer sort of matter or of those that confess it wholly spiritual and immaterial I 'le dispatch the former briefly strike at the root of their misconceit of the Souls production and shew it cannot be matter be it as pure as can be conceived Therefore 1 If the soul be matter then whatever perceptions or apprehensions it hath or is capable of they were lâ—â— in at the senses And thus the great Patron of the Hypothesis states it in his Leviathan and other writings But now clear it is that our Souls have some conceptions which they never received from external sense For there are some congenite implicit Principles in us without which there could be no sensation * since the images of objects are very small and inconsiderable in our brains comparatively to the vastness of the things which they represent and very unlike them in multitudes of other circumstances so that 't were impossible we should have the sensible representation of any thing * were it not that our souls use a kind of Geometry or mathematick Inference in judging of external objects by those little hints it finds in material impressions Which Art and the principles thereof were never received from sense but are preâ—upposed to all sensible perceptions * And were the soul quite void of all such implicit notions it would remain as senseless as a stone for ever Besides we find our minds fraught with principles logical moral metaphysical which could never owe their original to sense otherwise than as it gives us occasions of using them * For sense teacheth no general propositions but only affords singulars for Induction which being an Inference must proceed from an higher principle that owns no such dependence on the senses as being found iâ— the mind and not deriv'd from any thing without Also we find in our selves mathematical notions and build certain demonstrations on them which abstract from sense and matter And therefore never had them from any material power * but from something more sublime and excellent But this Argument is of too large a consideration to be treated of here and therefore I content my self with those brief Touches and pass on 2 If the soul be matter 't is impossible it should have the sense of any thing for either the whole image of the object must be received in one point of this sensitive matter a thing absurd
other And upon other Accounts it seems to have much the advantage of both of them As will appear to the unprejudiced in what is further to be discoursed of Finally therefore If the urgers of the Letter of Genesis of either side against this Hypothesis would but consider That the Souls that descend hither for their praevarication in another state lye in a long condition of silence and insensibility before they appear in terrestrial bodies each of them then might from the doctrine of Praeexistence thus stated gain all the advantages which he supposeth to have by his own opinion and avoid all those alsurdities which he seeth the other run upon If the Asserters of daily Creation think it clear from Scripture that God is the Father of Spirits and immediate maker of Souls they 'l find the same made good and assented to in this Hypothesis And if they are unwilling to hold any thing contrary to the Nature of the soul which is immortal and indiscerpible the Doctrine of Praeexistence amicably closeth with them in this also And if the Patrons of Traduction would have a way how sin and misery may be propagated from our first Parent without aspersing the divine Attributes or affirming any thing contrary to the phaenomena of Providence and Nature this Hypothesis will clear the business It giving us so fair an Account how we all dye in Adam without blotting the Wisdom Justice or Goodness of God or affirming any thing contrary to the Appearances of Nature I have been the longer on this Argument because 't is like to be one main objection And we see it is so far from prejudicing that it is no inconsiderable evidence of the truth of Praeexistence And now besides this that I have named I cannot think of any Arguments from Scripture against this Doctrine considerable enough to excuse a mention of them However if the candid Reader will pardon the impertinency I 'le present to view what I find most colourable Therefore 2 It may be some are so inadvertent as to urge against our souls having been of old that Sacred writ says We are but of Yesterday which expression of divine Scripture is questionless to be understood of our appearance on this stage of Earth And is no more an Argument against our Praeexistence than that other phrase of his Before I go hence and Be no more is against our future existence in an other state after the present life is ended Nor will it prove more the business it is brought for than the expression of Rachels weeping for her Children because they were not will inferr that they were absolutely nothing Nor can any thing more be made 3. Of that place in Ecclesiastes Yea better is he than both they meaning the dead and living which hath not yet been since besids that 't is a like scheme of speech with the former it seems more to favour than discountenance Praeexistence for what is absolutely nothing can neither be worse nor better Moreover we coming from a state of silence and inactivity when we drop into these bodies we were before as if we had not been and so there is better ground in this case for such a manner of speaking than in meer non-appearance which yet Scripture phraseth a Not being * And now I cannot think of any place in the Sacred volume more that could make a tolerable plea against this Hypothesis of our Souls having been before they came into these bodies except 4. Any will draw a negative Argument from the History of the Creation concluding that the Souls of men were not made of old because there is no mention there of any such matter To which I return briefly That the same Argument concludes against the being of Angels of whose Creation there is no more say'd in the first story than of this inferiour rank of Spirits Souls The reason of which silence is commonly taken to be because Moses had here to do with a rude and illiterate people who had few or no apprehensions of any thing beyond their senses and therefore he takes notice to them of nothing but what was sensible and of common observation This reason is given also why minerals were omitted 'T were an easy matter to shew how the outward cortex the Letter of this History is adapted to mean and vulgar apprehensions whose narrowness renders them incapable of sublimer speculations But that being more than needs for our present purpose I shall forbear to speak further of it I might 2 further add that great and learned Interpreters tell us that all sorts of Spirits Angels and Souls are symbollically meant by the creation of heaven and light And if it were directly in the way of our present business it might be made appear to be no improbable conjecture But I referr him that is curious in this particular to the great Restorer of the antient Cabbala the Learned Dr. H. More in his conjectura Cabbalistica And now from the consideration of the silence of the first History we descend to the last and most likely to be urged scruple which is to this purpose 5. We are not to step beyond the divine Revalations and since God hath made known no such Doctrine as this of the Souls Praeexistence any where in his word we may reasonably deny it or at least have no ground to imbrace it This is the most important objection of all the rest and most likely to prepossess timorous and wary inquirers against this Hypothesis wherefore I conceive that a full answer to this doubt will prevent many scrupulous Haesitations and make way for an unprejudic'd hearing of what I have further to alledge in the behalf of this opinion And 1. I wish that those that urge Scripture silence to disprove praeexistence would consider how silent it is both in the case of Daily Creation and Traduction we have seen already that there is nothing in Sacred writ to warrant either but only such Generals from which the respective Patrons of either Doctrine would inferr their own conclusion though indeed they all of them with better right and congruity prove Praeexistence 2. I suppose those that argue from Scripture-silence in such cases mistake the design of Scripture which is not to determine points of speculation but to be a rule of Life and Manners Nor doth it otherwise design the teaching of Doctrinals than as they have a tendency to promote the divine life righteousness and Holiness It was never intended by it's inspired Authors to fill our Heads with notions but to regulate our disorderly appetites and affections and to direct us the way to a nobler happiness Therefore those that look for a systeme of opinions in those otherways-designed writings do like him that should see for a body of natural Philosophy in Epictetus his morals or Seneca's Epistles 3. Christ and his Apostles spoke and writ as the condition of the persons with whom they dealt administred occasion as as did also the other pen-men
what joynt soever I shall discover it And yet I must needs say that whoever compares the Texts that follow with some particulars mention'd in the answer to the objection of Scripture-silence will not chuse but acknowledge that there is very fair probability for Praeexistence in the written word of God as there is in that which is engraven upon our rational natures Therefore to bring together here what Scripture saith in this matter 1. I 'le lightly touch an expression or two of the old Testament which not improperly may be applyed to the business we are in search of And methinks God himself in his posing the great instance of patience Job seems to intimate somewhat to this purpose viz. that all spirits were in being when the Foundations of the earth were laid when saith he the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy By the former very likely were meant the Angels and 't is not improbable but by the latter may be intended the blessed untainted Souls At least the particle All me thinks should comprize this order of spirits also And within the same period of discourse having question'd Job about the nature and place of the Light he adds I know that thou wast then born for the number of thy days are many as the Septuagint render it * And we know our Saviour and his Apostles have given credit to that Translation by their so constant following it Nor doth that saying of God to Jeremias in the beginning of his charge seem to intimate less Before I formed thee in the Belly I knew thee and before thou camest out of the womb I gave thee wisdom * as reads a very creditable version Now though each of these places might be drawn to another sense yet that only argues that they are no necessary proof for Praeexistence which I readily acknowledge nor do I intend any such matter by alledging them However I hope they will be confest to be applicable to this sense and if there be other grounds that swade this Hypothesis to be the truth 't is I think very probable that these Texts intend it favour which whether it be so or no we have seen already 2. For the Texts of the New Testament that seem to look pleasingly upon Praeexistence I shall as briefly hint them as I did the former * And me thinks that passage of our Saviours prayer Father Gloriâ—ie me with the same glory I had with thee before the world began sounds somewhat to this purpose The glory which he prays to be restored to seems to concern his humane nature only for the divine could never lose it And therefore it supposeth that he was in his humanity existent before And that his soul was of old before his appearance in a Terrestrial body Which seems also to be intimated * by the expressions of his coming from the Father descending from Heaven and returning thither again which he very frequently makes use of And we know the Divinity that â—ills all things cannot move to or quit a place it being a manifest imperfection and contrary to his Immensity I might add those other expressions of our Saviour's taking upon him the â—orm of a Servant of rich for our sakes becoming poor and many others of like import all which are very clear if we admit the doctrine of Praeexistence but without it somewhat pâ—rplex and intricate since these things applyed to him as God are very improper and disagreeing but appositely suit his Humanity to which if we refer them we must suppose our Hypothesis of Praeexistence But I omit further prosecution of this matter * since these places have been more diffusely urged in a late discourse to this purpose Moreover the Question of the Disciples * Was it for this mans sin or for his Fathers that he was born blind and that answer of theirs to our Saviours demand whom men said he was in that some said he was John the Baptist some Elias or one of the Prophets both which I have mentioned before do clearly enough argue that both the Disciples and the Jews believed Praeexistence And our Saviour saith not a word to disprove their opinion But I spake of this above Now however uncouth these allegations may seem to those that never heard these Scriptures thus interpreted yet I am confident had the opinion of Praeexistence been a received Doctrine and had these Texts been wont to be applyed to the proof on 't they would then have been thought to assert it with clear and convictive evidence But many having never heard of this Hypothesis and those that have seldom meeting it mentioned but as a silly dream or antiquated absurdity 't is no wonder that they never suspect it to be lodg'd in the Sacred volume so that any attempt to confirm it thence must needs seem rather an offer of wit than serious judgment And the places that are cited to that purpose having been frequently read and heard of by those that never discerned them to breath the least air of any such matter as Praeexistence their new and unexpected application to a thing so little thought of must needs seem a wild fetch of an extravagant imagination But however unconclusive the Texts alledged may seem to those a strong prejudice hath shut up against the Hypothesis The learned Jews who were perswaded of this Doctrine thought it clearly enough contain'd in the Old Volume of holy writ and took the citations named above for current Evidence And though I cannot warrant for their Judgment in things yet doubtless they were the best Judges of their own Language Nor would our School-Doctors have thought it so much a stranger to the New had it had the luck to have been one of their opinions or did they not too frequently apply the sacred Oracles to their own fore-conceived notions But whether what I have brought from Scripture prove any thing or nothing 't is not very material since the Hypothesis of Prae-existence stands secure enough upon those Pâ—llars of Reason which have their Foundation in the Attributes of God and the Phaenomena of the world And the Right Reason of a Man is one of the Divine volumes in which are written the indeleble Idea's of eternal Truth so that what it dictates is as much the voice of God as if in so many words it were clearly exprest in the written Revelations It is enough therefore for my purpose if there be nothing in the sacred writings contrary to this Hypothesis which I think is made clear enough already and though it be granted that Scripture is absolutely silent as to any assertion of Prae-existence yet we have made it appear that its having said nothing of it is no prejudice but an advantage to the cause CHAP. XII Why the Author thinks himself obliged to descend to some more particular Account of Praeexistence 'T is presumption positively to determine how it was with us of Old The Authors design in the Hypothesis that
to act by due and orderly gradations and takes no precipitous leaps from one extream to another 'T is very probable therefore that in our immediately next state we shall have another vehicle And then 2. considering that our Souls are immediately united to a more tenuious and subtile body here than this gross outside 'T is methinks a good presumption that we shall not be stript and divested of our inward stole also when we leave this dull Earth behind us Especially 3 if we take notice how the highest and noblest faculties and operations of the Soul are help'd on by somewhat that is corporeal and that it imployeth the bodily Spirits in its sublimest exercises we might then be perswaded that it always useth some body or other and never acts without one And 4 since we cannot conceive a Soul to live or act that is insensible and since we know not how there can be sense where there is no union with matter we should me seems be induc'd to think that when 't is disjunct from all body 't is inert and silent * For in all sensations there is corporeal motion as all Philosophy and Experience testifies And these motions become sensible representations by virtue of the union between the Soul and its confederate matter so that when it is loose and dis-united from any body whatsoever it will be unconcern'd in all corporeal motions being a penetrable substance and no sense or perception will be conveyed by them Nor will it make any thing at all against this Argument to urge that there are Nâ—â— and purely unembodied Spirits in the Vniverse which live and act without relation to any body and yet these are not insensible For what they know and how they know we are very incompetent Judges of they being a sort of Spirits specifically distinct from our order and therefore their faculties and operations are of a very diverse consideration from ours So that for us to deny what we may reasonably argue from the contemplation of our own natures because we cannot comprehend the natures of a species of creatures that are far above us is a great mistake in the way of reasoning Now how strange soever this Principle may seem to those whom customary opinions have seasoned with another belief yet considering the Reasons I have alledged I cannot forbear concluding it very probable and if it prove hereafter serviceable for the helping us in some concerning Theories I think the most wary and timerous may admit it till upon good grounds they can disprove it The Fifth Pillar 5 The Soul in every state hath such a body as is fittest for those faculties and operations that it is most inclined to exercise 'T Is a known Maxim That every thing that is is for its operation and the Contriver and Maker of the World hath been so bountiful to all Beings as to furnish them with all suitable and necessary requisites for their respective actions for there are no propensities and dispositions in nature but some way or other are brought into actual exercise otherwise they were meer nullities and impertinent appendices Now for the imployment of all kinds of faculties and the exerting all manner of operations all kinds of instruments will not suffice but only such as are proportion'd and adapted to the exercises they are to be used in and the Agents that imploy them 'T is clear therefore that the Soul of Man a noble and vigorous Agent must be fitted with a suitable body according to the Laws of that exact distributive Justice that runs through the Vniverse and such a one is most suitable as is fittest for those exercises it propends to for the body is the Souls instrument and a necessary requisite of action Whereas should it be otherwise God would then have provided worse for his worthiest Creatures than he hath for those that are of a much inferiour rank and order For if we look about us upon all the Creatures of God that are exposed to our Observation we may seal this Truth with an infallible Induction That there is nothing but what is sitted with all suitable requisites to act according to its nature The Bird hath wings to waft it aloft in the thin and subtile aire the Fish is furnisht with fins to move in her liquid element and all other Animals have Instruments that are proper for their peculiar inclinations So that should it be otherwise in the case of Souls it would be a great blot to the wise managements of Providence and contrary to its usual methods and thus we should be dis-furnisht of the best and most convictive Argument that we have to prove that a Prinoiple of exactest wisdom hath made and ordered all things The Sixth Pillar 6 The Powers and Faculties of the Soul are either 1 Spiritual and Intellectual 2 Sensitive Or 3 Plastick NOw 1 by the intellectual powers I mean all those that relate to the soul in its naked and abstracted conception as it is a spirit and are exercised about immaterial Objects as vertue knowledge and divine love This is the Platonical Nâ—â— and that which we call the mind The two other more immediately relate to its espoused matter For 2 the sensitive are exercised about all the objects of sense and are concerned in all such things as either gratifie or disgust the body And 3 the Plastick are those faculties of the soul whereby it moves and forms the body and are without sense or Animadversion The exercise of the former I call the Higher life and the operations of the latter the lower and the life of the body Now that there are such faculties belonging to our natures and that they are exercised upon such and such objects respectively plain experience avoucheth and therefore I may be excused from going about to prove so universally acknowledged a truth Wherefore I pass to The Seventh Pillar 7 By the same degrees that the higher powers are invigorated the lower are consopited and abated as to their proper exercises è contra 1 THat those Powers should each of them have a tendency to action and in their turns be exercised is but rational to conceive since otherwise they had been supersâ—uous And 2 that they should be inconsistent in the supremest exercise and inactuation is to me as probable For the Soul is a finite and limited Being and therefore cannot operate diverse ways with equal intention at once That is cannot at the same time imploy all her faculties in the highest degree of exercise that each of them is capable of For doubtless did it ingage but one of those alone the operations thereof would be more strong and vigorous than when they are conjunctly exercis'd their Acts and Objects being very divers So that I say that these faculties should act together in the highest way they are capable of seems to be contrary to the nature of the Soul And I am sure it comports not with experience for those that are endowed with an high
