Body which properties are as immediate to her as impenetrability and separability of parts to the matter and we are not to demand the cause of the one any more than of the other So here we have the true Form as sufficient notice And if voluntary Motion be proper to a Spirit I think meer Fire Solar or Aethereal is no Spirit But if all self-moving Power be proper to a Spirit Fire is a Spirit And from the Form will I denominate while you oft tell us that the Essence of Substance is unknown By Essence meaning somwhat else than that which I can fully prove to be the Form To conclude there are these different Opinions before us I. That the whole Entity or Conceptus realis of a Spirit is Virtus vitalis and is mera sorma or rather simplex actus Entitativus and that substantia is added not as a partial real Conceptus but as respective to notifie that this Virtus vitalis is no Accident but a thing that may subsist of itself Some hold this true only of God and some of all Spirits If this be true your notions of Penetrability and Indivisibility are most easily defended II. That Spirits have two inadequate real Conceptus and that Substantia is the fundamental as truly as materia is in meer Bodies and an incomprehensible purity of Substance or that it is Immaterial not having partes extra partes with the trine dimension is Substantiae dispositio yet that this hath degrees as the Forms have all Spirits not being of equal Purity And that Virtus vitalis is the partial Conceptus viz. Formalis And this I encline to as to created Spirits III. That the Conceptus formalis of Spirit is this Virtus vitalis vel motiva perceptiva appetitiva but that all Matter is essentially informed by that Vitality and so Matter and Vitality are the inadequate Conceptus of every Substance and that not by Composition but as of one simple thing And this is Dr. Glisson's and some others IV. That a Spirit is both a real Substance as the fundamental Conceptus and informed both by Immateriality Penetrability and Indiscerpibility and also by a vital and moving Power But that it existeth only in Bodies or Matter and so always makes up a Compound of two Substances saving that God is infinite beyond all Matter And that all such Spirits were at first made together indivisible Individuals both that of the least Creature and of the greatest but changed from Body to Body and so are parts of Animals This I suppose is your Opinion Our chief difference is that I profess to be ignorant of the Consistency and Incorporation which you talk of and must be so Though I am assured of the Substantiality and Form which satisfieth me for Christ knoweth all the rest for me FINIS OF THE IMMORTALITY OF Mans Soul And the Nature of it and other Spirits Two Discourses One in a Letter to an unknown Doubter The other in a Reply to Dr Henry Moore 's Animadversions on a private Letter to him which he published in his Second Edition of Mr Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus or History of Apparitions By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for B. Simons at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls 1682. The PREFACE § 1. THE Author of the Letter which I answer being wholly unknown to me and making me no return of his sense of my Answer I suppose it can be no wrong to him that I publish it I have formerly thought that it is safer to keep such Objections and false reasonings from mens notice than publickly to confute them But now in London they are so commonly known and published in open Discourse and Writing that whether silencing them be desirable or not it is become impossible And tho I have said so much more especially in two Books The Reasons of the Christian Religion and the Unreasonableness of Infidelity as may make this needless to them that read those yet most Infidels and Sadduces being so self conceited and fastidious as to disdain or cast by all that will cost them long reading and consideration it may be this short Letter may so far prevail against their sloth as to invite them to read more I would true Christianity were as common as the profession of it There would then be fewer that need such Discourses But alas how numerous are thâ—se Christians that are no Christians no more than a Carcass or a Picture is a man yea worse Christians who hate Christianity whose Godfathers and Godmothers not Parents but Neighbours did promise and vow three things in their Names 1. That they should renounce the Devil and all his Works the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World and all the sinful lusts of the flesh 2. That they should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith 3. That they should keep Gods holy Will and Commandments and walk in the same all the days of their lives Yea before they could speak the mouth of these Godfathers speaking for them did not only promise that they should believe but profess in the Infants name That even then they did stedfastly believe the Articles of the Christian Faith The Infant is said to make both the Promise and Profession by these Godfathers who also undertake to provide that they shall learn all things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his Souls health and shall be virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life Whether these Godfathers ever intend to perform this or the Parents use to expect it of them I need not tell you But how little most of the baptized perform of it is too notorious And what wonder is it if we have Christians that in Satans Image fight against Christ even PERJURED MALIGNANT PERSECUTING Christians haters of those that seriously practice the baptismal Vow when they are PERJURED and Perfidious Violaters of it themselves as to the prevalent bent of heart and life These Hypocrite nominal Ceremony Christians become the great hinderance of the cure of Infidelity in the world It is the SPIRIT by its supernatural Works which is the great Witness of Christ and the infallible proof of supernatural Revelation These witnessing works of the Spirit are these five 1. His Antecedent Prophecies 2. His inherent Divine impress on the Person Works and Gospel of Christ 3. His concomitant Testimony in Christs uncontrolled numerous Miracles Resurrection and Ascension 4. His subsequent Testimony in the numerous uncontrolled Miracles of the Apostles and supernatural gifts to the Christians of that Age. But tho the History of these be as infallibly delivered to us as any in the world 〈◊〉 the distance hindereth the belief of some who have not this history well opened to them 5. Therefore God hath continued to the end of the world a more excellent Testimony than miracles thought not so apt to work on sense even the special regenerating sanctifying work of the Spirit of Christ on the