again to their condition of primigenial innocence But we must leave them to their felicity and go on with the History of our own descent Therefore after we are detruded from our aethereal condition we next descend into the Aereal The Aereal State NOw our bodies are more or less pure in this condition proportionably to the degrees of our apostacy So that we are not absolutely miserable in our first step of descent but indeed happy in comparison of our now condition As yet there may be very considerable remains of vertue and divine love though indeed the lower life that of the body be grown very strong and rampant So that as yet we may be supposed to have lapst no lower than the best and purest Regions of the Air by Axiom 2 and 3. And doubtless there are some who by striving against the inordinacy of their Appetites may at length get the victory again over their bodies and so by the assistance of the Divine Spirit who is always ready to promote and assist good beginnings may re-enkindle the higher life and so be translated again to their old celestial habitations without descending lower But others irreclaimably persisting in their Rebellion and sinking more and more into the body and the relish of its joys and pleasures these are still verging to a lower and more degenerate state so that at the last the higher powers of the Soul being almost quite laid asleep and consopited and the sensitive also by long and tedious exercises being much tired and abated in their vigour * the plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken so that a body of thin and subtile air will not suffice its now so highly exalted energy no more than the subtile Aether can suffice us terrestrial animals for respiration wherefore the aereal-congruity of life expires also and thus are we ready for an earthly body But now since a soul cannot unite with any body but with such only as is fitly prepared for it by Principle 3. and there being in all likelyhood more expirations in the Air than there are prepared bodies upon earth it must needs be that for some time it must be destitute of any congruous matter that might be joyned with it And consequently by Principle 4. 't will lye in a state of inactivity and silence Not that it will for ever be lost in that forgotten recess and solitude * for it hath an aptness and propeâ—sity to act in a terrestrial body which will be reduced into actual exercise when fit matter is prepared The Souls therefore that are now laid up in the black night of stupidity and inertness will in their proper seasons be awakened into life and operation in such bodies and places of the earth as by their dispositions they are fitted for So that no sooner is there any matter of due vital temper afforded by generation but immediately a soul that is suitable to such a body * either by meer natural congruity the disposition of the soul of the world or some more spontaneous agent is attracted or sent into this so befitting tenement according to Axiom 2 and 3. Terrestrial State NOw because in this state too we use our sensitive faculties and have some though very small reliques of the higher life also therefore the soul first makes it self a vehicle out of the most spiritous and yielding parts of this spumous terrestrial matter which hath some analogy both with its aethereal and aereal state This is as it were its inward vest and immediate instrument in all its operations By the help of this it understands reasons and remembers yea forms and moves the body And that we have such a subtile aery vehicle within this terrestrial our manifest sympathizing with that element and the necessity we have of it to all the functions of life as is palpable in respiration is me thinks good ground for conjecture And 't is not improbable but even within this it may have a purer fire and aether to which it is united being some little remain of what it had of old In this state we grow up merly into the life of sense having little left of the higher life * but some apish shews and imitations of reason vertue and religion By which alone with speech we seem to be distinguisht from Beasts while in reality the brutish nature is predominant and the concernments of the body are our great end our only God and happiness this is the condition of our now degenerate lost natures However that ever over-flowing goodness that always aims at the happiness of his creatures hath not left us without all means of recovery but by the gracious and benign dispensations which he hath afforded us hath provided for our restauration which some though but very few make so good use of that being assisted in their well meant and sincere indeavours by the divine spirit they in good degree mortifie and subdue the body conquer self-will unruly appetites and disorderly passions and so in some measure by Principle 7. awaken the higher life which still directs them upwards to vertue and divine love which where they are perfectly kindled carry the Soul when dismist from this prison * to it s old celestial abode For the spirit and noblest faculties being so recovered to life and exercise require an aethereal body to be united to and that an aethereal place of residence both which the divine Nemesis that is wrought into the very nature of things bestoweth on them by Principle the second But they are very few that are thus immediately restored to the celestial paradise upon the quitting of their earthly bodies For others that are but in the way of recovery and dye imperfectly vertuous meer Philosophy and natural reason within the bounds of which we are now discoursing can determin no more * but that they step forth again into aery vehicles that congruity of life immediately awakening in them after this is expired In this state their happiness will be more or less proportionably to their vertues in which if they persevere we shall see anon how they will be recover'd But for the present we must not break off the clue of our account by going backwards before we have arriv'd to the utmost verge of descent in this Philosophical Romance or History the Reader is at his choice to call it which he pleaseth Wherefore let us cast our eyes upon the Most in whom their life on earth hath but confirmed and strengthened their degenerate sensual and brutish propensions And see what is like to become of them when they take their leave of these terrestrial bodies Only first a word of the state of dying Infants and I come immediately to the next step of descent * Those therefore that pass out of these bodies before the terrestrial congruity be spoil'd weakened or orderly unwound according to the tenour of this Hypothesis must return into the state of inactivity For the Plastick in them is too highly awakened to inactuate
creatures will at length so consume and destroy that insensible pleasure and congruity that unites Soul and Body that the thus miserably cruciated Spirit must needs quit it's unfit habitation and there being no other body within its reach that is capable of a vital union according to the tenor of this Hypothesis it must become senseless and unactive by Axiom 4. And so be buried in a state of silence and inertness At length when these greedy flames shall have devoured what ever was combustible and converted into a smoak and vapour all grosser concretions that great orb of fire that the Cartesian Philosophy supposeth to constitute the center of this Globe shall perfectly have recovered its pristine nature * and so following the Laws of its proper motion shall fly away out of this vortex and become a wandring Comet till it settle in some other But if the next Conflagration reach not so low as the inmost regions of the Earth * so that the central fire remains unconcern'd and unimploy'd in this combustion this Globe will then retain its wonted place among the Planets And that so it may happen is not improbable since there is plenty enough both of fiery principles and materials in those Regions that are nearer to the surface to set the Earth into a Lightsome flame and to do all that execution that we have spoken of Some conceive therefore that the conflagration will not be so deep and universal as this opinion supposeth it But that it may take beginning from a less distance and spend it self upwards And to this purpose they represent the sequel of their Hypothesis The General Restitution THose thick and clammy vapours which erstwhile ascended in such vast measures and had fill'd the vault of Heaven with smoak and darkness must at length obey the Laws of their nature and gravity and so descend again in abundant showres and mingle with the subsiding ashes which will constitute a mudd vegetative and fertile For those warm and benign beams that now again begin to visit the desolate Earth will excite those seminal principles into action which the Divine Wisdom and goodness hath mingled with all things Wherefore they operating according to their natures and the dispositions which they find in the restored matter will shoot forth in all sorts of flowers herbs and trees making the whole Earth a Garden of delight and pleasure And erecting all the Phaenomena proper to this Element By this time the Air will be grown vital again and far more pure and pleasant than before the fiery purgation Wherefore they conceive that the disbodyed Souls shall return from their unactive and silent recess and be joyned again to bodies of purified and duly prepared Air. For their radical aptitude to matter still remained though they fell asleep for want of bodies of fit temper to unite with This is the summ of the Hypothesis as it is represented by the profoundly Learned Dr. H. More with a copious and pompous eloquence Now supposing such a recess of any Souls into a state of inactivity such a Restitution of them to life and action is very reasonable since it is much better for them to live and operate again than to be useless in the universe and as it were nothing for ever And we have seen above that the Divine goodness doth always what is best and his wisdom is not so shallow as to make his Creatures so as that he should be fain to banish them into a state that is next to non-entity there to remain through all duration Thus then will those lately tormented Souls having smarted for their past iniquities be recovered both from their state of wretchedness and insensibility and by the unspeakable benignity of their Maker placed once more in such conditions wherein by their own endeavours and the divine assistance they may amend what was formerly amiss in them and pursue any good Resolutions that they took while under the lash of the fiery tortures Which those that do when their good inclinations are perfected and the Divine Life again enkindled they shall in due time re-ascend the Thrones they so unhappily fell from and be circled about with unexpressible felicity But those that for all this follow the same ways of sensuality and rebellion against their merciful deliverer they shall be sure to be met with by the same methods of punishment and at length be as miserable as ever Thus we see the Air will be re-peopled after the conflagration but how the Earth will so soon be restored to Inhabitants is a matter of some difficulty to determine since it useth to be furnisht from the Aereal regions which now will have none left that are fit to plant it For the good were delivered thence before the conflagration And those that are newly come from under the â—iery lash and latter state of silence are in a hopeful way of recovery At least their aereal congruity cannot be so soon expired as to fit them for an early return to their terrestrial prisons Wherefore to help our selves in this rencounter we must remember that there are continually multitudes of souls in a state of inactivity for want of suitable bodies to unite with there being more that dye to the aery state than are born into this terrestrial In this condition were myriads when the general Fever seiz'd this great destemper'd body who therefore were unconcern'd in the conflagration and are now as ready to return into life and action upon the Earth's happy restauration as if no such thing had hapned Wherefore they will not fail to descend into fitly prepared matter and to exercise all the functions proper to this condition Nor will they alone be inhabitants of the Earth For all the variety of other Animals shall â—â—ve and act upon this stage with them all sorts of souls insinuating themselves into those bodies which are â—it for their respective natures Thus then supposing habitable congruous bodies there is no doubt but there will be humane Souls to actuate and inform them but all the difficulty is to conceive how the matter shall be prepared For who shall be the common Seeds-man of succeeding Humanity when all mankind is swept away by the fiery deluge And to take Sanctuary in a Miracle is unphilosophical and desperate I think therefore it is not improbable I mean according to the duct of this Hypothesis but that in this renewed youth of the so lately calcined and purified Earth there may be some pure efflorescences of balmy matter not to be found now in its exhausted and decrepit Age that may be proper vehicles of life into which souls may descend without further preparation And so orderly shape and form them as we see to this day several sorts of other creatures do without the help of generation For doubtless there will be great plenty of unctuous spirituous matter when the most inward and recondite spirits of all things shall be dislodg'd from their old close residences and
yet other peculiarities also being required and the former sensible Pathos to be recovered which is impossible in this State it is likewise impossible for us to remember the other in this The second Argument of the Author for the proving the unlikeliness of our remembring the other State is the long intermission and discontinuance from thinking of those things For 't is plain that such discontinuance or desuetude bereaves us of the memory of such things as we were acquainted with in this World Insomuch as if an ancient man should read the Verses or Themes he made when he was a School-boy without his name subscribed to them though he pumpt and sweat for them when he made them could not tell they were his own How then should the Soul remember what she did or observ'd many hundreds nay thousands of years ago But yet our Authors Antagonist has the face to make nothing of this Argument neither Because forsooth it is not so much the desuetude of thinking of one thing but the thinking of others that makes us forget that one thing What a shuffle is this For if the Soul thought on that one thing as well as on other things it would remember it as well as them Therefore it is not the thinking of other things but the not thinking of that that makes it forgotten Vsus promptus facit as in general so in particular And therefore disuse in any particular slackens at first and after abolishes the readiness of the Mind to think thereof Whence sleepiness and sluggishness is the Mother of Forgetfulness because it disuses the Soul from thinking of things And as for those seven Chronical Sleepers that slept in a Cave from Decius his time to the reign of Theodosius junior I dare say it would have besotted them without a Miracle and they would have rose out of their sleep no more wise than a Wisp I am sure not altogether so wise as this awkward Arguer for memory of Souls in their Pre-existent state after so hugely long a discontinuance from it But for their immediately coming out of an Aethereal Vehicle into a Terrestrial and yet forgetting their former state what Example can be imagined of such a thing unless that of the Messias who yet seems to remember his former glorious condition and to pray that he may return to it again Though for my part I think it was rather Divine Inspiration than Memory that enabled him to know that matter supposing his Soul did pre-exist Our Authors third and last Argument to prove that lapsed Souls in their Terrestrial condition forget their former state is from observation how deteriorating changes in this earthly Body spoils or quite destroys the Memory the Soul still abiding therein such as Casualties Diseases and old Age which changes the tenour of the Spirits and makes them less useful for memory as also 't is likely the Brain it self Wherefore there being a more deteriorating change to the Soul in coming into an earthly Body instead of an aereal or aethereal the more certainly will her memory of things which she experienced in that state be washed out or obliterated in this Here our Authors Antagonist answers That though changes in body may often weaken and sometimes utterly spoil the memory of things past yet it is not necessary that the Souls changing of her body should therefore do so because it is not so injurious to her faculties Which if it were not onely our Memory but Reason also should have been casheered and lost by our migration out of those Vehicles we formerly actuated into these we now enliven but that still remaining sound and entire it is a signe that our Memory would do so too if we had pre-existed in other bodies before and had any thing to remember And besides if the bare translocation of our Souls out of one body into another would destroy the memory of things the Soul has experienced it would follow that when People by death are summoned hence into the other state that they shall be quite bereaved of their Memory and so carry neither applause nor remorse of Conscience into the other World which is monstrously absurd and impious This is the main of his Answer and mostwhat in his own words But of what small force it is we shall now discover and how little pertinent to the business For first we are to take notice that the deteriorating change in the Body or deteriorating state by change of Bodies is understood of a debilitative diminutive or privative not depravative deterioration the latter of which may be more injurious to the faculties of the Soul though in the same Body such a deteriorating change causing Phrensies and outragious Madness But as for diminutive or privative deterioration by change the Soul by changing her Aereal Vehicle for a Terrestrial is comparing her latter state with her former much injured in her faculties or operations of them all of them are more slow and stupid and their aptitude to exert the same Phantasms of things that occurred to them in the other State quite taken away by reason of the heavy and dull though orderly constitution of the Terrestrial Tenement which weight and stupor utterly indisposes the Soul to recall into her mind the scene of her former state this load perpetually swaying down her thoughts to the Objects of this Nor does it at all follow because Reason is not lost therefore Memory if there were any such thing as Pre-existence would still abide For the universal principles of Reason and Morality are essential to the Soul and cannot be obliterated no not by any death but the knowledge of any particular external Objects is not at all essential to the Soul nor consequently the memory of them and therefore the Soul in the state of silence being stript of them cannot recover them in her incorporation into a Terrestrial Body But her Reason with the general principles thereof being essential to her she can as well as this State will permit exercise them upon the Objects of this Scene of the Earth and visible World so far as it is discovered by her outward senses she looking out at those windows of this her earthly Prison to contemplate them And she has the faculty and exercise of Memory still in such a sense as she has of sensitive Perception whose Objects she does remember being yet to all former impresses in the other state a mere Abrasa Tabula And lastly it is a mere mistake of the Opposer or worse that he makes the Pre-existentiaries to impute the loss of memory in Souls of their former state merely to their coming into other Bodies when it is not bare change of Bodies but their descent into worser Bodies more dull and obstupifying to which they impute this loss of memory in lapsed Souls This is a real death to them according to that ancient Aenigm of that abstruse Sage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We live their death namely of separate Souls but are
though very happy may be improved at the long run and in an orderly series of times and things whether the Soul lapse into sin or no. For accession of new improvements increaseth Happiness and Joy Now therefore I say suppose several and that great numbers even innumerable myriads of pre-existent Souls to lapse into the Regions of Sin and Death provided that they do not sin perversely and obstinately nor do despight to the Spirit of Grace nor refuse the advantageous offers that Divine Providence makes them even in these sad Regions why may not their once having descended hither tend to their greater enjoyment when they shall have returned to their pristine Station And why may not the specifical nature of the Soul be such that it be essentially interwoven into our Being that after a certain period of times or ages whether she sin or no she may arrive to a fixedness at last in her heavenly Station with greater advantage to such a Creature than if she had been fixed in that state at first The thing may seem least probable in those that descend into these Regions of Sin and Mortality But in those that are not obstinate and refractorie but close with the gracious means that is offered them for their recoverie their having been here in this lower State and retaining the memorie as doubtless they do of the transactions of this Terrestrial Stage it naturally enhances all the enjoyments of the pristine felicitie they had lost and makes them for ever have a more deep and vivid resentment of them So that through the richness of the Wisdom and Goodness of God and through the Merits and conduct of the Captain of their Salvation our Saviour Jesus Christ they are after the strong conflicts here with sin and the corruptions of this lower Region made more than Conquerours and greater gainers upon the losses they sustained before from their own folly And in this most advantageous state of things they become Pillars in the Temple of God there to remain for ever and ever So that unless straying Souls be exceedingly perverse and obstinate the exitus of things will be but as in a Tragick Comedy and their perverseness and obstinacie lies at their own doors for those that finally miscarrie whose number this confident Writer is to prove to be so considerable that the enhanced happiness of the standing part of pre-existent Souls and the recovered does not far preponderate the infelicitie of the others condition Which if he cannot do as I am confident he cannot he must acknowledge That God in not forcibly fixing pre-existent Souls in the state they were first created but leaving them to themselves acted not from the Supremacy of his Will over his Goodness but did what was best and according to that Soveraign Principle of Goodness in the Deitie And now for that snitling Dilemma of this eager Opposer of Pre-existence touching the freedom of acting and mutabilitie in humane Souls whether this mutabilitie be a Specifick properly and essential to them or a separable Accident For if it were essential says he then how was Christ a perfect man his humane nature being ever void of that lapsabilitie which is essential to humanitie and how come men to retain their specifick nature still that are translated to Celestial happiness and made unalterable in the condition they then are To this I answer That the Pre-existentiaries will admit that the Soul of the Messiah was created as the rest though in an happie condition yet in a lapsable and that it was his peculiar merit in that he so faithfully constantly and entirely adhered to the Divine Principle incomparably above what was done by others of his Classis notwithstanding that he might have done otherwise and therefore they will be forward to extend that of the Author to the Hebrews chap. 1. v. 8. Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever the Scepter of Righteousness is the Scepter of thy Kingdom Thou hast loved Righteousness and hated Iniquity therefore God even thy God hath anointed thee with the Oyl of Gladness above thy Fellows to his behaviour in his pre-existent state as well as in this And whenever the Soul of Christ did exist if he was like us in all things sin onely excepted he must have a capacitie of sinning though he would not sin that capacitie not put into act being no sin but an Argument of his Vertue and such as if he was always devoid of he could not be like us in all things sin onely excepted For posse peccare non est peccatum And as for humane Souls changing their Species in their unalterable heavenly happiness the Species is not then changed but perfected and compleated namely that facultie or measure of it in their Plastick essentially latitant there is by the Divine Grace so awakened after such a series of time and things which they have experienced that now they are â—irmly united to an heavenly Body or ethereal Vehicle for ever And now we need say little to the other member of the Dilemma but to declare that free will or mutability in humane Souls is no separable Accident but of the essential contexture of them so as it might have its turn in the series of things And how consistent it was with the Goodness of God and his Wisdom not to suppress it in the beginning has been sufficiently intimated above Wherefore now forasmuch as there is no pretext that either the Wisdom or Justice of God should streighten the time of the creation of humane Souls so that their existence may not commence with that of Angels or of the Universe and that this figment of the Supremacy of Gods mere Will over his other Attributes is blown away it is manifest that the Argument for the Pre-existence of Souls drawn from the Divine Goodness holds firm and irrefragable against whatever Opposers We have been the more copious on this Argument because the Opposer and others look upon it as the strongest proof the Pre existentiaries produce for their Opinion And the other Party have nothing to set against it but a fictitious Supremacy of the Will of God over his Goodness and other Attributes Which being their onely Bulwark and they taking Sanctuary nowhere but here in my apprehension they plainly herein give up the cause and establish the Opinion which they seem to have such an antipathy against But it is high time now to pass to the next Chapter Chap. 10. p. 75. To have contracted strong and inveterate habits to Vice and Lewdness and that in various manners and degrees c. To the unbyassed this must needs seem a considerable Argument especially when the Parties thus irreclaimably profligate from their Youth some as to one Vice others to another are found such in equal circumstances with others and advantages to be good born of the same Parents educated in the same Family and the like Wherefore having the same bodily Extraction and the same advantages of Education what
Essence For according to them it belongs to Angels onely to exist a mundo condito not to Humane souls Let us therefore see what great and urgent occasions there are that the Almighty should break this order The first is That he may remonstrate the Soul of the Messiah to be his most special Favourite Why That is sufficiently done and more opportunely if other souls pre-existed to be his corrivals But his faithful adhesion above the rest to the Law of his Maker as it might make him so great a Favourite so that transcendent priviledge of being hypostatically united with the Godhead or Eternal Logos would I trow be a sufficient Testimony of Gods special Favour to him above all his fellow Pre-existent Souls And then which is the second thing for his Anti-praemial Happiness though it is but an Hysteron Proteron and preposterous conceit to fancie wages before the work had he less of this by the coexistence of other souls with him or was it not rather the more highly encreased by their coexistencie And how oddly does it look that one solitary Individual of a Species should exist for God knows how many ages alone But suppose the soul of the Messiah and all other souls created together and several of them fallen and the Soul of the Messiah to undertake their recovery by his sufferings and this declared amongst them surely this must hugely inhance his Happiness and Glory through all the whole order of Humane souls being thus constituted or designed Head and Prince over them all And thus though he was rejected by the Jews and despised he could not but be caressed and adored by his fellowsouls above before his descent to this state of humiliation And who knows but this might be part at least of that Glory which he says he had before the world was And which this ungrateful world denied him while he was in it who crucified the Lord of life And as for the third and last That the Soul of the Messiah was to pre-exist that he might preside over the Church all along from the beginning of it What necessity is there of that Could not the Eternal Logos and the Ministry of Angels sufficiently discharge that Province But you conceive a congruity therein and so may another conceive a congruity that he should not enter upon his Office till there were a considerable lapse of Humane Souls which should be his care to recover which implies their Pre-existence before this stage of the Earth And if the Soul of the Messiah united with the Logos presided so early over the Church that it was meet that other unlapsed souls they being of his own tribe should be his Satellitium and be part of those ministring Spirits that watch for the Churches good and zealously endeavour the recovery of their sister-souls under the conduct of the great Soul of the Messiah out of their captivity of sin and death So that every way Pre-existence of other souls will handsomly fall in with the Pre-existence of the soul of the Messiah that there may be no breach of order wherias there is no occasion for it nor violence done to the Holy Writ which expressly declares Christ to have been like to us in all things as well in Existence as Essence sin onely excepted as the Emperour earnestly urges to the Patriarch Menas Wherefore we finding no necessity of his particular pre-existing nor convenience but what will be doubled if other Souls pre-exist with him it is plain if he pre-exist it is as he is an Humane soul not as such a particular soul and therefore what proves his soul to pre-exist proves others to pre-exist also Pag. 87. Since these places have been more diffusely urged in a late discourse to this purpose I suppose he means in the Letter of Resolution concerning Origen Where the Author opens the sense of Philip. 2. 6. learnedly and judiciously especially when he acknowledges Christs being in the form of God to be understood of his Physical Union with the Divine Logos Which is the Ancient Orthodox Exposition of the Primitive Fathers they taking this for one notable Testimony of Scripture for the Divinity of Christ Whenas they that understand it Politically of Christs Power and Authority onely take an excellent weapon out of the hands of the Church wherewith she used to oppose the Impugners of Christs Divinity But how can Christ being God verus Deus as Vatablus expounds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 empty himself or any way deteriorate himself as to his Divinity by being incarnate and taking upon him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the form of the terrestrial Adam For every earthly man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle seems to intimate Rom. 8. 21. as this ingenious Writer has noted and the Apostle likewise seems so to expound it in the Text by adding presently by way of Exegesis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and was made in the likeness of men like that Gen. 5. 3. Adam begot a son in his own likeness a terrestrial man as himself was Wherefore the Incarnation of Christ being no exinanition to his Divinity there was an Humanity of Christ viz. his Soul in a glorious state of Pre-existence to which this voluntary exinanition belonged Pag. 87. Was it for this mans sin or his fathers that he was born blind For the avoiding the force of this Argument for proving that Pre-existence was the Opinion of the Jews and that Christ when it was so plainly implied in the Question by his silence or not reproving it seemed to admit it or at least to esteem it no hurtful Opinion They alledge these two things First That these Enquirers having some notions of the Divine Prescience might suppose that God foreknowing what kind of person this blind man would prove had antedated his punishment The other is That the Enquirers may be conceived to understand the blind mans original sin So that when they enquired whether the man was born blind for his own or his Parents sin they might onely ask whether that particular Judgment was the effect of his Parents or of his own original pravity This is Camerons But see what sorced conceits Learned men will entertain rather than not to say something on a Text. What a distorted and preposterous account is that found that God should punish men before they sin because he foresees they will sin And he onely produces this example and a slight one too That Jeroboams hand was dried up as he stretched it forth to give a sign to apprehend the Prophet And the other is as fond an account That God should send such severe Judgments on men for their original Pravity which they cannot help And original Pravity being so common to all it could be no reason why this particular man should be born blind more than others Wherefore Grotius far more ingenuously writes thus upon the place Quoerunt ergo an ipse peccaverit quia multi Judoeorum credebant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
as entirely taken up with this one Bodie as if she enjoyed the pleasures of all three bodies at once Aethereal Aereal and Terrestrial And lastly Which will strike all sure He that is able to save to the utmost and has promised us eternal life is as true as able and therefore cannot fail to perform it And who can deny but that we in this State I have described are as capable of being fixed there and confirmed therein as the Angels were after Lucifer and others had faln And now to the fifth and last Argument against the state of Silence I say it is raised out of mere ignorance of the most rational as well as most Platonical way of the souls immediate descent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For the first Mover or stirrer in this matter I mean in the formation of the Foetus is the Spirit of Nature the great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Universe to whom Plotinus somewhere attributes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first Predelineations and prodrome Irradiations into the matter before the particular soul it is preparing for come into it Now the Spirit of Nature being such a spirit as contains Spermatically or Vitally all the Laws contrived by the Divine Intellect for the management of the Matter of the World and of all Essences else unperceptive or quatenus unperceptive for the good of the Universe we have all the reason in the world to suppose this Vital or Spermatical Law is amongst the rest viz. That it transmit but one soul to one prepared conception Which will therefore be as certainly done unless some rare and odd casualty intervene as if the Divine Intellect it self did do it Wherefore one and the same Spirit of Nature which prepares the matter by some general Predelineation does at the due time transmit some one soul in the state of Silence by some particularizing Laws that fetch in such a soul rather than such but most sure but one unless as I said some special casualty happen into the prepared Matter acting at two places at once according to its Synenergetical vertue or power Hence therefore it is plain that there will be no such clusters of Foetus's and monstrous deformities from this Hypothesis of the souls being in a state of Silence But for one to shuffle off so fair a satisfaction to this difficulty by a precarious supposing there is no such Being as the Spirit of Nature when it is demonstrable by so many irrefragable Arguments that there is is a Symptome of one that philosophizes at random not as Reason guides For that is no reason against the existence of the Spirit of Nature because some define it A Substance incorporeal but without sense and animadversion c. as if a spirit without sense and animadversion were a contradiction For that there is a Spirit of Nature is demonstrable though whether it have no sense at all is more dubitable But though it have no sense or perception it is no contradiction to its being a Spirit as may appear from Dr. H. Mores Brief Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit To which I direct the Reader for satisfaction I having already been more prolix in answering these Arguments than I intended But I hope I have made my presage true that they would be found to have no force in them to overthrow the Hypothesis of a threefold Vital Congruity in the Plastick of the soul So that this fourth Pillar for any execution they can do will stand unshaken Pag. 103. For in all sensation there is corporeal motion c. And besides there seems an essential relation of the Soul to Body according to Aristotles definition thereof he defining it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which actuates the boby Which therefore must be idle when it has nothing to actuate as a Piper must be silent as to piping if he have no Pipe to play on Chap. 14. pag. 113. The ignobler and lower properties or the life of the body were languid and remiss viz. as to their proper exercises or acting for themselves or as to their being regarded much by the Soul that is taken up with greater matters or as to their being much relished but in subserviency to the enjoyment of those more Divine and sublime Objects as the Author intimates towards the end of his last Pillar Pag. 114. And the Plastick had nothing to do but to move this passive and easie body c. It may be added and keep it in its due form and shape And it is well added accordingly as the concerns of the higher faculties required For the Plastick by reason of its Vital Union with the vehicle is indeed the main instrument of the motion thereof But it is the Imperium of the Perceptive that both excites and guides its motion Which is no wonder it can do they being both but one soul Pag. 114. To pronounce the place to be the Sun c. Which is as rationally guessed by them as if one should fancy all the Fellows and Students Chambers in a Colledge to be contained within the area of the Hearth in the Hall and the rest of the Colledge uninhabited For the Sun is but a common Focus of a Vortex and is less by far to the Vortex than the Hearth to the Ichnographie of the whole Colledge that I may not say little more than a Tennis-ball to the bigness of the earth Pag. 115. Yet were we not immutably so c. But this mutability we were placed in was not without a prospect of a more full confirmation and greater accumulation of Happiness at the long run as I intimated above Pag. 116. We were made on set purpose defatigable that so all degrees of life c. We being such Creatures as we are and finite and taking in the enjoyment of those infinitely perfect and glorious Objects onely pro modulo nostro according to the scantness of our capacity diversion to other Objects may be an ease and relief From whence the promise of a glorified body in the Christian Religion as it is most grateful so appears most rational But in the mean time it would appear most irrational to believe we shall have eyes and ears and other organs of external sense and have no suitable Objects to entertain them Pag. 117. Yea methinks 't is but a reasonable reward to the body c. This is spoken something popularly and to the sense of the vulgar that imagine the body to feel pleasure and pain whenas it is the soul onely that is perceptive and capable of feeling either But 't is fit the body should be kept in due plight for the lawful and allowable corporeal enjoyments the soul may reap therefrom for seasonable diversion Pag. 117 That that is executed which he hath so determined c. Some fancy this may be extended to the enjoying of the fruits of the Invigouration of all the three Vital Congruities of the Plastick and that for a soul orderly and in due time
it is really Discerpible and consequently divisible into Physical Monads or Atoms and therefore constituted of them and the last Inference will be that of the Epigrammatist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To this sense All a vain Jest All Dust All Nothing deem For of mere Atoms all composed been And thus the fairest and firmest structures of Philosophical Theorems in the behalf of the Providence of God the Existence of Spirits and the Immortality of the Soul will become a Castle of Come-Down and fall quite to the ground Whence it was rightfully done of the Doctor to lay such stress upon these two terms Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie they being the essential Characteristicks of what is truly a Spirit and which if they were taken out of the world all would necessarily be Matter I mean Physical Matter to prevent all quibblings and fiddlings about words and phrases and this Physical Matter would be the Subject and Source of all Life whatever Intellective Sensitive and Vegetative And Mr. Baxter did ill in not onely omitting these terms himself in his Notion of a Spirit but in publickly slighting and disgracing of the Doctors using of them and afterwards in so stomaching his vindication of the same in publick whenas we see that without them there can be nothing but Physical Matter in the world and God and Angels and the Souls of men must be such Matter if they be any thing a◠all and therefore in such an errour as this Mr. Baxter with Christian patience might well have born with the Doctors calling it not onely a Mistake but a Mischief And I hope by this time he is such a proficient in that Vertue that he will chearfully bear the publication of this my Answer in the behalf of the Doctor to all his Objections against these two essential and necessarie Characters of a Spirit and not be offended if I briefly run over his smaller Criticisms upon the Doctors Definition of the same which do occur pag. 80 81. and elsewhere as I shall advertise The Doctors Definition of a Spirit in his Discourse of that Subject Sect. 29. is this A Spirit is a Substance immaterial intrinsecally indued with life and the facultie of motion where he notes that Immaterial contains virtually in it Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Now let us hear how Mr. Baxter criticizes on this Definition First saies he pag. 80. Your Definition is common good and true allowing for its little imperfections and the common imperfection of mans knowledge of Spirits If by Immaterial you mean not without Substance it signifieth truth but a negation speaketh not a formal Essence Ans How very little these imperfections are I shall note by passing through them all and for the common imperfection of mans knowledge of Spirits what an unskilful or hypocritical pretence that is the Doctor hath so clearly shewn in his Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit Sect. 16 17 18 19. that it is enough to send the Reader thither for satisfaction But as for Immaterial how can any one think that thereby is meant without Substance but those that think there is nothing but Matter in the Physical sense of the word in the world As if Substance Immaterial was intended to signifie Substance without Substance And lastly the Doctor will denie that In in Immaterial signifies negatively here more than in Immortal Incorruptible or Infinite but that it is the indication of opposite properties to those of Physical Matter viz. Impenetrability and Discerpibility and that therefore Immaterial here includes Indiscerpibility and Penetrability Secondly pag. 81. Spirit it self saies he is but a metaphor Ans Though the word first signified other things before it was used in the sense it is here defined yet use has made it as good as if it were originally proper With your Logicians in those Definitions Materia est Causa ex qua res est Forma est Causa per quam res est id quod est Materia and Forma are Metaphorical words but use has made them in those Definitions as good as proper nor does any sober and knowing man move the least scruple touching those Definitions on this account To which you may add that Aristotles caution against Metaphors in defining things is to be understood of the Definition it self not the Definitum but Spirit is the Definitum here not the Definition Thirdly Intrinsecally indued with lise tells us not that it is the Form Qualities and proper Accidents are intrinsecal Ans Mr. Baxter I suppose for clearness sake would have had Form written over the head of this part of the Definition as the old bungling painters were wont to write This is a Cock and this a Bull or as one wittily perstringed a young Preacher that would name the Logical Topicks he took his Arguments from saying he was like a Shoemaker that offered his Shoes to sale with the Lasts in them I thought Mr. Baxter had been a more nimble Logician than to need such helps to discern what is the Genus in the Definition what the Differentia or Forma And for intrinsecally indued I perceive he is ignorant of the proper force and sense of the word Intrinsecùs which signifies as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 onely which implies that this life is from the intimate Essence of a Spirit quatenus a Spirit and therefore can be no common qualitie nor a facultie clarted on as Mr. Baxter fancies God may clart on Life the specifick Form of Spirit as he himself acknowledges on Matter though Materia quatenus Materia implies no such thing but I say Spiritus quatenus Spiritus does which is both the Source and proper Subject of life But it is the effect of an ill perturbed sight to fancie flaws where there are really none And to fancie that a Vis Vitalis or Power of living can belong to Materia Physica immediately which power must necessarily be the Result of an Essence specifically distinct from Physical Matter I think may justly be called clarting of this Power on a Subject it belongs not to nor is intrinsecal to it there being no new specifick Essence from whence it should spring Fourthly The Facultie of motion saies he is either a Tautologie included in Life or else if explicatorie of Life it is defective Ans It is neither Tautological nor Exegetical no more than if a man should define Homo Animal rationale risibile Risibile there is neither Tautological though included in Animal rationale nor Exegetical it signifying not the same with Rationale And the Definition is as true with Risibile added to it as if omitted But the addition of Risibile being needless is indeed ridiculous But it is not Ridiculous to add the faculty of motion in this Definition of a Spirit because it is not needless but is added on purpose to instruct such as Mr. Baxter that an intrinsecal facultie of motion belongs to Spirit quatenus Spirit and
alone doth all imply 12. Here 's Rest here 's Peace here 's Joy and holy Love The Heaven 's here of true Content For those that hither sincerely move Here 's the true Light Of Wisdom bright And Prudence pure with no self-seeking mient 13. Here Spirit Soul and cleansed Body may Bathe in this Fountain of true Bliss Of Pleasures that will ne're decay All joyful Sights And hid Delights The sense of these renew'd here daily is 14. Come therefore come and take an higher flight Things perishing leave here below Mount up with winged Soul and Spright Quick let 's be gone To him that 's One But in this One to us can all things show 15. Thus shall you be united with that ONE That ONE where 's no Duality For from this perfect GOOD alone Ever doth spring Each pleasant thing The hungry Soul to feed and satisfie 16. Wherefore O man consider well what 's said To what is best thy Soul incline And leave off every evil trade Do not despise What I advise Finish thy Work before the Sun decline FINIS Books Printed for or Sold by Samuel Lownds over against Exeter Exchange in the Strand PArthenissa that Fam'd Romance Written by the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery Clelia an Excellent new Romance the whole Work in Five Books Written in French by the exquisite pen of Monsieur de Scudery The Holy Court Written by N. Causinus Bishop Saundersons Sermons Herberts Travels with large Additions The Compleat Horseman and Expert Farrier in Two Books 1. Shewing the best manner of breeding good Horses with their Choice Nature Riding and Dieting as well for Running as Hunting as also Teaching the Groom and Keeper his true Office 2. Directing the most exact and approved manner how to know and Cure all Diseases in Horses a Work containing the Secrets and best Skill belonging either to Farrier or Horse-Leach the Cures placed Alphabetically with Hundreds of Medicines never before imprinted in any Author By Thomas de Grey Claudius Mauger's French and English Letters upon all Subjects enlarged with Fifty new Letters many of which are on the late great Occurrences and Revolutions of Europe all much Amended and Refined according to the most quaint and Courtly Mode wherein yet the Idiom and Elegancy of both Tongues are far more exactly suited than formerly Very useful to those who aspire to good Language and would know what Addresses become them to all sorts of persons Besides many Notes in the end of the Book which are very necessary for Commerce Paul Festeau's French Grammar being the newest and exactest Method now extant for the attaining to the Elegancy and Purity of the French Tongue The Great Law of Consideration a Discourse shewing the Nature Usefulness and absolute necessity of Consideration in order to a truly serious and Religious Life The Third Edition Corrected and much Enlarged by Anthony Horneck D. D. The Mirror of Fortune or the true Characters of Fate and Destiny Treating of the Growth and Fall of Empires the Misfortunes of Kings and Great Men and the ill fate of Virtuous and handsome Ladies Saducismus Triumphatus or full plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions in Two parts the first Treating of their Possibility the second of their Real Existence by Joseph Glanvil late Chaplain to His Majesty and Fellow of the Royal Society The Second Edition The advantages whereof above the former the Reader may understand out of Dr. Henry More 's Account prefixt thereunto With two Authentick but wonderful stories of Swedish Witches done into English by Anthony Horneck D. D. French Rogue being a pleasant History of his Life and Fortune adorned with variety of other Adventures of no less rarity Of Credulity and Incredulity in things Divine and Spiritual wherein among other things a true and faithful account is given of Platonick Philosophy as it hath reference to Christianity As also the business of Witches and Witchcraft against a late Writer fully argued and disputed By Merick Causabon D. D. one of the Prebends of Canterhury Cicero against Catiline in Four Invective Orations containing the whole manner of discovering that notorious Conspiracy By Christopher Wase Cambridge Jests being Witty Alarms for Melancholy Spirits By a Lover of Ha Ha He. FINIS