If a man believe all the Articles of the Creed only because men tell him that they are true it is but a human Faith as resting only on mans Authority but the true Members of the Church believe all the same things because God revealeth and attesteth them and this is a Divine Faith And so must you If you love light more than darkness and deceit distinguish 1. Believing men for Authority 2. Believing men for their Honesty 3. Believing men for the natural impossibility of their deceiving And the foundation of this difference is here Mans Soul hath two sorts of acts Necessary and Contingent or mutably free To love our selves to be unwilling to be miserable and willing to be happy to love God as good if known c. are acts of the Soul as necessary as for fire to burn combustible contiguous matter or for a Bruit to eat so that all the Testimonies which is produced by these necessary acts by knowing men hath a Physical certainty the contrary being impossible And this is infallible historical knowledg of matter of fact Thus we know there is such a City as Rome Paris Venice c. and that there was such a man as K. James Ed. 6. Hen. 8. William the Conqueror c. And that the Statutes now ascribed to Ed. 3. and other Kings and their Parliaments are genuine For Judges judge by them Lawyers plead them Kings own them all men hold their Estates and Lives by them Contrary mens Interest by Lawyers are daily pleaded by them against each other and if any one would deny forge or corrupt a Statute Interest would engage the rest against him to detect his fraud 1. The certain effect of natural necessary Causes hath natural necessary evidence of Truth But when all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg a thing true this is the effect of nataral necessary Causes Ergo it hath natural necessary evidence of Truth 2. It is impossible there should be an Effect without a sufficient Cause But that a thing should be false which all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg to be true would be an Effect without a Cause for there is no Cause in nature to effect it It is impossible in nature that all men in England should agree to say There was a King James K. Edward Q. Mary or that these Statutes were made by them if it were false This is infallible Historical Testimony It were not so strong if it were only by one Party and not by Enemies also or men of contrary Minds and Interests And thus we know the History of the Gospel and this Tradition is naturally infallible II. But all the Testimony which dependeth on humane Acts not necessary but free have but an uncertain moral humane Credibility For so all men are Lyars i.e. fallible and not fully to be trusted And I. Those Testimonies which depend on mens Honesty are no farther credible than we know the Honesty of the men which in some is great in some is 〈◊〉 in most is mixt and lubricous and doubtful Alas what abundance of false History is in the world Who can trust the Honesty of such men as multitudes of Popes Prelates and Priests have been Will they stick at a Lye that stick not at Blood or any wickedness Besides the ignorance which invalidates their Testimony II. And to pretend Authority to rule our Faith is the most unsatisfactory way of all For before you can believe that Jesus is the Christ and his Word true how many impossibilities have you to believe 1. You must believe that Christ hath a Church 2. And hath authorized them to determine what is to be believed before you believe that he is Christ 3. You must know who they be whom you must believe whether all or some or a major vote Whether out of all the world or a party 4. And how far their Authority extendeth Whether to judg whether there be a God or no God a Christ or no Christ a Heaven or none a Gospel or none or what 5. And how their determinations out of all the world may come with certainty to us and where to find them 6. And when Countreys and Councils contradict and condemn each other which is to be believed Many such impossibilities in the Roman way must be believed before a mâ—n can believe that Jesus is the Christ In a word you must not puzzle your head to know what a man is or whether he have an immortal soul but you must 1. believe the Church of Believers before you are a Believer in Christ 2. And you must believe that Christ was God and Man and came to save man before you believe that there is such a creature as man or what he is and whether he have a soul capable of salvation But I have oft elsewhere opened these Absurdities and Contradictions where you may see them confuted if you are willing § 36. Your question about the souls nature existence and Individuation may be resolved by a surer and easier way as followeth I. By your own certain experience 1. You perceive that you see feel understand will and execute 2. You may know as is oft said that therefore you have an active power to do these 3. You may thence know that it is a substance which hath that power Nothing can do nothing 4. You may perceive that it is not the terrene substance but an invisible substance actuating the body 5. You may know that there is no probability that so noble a substance should be annihilated 6. Or that a pure and simple substance should be dissolved by the separation of parts or if that were every part would be a spirit still 7. You have no cause to suspect that this substance should lose those powers or faculties which are its essential form and be turned into some other species or thing 8. And you have as little cause to suspect that an essential vital intellective power will not be active when active inclination is its Essence 9. You have no cause to suspect that it will want Objects to action in a World of such variety of Objects 10. And you have as little cause to suspect that it will be unactive for want of Organs when God hath made its Essence active and either can make new Organs or that which can act on matter can act without or on other matter He that can play on a Lute can do somewhat as good if that be broken 11. And experience might satisfie you that several men have several souls by the several and contrary Operations 12. And you have no reason to suspect that God will turn many from being many into one or that unity should be any of their loss All this Reason tells you beginning at your own experience as I have and elsewhere more fully opened § 37. II. And you have at hand sensible proof of the individuation of spirits by Witches Contracts and Apparitions of which the world has
between the dispossession of the old and the possession of the new If any then the Soul is sometime without a body And how can you tell how long If not what body is it that you can imagine so ready to receive it without any interposition I have not been without temptations to over inquisitive thoughts about these matters And I never had so much ado to overcome any such temptation as that to the opinion of Averrhoes that as extinguished Candles go all into one illuminated air so separated Souls go all into one common Anima Mundi and lose their individuation and that Materia receptiva individuat And then indeed your notion would be probable for the Anima mundi mundum semper animat and so my separated Soul should be still imbodyed in the world and should have its part in the worlds animation But both Scripture and Apparitions assure us of the individuation of Spirits and separate Souls And I confess to you that I have oft told the Sadduces and Infidels that urge seeming impossibilities against the Resurrection and the activity of separate Souls for want of Organs that they are not sure that the Soul taketh not with it at its departure hence some seminal material Spirits ethereal and airy and so that this spirituous or igneous body which it carrieth hence is a semen to the body which it shall have at the Resurrection no man knoweth the contrary and no man knoweth that it is so The Soul is many months here in organizing its own body in generation and more in nourishing it to a useful state That particular organical bodies are made ready to receive them just at death is hard to be believed That the matter of the Vniverse is still ready is past doubt But how organized or how the Soul worketh without Organs we shall better know hereafter Your opinion much favoureth the Pythagoreans If the Soul be never out of a body is it not as like to come into one new forming in the womb as into we know not what or where § 5. I could wish you had printed my Letter wholly by it self before you had annexed your answer that the Reader might have understood it which I can hardly do my self as you have parcel'd it But we must not have what we would have from wiser men I take it for an odd method when I never asserted Spirits to be fire but denyed it first to be in your Epistle feigned to have said it and yet in the end of it for you to say that I mean not ordinary fire but that my meaning is more subtile and refined and never tell the Reader what it is before you dispute it and then through the whole answer to dispute on a wrong supposition and in the end of the Book to confess again that I say not that Spirits are fire or material § 6. Had I been to choose an edifying method we would first have stated our question and agreed on the meaning of our terms But I must follow your steps though I had rather have done otherwise Ad SECT I. § 1. THat my Notions are like those of Judge Hale is no wonder we were no strangers to each others thoughts about these matters and though he and you have had some peaceable Velitations I take it for no dishonour to be of his mind 1. De Nomine There is no such agreement among Philosophers of the name Matter as you suppose I refer you for brevity but to a very small Book of a very Learned Author advanced by the Preface of one eminent for subtilty the Metaphysicks of Dr. Rich. Crakenthorp who tells you at large that Matter is taken either properly as you and I do Substance and so Spirits are material or improperly and narrowly for that only which hath the three dimensions and so Spirits are not material It 's unprofitable to cite many more to to the same purpose And I suppose you know that not only Tertullian but many other of the Fathers many of whom you may find cited by Faustus Reg. whom Mammertus answereth so used both Matter and Corpus also § 2. The word Form is as ambiguous You and I are not the only persons that use it not in the same sense Matter in its first Conceptus called Primus hath no Form that is is conceived of abstracted from all Form Matter in its next Conceptus is conceived of as diversified by accidents as quantity figure c. And so the 3 passive Elements Earth Air Water are diversified by many accidents making up that Consistence which is called their several forms known only by sensse and capable of no perfect definition Many such passive Materials conjunct have their Relative Form which is that Contexture in which consisteth their aptitude for their use as a House a Ship a Gun a Watch. In Compositions where the Active natures are added and operate unitedly on the passive there the Active is the Form of the Compound quite in another sense than any of the former viz. as it is principium motus You and I are enquiring of the different Forms of Matter and Spirit You say that Impenetrability and Divisibility are the Form of Matter and the contrary of Spirit I say that 1. Substance as Substance and Matter taken for Substance which Dr. Crakenthorpe thinketh is the properest sense as such hath no Form that is in conceptu primo 2. That substance distinguished by subtilty crassitude visibility and invisibility quantity shape motion c. doth herein differ Modally And this Mode may well enough be called the Form before it have another Form And as the divers foresaid Elements