at first view that such variety of distinct and orderly representations should be made at once upon a single atom or the whole image is imprest upon every point and then there would be as many objects as there are points in this matter and so every thing would be infinitely multiplied in our delâ—sive senses Or finally every part of the soul must receive a proportionable part of the image and then how could those parts communicate their perceptions to each other and what should perceive the whole This Argument is excellently managed by the great Dr. H. More in whose writings this fond Hypothesis is fully triumpht over and defeated Since therefore the very lowest degree of perception single and simple sense is incompatible to meer body or matter we may safely conclude that the higher and nobler operations of imagining remembring reasoning and willing must have a cause and source that is not Corporeal Thus therefore those that build the souls traduction upon this ground of its being only body and modified matter are disappointed in the foundation of their conclusion But 2 Another sort of assertors of traduction teach the Soul to be spiritual and incorporeal and affirm that by a vertue deriv'd from the first benediction it can propagate its like one soul emitting another as the body doth the matter of Generation The manner of which spiritual production useth to be illustrated by one Candle's lighting another and a mans begetting a thought in anothers mind without diminishing of his own This is the most favourable representation of this opinion that I can think on And yet if we nearly consider it it will appear most absuâ—d and unphilosophical For if one soul produce another 't is either out of nothing or something praeexistent If the former 't is an absolute creation which all philosophy concludes impossible for a Creature And if it be pretended that the Parent doth it not by his proper natural virtue but by a strength imparted by God in the first blessing Increase and multiply so that God is the prime agent he only the instrument I rejoin that then either God hath thereby obliged himself to put forth a new and extraordinary power in every such occasion distinct from his influence in the ordinary â—ourse of nature Or else 2 he only concurrs by his providence as he doth to our other natural actions we having this Ability bestowed upon our very natures He that asserts the first runs upon all the rocks that he would avoid in the former Hypothesis of continual Creation and God will be made the cause of the sin and misery of his spotless and blameless Creatures which absurdities he cannot shun by saying that God by interposing in such productions doth but follow the rules of acting which he first made while man was innocent For certainly infinite goodness would never have tyed up it self to such Laws of working as he foresaw would presently bring unavoidable inconvenience misery and ruine upon the best part of his workmanship And for the second way it supposeth God to have no more to do in this action than in our eating and drinking Consequently here is a creation purely natural And methinks if we have so vast a power to bring the ends of contradictories together something out of nothing which some deny to Omnipotence it self 't is much we cannot conserve in being our Creature so produced nor our own intimate selves since conservation is not more than Creation And 't is much that in other things we should give such few specimens of so vast an ability or have a power so divine and excellent and no faculty to discern it by Again 2 if the Soul be immediately produced out of nothing be the agent who it will God or the Parent it will be pure and sinless For supposing our parents to be our Creators they make us but as natural agents * and so can only transmit their natural qualities but not their moral pravities Wherefore there can no better account be given from this way how the Soul is so debauched and infected assoon as it comes into the body than in the former and therefore it fails in the main end it is designed for Thus we see then that the traduction of the Soul supposing it to be produced out of nothing cannot be defended Nor doth the second general way yield any more relief to this Hypothesis For if it be made of any thing praeexistent it is either of matter or spirit The former we have undermined and overthrown already in what was said against those that hold it to be body And if it be made out of any Spiritual substance it must be the soul of the parent except we will revive the old enthusiastick conceit of its being a particle of the divine essence which supposition is * against the nature of an immaterial being a chief property of which is to be indiscerpible Nor do the similitudes I mentioned in the proposal of the Hypothesis at all fit the business for one candle lights another * by separable emissions that pass from the flame of that which is kindled to the wick of the other And flame is a body whose parts are in continual flux as a river But the substance of the soul is stable permanent and indivisible which quite makes it another case And for a mans informing anothers mind with a thought which he had not conceived it is not a production of any substance but only an occasioning him to exert an operation of his mind which he did not before And therefore makes nothing to the illustrating how a Soul can produce a Soul a substance distinct and without it self Thus we see how desperate the case of the souls original is in the Hypothesis of Traduction also But yet to let it have fair play we 'l give it leave to plead it's cause and briefly present what is most material in its behalf There are but two reasons that I can think of worth the naming 1 A man begets a man and a man he is not without a Soul therefore 't is pretended that the soul is begotten But this argument is easily detected of palpable sophistry and is as if one should argue a man is mortal therefore his Soul is mortal or is fat and lusty therefore his Soul is so The absurdity of which kinds of reasoning lyes in drawing that into a strict and rigorous affirmation which is only meant according to vulgar speech and is true only in some remarkable respect or circumstance Thus we say A man begets a man because he doth the visible and only sensible part of him The vulgar to whom common speech is accommodate not taking so much notice of what is past the ken of their senses And therefore Body in ordinary speaking is oft put for Person as here man for the body Sometimes the noblest part is used for the whole as when 't is said 70 Souls went down with Jacob into Egypt therefore such arguments as
in his written Will to the contrary And now if it be found also that he hath not made it known to our Reasons that 't was not his will to do so we may conclude this first particular That no one can say that the Doctrine of Praeexistence is a falshhood Therefore let us call to Account the most momentous reasons that can be laid against it and we shall find that they all have not weight enough in the least to move so rational and solid an opinion 1. Then 't is likely to be urged that had we lived and acted in a former state * we should doubtless have retain'd some remembrance of that condition But we having no memory of any thing backwards before our appearance upon this present stage it will be thought to be a considerable praesumption that Praeexistence is but a phancy But I would desire such kind of reasoners to tell me how much they remember of their state and condition in the womb or of the Actions of their first infancy And I could wish they would consider that not one passage in an hundred is remembred of their grown and riper age Nor doth there scarce a night pass but we dream of many things which our waking Memories can give us no Account of yea old age and some kinds of diseases blot out all the images of things past and even in this state cause a total oblivion * Now if the Reasons why we should lose the remembrance of our former life be greater than are the causes of forgetfulness in the instances we have produced I think it will be clear that this Argument hath but little force against the opinion we are inquiring into Therefore if we do but reflect upon that long state of silence and inactivity that we emerged from when we came into these bodies and the vast change we under-went by our sinking into this new and unwonted habitation it will appear to the considerate that there is greater reason why we should have forgotten our former Life than any thing in this And if a disease or old age can rase out the memory of past actions even while we are in one and the same condition of Life certainly so long and deep a swoon as is absolute insensibility and inertness may much more reasonably be thought to blot out the memory of an other Life whose passages probably were nothing like the transactions of this And this also might be given as an other Reason of our forgetting our former state since usually things are brought to our remembrance by some like occurrences But 2. Some will argue If this be a state of punishment for former miscarriages how comes it about then that 't is a better condition than that we last came from viz. the state of silence and insensibility I answer That if we look upon our present terrestrial condition as an effect of our defection from the higher Life and in reference to our former happiness lost by our own default 't is then a misery and a punishment But if we compare our now-being with the state of inactivity we were delivered from it may then be called an After-Game of the divine Goodness and a Mercy As a Malefactor that is at first put into a dark and disconsolate dungeon and afterwards is remov'd to a more comfortable and lightsome prison may acknowledge his remove to be a favour and deliverance compared with the place he was last consined to though with respect to his fault and former liberty even this condition is both a mulct and a misery It is just thus in the present caâ—e and any one may make the application But it will be said 3 If our Souls liv'd in a former state did they act in bodies or without them The former they 'l say is absurd and the latter incongruous and unlikely since then all the powers the Soul hath to exert in a body would have been idle and to no purpose But 1 the most that can be argued from such like objections is that we know not the manner of the thing and are no Arguments against the assertion it self And were it granted that the paticular state of the Soul before it came hither is inconceivable yet this makes no more against it than it doth against it's after-condition which these very objectors hold to be so as to the particular modus But 2 Why is it so absurd that the Soul should have actuated another kind of body before it came into this Even here 't is immediately united to a purer vehicle moves and acts the grosser body by it And why then might it not in its former and purer state of Life have been joyn'd only to such a refined body which should have been suitable to its own perfection and purity I 'me sure many if not the most of the Antient Fathers thought Angels themselves to be embodied and therefore they reputed not this such a gross absurdity But an occasion hereafter will draw our pen this way again and therefore I pass it to a third return to this objection 3. Therefore though it were granted that the Soul lived afore-times without a body what greater incongruity is there in such a supposition than that it should live and act after death without any union with matter or any body whatsoever as the objectors themselves conceive it doth But all such objections as these will fly away as mists before the Sun when we shall come particularly to state the Hypothesis And therefore I may be excused from further troubling my self and the Reader about them here Especially since as hath been intimated they prove nothing at all but that the objectors cannot conceive what manner of state that of Praeexistence was which is no prejudice to the opinion it self that our Souls were extant before these earthly bodies Thus then I hope I have clearly enough made good that all Souls might have been Created from the beginning for ought any thing that is made known either in the Scriptures or our reasons to the contrary * And thereby have removed those prejudices that Would have stood in the way of our conclusion Wherefore we may now without controul from our proof of That it may be so pass on to enquire whether indeed it is so and see whether it may as well be asserted as defended And truly considering that both the other ways are impossible and this third not at all unreasonable it may be thought needless to bring more forces into the field to gain it the victory after its enemies are quite scattered and defeated Yet however for the pomp and triumph of truth though it need not their service we shall add some positive Arguments whereby it may appear that not only all other ways are dangerous and unpassable and this irreproveable but also that there is direct evidence enough to prove it solid and rational And I make my first consideration of this kind a second Argument CHAP. VI. A second Argument for
Members nourished and decays of strength repaired I say the gathering from all these which one would think were a very natural consequence that there is a wise Principle which directs all these Beings unknown to you in their several motions to their several ends supposing the dependence and relations of things to be contingent and arbitrarious were a piece of folly and incogitancy For how can the Order of those things speak a wise and understanding Being which have no relation or respect unto one another but their whole agreement suitableness and proportion is a meer casual issue of absolute and independent Will If any thing may be the cause of any effect and a proportionate mean to any end who can infer infinite Wisdom from the dependence of things and their relations unto one another * For we are to know that there is a God and the Will of that God before we can know the mutual Harmony or Disproportion of things and yet if we do not know these principal respects that things have among themselves it is impossible we should ever come to the knowledge of a God For these are the only arguments that any Logick in the world can make use of to prove any conclusion But suppose we should come to know that there is a God which as I have demonstrated denying the necessary and immutable truth of common Notions and the indispensible and eternal relations of things is altogether impossible However let it be supposed yet how shall we know that these common Notions and principles of natural instinct which are the foundation of all Discourse and Argumentation are certain and infallible Truths and that our Senses which with these former Principles we suppose this Divine Nature to have given us to converse with this outward world were not on purpose bestowed upon us to befool delude and cheat us if we be not first assured of the Veracity of God And how can we be assured of that if we know not that Veracity is a perfection and how shall we know it is so unless there be an intrinsecal relation betwixt Veracity and Perfection For if it be an arbitrarious respect depending upon the Will of God there is no way possible left whereby we should come to know that it is in God at all And therefore we have fully as much reason to believe that all our common Notions and Principles of natural instinct whereupon we ground all our reasonings and discourse are meer Chimaera's to delude and abuse our faculties and all those Idea's Phantasms and Apprehensions of our external senses we imagine are occasioned in us by the preâ—ence of outward objects are meer Spectrums and Gulleries wherewith poor mortals are befooled and cheated as that they are given us by the first Goodness and Truth to lead us into the Knowledge of himself and Nature This is a clear and evident consequence and cannot be denyed by any that doth not complain of darkness in the brightest and most Meridian Light And here you have the foundations laid of the highest Scepticism for who can say he knows any thing when he hath no basis on which he can raise any true conclusions SECT X. That the denying the Eternal and immutable Respects of things frustrates all the noble Essays of the mind or understanding of man THus you see the noble faculties of man his Mind and Understanding will be to no end and purpose but for a Rack and Torture for what greater unhappiness or torment can there be imagined than to have Faculties whose Accomplishment and Perfection consists in a due conformation unto their objects and yet to have no objects unto which they may be conformed to have a Soul unmeasurably breathing after the embraces of Truth and Goodness and after a search and enquiry after one and the other and to find at last they are but â—iery empty and uncertain Notions depending upon the arbitrarious determinations of boundless and independent Will which determinations she sees it beyond her reach ever to come to any knowledge of SECT XI That in the abovesaid denial are lad the Foundations of Rantism Debauchery and all Dissoluteness of Life HEre you have likewise the true Foundations of that we call Rantism for if there be no distinction 'twixt Truth and Falshood Good and Evil in the nature of the things themselves and we never can be assured what is the mind and pleasure of the supream and absolute Will because Veracity is not intrinsecally and ex natura reâ— a Perfection but only an Arbitrarious if any Attribute in the Deity * then it infallibly follows that it is all one what I do or how I live and I have as much reason to believe that I am as pleasing unto God when I give up my self unto all Fâ—â—thiness Uncleanness and Sin when I swell with Pride Envy Hatred and Malice c. as when I endeavour with all my Might and Strength to purge and purifie my Soul from all pollution and deâ—ilement both oâ— Flesh and Spirit and when I pursue the mortification of all my â—arnal Lusts and Inclinations And I have fully as much ground and assurance that the one is the ready Way to Happiness as the other SECT XII That our assurance of future Happiness is quite cut off by the Denying of the Eternal and immutable respects of things ANd this is another branch of this second Absurdity from the denial oâ— the intrinfecal and eternal respects and relations of things that a man would not have any assurance of future Happiness for though it be true indeed or at least we fancy to our selves that God hath sent Jesus Christ into the world and by him hath made very large and ample promises that whosoever believes in him and conforms his life unto his precepts shall be made heir of the same Inheritance and Glory which Christ is now possessed of and invested with in the Kingdom of his Father yet what ground have we to believe that God does not intend only to play with and abuse our Faculties and in conclusion to damn all those that believe and live as is above expressed and to take them only into the Injoyments of Heaven and Hâ—ppiness who have been the great Opposers of the Truth and Gospel and Life and Nature of Jesus Christ in the world For if there be no eternal and indispensible Relation of Things then there 's no intrinsecal Evil in Deceiving and Falsifying in the damning the Good or saving obstinate and contumacious Sinners whilst such notwithstanding any promises or threatnings to the contrary and if the things be in themselves indifferent it is an unadvised Confidence to pronounce determinately on either side Yea further suppose we should be assured that God is Verax and that the Scripture doth declare what is his Mind and Pleasure yet if there be not an intrinsecal opposition betwixt the Being and not Being of a thing at the same time and in the same respect then God can make a thing