thus differ so the substance of Spirits no doubt hath some Modal Excellency above all Bodies or Matter strictly or narrowly so called And if you will call this a Form I contend not about the word but it is but equivocally so called Spirits having another nobler sort of Form 3. Nothing hath two Forms univocally so called But Spirits have all that Virtus formalis which I oft described which is their very form There is no Spirit without it It 's not a Compounding part but the form of a simple substance Vital Virtue Vis Potentia activa signifieth not the same thing with Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Therefore both cannot be the Form univocally so called And how you could put both these your self into one definition as a kind of Compounded Form I wonder Yea your two words themselves signify not the same thing Penetrable and Indiscerpible are not words of one signification And surely you will grant that these two Penetrable and Indiscerpible can be no otherwise a Form to Spirits than Impenetrable and Discerpible are a Form to Matter And it 's apparent that the first is but a modal conceptus and the latter a relative notion of Matter and neither one nor both are contrary to Virtus Vitalis in a Spirit or Virtus activa Meer passive potentiality is rather the contrary difference
for the hand of God hath touched me The wicked live and become old yea they are mighty in power their seed is established in their sight with them and their off-spring before their eyes their houses are safe from fear neither is the rod of God upon them c. they are planted and take root they grew yea they bring forth fruit yet God is never in their mouth and far from their reins In vain then do I wash my hands in innocency seeing all things come alike to all There is one event to the righteous and to the wicked to the good to the clean and to the unclean to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not as is the good so is the sinner and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath I have now done tho I hardly know how lest I too far trouble you and only beg your perusal of these lines and two or three in answer of them by this Bearer who shall at your appointment wait on you for the same Let me farther â—eg these two things of you first That you would consider you have not to do with a Sophistick Wrangler or with one that would willingly err but with one that desires to know the Truth Let therefore your Answer be as much as you can void of Scholastick Terms or Notions that may lead me more into the dark And then as Job did beg That God would withdraw his hand far from him and that his dread might not make him afraid so I. And further That you would not awe me with his greatness nor suppress my Arguments with his Omnipotence Then call thou and I will answer or let me speak and answer thou me Thus begging the Divine Influence to direct you and enlighten me I subscribe my self SIR § 1. IT is your wisdom in Cases of so great moment to use all just endeavours for satisfaction and I think you did but your duty to study this as hard as you say you have done But 1. I wish you had studied it better for then you would not have been a stranger to many Books which afford a just solution of your Doubts as I must suppose you are by your taking no notice of what they have said 2. And I wish you had known that between the solving of all your Objections and taking all on Trust from men or believing as the Church believeth there are Two other ways to satisfaction which must be conjunct 1. Discerning the unanswerable evidences in Nature and Providence of the Souls future Life 2. And taking it on trust from Divine Revelation which is otherwise to be proved than by believing as the Church by Authority requireth you I have written on this Subject so much â—â—ready that I had rather you had told me why you think it unsatisfactory than desire me to transcribe it while Print is as legible as Manuscript If you have not read it I humbly offer it to your consideration It is most in two Books The first which I intreat you to read is called The Reasons of the Christian Religion the other is called The Unreasonableness of Infidelity If you think this too much labour you are not so hard or faithful a Student of this weighty Case as it deserveth and you pretend to be If you will read them or the first at least and after come to me that we may fairly debate your remaining Doubts it will be a likelier way for us to be useful to each other than my going over all the mistakes of your Paper will be And I suppose you know that we have full assurance of a multitude of Verities against which many Objections may be raised which no mortal man can fully solve especially from Modes and Accidents Nay perhaps there is nothing in the World which is not liable to some such Objections And yet I will not neglect your writing § 2. When you were convinc'd That there is a first Cause it would have been an orderly progress to think what that Cause is and whether his Works do not prove his Infinite Perfection having all that eminently which he giveth formally to the whole World as far as it belongeth to perfection to have it For none can give more than he hath And then you should have thought what this God is to man as manifest in his Works and you should have considered what of man is past doubt and thence in what relation he stands to God and to his fellow-creatures And this would have led you to know mans certain duty and that would have assured you of a future life of Retribution Is not this a just progress § 3. But you would know a Definition of the Soul But do you know nothing but by Definitions Are all men that cannot define therefore void of all knowledg You know not at all what seeing is or what light is or what feeling smelling tasting hearing is what sound or odor is what sweet or bitter nor what thinking or knowing or willing or loving is if you know it not before defining tell you and better than bare defining can ever tell you Every vital faculty hath a self-perception in its acting which is an eminent sense Intuition also of outward sensible Objects or immediate perception of them as sensata imaginata is