conceptions and Ideas of these natures and their relations can be only so far true * as they conform and agree with the things themselves and the harmony which they have one to another FINIS THE CONTENTS OF THE DISCOURSE of TRUTH Sect. 1. THAT Truth is twofold In the Object and in the Subject That in the Object what it is And that it is antecedent to and independent of any Will or Vnderstanding whatever p. 165 Sect. 2. The necessity of there being certain Arguments Means and Objects for certain Conclusions Ends and Faculties And that every thing will not suit every thing p. 166 Sect. 3. An Instance or two of the gross and horrid Absurdities consequent to the denying the mutual respects and relations of things to be eternal and indispensible p. 167 Sect. 4. The Entrance into the first part of the Discourse which is of Truth in the Object That the Divine Understanding does not make the Respects and Relations of its Objects but finds them or observes them p. 168 Sect. 5. That the Divine Will does not determine the References and Dependences of things because that would subvert his other Attributes p. 169 Sect. 6. The avoidance of the foregoing ill consequences by making God immutable with an Answer thereto p. 172 Sect. 7. An hideous but genuine Inference of a Pamphleteer from this principle That absolute and Sovereign Will is the Spring and Fountain of all Gods actions p. 173 Sect. 8. That the Denial of the mutual Respects and Relations of things unto one another to be eternal and unchangeable despoils God of that universal Rectitude of his Nature p. 174 Sect. 9. That the Denial of the unchangeableness of the said mutual Respects and Relations of things to one another takes away the Knowledge of God and of our own Happiness and lays a foundation of the most incurable Scepticism imaginable p. 176 Sect. 10. That the denying the Eternal and Immutable Respects of things frustrates all the noble Essays of the mind or understanding of man p. 180 Sect. 11. That in the abovesaid Denial are laid the Foundations of Rantism Debauchery and of all Dissoluteness of Life p. 181 Sect. 12. That our Assurance of future Happiness is quite â—ut off by the denying of the Eternal and Immutable Respects of Things p. 182 Sect. 13. Several Objections propounded against the scope of this Discourse hitherto from the Independency of the Divine Understanding and Will. p. 184 Sect. 14. A main Objection more fully insisted upon namely How well the Advancement of Gods Justice in the Damnation of the greatest part of Mankind consists with the scope of this Discourse especially it being so stated as is here set down p. 186 Sect. 15. An Answer to that Objection that concerns the Understanding of God shewing hat the Divine Vnderstanding does not depend upon the natures and mutual Respects of things though they be its Objects p. 187 Sect. 16. An Answer to that Objection which concerns the Will of God shewing That Liberty in the Power or Principle is no where a Perfection where there is not an Indifferency in the things or actions about which it is conversant p. 189 Sect. 17. That the Discourse hitherto does not infer any Dependency of God upon any thing without himself But only occasions are offered to him of acting according to his own intimate Nature and Essence p. 191 Sect. 18. The second part of the Discourse which briefly treats of Truth in the Subject What it is What in God and what in the Creature And that in both it is A representation or conception in the mind conformable to the unchangeable natures and mutual Respects of things p. 193 Annotations UPON THE Two foregoing TREATISES LVX ORIENTALIS OR An Enquiry into the OPINION OF THE EASTERN SAGES Concerning the Prae-existence of Souls AND THE Discourse of TRUTH Written for the more fully clearing and further confirming the main DOCTRINES in each TREATISE By one not unexercized in these kinds of SPECULATION LONDON Printed for J. Collins and S. Lounds over against Exeter-Change in the Strand 1682. Annotations UPON LVX ORIENTALIS THese two Books Lux Orientalis and the Discourse of Truth are luckily put together by the Publisher there being that suitableness between them and mutual support of one another And the Arguments they treat of being of the greatest importance that the Mind of man can entertain herself with the consideration thereof has excited so sluggish a Genius as mine to bestow some few Annotations thereon not very anxious or operose but such as the places easily suggest and may serve either to rectifie what may seem any how oblique or illustrate what may seem less clear or make a supply or adde strength where there may seem any further need In which I would not be so understood as that I had such an anxiety and fondness for the Opinions they maintain as if all were gone if they should fail but that the Dogmata being more fully clearly and precisely propounded men may more safely and considerately give their Judgments thereon but with that modesty as to admit nothing that is contrary to the Judgment of the truly Catholick and Apostolick Church Chap. 2. p. 4. That he made us pure and innocent c. This is plainly signified in the general Mosaick History of the Creation that all that God made he saw it was good and it is particularly declared of Adam and Eve that they were created or made in a state of Innocency Pag. 4. Matter can do nothing but by motion and what relation hath that to a moral Contagion We must either grant that the figures of the particles of Matter and their motion have a power to affect the Soul united with the Body and I remember Josephus somewhere speaking of Wine says it does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 regenerate as it were the Soul into another life and sense of things or else we must acknowledge that the parts of Matter are alterable into qualifications that cannot be resolved into mere mechanical motion and figure whether they be thus altered by the vital power of the Spirit of Nature or however it comes to pass But that Matter has a considerable influence upon a Soul united thereto the Author himself does copiously acknowledge in his fourth Chapter of this Book where he tells us that according to the disposition of the Body our Wits are either more quick free and sparkling or more obtuse weak and sluggish and our Mind more chearful and contented or else more morose melancholick or dogged c. Wherefore that he may appear the more consistent with himself it is likely he understands by this Moral Contagion the very venome and malignity of vitious Inclinations how that can be derived from Matter especially its power consisting in mere motion and figuration of parts The Psalmist's description is very apposite to this purpose Psal 58. The ungodly are froward even from their mothers womb as soon as they are born they go astray and
and put into a foul Body but in the other case God onely is a looker on there is onely his Permission not his Action And the vast difference of time he salves it with such a Quibble as this as if it were nothing because thousands of Ages ago in respect of God and his Eternity is not an hour before He might as well say the difference betwixt the most glorious Angel and a Flea is nothing because in comparison of God both are so indeed Wherefore this Anti-Pre-existentiary is such a Trifler that I am half ashamed that I have brought him upon the Stage But yet I will commend his Craft though not his Faithfulness that he had the wit to omit the proposing of Buggery as well as of Adultery and the endeavouring to shew how graceful and agreeable to God how congruous and proportionate it were to his immense Grandeur and Majesty to create a Soul on purpose immaculate and undefiled to actuate the obscene Emissions of a Brute having to do with a Woman or of a Man having to do with a Brute For both Women and Brutes have been thus impregnated and brought forth humane Births as you may see abundantly testified in Fortunius Licetus it would be too long to produce Instances This Opinion of Gods creating Souls and putting them into Bodies upon incestuous and adulterous Coitions how exceeding absurd and unbecoming the Sanctity of the Divine Majesty it seemed to the Churches of Aethiopia you may see in the History of Jobus Ludolphus How intolerable therefore and execrable would this Doctrine have appeared unto them if they had thought of the prodigious fruits of successful Buggery The words of Ludolfus are these Perabsurdum esse si quis Deum astrictum dicat pro adulterinis incestuoâ—is partubus animas quotidie novas creare Hist Aethiop lib. 3. cap. 5. What would they then say of creating a new Soul for the Womb of a Beast bugger'd by a Man or of a Woman bugger'd by a Beast Pag. 12. Methinks that may be done at a cheaper rate c. How it may be done with more agreeableness to the Goodness Wisdom and Justice of God has been even now hinted by me nor need I repeat it Pag. 13. It seems very incongruous and unhandsome to suppose that God should create two Souls for the supply of one monstrous Body And there is the same reason for several other Monstrosities which you may take notice of in Fortunius Licetus lib. 2. cap. 58. One with seven humane heads and arms and Ox-feet others with Mens bodies but with a head the one of a Goose the other of an Elephant c. In which it is a strong presumption humane Souls lodged but in several others certain How does this consist with Gods fresh creating humane Souls pure and innocent and putting them into Bodies This is by the aforesaid Anti-Pre-existentiary at first answered onely by a wide gape or yawn of Admiration And indeed it would make any one stare and wonder how this can consist with Gods immediately and freely intermeddling with the Generation of Men as he did at first in the Creation For out of his holy hands all things come clean and neat Many little efforts he makes afterwards to salve this difficulty of Monsters but yet in his own judgment the surest is the last That God did purposely tye fresh created Souls to these monstroûs shapes that they whose Souls sped better might humbly thank him Which is as wisely argued as if one should first with himself take it for granted that God determines some men to monstrous Debaucheries and Impieties and then fancy this the use of it that the Spectators of them may with better pretence than the Pharisee cry out Lord we thank thee that we are not as these men are There is nothing permitted by God but it has its use some way or other and therefore it cannot be concluded because that an Event has this or that use therefore God by his immediate and free Omnipotence effected it A Pre-existentiary easily discerns that these Monstrosities plainly imply that God does not create Souls still for every humane Coition but that having pre-existed they are left to the great Laws of the Vniverse and Spirit of Nature but yet dares not conclude that God by his free Omnipotence determines those monstrous Births as serviceable as they seem for the evincing so noble a Theory Pag. 15. That God on the seventh day rested from all his works This one would think were an Argument clear enough that he creates nothing since the celebration of the first seventh days rest For if all his works are rested from then the creation of Souls which is a work nay a Master-piece amongst his works scarce inferiour to any is rested from also But the above-mentioned Opposer of Pre-existence is not at a loss for an Answer for his Answers being slight are cheap and easie to come by He says therefore That this supposeth onely that after that time he ceased from creating new Species A witty Invention As if God had got such an easie habit by once creating the things he created in the six days that if he but contained himself within those kinds of things though he did hold on still creating them that it was not Work but mere Play or Rest to him in comparison of his former labour What will not these men fancy rather than abate of their prejudice against an opinion they have once taken a toy against When the Author to the Hebrews says He that has entred into his rest has ceased from his own works as God ceased from his verily this is small comfort or instruction if it were as this Anti-Pre-existentiary would have it for if God ceased onely from creating new Species we may notwithstanding our promised Rest be tyed to run through new instances of labours or sins provided they be but of those kinds we experienced before To any unprejudiced understanding this sence must needs seem forced and unnatural thus to restrain Gods Rest to the Species of things and to engage him to the dayly task of creating Individuals The whole Aethiopian Church is of another mind Qui animam humanam quotidiè non creari hoc argumento asserunt quòd Deus sexto die perfecerit totum opus Creationis See Ludolfus in the place above-cited Chap. 3. pag. 17. Since the Images of Objects are very small and inconsiderable in our brains c. I suppose he mainly relates to the Objects of Sight whose chief if not onely Images are in the fund of the Eye and thence in vertue of the Spirituality of our Soul extended thither also and of the due qualification of the Animal Spirits are transmitted to the Perceptive of the Soul within the brain But how the bignesses and distances of Objects are conveyed to our cognoscence it would be too tedious to signifie here See Dr. H. Moore 's Enchiridion Metaphysicum cap. 19. Pag. 17. Were it not that our
Souls use a kind of Geometry c. This alludes to that pretty conceit of Des Cartes in his Dioptricks the solidity of which I must confess I never understood For I understand not but that if my Soul should use any such Geometry I should be conscious thereof which I do not find my self And therefore I think those things are better understood out of that Chapter of the Book even now mentioned Pag. 17. And were the Soul quite void of all such implicit Notions it would remain as senseless c. There is no sensitive Perception indeed without Reflection but the Reflection is an immediate attention of the Soul to that which affects her without any circumstance of Notions intervening for enabling her for sensitive Operations But these are witty and ingenious Conjectures which the Author by reading Des Cartes or otherhow might be encouraged to entertain To all sensitive Objects the Soul is an Abrasa Tabula but for Moral and Intellectual Principles their Idea's or Notions are essential to the Soul Pag. 18. For Sense teacheth no general Propositions c. Nor need it do any thing else but exhibit some particular Object which our Understanding being an Ectypon of the Divine Intellect necessarily when it has throughly sifted it concludes it to answer such a determinate Idea eternally and unalterably one and the same as it stands in the Divine Intellect which cannot change and therefore that Idea must have the same properties and respects for ever But of this enough here It will be better understood by reading the Discourse of Truth and the Annotations thereon Pag. 18. But from something more sublime and excellent From the Divine or Archetypal Intellect of which our Understanding is the Ectypon as was said before Pag. 21. And so can onely transmit their natural qualities They are so far from transmitting their Moral Pravities that they transmit from themselves no qualities at all For to create a Soul is to concreate the qualities or properties of it not out of the Creator but out of nothing So that the substance and all the properties of it are out of nothing Pag. 22. Against the nature of an immaterial Being a chief property of which is to be indiscerpible The evasion to the force of this Argument by some Anti-Pre-existentiaries is that it is to philosophize at too high a rate of confidence to presume to know what the nature of a Soul or Spirit is But for brevities sake I will refer such Answerers as these to Dr. H. Moore 's brief Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit printed lately with Saducismus Triumphatus and I think he may be thence as sure that Indiscerpibility is an essential property of a Spirit as that there are any Spirits in the Universe and this methinks should suffice any ingenuous and modest Opposer But to think there is no knowledge but what comes in at our Senses is a poor beggarly and precarious Principle and more becoming the dotage of Hobbianism than men of clearer Parts and more serene Judgments Pag. 22. By separable Emissions that pass from the flame c. And so set the Wick and Tallow on motion But these separable Emissions that pass from the flame of the lighted Candle pass quite away and so are no part of the flame enkindled So weak an Illustration is this of what these Traducters would have Chap. 4. pag. 32. Which the Divine Piety and Compassion hath set up again that so so many of his excellent Creatures might not be lost and undone irrecoverably but might act anew c. To this a more elegant Pen and refined Wit objects thus Now is it not highly derogatory to the infinite and unbounded Wisdom of God that he should detrude those Souls which he so seriously designes to make happy into a state so hazardous wherein he seeth it to be ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt and defile themselves and so make them more miserable here and to eternity hereafter A strange method of recovering this to put them into such a fatal necessity of perishing 't is but an odd contrivance for their restauration to Happiness to use such means to compass it which 't is ten thousand to one but will make them infinitely more miserable This he objects in reference to what the Author of Lux Orientalis writes chap. 2. where he says It is a thousand to one but Souls detruded into these bodies will corrupt and defile themselves and so make themselves miserable here and to eternity hereafter And much he quotes to the same purpose out of the Account of Origen Where the Souls great disadvantages to Vertue and Holiness what from the strong inclinations of the Body and what from National Customs Education in this Terrestrial State are lively set out with a most moving and tragical Eloquence to shew how unlikely it is that God should put innocent and immaculate Souls of his own creation immediately into such Bodies and so hard and even almost fatal condition of miscarrying Upon which this subtile Anti-Pre-existentiary Thus you see saith he what strong Objections and Arguments the Pre-existentiaries urge with most noise and clamour are against themselves If therefore these Phaenomena be inexplicable without the Origenian Hypothesis they are so too with it and if so then the result of all is that they are not so much Arguments of Pre-existence as Aspersions of Providence This is smartly and surprizingly spoken But let us consider more punctually the state of the matter Here then we are first to observe how cunningly this shrewd Antagonist conceals a main stroke of the Supposition viz. That the Divine Pity and Compassion to lapsed Souls that had otherwise fallen into an eternal state of Silence and Death had set up Adam for their relief and endued him with such a Paradisiacal body of so excellent a constitution to be transmitted to all his Posterity and invested him in vertue of this with so full power non peccandi that if he and his Posterity were not in an happy flourishing condition as to their eternal interest of Holiness and Vertue it would be long of himself And what could God do more correspondently to his Wisdom and Goodness dealing with free Agents such as humane Souls are than this And the thing being thus stated no Objections can be brought against the Hypothesis but such as will invade the inviolable Truths of Faith and Orthodox Divinity Secondly We are to observe how this cunning Objector has got these two Pre-existentiaries upon the hip for their youthful flowers of Rhetorick when one says it is hundreds to one the other ten thousand to one that Souls will miscarry put into these disadvantages of the Terrestrial state by which no candid Reader will understand any more than that it is exceeding difficult for them to escape the pollutions of this lower World once incorporated into Terrestrial Bodies But it being granted possible for them to emerge this is a great grace
and favour of the Divine Goodness to such peccant wretches that they are brought out of the state of eternal Silence and Death to try their Fortunes once more though incumbred with so great difficulties which the Divine Nemesis suffers to return upon them That therefore they are at all in a condition of recovery is from the Goodness and Mercy of God that their condition is so hard from his Justice they having been so foully peccant And his wisdom being only to contrive what is most agreeable to his Mercy and Justice it is not at all derogatory to the infinite and unbounded Wisdom of God thus to deal with lapsed Souls For though he does seriously intend to make them happy yet it must be in a way correspondent to his Justice as well as Mercy Thirdly and Lastly Besides that the Spirit of the Lord pervades the whole Earth ready to assist the sincere there is moreover a mighty weight of mercy added in the Revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the world so that the retriving of the Souls of men out of their Death and Silence into this Terrestrial state in which there is these helps to the sincere it is manifestly worthy the Divine Wisdom and Goodness For those it takes no effect with they beginning the world again on this stage they shall be judged onely according to what they have done here there being an eternal obliteration as well as oblivion of the acts of their Pre-existent state but those that this merciful Dispensation of God has taken any effect upon here their sincere desires may grow into higher accomplishments in the future state Which may something mitigate the horrour of that seeming universal squalid estate of the Sons of men upon earth Which in that it is so ill is rightly imputed by both Jews and Christians and the divinest Philosophers to a Lapse and to the Mercy and Grace of God that it is no worse From whence it may appear that that argument for Pre-existence that God does not put newly created innocent Souls into such disadvantageous circumstances of a terrestrial Incorporation though partly out of Mercy partly out of Justice he has thought fit lapsed Souls should be so disposed of that this I say is no aspersion of Divine Providence Pag. 36. And now I cannot think of any place in the sacred Volume more that could make a tolerable plea against this Hypothesis c. It is much that the ingenious Author thought not of Rom. 9. 11. For the Children being not yet born neither having done either good or evil that the purpose of God according to Election might stand not of works but of him that calleth This is urged by Anti-pre-existentiaries as a notable place against Pre-existence For say they how could Esau and Jacob. be said neither to have done good nor evil if they pre-existed before they came into this world For if they pre-existed they acted and if they acted they being rational Souls they must have done either good or evil This makes an handsome shew at first sight but if we consult Gen. 25. we shall plainly see that this is spoke of Jacob and Esau yet strugling in the Womb as it is said in this Text For the Children being not yet born but strugling in the Womb as you may see in the other Which plainly therefore respects their actions in this life upon which certainly the mind of St. Paul was fix'd As if he should have expresly said For the Children being not yet born but strugling in the Womb neither having done either good or evil in this life as being still in the Womb it was said of them to Rebeckah The elder shall serve the younger Which sufficiently illustrates the matter in hand with St. Paul that as Jacob was preferred before Esau in the Womb before either of them was born to act here on the Earth and that therefore done without any respect to their actions so the purpose of God touching his people should be of free Election not of Works That of Zachary also Chap. 12. 1. I have heard alledged by some as a place on which no small stress may be laid The Lord is there said to be the Former of the Spirit of Man within him Wherefore they argue If the Spirit of Man be formed within him it did never pre-exist without him But we answer That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is but the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And then the sence is easie and natural that the Spirit that is in man God is the Former or Creator of it But this Text defines nothing of the time of forming it There are several other Texts alledged but it is so easie to answer them and would take up so much time and room that I think fit to omit them remembring my scope to be short Annotations not a tedious Commentary Pag. 41. Mr. Ben Israel in his Problems De Creatione assures us that Pre-existence was the common belief c. That this was the common opinion of the wiser men amongst the Jews R. Menasse Ben Israel himself told me at London with great freedom and assurance and that there was a constant tradition thereof which he said in some sence was also true concerning the Trinity but that more obscure But this of Pre-existence is manifest up and down in the Writings of that very ancient and learned Jew Philo Judaeus as also something toward a Trinity if I remember aright Chap. 5. Pag. 46. We should doubtless have retained some remembrance of that condition And the rather as one ingeniously argues because our state in this life is a state of punishment Upon which he concludes That if the calamities of this life were inflicted upon us only as a punishment of sins committed in another Providence would have provided some effectual means to preserve them in our memories And therefore because we find no remainders of any such Records in our minds 't is says he sufficient evidence to all sober and impartial inquirers that our living and sinning in a former state is as false as inevident But to this it may be answered That the state we are put in is not a state only of punishment but of a merciful trial and it is sufficient that we find our selves in a lapsed and sinful condition our own Consciences telling us when we do amiss and calling upon us to amend So that it is needless particularly to remember our faults in the other world but the time is better spent in faithfully endeavouring to amend our selves in this and to keep our selves from all faults of what nature soever Which is a needless thing our memory should discover to us to have been of old committed by us when our Consciences urge to us that they are never to be committed and the Laws of holy Law-givers and divine Instructers or wise Sages over all the world assist also our Conscience in her office So that the end of Gods Justice by these inward and