before all Argument and Definition or reasoning action By seeing we perceive that we see and by understanding we perceive that we understand I dare say That you know the Acts of your own Soul by acting tho when you come to reasoning or defining you say you know not what they are You can give no definition what substance is or Ens at least much less what God is And yet what is more certain than that there is Substance Entity and God § 4. But I 'le tell you what the Soul of mâ—n is It is a Vital Intellectual Volitive Spirit animating a humane organized Body When it is separated it is not formally a Soul but a Spirit still § 5. Qu. But what is such a mental Spirit It is a most pure Substance whose form is a Power or Virtue of Vital Action Intellection and Volition three in one § 6. I. Are you not certain of all these Acts viz. That you Act vitall understand and will If not you are not sure that you see that you doubt that you wrote to me or that you are any thing II. If you act these it is certain that you have the power of so acting For nothing doth that which it cannot do III. It is certain that it is a Substance which hath this power For nothing can do nothing IV. It is evident that it is not the visible Body as composed of Earth Water and Air which is this mental Substance Neither any one of them nor all together have Life Understanding or Will They are passive Beings and act not at all of themselves but as acted by invisible Powers They have an aggregative inclination to Uâ—ion and no other
usually taken for corporeal or gross and impenetrable and divisible substance uncapable of essential vital self-moving perception and appetite If this seems nothing to you God seems nothing to you and true Nature which is Principium motus seems nothing to you And all that performeth all the action which you see in the world seems nothing to you It 's pity that you have converst so little with God and your self as to think both to be nothing § 14. What you say out of Gen. 1. is little else but mistake when you say all was made out of the deep waters by the spirit of God The Text nameth what was made of them It saith nothing of the Creation of Angels or Spirits out of them no nor of the Light or Earth or Firmament And whereas you say God made man of the dust of the ground but the body only is not man ergo Ans You use your self too unkindly to leave out half the words Gen. 2. 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul when the Text tells us the two works by which God made man will you leave out one and then argue exclusively against it What if I said The Chandler made a Candle of Tallow and then by another kindled it or a man made an house of Bricks and cemented them with Mortar c. will you thence prove That he made a Candle burning without fire or the House without Mortar Words are useless to such Expositors § 15. Page 4. you say You know all matter is eternal But you know no such thing If it be Eternal it hath one Divine perfection and if so it must have the rest and so should be God But what 's your proof You again believe the Souls concentration in its body Ans Words insignificant It 's Idem or Aliud If Idem then dust is Essentially Vital and Intellectual Deny not spiritual forms if every clod or stone have them If Aliud how prove you it to be there rather than elsewhere And if you considered well you would not believe essential substantial life and mind to lye dead and unactive so long as the dust is so § 16. You come to the hardest Objecti The Souls defective acting in infants ideots the sick c. and say It would rather not act if it were as represented Ans 1. It cannot be denied but the Operations of the Soul here are much of them upon the organized body and tho not organical as if they acted by an Organ yet organical as acting on an Organ which is the material Spirit primarily And so there go various Causes to some Effects called Acts. 2. And the Soul doth nothing independently but as dependent on God in Being and Operation and therefore doth what God knoweth and useth it too as his Instrument in the forming of the body and in what it knoweth not it self And as God as fons naturae necessitateth the natural agency of the Soul as he doth the Soul of Bruits But as the wise and free Governor of the world he hath to moral acts given mans Soul free-will and therefore conducting Reason which it needs not to necessitated acts as digestion motion of the blood formation of the body c. And as it is not made to do all its acts freely and rationally so neither at all times as in Apoplexies Infancy Sleep c. It is essential to the Soul to have the active power or virtue of Intellection and Free-will but not always to use it As it is essential to the substance of fire tho latent in a flint to have the power of motion lighe and heat And its considerable that as a traveller in his journey thinking and talking only of other things retaineth still a secret act of intending his end else he would not go on when he perceiveth and observeth it not at all He that playeth on the Lute or Harpsical ceaseth when his Instrument is out of tune because he acteth by free-will But the Soul of an Idiot or mad-man acteth only per modum naturae not by free-acts but necessitated by God by the order of nature Only moral acts are free and that some other are but brutish and some but vegitative is no-more a wonder than that it should understand in the head and be sensible only in the most of the body and vegitative only in the hairs and nails It operateth in all the body by the Spirits as calid but about the eyes and open sensoria by Spirits also as lucid for that use § 14. But never forget this That nothing at any time doth what it cannot do but many can do that which they do not Tho the Soul in the Womb or Sleep remember not or reason not if ever it do it that proveth it had the power of doiug it And that power is not a novel accident tho the act may be so § 18. To your Explications p. 4. I say 1. None doubts but all the world is the work of one prime operating Cause Whom I hope you see in them is of perfect power wisdom aud goodness the chief efficient dirigent and final cause of all 2. I doubt not