dead to their life But the changing of our Earthly Body for an Aereal or Aethereal this is not Death but Reviviscency in which all the energies of the Soul are not depressed but exalted and our Memory with the rest quickened as it was in Esdras after he had drunk down that Cup offered to him by the Angel full of Liquor like Fire which filled his Heart with Understanding and strengthned his Memory as the Text says Thus we see how all Objections against the three Reasons of lapsed Souls losing the memory of the things of the other state vanish into smoak Wherefore they every one of them single being so sound all three put together methinks should not fail of convincing the most refractory of this Truth That though the Soul did pre-exist and act in another state yet she may utterly forget all the Scenes thereof in this Pag. 46. Now if the reasons why we lose the remembrance of our former life be greater c. And that they are so does appear in our Answer to the Objections made against the said Reasons if the Reader will consider them Pag. 50. And thereby have removed all prejudices c. But there is yet one Reason against Pre-existence which the ingenious Author never thought of urged by the Anti-Pre-existentiaries namely That it implies the rest of the Planets peopled with Mankind it being unreasonable to think that all Souls descended in their lapse to this onely Earth of Ours And if there be lapsed Souls there how shall they be recovered shall Christ undergo another and another death for them But I believe the ingenious Author would have looked upon this but as a mean and trifling Argument there being no force in any part thereof For why may not this Earth be the onely Hospital Nosocomium or Coemeterium speaking Platonically of sinfully lapsed Souls And then suppose others lapsed in other Planets what need Christ die again for them when one drop of his Bloud is sufficient to save myriads of Worlds Whence it may seem a pity there is not more Worlds than this Earth to be redeemed by it Nor is it necessary they should historically know it And if it be the Eclipse of the Sun at his Passion by some inspired Prophets might give them notice of it and describe to them as orderly an account of the Redemption as Moses does of the Creation though he stood not by while the World was framed but it was revealed to him by God And lastly it is but a rash and precarious Position to say that the infinite Wisdom of God has no more ways than one to save lapsed Souls It is sufficient that we are assured that this is the onely way for the saving of the Sons of Adam and these are the fixt bounds of revealed Truth in the Holy Scripture which appertains to us Inhabitants on Earth But as for the Oeconomy of his infinite Wisdom in the other Planets if we did but reflect upon our absolute ignorance thereof we would have the discretion not to touch upon that Topick unless we intended to make our selves ridiculous while we endeavour to make others so Chap. 6. pag. 51. Now as the infinite goodness of the Deity obligeth him always to do good so by the same to do that which is best c. To elude the force of this chief Argument of the Pre-existentiaries an ingenious Opposer has devised a way which seems worth our considering which is this viz. By making the Idea of God to consist mainly in Dominion and Soveraignty the Scriptures representing him under no other notion than as the Supream Lord and Soveraign of the Universe Wherefore nothing is to be attributed to him that enterferes with the uncontroulableness of his Dominion And therefore says he they that assert Goodness to be a necessary Agent that cannot but do that which is best directly supplant and destroy all the Rights of his Power and Dominion Nay he adds afterwards That this notion of Gods goodness is most apparently inconsistent not onely with his Power and Dominion but with all his other moral Perfections And for a further explication of his mind in this matter he adds afterwards That the Divine Will is indued with the highest kind of liberty as it imports a freedom not onely from foreign Violence but also from inward Necessity For spontaneity or immunity from coaction without indifferency carries in it as great necessity as those motions that proceed from Violence or Mechanism From whence he concludes That the Divine Will cannot otherwise be determined than by its own intrinsick energie And lastly Forasmuch as no Courtisie can oblige but what is received from one that had a power not to bestow them if God necessarily acted according to his Goodness and not out of mere choice and liberty of Will there were no thanks nor praise due to him which therefore would take away the duties of Religion This is the main of his Hypothesis whereby he would defeat the force of this Argument for the Pre-existence of Souls taken from the Goodness of God Which this Hypothesis certainly would do if it were true and therefore we will briefly examine it First therefore I answer That though the Scriptures do frequently represent God as the Lord and Soveraign of the Universe yet it does not conceal his other Attributes of Goodness and Mercy and the like But that the former should be so much inculcated is in reference to the begetting in the People Awe and Obedience to him But it is an invalid consequence to draw from hence that the Idea of God does mainly consist in Dominion and Soveraignty which abstracted from his other Attributes of Wisdom and Goodness would be a very black and dark representation of him and such as this ingenious Writer could not himself contemplate without aversation and horror How then can the Idea of God chiefly consist in this It is the most terrifying indeed but not the most noble and accomplishing part in the Idea of the Deity This Soveraignty then is such as is either bounded or not bounded by any other Attributes of God If bounded by none then he may do as well unwisely as wisely unjustly as justly If bounded by Wisdom and Justice why is it bounded by them but that it is better so to be than otherwise And Goodness being as essential to God as Wisdom and Justice why may not his Soveraignty be bounded by that as well as by the other and so he be bound from himself of himself to do as well what is best as what is better This consists with his absolute Soveraignty as well as the other And indeed what can be absolute Soveraignty in an intelligent Being if this be not viz. fully and entirely to follow the will and inclinations of its own nature without any check or controul of any one touching those over whom he rules Whence in the second place it appears that the asserting that Gods goodness is a necessary Agent in
such a sense as Gods Wisdom and Justice are which can do nothing but what is wise and just the asserting I say that it cannot but do that which is the best does neither directly nor indirectly supplant or destroy any Rights of his Power or Dominion forasmuch as he does fully and plenarily act according to his own inclinations and will touching those that are under his Dominion But that his Will is always inclined or determined to what is best it is the Prerogative of the Divine Nature to have no other Wills nor Inclinations but such And as for that in the third place That this notion of Gods Goodness is inconsistent with all his other moral Perfections I say that it is so far from being inconsistent with them that they cannot subsist without it as they respect the dealings of God with his Creatures For what a kind of Wisdom or Justice would that be that tended to no good But I suspect his meaning is by moral Perfections Perfections that imply such a power of doing or not doing as is in humane actions which if it be not allowed in God his Perfections are not moral And what great matter is it if they be not provided they be as they are and ought to be Divine But to fancy moral actions in God is to admit a second kind of Anthropomorphitism and to have unworthy conceits of the Divine Nature When it was just and wise for God to do so or so and the contrary to do otherwise had he a freedom to decline the doing so Then he had a freedom to do unjustly and unwisely And yet in the fourth place he contends for the highest kind of liberty in the Divine Will such as imports a freedom not onely from forreign Violence but also from inward Necessity as if the Divine Will could be no otherwise determined than by its own intrinsick Energie as if it willed so because it willed so which is a sad principle And yet I believe this learned Writer will not stick to say that God cannot tye cannot condemn myriads of innocent Souls to eternal Torments And what difference betwixt Impossibility and Necessity For Impossibility it self is onely a Necessity of not doing which is here internal arising from the excellency and absolute perfection of the Divine Nature Which is nothing like Mechanism for all that Forasmuch as it is from a clear understanding of what is best and an unbyassed Will which will most certainly follow it nor is determined by its own intrinsick Energy That it is otherwise with us is our imperfection And lastly That Beneficence does not oblige the Receiver of it to either Praise or Thanksgiving when it is received from one that is so essentially good and constantly acts according to that principle when due occasion is offered as if it were as absurd as to give thanks to the Sun for shining when he can do no otherwise I say the case is not alike because the Sun is an inanimate Being and has neither Understanding nor Will to approve his own action in the exerting of it And he being but a Creature if his shining depended upon his Will it is a greater perfection than we can be assured would belong to him that he would unfailingly administer Light to the World with such a steadiness of Will as God sustains the Creation Undoubtedly all Thanks and Praise is due to God from us although he be so necessarily good that he could not but create us and provide for us forasmuch as he has done this for our sakes merely he wanting nothing not for his own Suppose a rich Christian so inured to the works of Charity that the Poor were as certain of getting an Alms from him as a Traveller is to quench his thirst at a publick Spring near the Highway would those that received Alms from him think themselves not obliged to Thanks It may be you will say they will thank him that they may not forfeit his Favour another time Which Answer discovers the spring of this Misconceit which seems founded in self-love as if all Duty were to be resolved into that and as if there were nothing owing to another but what implied our own profit But though the Divine Goodness acts necessarily yet it does not blindly but according to the Laws of Decorum and Justice which those that are unthankful to the Deity may find the smart of But I cannot believe the ingenious Writer much in earnest in these points he so expresly declaring what methinks is not well consistent with them For his very words are these God can never act contrary to his necessary and essential properties as because he is essentially wise just and holy he can do nothing that is foolish unjust and wicked Here therefore I demand Are we not to thank him and praise him for his actions of Wisdom Justice and Holiness though they be necessary And if Justice Wisdom and Holiness be the essential properties of God according to which he does necessarily act and abstain from acting why is not his Goodness when it is expresly said by the Wisdom of God incarnate None is good save one that is God Which must needs be understood of his essential Goodness Which therefore being an essential property as well as the rest he must necessarily act according to it And when he acts in the Scheme of Anger and Severity it is in the behalf of Goodness and when he imparts his Goodness in lesser measures as well as in greater it is for the good of the Whole or of the Vniverse If all were Eye where were the Hearing c. as the Apostle argues So that his Wisdom moderates the prompt outflowings of his Goodness that it may not outflow so but that in the general it is for the best And therefore it will follow that if the Pre-existence of Souls comply with the Wisdom Justice and Holiness of God that none of these restrain his prompt and parturient Goodness that it must have caused humane Souls to pre-exist or exist so soon as the Spirits of Angels did And he must have a strange quick-sightedness that can discern any clashing of that act of Goodness with any of the abovesaid Attributes Chap. 7. pag. 56. God never acts by mere Will or groundless Humour c. We men have unaccountable inclinations in our irregular and depraved Composition have blind lusts or desires to do this or that and it is our present ease and pleasure to fulfil them and therefore we fancy it a priviledge to be able to execute these blind inclinations of which we can give no rational account but that we are pleased by fulfilling them But it is against the Purity Sanctity and Perfection of the Divine Nature to conceive any such thing in Him and therefore a weakness in our Judgments to fancy so of him like that of the Anthropomorphites that imagined God to be of Humane shape Pag. 59. That God made all things for himself It is ignorance
but temporary which I am sure they shall never be for the very same word that is used to express the permanence of the one measures out the continuance of the other and if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 denotes everlasting life a blessedness that shall never end Mat. 25. ult what can 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the same verse signifie but perpetual punishment a misery that shall never cease This is pretty handsomly put together but as I said does not conclude firmly what is driven at For it being undeniably true that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies as well that which onely is of a long continuance as what is properly everlasting and it being altogether rational that when words have more significations than one that signification is to be applied that is most agreeable to the subject it is predicated of and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in that higher sence of property and absolutely everlasting not being applicable to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but upon this Writers monstrous supposition that the Will of God has a Supremacy over his Wisdom Goodness and Justice as if the righteous God could act against his own Conscience which no honest man can do it is plain that though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie properly everlasting that there is no necessity that it should signifie so in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but have that other signification of long continuance though not of everlastingness and that continuance so long as if considered would effectually rouze any man out of his sins and Eternity not considered will not move him This one would think were enough to repress the confidence of this young Writer But I will adde something more out of his fellow Anti-Pre-existentiary That Comminations are not though Promises be obligatory Forasmuch as in Comminations the Comminator is the Creditor and he that is menaced the Debtor that owes the punishment with which that Latine Phrase well agrees dare poenas but in Promises he that promiseth becomes Debtor and he to whom the Promise is made Creditor Whence the Promiser is plainly obliged to make good his Promise as being the Debtor But the Comminator as being the Creditor is not obliged to exact the punishment it being in the power of any Creditor to remit the Debt owing him if he will Wherefore in this Commination of eternal fire or everlasting punishment though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie here properly everlasting as well as in everlasting life yet because this latter is a Promise the other onely a Commination it does not follow that as surely as the Righteous shall be rewarded with everlasting life so surely shall the Wicked be punished with everlasting fire in the most proper and highest extent of the signification of the word Because God in his Comminations to the Wicked is onely a Creditor and has still a right and power to remit either part or the whole Debt but to the Righteous by vertue of his Promise he becomes a Debtor and cannot recede but must punctually keep his word To all which I adde this Challenge Let this Writer or any else if they can demonstrate that a Soul may not behave herself so perversely obstinately and despightfully against the Spirit of Grace that she may deserve to be made an everlasting Hackstock of the Divine Nemesis even for ever and ever And if she deserve it it is but just that she have it and if it be just it is likewise good For Justice is nothing else but Goodness modified in such sort as Wisdom and sense of Decorum sees fittest But the Election of Wisdom being always for the best all things considered it is plain that Justice and the execution thereof is for the best and that so Goodness not mere Will upon pretence of having a Supremacy over Goodness would be the measure of this sentencing such obdurate sinners to eternal punishment And this eternal punishment as it is a piece of vindicative Justice upon these obdurate sinners so it naturally contributes to the establishment of the Righteous in their Celestial Happiness Which this Opposer of Pre-existence objects somewhere if Souls ever fell from they may fall from it again But these eternal Torments of Hell if they needed it would put a sure bar thereto So that the Wisdom and Goodness also of God is upon this account concerned in the eternal punishments of Hell as well as his Justice That it be to the unreclaimable as that Orphick Hemistichium calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The fifth and last forcible Argument as he calls them for the proving the Soveraignty of Gods Will over his Goodness is this If Gods Goodness saith he be not under the command of his Will but does always what is best why did it not perpetuate the Station of Pre-existent Souls and hinder us if ever we were happy in a sublimer state from lapsing into these Regions of Sin and Death But who does not at first sight discern the weakness of this Allegation For it is plainly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an absurd thing and contrary to Reason to create such a species of Being whose nature is free and mutable and at the first dash to dam up or stop the exercise of that freedom and capacity of change by confining it to a fixt Station As ridiculous as to suppose a living Creature made with wings and feet and yet that the Maker thereof should take special care it should never slie nor go And so likewise that the mere making of such an Order of Beings as have a freedom of Will and choice of their Actions that this is misbecoming the Goodness of God is as dull and idiotical a conceit and such as implies that God should have made but one kind of Creature and that the most absolutely and immutably happy that can be or else did not act according to his Goodness or for the best Which is so obvious a Falshood that I will not confute it But it is not hard to conceive that he making such a free-willed Creature as the Souls of men simul cum mundo condito and that in an happy condition and yet not â—ixing them in that Station may excellently well accord with the Soveraignty of his Goodness nor any one be constrained to have recourse to the Supremacy of his Will over his Goodness as if he did it because he would do it and not because it was best For what can this freedom of Will consist in so much as in a temptableness by other Objects that are of an inferiour nature not so divine and holy as the other to which it were the security of the Soul to adhere with all due constancy and therefore her duty But in that she is temptable by other Objects it is a signe that her present enjoyment of the more Divine and Heavenly Objects are not received of her according to their excellency but according to the measure and capacity of her present state which
incorruption So little inconsistency is there of this Hypothesis as touching the souls acting in either an Aereal or Aethereal Vehicle during the interval betwixt the Resurrection and her departure hence with the Resurrection of the bodie But in the mean time there is a strong bar thereby put to the dull dream of the Psychopanychiles and other harshnesses also eased or smoothed by it Now as for the third Argument which must needs seem a great Scare-crow to the illiterate there is very little weight or none at all in it For if we take but notice of the whole Atmosphere what is the dimension thereof and of the three Regions into which it is distributed all these Bugbears will vanish As for the Dimension of the whole Atmosphere it is by the skilful reputed about fifty to Italick miles high the Convex of the middle Region thereof about four such miles the Concave about half a mile Now this distribution of the Air into these three Regions being thus made and the Hebrew tongue having no other name to call the Expansum about us but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heaven here is according to them a distribution of Heaven into three and the highest Region will be part of the third Heaven This therefore premised I answer That though the souls of good men after death be detained within the Atmosphere of the Air and the Air it self haply may reach much higher than this Atmosphere that is bounded by the mere ascent of exhalations and vapours yet there is no necessity at all that they should be put to those inconveniencies which this Argument pretends from the company of Devils or incommodious changes and disturbances of the Air. For suppose such inconveniencies in the middle and lowest Region yet the upper Region which is also part of the third Heaven those parts are ever calm and serene And the Devils Principality reaching no further than through the middle and lowest Region next the earth not to advertise that his quarters may be restrained there also the souls of the departed that are good are not liable to be pester'd and haunted with the ungrateful Presence or Occursions of the deformed and grim Retinue or of the vagrant vassals of that foul Feind that is Prince of the Air he being onely so of these lower parts thereof and the good souls having room enough to consociate together in the upper Region of it Nor does that promise of our Saviour to the thief on the Cross that that very day he should be with him in Paradise at all clash with this Hypothesis of Aereal Bodies both because Christ by his miraculous power might confer that upon the penitent thief his fellow-sufferer which would not fall to the share of other penitents in a natural course of things and also because this third Region of the Air may be part of Paradise it self In my Fathers house there are many Mansions and some learned men have declared Paradise to be in the Air but such a part of the Air as is free from gross Vapours and Clouds and such is the third Region thereof In the mean time we see the souls of good men departed freed from those Panick fears of being infested either by the unwelcome company of Fiends and Devils or incommodated by any dull cloudy obscurations or violent and tempestuous motions of the Air. Onely the shadowy Vale of the Night will be cast over them once in a Nycthemeron But what incommodation is that after the brisk active heat of the Sun in the day-time to have the variety of the more mild beams of the Moon or gentle though more quick and chearful scintillations of the twinkling Stars This variety may well seem an addition to the felicity of their state And the shadowyness of the Night may help them in the more composing Introversions of their contemplative mind and cast the soul into ineffably pleasing slumbers and Divine extasies so that the transactions of the Night may prove more solacing and beatifick sometimes than those of the day Such things we may guess at afar off but in the mean time be sure that these good and serious Souls know how to turn all that God sends to them to the improvement of their Happiness To the fourth Argument we answer That there are not a few reasons from the nature of the thing that may beget in us a strong presumption that souls recovered into their Celestial Happiness will never again relapse though they did once For first it may be a mistake that the Happiness is altogether the same that it was before For our first Paradisiacal Bodies from which we lapsed might be of a more crude and dilute Aether not so full and saturate with Heavenly glory and perfection as our Resurrection-body is Secondly The soul was then unexperienced and lightly coming by that Happiness she was in did the more heedlessly forgo it before she was well aware and her mind roved after new adventures though she knew not what Thirdly It is to be considered whether Regeneration be not a stronger tenour for enduring Happiness than the being created happie For this being wrought so by degrees upon the Plastick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with ineffable groans and piercing desires after that Divine Life that the Spirit of God co-operating exciteth in us when Regeneration is perfected and wrought to the full by these strong Agonies this may rationally be deemed a deeper tincture in the soul than that she had by mere Creation whereby the soul did indeed become Holy innocent and happie but not coming to it with any such strong previous conflicts and eager workings and thirstings after that state it might not be so firmly rooted by far as in Regeneration begun and accomplished by the operation of Gods Spirit gradually but more deeply renewing the Divine Image in us Fourthly It being a renovation of our Nature into a pristine state of ours the strength and depth of impression seems increased upon that account also Fifthly The remembrance of all the hardships we underwent in our lapsed condition whether of Mortification or cross Rancounters this must likewise help us to persevere when once returned to our former Happiness Sixthly The comparing of the evanid pleasures of our lapsed or terrestrial life with the fulness of those Joys that we find still in our heavenly will keep us from ever having any hankering after them any more Seventhly The certain knowledge of everlasting punishment which if not true they could not know must be also another sure bar to any such negligencies as would hazard their setled felicity Which may be one reason why the irreclaimable are eternally punished namely that it may the better secure eternal Happiness to others Eighthly Though we have our triple Vital Congruity still yet the Plastick life is so throughly satisfied with the Resurrection-body which is so considerably more full and saturate with all the heavenly richness and Glorie than the former that the Plastick of the soul is