but the created universe is all one thing or frame and no one atome or part totally separated from and independent on the rest 3. But yet the parts are multitudes and heterogeneous and have their Individuation and are at once many and one in several respects And the unity of the Universe or of inferior universal Causes as the Sun or an anima telluris c. are certainly consistent with the specifick and individual differences of the parts E. g. Many individual Apples grow on the same Tree yea Crabs and Apples by divers grafts nourished on the same stock One may rot or be sower and not another Millions of Trees as also of Herbs and Flowers good and poysonous all grow in the same earth Here is Unity and great Diversity And tho self-moving Animals be not fixed on the earth no doubr they have a contiguity or continuity as parts with the Universe But for all that a Toad is not a Man nor a man in torment undifferenced from another at ease nor a bad man all one with a good § 19. And if any should have a conceâ—â— That there is nothing but God and matter I have fully confuted it in the Appendix to Reas of Christian Religion Matter is no such omnipotent sapiential thing in it self as to need no cause or maker any more than Compounds And to think that the infinite God would make no nobler Creature than dead matter no liker himself to glorifie him is antecedently absurd but consequently notoriously false For tho nothing be acted without him it 's evident that he hath made active Natures with a principle of self-moving in themselves The Sun differs from a clod by more than being matter variously moved by God even
be no Contradiction yet it will never be because he useth every thing according to its nature till he cometh to miracles Therefore their dissilution of parts is no more to be feared than their annihilation 3. But if you take Souls to be partible and unible then you must suppose every part to have still its own existence in the whole And do you think that this doth not more advance Souls than abase them Yea you seem to Deifie them while you make them all to return into God as drops into the Sea And if you feign God to be partible is it not more honour and joy to be a part of God who is joy it self than to be a created Soul If a thousand Candles were put out and their light turned into one Luminary as great as they all every part would have its share in the enlightning of the place about it Is it any loss to a single Soldier to become part of a victorious Army 4. But indeed this is too high a Glory for the Soul of man to desire or hope for It is enough to have a blessed union with Christ and the holy Society consistent with our Individuation Like will to like and yet be it self Rivers go to the Sea and not to the Earth Earth turns to Earth and not to the Sun or Fire And the holy and blessed go to the holy and blessed And I believe that their union will be nearer than we can now well conceive or than this selfish state of man desireth But as every drop in the Sea is the same Water it was so every Soul will be the same Soul 2. And as to the incapacity of misery which you talk of why should you think it more hereafter than here If you think all Souls now to be but one doth not an aking Tooth or a gouty Foot or a calculous Bladder suffer pain tho it be not the body that feeleth but the same sensitive Soul is pain'd in one part and pleas'd in another And if all Souls be now but God in divers Bodies or the Anima mundi try if you can comfort a man under the torment of the Stone or other Malady or on the Rack or in terror of Conscience by telling him That his Soul is a part of God Will this make a Captive bear his Captivity or a Malefactor his Death If not here why should you think that their misery hereafter will be ever the less or more tolerable for your conceit that they are parts of God They will be no more parts of him then than they were here But it 's like that they also will have an uniting inclination even to such as themselves or that God will separate them from all true unity and say Go you cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels c. § 33. No doubt it 's true that you say page 7 and 8. That matter is still the same and liable to all the changes which you mention But it 's an unchanged God who doth all this by Spirits as second Causes who are not of such a changeable dissoluble partible nature as Bodies are It is Spirits that do all that 's done in the world And I conjecture as well as you That universal Spirits are universal Causes I suppose That this Earth hath a vegitative form which maketh it as a matrix to receive the Seeds and the more active influx of the Sun But Earth and Sun are but general Causes Only God and the seminal Virtue cause the species as such The Sun causeth every Plant to grow but it causeth not the difference between the Rose and the Nettle and the Oak The wonderful unsearchable Virtue of the Seed causeth that And if you would know that Virtue you must know it by the effects You cannot tell by the Seed only of a Rose a Vine an Oak what is in it But when you see the Plants in ripeness you may see that the Seeds had a specifying Virtue by the influx of the general Cause to bring forth those Plants Flowers c. Neither can you know what is in the Egg but by the ripe Bird nor what the Soul of an Infant is but by Manhood and its Acts. § 34. You here pag. 7. divert from the point of the Immortality or Nature of the Soul to that of the Resurrection of the Body of which I will now say but this Christ rose and hath promised us a Resurrection and nothing is difficult to God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 oft signifieth our living another life after this The Body hath more parts than Earth and Water The Spirits as we call them which are the igneous parts lodged in the purest aereal in the blood c. are that body in and by which the Soul doth operate on the rest How much of these material Spirits the Soul may retain with it after Death we know not and if it have such a body it hath partly the same and God can make what Addition he please which shall not contradict identity Paul saith of Corn God giveth it a body as pleaseth him in