requires no such thing but it rather clashes with the first and chiefest Pillar thereof viz. That all the Divine designs and actions are laid and carried on by Infinite Goodness And I have already intimated how much better it is to be this way that I am pleading for than that of this otherwise-ingenious Writer Pag. 125. Since by long and hard exercise in this body the Plastick Life is well tamed and debilitated c. But this is not at all necessary no not in those souls whose Plastick may be deemed the most rampant Dis-union from this Terrestrial body immediately tames it I mean the Terrestrial Congruity of Life and itâ— operation is stopt as surely as a string of a Lutâ— never so smartly vibrated is streightways silenced by a gentle touch of the finger and another single string may be immediately made to sound alone while the other is mute and silent For I say these are the free Laws of the Eternal Wisdom but fatally and vitally not intellectually implanted in the Spirit of Nature and in all Humane Souls or Spirits The whole Universe is as it were the Automatal Harp of that great and true Apollo and as for the general striking of the strings and stopping their vibrations they are done with as exquisite art as if a free intellectual Agent plaid upon them But the Plastick powers in the world are not such but onely Vital and Fatal as I said before Pag. 126. That an Aereal body was not enough for it to display its force upon c. It is far more safe and rational to say that the soul deserts her Aereal Estate by reason that the Period of the Vital Congruity is expired which according to those fatal Laws I spoke of before is determined by the Divine Wisdom But whether a soul may do any thing to abbreviate this Period and excite such symptoms in the Plastick as may shorten her continuance in that state let it be left to the more inquisitive to define Pag. 128. Where is then the difference betwixt the just and the wicked in state place and body Their difference in place I have sufficiently shewn in my Answer to the third Argument against the triple Congruity of Life in the Plastick of Humane Souls how fitly they may be disposed of in the Air. But to the rude Buffoonry of that crude Opposer of the Opinion of Pre-existence I made no Answer It being methinks sufficiently answered in the Scholia upon Sect. 12. Cap. 3. Lib. 3. of Dr. H. Mores Immortalitas Animae if the Reader think it worth his while to consult the place Now for State and Body the difference is obvious The Vehicle is of more pure Air and the Conscience more pure of the one than of the other Pag. 130. For according to this Hypothesis the gravity of those bodies is less because the quantity of the earth that draws them is so c. This is an ingenious invention both to salve that Phaenomenon why Bodies in Mines and other deep subterraneous places should seem not so heavy nor hard to lift there as they are in the superiour Air above the earth and also to prove that the crust of the earth is not of so considerable a thickness as men usually conceive it is I say it is ingenious but not so firm and sure The Quick-silver in a Torricellian Tube will sink deeper in an higher or clearer Air though there be the same Magnetism of the earth under it that was before But this is not altogether so fit an illustration there being another cause than I drive at conjoyned thereto But that which I drive at is sufficient of it self to salve this Phaenomenon A Bucket of water while it is in the water comes up with ease to him that draws it at the Well but so soon as it comes into the Air though there be the same earth under it that there was before it feels now exceeding more weighty Of which I conceive the genuine reason is because the Spirit of Nature which ranges all things in their due order acts proportionately strongly to reduce them thereto as they are more heterogeniously and disproportionately placed as to their consistencies And therefore by how much more crass and solid a body is above that in which it is placed by so much the stronger effort the Spirit of Nature uses to reduce it to its right place but the less it exceeds the crassness of the Element it is in the effort is the less or weaker Hence therefore it is that a stone or such like body in those subterraneous depths seems less heavy because the air there is so gross and thick and is not so much disproportionate to the grossness of the stone as our air above the earth here is nor do I make any doubt but if the earth were all cut away to the very bottom of any of these Mines so that the Air might be of the same consistency with ours the stone would then be as heavy as it is usually to us in this superioor surface of the earth So that this is no certain Argument for the proving that the crust of the earth is of such thinness as this Author would have it though I do not question but that it is thin enough Pag. 131. And the mention of the Fountains of the great Deep in the Sacred History c. This is a more considerable Argument for the thinness of the crust of the earth and I must confess I think it not improbable but that there is an Aqueous hollow Sphaericum which is the Basis of this habitable earth according to that of Psalm 24. 2. For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the flouds Pag. 131. Now I intend not that after a certain distance all is fluid matter to the Centre That is to say After a certain distance of earthly Matter that the rest should be fluid Matter namely Water and Air to the Centre c. But here his intention is directed by that veneration he has for Des Cartes Otherwise I believe if he had freely examined the thing to the bottom he would have found it more reasonable to conclude all fluid betwixt the Concave of the Terrestrial Crust and the Centre of the Earth as we usually phrase it though nothing be properly Earth but that Crust Pag. 131. Which for the most part very likely is a gross and foetid kind of air c. On this side of the Concave of the Terrestrial Crust there may be several Hollows of foetid air and stagnant water which may be so many particular lodgings for lapsed and unruly Spirits But there is moreover a considerable Aqueous Sphaericum upon which the earth is founded and is most properly the Abyss but in a more comprehensive notion all from the Convex thereof to the Centre may be termed the Abyss or the Deepest place that touches our imagination Pag. 131. The lowest and central Regions may be filled with flame and
it may be so much as the motion of the Earth suppose and Des Cartes his Vortices and the like to be certain Science it is the interest of every National Church to define the truth of no more Theories than are plainly necessary for Faith and good manners because if they either be really or seem to be mistaken in their unnecessary Decisions or Definitions this with those that are more knowing than ingenuous will certainly lessen the Authority and Reverence due to the Church and hazard a secret enmity of such against her But to adventure upon no Decisions but what have the Authority of Scripture which they have that were the Decisions of General Councils before the Apostasie and plain usefulness as well as Reason of their side this is the greatest Conservative of the Honour and Authority of a Church especially joyned with an exemplary life that the greatest Prudence or Politicks can ever excogitate Which true Politicks the Church of Rome having a long time ago deserted has been fain an horrid thing to think of it to support her Authority and extort Reverence by mere Violence and Bloud Whenas if she had followed these more true and Christian Politicks she would never have made herself so obnoxious but for ought one knows she might have stood and retained her Authority for ever In the mean time this is suitable enough and very well worth our noting That forasmuch as there is no assurance of the Holy Ghost's assisting unnecessary Decisions though it were of the Universal Church much less of any National one so that if such a point be determined it is uncertainly determined and that there may be several ways of holding a necessary Point some more accommodate to one kind of men others to another and that the Decisions of the Church are for the Edification of the people that either their Faith may be more firm or their Lives more irreprehensible these things I say being premised it seems most prudent and Christian in a Church to decline the Decision of the circumstances of any necessary point forasmuch as by deciding and determining the thing one way those other handles by which others might take more fast hold on it are thereby cut off and so their assent made less firm thereto We need not go far for an example if we but remember what we have been about all this time It is necessarie to believe that we have in us an Immortal Spirit capable of Salvation and Damnation according as we shall behave ourselves This is certainly revealed to us and is of indispensable usefulness But though this Opinion or rather Article of Faith be but oâ—e yet there are several waies of holding it And it lies more easie in some mens minds if they suppose it created by God at every conception in the Womb in othersome if they conceive it to be ex Traduce and lastly in others if it pre-exist But the waies of holding this Article signifie nothing but as they are subservient to the making us the more firmly hold the same For the more firmly we believe it the greater influence will it have upon our lives to cause us to live in the fear of God and in the waies of Righteousness like good Christians Wherefore now it being supposed that it will stick more firm and fixt in some mens minds by some one of these three waies rather than by either of the other two and thus of any one of the three It is manifest it is much more prudently done of the Church not to cut off two of these three handles by a needless nay a harmful Decision but let every one choose that handle that he can hold the Article fastest by for his own support and Edification For thus every one laying firm hold on that handle that is best fitted for his own grasp the Article will carry all these three sorts of believers saâ—e up to Heaven they living accordingly whenas two sorts of them would have more slippery or uncertain hold if they had no handle offered to them but those which are less suitable to their grasp and Genius Which shews the Prudence Care and Accuracy of Judgment in the Church of England that as in other things so in this she has made no such needless and indeed hurtful Decisions but left the modes of conceiving things of the greatest moment to every ones self to take it that way that he can lay the fastest hold of it and it will lie the most easily in his mind without doubt and wavering And therefore there being no one of these handles but what may be useful to some or other for the more easie and undoubted holding that there is in us an Immaterial and Immortal Soul or Spirit my having taken this small pains to wipe off the soil and further the usefulness of one of them by these Annotations if it may not merit thanks it must I hope at least deserve excuse with all those that are not of too sowre and tetrick a Genius and prefer their own humours and sentiments before the real benefit of others But now if any one shall invidiously object that I prefer the Christian Discretion of my own Church the Church of England before the Judgment and Wisdom of a General Council namely the fifth Oecumenical Council held at Constantinople in Justinians time under the Patriarch Eutychius who succeeded Menas lately deceased to whom Justinian sent that Discourse of his against Origen and his errours amongst which Pre-existence is reckoned one In answer to this several things are to be considered that right may be done our Mother First What number of Bishops make a general Council so that from their Numerosity we may rely upon their Authority and infallibility that they will not conclude what is false Secondly Whether in whatsoever matters of debate though nothing to the Salvation of mens souls but of curious Speculation fitter for the Schools of Philosophers than Articles of Faith for the edification of the people whose memory and conscience ought to be charged with no notions that are not subservient to the rightly and duly honouring God and his onely begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ and to the faithful discharging their duty to man the assistance of the Spirit of God can rationally be expected or onely in such things as are necessary to be professed by the people and very useful for the promoting of Life and Godliness And as Moses has circumscribed his Narrative of the Creation within the limits of Mundus Plebeiorum and also the Chronology of time according to Scripture is bounded from the first Adam to the coming again of the second to Judgment and Sentencing the wicked to everlasting punishment and the righteous to life everlasting so whether the Decisions of the Church are not the most safely contained within these bounds and they faithfully discharge themselves in the conduct of Souls if they do but instruct them in such truths only as are within this compass
in the fore-cited place has perfectly routed that fond and foul Hypothesis of Dr. Glisson and I dare say is sorry that so good and old a Knight errant in Theologie and Philosophie as Mr. Richard Baxter seems to be should become benighted as in a wood at the Close of his daies in this most horrid dark Harbour and dismal Receptacle or Randevouz of wretched Atheists But I dare say for him it is his ignorance not choice that has lodged him there The fourth Disingenuity of Mr. Baxter towards the Doctor is in complaining of him as if he had wronged him by the Title of his Answer to his Letter in calling it an Answer to a Psychopyrist pag. 2. 82. As if he had asserted that materiality of Spirits which belongs to bodies pag. 94. In complaining also of his inconsistency with himself pag. 10. as if he one while said that Mr. Baxter made Spirits to be Fire or material and another while said he made them not Fire or material But to the first part of this Accusation it may be answered That if it is Mr. Baxter that is called the Learned Psychopyrist how is the thing known to the world but by himself It looks as if he were ambitious of the Title and proud of the â—ivil treating he has had at the hands of the Doctor though he has but ill repai'd his civility in his Reply And besides this there is no more harshness in calling him Psychopyrist than if he had called him Psycho-Hylist there being nothing absurd in Psychopyrism but so far forth as it includes Psycho-Hylism and makes the Soul material Which Psycho-Hylism that Mr. Baxter does admit it is made evident in the Doctors Answer Sect. 16. And Mr. Baxter in his Placid Collation as he mis-calls it for assuredly his mind was turbid when he wrote it pag. 2. allows that Spirits may be called Fire Analogicè and Eminenter and the Doctor in his Preface intimates that the sense is to be no further stretched than the Psychopyrist himself will allow But now that Mr. Baxter does assert that Materiality in created Spirits that belongs to bodies in the common sense of all Philosophers appears Sect. 16. where his words are these But custom having made MATERIA but especially CORPVS to signifie onely such grosser Substance as the three passive Elements are he means Earth Water Air I yield says he so to say that Spirits are not Corporeal or Material Which plainly implies that Spirits are in no other sense Immaterial than Fire and Aether are viz. than in this that they are thinner matter And therefore to the last point it may be answered in the Doctors behalf that he assuredly does nowhere say That Mr. Baxter does not say that Spirits are Material as Material is taken in the common sense of all Philosophers for what is impenetrable and discerpible Which is Materia Physica and in opposition to which a Spirit is said to be Immaterial And which briefly and distinctly states the Question Which if Mr. Baxter would have taken notice of he might have saved himself the labour of a great deal of needless verbosity in his Placid Collation where he does over-frequently under the pretence of more distinctness in the multitude of words obscure knowledge Fifthly Upon Sect. 10. pag. 21. where Mr. Baxters Question is How a man may tell how that God that can make many out of one cannot make many into one c. To which the Doctor there answers If the meaning be of substantial Spirits it has been already noted that God acting in Nature does not make many substances out of one the substance remaining still entire for then Generation would be Creation And no sober man believes that God assists any creature so in a natural course as to enable it to create And then I suppose that he that believes not this is not bound to puzzle himself why God may not as well make many substances into one as many out of one whenas he holds he does not the latter c. These are the Doctors own words in that Section In reply to which Mr. Baxter But to my Question saies he why God cannot make two of one or one of two you put me off with this lean Answer that we be not bound to puzzle our selves about it I think saies he that Answer might serve to much of your Philosophical disputes Here Mr. Baxter plainly deals very disingenuously with the Doctor in perverting his words which affirm onely That he that denies that God can make two substances of one in the sense above-declared need not puzzle himself how he may make one of those two again Which is no lean but full and apposite Answer to the Question there propounded And yet in this his Placid Collation as if he were wroth he gives ill language and insinuates That much of the Doctors Philosophical Disputes are such as are not worth a mans puzling himself about them whenas it is well known to all that know him or his Writings that he concerns himself in no Theories but such as are weighty and useful as this of the Indiscerpibility of Spirits is touching which he further slanders the Doctor as if it were his mere Assertion without any Proof As if Mr. Baxter had never read or forgot the Doctors Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit or what he has writ in the further Defence thereof See Sect. 26 28 30 31. Thus to say any thing in an angry mood verily does not become the Title of a Placid Collation Sixthly The Doctor in Sect. 11. of his Defence of his Notion of a Spirit writes thus I desire you to consider the nature of Light throughly and you shall find it nothing but a certain motion of a Medium whose parts or particles are so or so qualified some such way as Cartesianism drives at To this Mr. Baxter replies against the Doctor pag. 59. Really saies he when I read how far you have escaped the delusions of Cartesianism I am sorry you yet stick in so gross a part of it as this is when he that knoweth no more than motion in the nature of Fire which is the Active Principle by which Mental and Sensitive Nature operateth on Man and Brutes and Vegetables and all the Passive Elements and all the visible actions in this lower world are performed what can that mans Philosophie be worth I therefore return your Counsel study more throughly the nature of Ethereal Fire Satis pro imperio very Magisterially spoken and in such an igneous Rapture that it is not continuedly sense Does Mental and Sensitive Nature act on Brutes and Vegetables and all the Passive Elements But to let go that Is all the Doctors Philosophie worth nothing if he hold with Des Cartes touching the Phaenomenon of Light as to the Material part thereof It is the ignorance of Mr. Baxter that he rejects all in Des Cartes and Judiciousness in the Doctor that he retains some things and supplies where his
as a Spirit does Spirit and matter which Matter cannot do This is a certain Character of a Spirit And his instancing in Light as Indiscerpible is as little to the purpose For the substance of Light viz. the Materia subtilissima and Globuli are discerpible And the motion of them is but a Modus but the point in hand is Indiscerpibilitie of Substance To the Eighth I Answer That Mr. Baxter here is hugely unreasonable in his demands as if Penetrabilitie of Spirits were not sufficiently explained unless it can be made out that all the Spirits in the world Universal and particular may be contracted into one Punctum But this is a Theme that he loves to enlarge upon and to declaim on very Tragically as pag. 52. If Spirits have parts which may be extended and contracted you will hardly so easily prove as say that God cannot divide them And when in your Writings shall I find satisfaction into how much space one Spirit may be extended and into how little it may be contracted and whether the whole Spirit of the World may be contracted into a Nut-shell or a Box and the Spirit of a Flea may be extended to the Convex of all the world And again pag. 78. You never tell into how little parts onely it may be contracted And if you put any limits I will suppose that one Spirit hath contracted itself into the least compass possible and then I ask Cannot another and another Spirit be in the same compass by their Penetration If not Spirits may have a contracted Spissitude which is not Penetrable and Spirits cannot penetrate contracted Spirits but onely dilated ones If yea then quaero whether all created Spirits may not be so contracted And I should hope that the Definition of a Spirit excludeth not God and yet that you do not think that his Essence may be contracted and dilated O that we knew how little we know This grave moral Epiphonema with a sorrowful shaking of the Head is not in good truth much misbecoming the sly insinuating cunning of Mr. Richard Baxter who here makes a shew speaking in the first person We of lamenting and bewailing the ignorance of his own ignorance but friendly hooks in by expressing himself in the plural number the Doctor also into the same condemnation Solamen miseris as if He neither did understand his own ignorance in the things he Writes of but will be strangely surprised at the hard Riddles Mr. Baxter has propounded as if no Oedipus were able to solve them And I believe the Doctor if he be called to an account will freely confess of himself That in the things he positively pronounces of so far as he pronounces that he is indeed altogether ignorant of any ignorance of his own therein But that this is by reason that he according to the cautiousness of his Genius does not adventure further than he clearly sees ground and the notion appears useful for the Publick As it is indeed useful to understand that Spirits can both Penetrate matter and Penetrate one another else God could not be Essentially present in all the parts of the Corporeal Universe nor the Spirits of Men and Angels be in God Both which notwithstanding are most certainly true to say nothing of the Spirit of Nature which particular Spirits also Penetrate and are Penetrated by it But now for the Contraction and Dilatation of Spirits that is not a propertie of Spirits in general as the other are but of particular created Spirits as the Doctor has declared in his Treatise of the Immortalitie of the Soul So that that hard Question is easily answered concerning Gods contracting and dilating himself That he does neither he being no created Spirit and being more absolutely perfect than that any such properties should be competible to him And it is reasonable to conceive that there is little actually of that propertie in the Spirit of Nature it being no particular Spirit though created but an Universal one and having no need thereof For the corporeal world did not grow from a small Embryo into that vast amplitude it is now of but was produced of the same largeness it now has though there was a successive delineation and orderly polishing and perfecting the vast distended parts thereof And to speak compendiously and at once That God that has Created all things in number weight measure has given such measures of Spiritual Essence and of the facultie of contracting and dilating the same as also of Spiritual Subtilty of substance as serves the ends of his Wisdom and Goodness in creating such a species of Spirit So that it is fond unskilful and ridiculous to ask if the whole Spirit of the world can be contracted into a Nut-shell and the Spirit of a Flea extended to the Convex of the Universe They that talk at this rate err as Aliens from the Wisdome of God and ignorant of the Laws of Nature and indeed of the voice of Scripture itself Why should God make the Spirit of a Flea which was intended for the constituting of such a small Animal large enough to fill the whole world Or what need of such a contraction in the Spirit of Nature or Plastick Soul of the corporeal Universe that it may be contrived into a Nut-shell That it has such Spiritual subtiltie as that particular Spirits may contract themselves in it so close together as to be commensurate to the first Inchoations of a Foetus which is but very small stands to good reason and Effects prove it to be so As also this smalness of a Foetus or Embryo that particular Spirits are so far contracted at first and expand themselves leisurely afterwards with the growth of the bodie which they regulate But into how much lesser space they can or do contract themselves at any time is needless to know or enquire And there is no Repugnancie at all but the Spirit of Nature might be contracted to the like Essential Spissitude that some particular Spirits are but there is no reason to conceit that it ever was or ever will be so contracted while the World stands Nor lastly is there any Inconvenience in putting indefinite limits of Contraction in a Spirit and to allow that after such a measure of Contraction though we cannot say just what that is it naturally contracts no further nor does another so contracted naturally penetrate this thus contracted Spirit For as the usefulness of that measure of Self-Penetrability and Contraction is plain so it is as plain that the admitting of it is no incongruitie nor incommoditie to the Universe nor any confusion to the Specifick modes of Spirit and Bodie For these two Spirits suppose contracted to the utmost of their natural limits may naturally avoid the entring one another not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as in Bodies or Matter but by a vital Saturitie or natural Uneasiness in so doing Besides that though at such a contracted pitch they are naturally impenetrable to one
indued with Life whenas yet he pag. 35. will not admit that self-motion is an indication of Life in the subject that moves itself although it is the very prime argument that his beloved and admired Dr. Glisson useth to prove that there is universally life in Matter But it is the symptome of an over Polemical Fencer to deny a thing merely because he finds it not for his turn In the mean time it is plain the Doctor has not added the facultie of motion rashly out of over sight but for the instructing the ignorant in so important a truth That there is no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but there is Life and Spirit This is so great a truth that the Platonists make it to be the main Character of Soul or Spirit to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as you may see in Proclus Fifthly No man saith he can understand that the Negative Immaterial by the terms includeth Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie Ans No man that rightly understands himself but must conceive that Immaterial signifies an opposite or contrary condition to Material and he knowing as who is ignorant of it that the proper and essential characters of Material in substantia materialis is to be Impenetrable and Discerpible he will necessarily even whether he will or no discover that Immaterial which signifies the opposite to these in substantia immaterialis must denote Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Sixthly You do not say here saith he that they are the Form but elsewhere you do and the Form should be exprest and not onely vertually contained as you speak Ans What would you have him in the very Definition it self which is so clear an one say This is the Genus this the Form as those bunglers I mentioned above writ the names of the Animals they had so badly drawn And that the Form should be exprest is true but it is sufficient it be exprest in such a comprehensive term as contains under it all that belongs to such a Species As when we have divided Vivens into Planta and Animal if we then define Animal to be Vivens sensu praeditum that one word sensus is sufficient because it reaches any Species of Animal and none but Animals And yet here the Doctor is not so niggardly as to pinch the expression of all the Form or Difference into that one word Immaterial whereby he here onely intimates Penetrability and Indiscerpibility but for fuller explication addeth Intrinsecally indued with Life and the facultie of motion But lastly For his elsewhere calling Penetrability and Indiscerpibility the Form of a Spirit he nowhere makes them the whole Form of a Spirit but makes the Logical Form or Differentia of a Spirit to be all that which he has expressed in this Definition viz. Immaterial which denotes Penetrability and Indiscerpibility and Intrinsecal life and motion And it is evident that when he calls this Differentia in his Definition Form that he does not mean the very specifick Substance or Essence whereby a Spirit is a Spirit but onely essential or inseparable Attributes which onely are known to us and which are only in an improper sense said to be the Form it self or specifick Nature They are onely the Result of the Form and Notes of an Essence or Substance Specifically distinct from some other Substance It is not so in substantial Forms as in Geometrical Forms or Figures as to Visibilitie or Perceptibilitie Dic tu formam hujus lapidis says Scaliger to Cardan Phyllida solus habeto But there are inseparable and essential Properties of a substantial Form necessarily resulting from the Form it self as there are in external Forms or Figures As for example from the form of a Globe which is a round Form defined from the equalitie of all lines from one point drawn thence to the Superficies From this form does necessarily and inseparably result the Character of an easie rouling Mobilitie That a bodie of this Form is the most easily moved upon a Plain of any bodie in the world And so from the Form of a piece of Iron made into what we call a Sword Fitness for striking for cutting for stabbing and for defending of the hand is the necessarie result from this Form thereof And so I say that from the intimate and essential Form of a Spirit suppose essentially and inseparably result such and such properties by which we know that a Spirit is a distinct Species from other things though we do not know the very specifick essence thereof And therefore here I note by the by that when the Doctor saies any such or such Attributes are the Form of a Spirit he does datâ operâ balbutire cum balbutientibus and expresses himself in the language of the Vulgar and speaks to Mr. Baxter in his own Dialect For it is the declared opinion of the Doctor that the intimate Form of no Essence or Substance is knowable but onely the inseparable Fruits or Results thereof Which is a Principle wants no proof but an appeal to every mans faculties that has ordinarie wit and sinceritie Seventhly They are not the Form saith he but the Dispositio vel Conditio ad formam Ans You may understand out of what was said even now that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie are so far from being Dispositio ad formam that they are the Fruits and Results of the intimate and Specifick Form of a Spirit and that they suppose this Specifick Form in order of nature to precede them as the Form of a Globe precedes the rouling mobilitie thereof In vertue of a Spirits being such a Specifick substance it has such inseparable attributes resulting from it as a Globe has mobilitie And as the Globe is conceived first and mobilitie inseparably resulting from it so the Specifick Nature of a Spirit which is its true and intimate Form and made such according to the eternal Idea thereof in the Intellect of God being one simple Specifick substance or Essence has resulting from it those essential or inseparable properties which we attribute to a Spirit itself in the mean time remaining but one simple self-subsistent Actus Entitativus whose Penetrabilitie and Indivisibilitie Mr. Baxter himself pag. 99. says is easily defendible And the Doctor who understands himself I dare say for him defends the Penetrabilitie and Indivisibilitie of no Essences but such Eighthly If such Modalities says he or Consistence were the Form more such should be added which are left out Ans He should have nominated those which are left out He means I suppose Quantity and Trina Dimensio which it was his discretion to omit they being so impertinent as I have shewn above in my Answer to his third Objection against the Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie of a Spirit Ninthly Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie are two Notions and you should not give us says he a compound Form Ans This implies that Penetrability and Indiscerpibility are the Form of a Spirit but I have said again and again they are but the Fruits
Attributes of a Spirit contrarie to Matter are not in vain For whenas a Plastick Spirit is to actuate and organize Matter and inwardly dispose it into certain forms Penetrability is needful that it may possess the Matter and order it throughout As also that Oneness of Essence and Indiscerpibility that it may hold it together For what should make any mass of Matter one but that which has a special Oneness of Essence in it self quite different from that of Matter And forasmuch as all Souls are indued with the Plastick whether of Brutes or Men not to add the Spirits of Angels still there holds the same reason in all ranks that Spirits should be as well Penetrable and Indiscerpible as Vital And if there be any Platonick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that have no Plastick yet Penetrability must belong to them and is of use to them if they be found to be within the verges of the Corporeal Universe and why not they as well as God himself and Indiscerpibility maintains their Supposital Unitie as it does in all Spirits that have to do with Matter and are capable of a vital coalescencie therewith But I have accumulated here more Theorie than is needful And I must remember that I am in a Digression To return therefore to the particular point we have been about all this while I hope by this time I have made it good that the Dr.'s Definition of a Spirit is so clear so true so express and usefully instructive and that is the scope of the Doctors Writings that neither he himself nor any body else let them consider as much as they can will ever be able to mend it And that these affected Cavils of Mr. Baxter argue no defects or slaws in the Doctors Definition but the ignorance and impotencie of Mr. Baxters Spirit and the undue elation of his mind when notwithstanding this unexceptionableness of the Definition he pag. 82. out of his Magisterial Chair of Judicature pronounces with a gracious nod You mean well but all our Conceptions here must have their ALLOWANCES and we must confess their weakness This is the Sentence which grave Mr. Baxter alto supercilio gives of the Doctors accurate Definition of a Spirit to humble him and exalt himself in the sight of the populacie But is it not a great weakness or worse to talk of favourable allowances and not to allow that to be unexceptionable against which no just exception is found But to give Mr. Baxter his due though the extream or extimate parts of this Paragraph pag. 82. which you may fancie as the skin thereof may seem to have something of bitterness and toughness in it yet the Belly of the Paragraph is full of plums and sweet things For he saies And we are all greatly beholden to the Doctor for his so industrious calling foolish Sensualists to the study and notion of invisible Beings without which what a carcass or nothing were the world But is it not pity then while the Doctor does discharge this Province with that faithfulness and industrie that Mr. Baxter should disturb him in his work and hazzard the fruits and efficacie thereof by eclipsing the clearness of his Notions of Spiritual Beings for Bodies may be also invisible by the interposition or opposition of his own great Name against them who as himself tells the world in his Church-History has wrote fourscore Books even as old Dr. Glisson his Patron or rather Pattern in Philosophy arrived to at least fourscore Years of age And Mr. Baxter it seems is for the common Proverb The older the wiser though Elihu in Job be of another mind who saies there I said Days should speak and multitude of Years should teach Wisdom But there is a Spirit in man and the Inspiration of the Almighty giveth him Vnderstanding But whither am I going I would conclude here according to promise having rescued the Doctors Definition of a Spirit from Mr. Baxters numerous little Criticisms like so many shrill busie Gnats trumpeting about it and attempting to insix their feeble Proboscides into it and I hope I have silenced them all But there is something in the very next Paragraph which is so wrongfully charged upon the Doctor that I cannot forbear standing up in his justification The Charge is this That he has fathered upon Mr. Baxter an Opinion he never owned and nick-named him Psychopyrist from his own fiction As if says he we said that Souls are Fire and also took Fire as the Doctor does for Candles and hot Irons c. onely But I answer in behalf of the Doctor as I have a little toucht on this matter before That he does indeed entitle a certain Letter which he answers to a Learned Psychopyrist as the Author thereof But Mr. Baxters name is with all imaginable care concealed So that he by his needless owning the Letter has notched that nick-name as he calls it of Psychopyrist upon himself whether out of greediness after that alluring Epithet it is baited with I know not but that he hangs thus by the gills like a Fish upon the Hook he may thank his own self for it nor ought to blame the Doctor Much less accuse him for saying that Mr. Baxter took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like For in his Preface he expresly declares on the Psychopyrists behalf that he does not make this crass and visible Fire the Essence of a Spirit but that his meaning is more subtile and refined With what conscience then can Mr. Baxter say that the Doctor affirms that he took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like and that he held all Souls to be such Fire whenas the Doctor is so modest and cautious that he does not affirm that Mr. Baxter thinks any to be such though even in this Placid Collation he professes his inclination towards the Opinion that Ignis and Vegetative Spirit is all one pag. 20 21. I have oft professed saith he that I am ignorant whether Ignis and Vegetative Spirit be all one to which I most incline or whether Ignis be an active nature made to be the instrument by which the three spiritual natures Vegetative Sensitive and Mental work on the three passive natures Earth Water Air. And again pag. 66. If it be the Spirit of the world that is the nearest cause of illumination by way of natural activity then that which you call the Spirit of the World I call Fire and so we differ but de nomine But I have saith he as before professed my ignorance whether Fire and the Vegetative nature be all one which I incline to think or whether Fire be a middle active nature between the spiritual and the mere Passive by which Spirits work on bodie And pag. 71. I doubt not but Fire is a Substance permeant and existent in all mixt bodies on Earth In your bloud it is the prime part of that called the
Spirits which are nothing but the igneous principle in a pure Aereal Vehicle and is the organ of the Sensitive faculties of the Soul And if the Soul carry any Vehicle with it it 's like to be some of this I doubt you take the same thing to be the Spirit of the world though you seem to vilifie it And pag. 74. I suppose you will say the Spirit of the world does this But call it by what name you will it is a pure active Substance whose form is the Virtus motiva illuminativa calefactiva I think the same which when it operateth on due seminal Matter is Vegetative And lastly pag. 86. I still profess my self in this also uncertain whether Natura Vegetativa and Ignea be all one or whether Ignis be Natura Organica by which the three Superiour he means the Vegetative Sensitive and Intellective Natures operate on the Passive But I incline most to think they are all one when I see what a glorious Fire the Sun is and what operation it hath on Earth and how unlikely it is that so glorious a Substance should not have as noble a formal nature as a Plant. This is more than enough to prove that Mr. Baxter in the most proper sense is inclined to Psychopyrism as to the Spirit of the world or Vegetative soul of the Vniverse that that Soul or Spirit is Fire And that all created Spirits are Fire analogicè and eminenter I have noted above that he does freely confess But certainly if it had not been for his ignorance in the Atomick Philosophie which he so greatly despiseth he would never have taken the Fire it self a Congeries of agitated particles of such figures and dimensions for the Spirit of the world But without further doubt have concluded it onely the instrument of that Spirit in its operations as also of all other created Spirits accordingly as the Doctor has declared a long time since in his Immortalitas Animae Lib. 2. Cap. 8. Sect. 6. And finding that there is one such universal Vegetative Spirit properly so called or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the world he could not miss of concluding the whole Vniverse one great Plant or if some obscure degree of sense be given to it one large Zoophyton or Plant-animal whence the Sun will be endued or actuated as much by a Vegetative Nature as any particular Plant whatsoever whereby Mr. Baxter might have took away his own difficultie he was entangled in But the truth is Mr. Baxters defectiveness in the right understanding of the Atomick Philosophy and his Aversness therefrom as also from the true System of the world which necessarily includes the motion of the Earth we will cast in also his abhorrence from the Pre-existence of Souls which three Theories are hugely necessary to him that would Philosophize with any success in the deepest points of natural Religion and Divine Providence makes him utter many things that will by no means bear the Test of severer Reason But in the mean time this Desectiveness in sound Philosophie neither hinders him nor any one else from being able Instruments in the Gospel-Ministrie if they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a due measure If they have a firm Faith in the revealed Truths of the Gospel and skill in History Tongues and Criticism to explain the Text to the people and there be added a sincere Zeal to instruct their Charge and that they may appear in good earnest to believe what they teach they lead a life devoid of scandal and offence as regulated by those Gospel-Rules they propose to others this though they have little of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly so called that reaches to the deepest account of things but instead thereof Prudence and Ingenuity will sufficiently enable them to be Guides to the people especially by adhering in Matters of moment to the Ancient Apostolick and unapostatized Church and presuming nothing upon their private spirit against the same Such questionless will prove able and safe Pastors and will not fail of being approved of by our Lord Jesus the great Shepherd and Bishop of our Souls But if any such as I noted above for that they conceit themselves also dapper fellows at Cudgils or Quarter-staff shall leaving their Flocks solitary in the fields out of an itch after applause from the Country-Fry gad to Wakes and Fairs to give a proof of their dexterity at those Rural exercises if they shall I say for their pains return with a bruised knuckle or broken pate who can help it it will learn them more wit another time Thus much by way of Digression I thought fit to speak not out of the least ill-will to Mr. Baxter but onely in behalf of the Doctor hoping though it is far from all that may be said that yet it is so much and so much also to the purpose that it will save the Doctor the labour of adding any thing more thereto So that he may either enjoy his Repose or betake himself to some design of more use and moment In the mean time I having dispatcht my Digression I shall return to the main business in hand I think it may plainly appear from what has been said that it is no such harsh thing to adventure to conclude That the Truth of the Divine Intellect quatenus conceptive speculative or observative which a Platonist would be apt to call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Divine Intellect exhibitive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for though it be but one and the same Intellect yet for distinctness sake we are fain to speak as of two does consist in its Conformity with the Divine Intellect exhibitive with the immutable Idea's Respects and References of things there In conceiving and observing them as I may so speak to be such as they are represented in the said Intellect quatenus necessarily and unalterably representing such Idea's with the immediate Respects and References of them In this consists the Truth of the Divine Intellect Speculative But the Transcendental Truth of things consists in their Conformity to the Divine Intellect Exhibitive For every thing is true as it answers to the immutable Idea of its own nature discovered in the Divine Intellect Exhibitive To which also the same Divine Intellect quatenus Conceptive Speculative or Observative gives its suffrage steadily and unalterably conceiving these immutable Idea's of things in their Objective Existence what their natures will be with their necessary references aptitudes or ineptitudes to other things when they are produced into act From whence we may discern how that saying of this ingenious Author of the Discourse of Truth is to be understood Where he writes It is against the nature of all Vnderstanding to make its Object Which if we will candidly interpret must be understood of all understanding quatenus merely conceptive speculative or observative and of framing of its Object at its pleasure Which as it is not done in the setled