some respect the same c. in some not the same that was sown We do not hold That all the flesh that ever a man had shall be raised as that mans If one man that was fat grow lean in his sickness we do not say that all the flesh that sickness wasted shall rise It shall rise a spiritual body God knoweth that which you and I know not § 35. You add how easie it would have been to you to believe as the Church believeth and not to have immerged your self in these difficulties Ans 1. The Church is nothing but all individual Christians and it is their Belief which makes them capable of being of the Church As we must be men in order of Nature before we are a Kingdom of men so we are Believers before we are a Church of Believers A Kingdom or Policy maketh us not men but is made of men and Church-society or Policy maketh us not Believers but is made up of Believers Therefore Belief is first and is not caused by that which followeth it And why doth the Church believe Is it because they believe And whom do they believe Is it themselves I doubt you have fallen into acquaintance with those whose Interest hath made it their Trade to puzzle and confound men about things as hard to themselves as others that they may bring them to trust the Church and then tell them that it 's they that are that Church as a necessary means to the quieting their minds And they tell them You are never able by reason to comprehend the mysteries of Faith the more you search the more you are confounded But if you believe as the Church believeth you shall speed as the Church speedeth But it 's one thing to believe the same thing which the Church believeth and another to believe it with the same faith and upon the same Authority
Indivisibility though perhaps thâ—se also may be useful Sir I crave your pardon of these curt expressions of the thoughts which you desired concerning the description of a Spirit If God make us truly holy we shall quickly know more to our satisfaction I rest Nov. 17. 1681. Your obliged Servant Rich. Baxter You make a Spirit to be Ens ideoque Unum Verum and that True denotes the answerableness of the thing to its proper Idea and implies right matter and form duly conjoined Q. Do you not here make Spirits material But no doubt whether to be called Material or Substantial the form is not an Adjoyned thing but the form of a simple essence is but an inadequate conceptus making no composition OF THE NATURE OF SPIRITS A Placid Collation with the Learned Dr Henry More upon his Answer to à private Letter published in the second Edition of Mr. Glanviles Sadduceismus Triumphatus Reverend Sir § 1. THat my hasty Letter should occasion you to benefit the World with more of your Information in so considerable a point as is the nature of a Spirit was more than I thought of or could hope for Had I imagined that you would have so far honoured it I should have so written it as might have drawn out more of your Instruction and made your Animadversions yet more edifying § 2. I desired you to have forborn the title of Psychopyrist for these Reasons 1. Because it tendeth plainly to misinform the Reader as if I held that Souls or Spirits are Fire whereas in my Books and Letters I still say otherwise And that they may be so called not formaliter or univoce but only eminenter and analogice And when a name on the Title page through the whole and a supposition in much of your arguing implyeth that I hold what I renounce it may wrong your Reader 's understanding though I am below the capacity of being wronged 2. And the fastning of Nick-names on one another in Controversies of Religion hath so much caused Schisms and other mischiefs that I confess I the less like it about Philosophy But I must submit § 3. My understanding is grown so suspicious of ambiguity in almost all words that I must confess that what you say also against those whom you call Holenmerians and Nullibists satisfieth me not unless many terms used in the controversies were farther explained than I find them here or in your Metaphysicks your Books against Judge Hale I have not seen But I may take it for granted that you know that they who use the saying of Tota in toto tota in qualibet parte ordinarily tell us 1. That they use the word Tota relatively and improperly seeing that which hath no parts is improperly called Tota 2. That they mean it but negatively viz. That the Soul is not in the parts of the body per partes part in one part and part in another but indivisibly And one would think this should suit with your own hypothesis And when I better know in what sense Locus is used I shall be fitter to enquire whether Spirits be in loco When some take it for a circumscribing body and some for a subjective body on which it operateth and some for a meer room possest in vacuo and some for God himself in whom are all things the name of a Nullibist is as ambiguous to me § 4. You tell your Reader that All created Spirits are Souls in all probability and actuate some Matter or other Sir Philosophers freedom is usually taken easilyer than Divines I will therefore presume that our mutual freedom shall not be in the least distastful to either of us And so I must tell you that I have long taken it for a matter of very great use to distinguish unknown things from known and to bridle my understanding from presuming to enquire into unrevealed things And I take that holdness of Philosophers to have had a great hand in corrupting Divinity Secret things are for God and things revealed for us and our Children saith Moses And when I presume most I do but most lose my self and misuse my understanding nothing is good for that which it was not made for Our understandings as our Eyes are made only for things revealed In many of your Books I take this to be an excess And I have oft wondred at your Friend and sometime mine Mr. Glanvile that after his Scepsis scientifica he could talk and write of doubtful things with that strange degree of confidence and censuring of Dissenters as he did I am accused of overdoing and curiosity my self But I endeavour to confine my enquiries to things revealed This premised I say undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed either as to any certainty or probability that all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter Alass how should we come to know it Neither Nature nor Scripture tells it us But 1. If this be so the difference between you and the Psychopyrists must be opened as it is much like that of Mammertus and Faustus whether the Soul or a Spirit have Matter by composition or simply uncompounded for a body you suppose it still to have Is it separable from a Body or not If it be why should you think that it is never separated If it can subsist without a Body who can say that it doth not If it cannot but be inseparable it is a strange composition that God cannot dissolve And if it perish upon the dissolution then it was but an Accident of the body and not a compounding Substance Dr. Glissons and Campanella's way is as probable as this And I marvel that when you have dealt with so many sorts of Dessenters you meddle not with so subtile a piece as that old Doctor 's de Vita Naturae I have talkt with divers high pretenders to Philosophy here of the new strain and askt them their judgment of Dr. Glissons Book and I found that none of them understood it but neglected it as too hard for them and yet contemned it He supposeth all Matter to be animated without composition the Matter and Form being but conceptus inadequati of an uncompounded being however that Matter as such be divisible into atomes every atome still being uncompounded living Matter You suppose all Spirit to be in Matter but by way of composition as distinct substances I go the middle way and suppose that substance simple is Active or Passive that the three Passive Elements Earth Water and Air are animated only by composition or operation of the active But that the active substances have no composition but intellectual but Substance and Form are conceptus ejusdem inadequati So that what Dr. Glisson saith of every clod and stone I say only of Spirits of fire I shall speak after 2. And do you think that the Soul carrieth a body out of the body inseparable with it or only that it receiveth a new body when it passeth out of the old If the latter is there any instant of time
to you as a Teacher But whereas you say that these make three no more than Animal Homo and Brutum or Cupiditas Desiderium and Fuga you silence me for it beseemeth me not to speak to you in a Teaching Language and there is no other to convince you And if all that I have said in Method Theol. will not do it I confess it will not easily be done Animal Homo and Brutum are three words containing only a Generical and specifick nature in two distinct species of Subjects If you think that in the Sun Virtus-motiva illuminativa calefactiva or in mans Soul a vegetative sensitive and Intellective power or in the latter mentally-active Intellective and Volitive Virtue are no other I will not persuade you to change your mind much less give you any Answer to your simile of cupiditas desiderium fuga save that you might almost as well have named any three Words § 3. But you say The Omission of Immaterial in your Conceptus formalis or which is all one of Penetrability and Indiscerpibility is not only a mistake but a mischief it implying that the Virtus Appetitiva perceptiva may be in a Substance though material which betrays much of the succours which Philosophy affords to Religion c. Ans Melancholy may cause fears by seeming Apparitions I hope no body will be damned for using or not using the Word Material or Immaterial It 's easie to use either to prevent such danger And I am not willing again to examine the sense of these words every time you use them You know I said not that Spirits are Material And you say they are Substances of Extension Amplitude Spissitude Locality and Subtilty as opposite to Crassitude And what if another think just so of them or not so grosly and yet call them Matter will the word undoe him But you say I omitt Immaterial Ans See my Append. to Reas of Christ Rel. whether I omit it But is a bare Negative Essential to a just definition here Why then not many Negatives more as invisible insensible c. To say that Air is not Water or Water is not Earth was never taken for defining nor any mischief to omit it But that the positive term Purissima doth not include Immaterial and is not as good you have not as yet proved Is Substantia purissima material Do not you by that intimation do more to assert the Materiality of Spirits than ever I did Have you read what I have answered to 20 Objections of the Somatists in the aforesaid Append. But you say It implyeth that Virtus perceptiva c. may be in a substance material Ans Negatur If I leave out 20 Negatives in my Definition it followeth not that the form may be with their positives But can you excuse your self from what you call a Mischief when you intimate that Substantia purissima may be material Because I only called it purissima you say I imply it may be material But I confess I am too dull to be sure that God cannot endue matter itself with the formal Virtue of Perception That you say the Cartesians hold the contrary and that your Writings prove it certifieth me not O the marvellous difference of mens Conceptions Such great Wits as Campanella Dr. Glisson c. were confident that no Matter in the world was without the una-trina Virtus viz. Perceptive Appetitive and Motive I agree not with them But you on the contrary say that Materia qualitercunque modificata is uncapable of Perception I doubt not materia qua materia or yet qua mere modificata hath no LIfe But that it is uncapable of it and that Almighty God cannot make perceptive living Matter and that by informing it without mixture I cannot prove nor I think you Where is the Contradiction that makes it impossible Nor do I believe that it giveth a man any more cause to doubt as you add of the Existence of God or the Immortality of the Soul than your Opinion that saith God cannot do this To pass by many other I will but recite the words of Micraelius Ethnophron li. 1. c. 13. p. 23 24. instancing in many that held the Soul to be Pure Matter Eam Sententiam inter veteres probavit apud Macrobium Heraclitus Physicus cui anima est Essentiae Stellaris scintilla Et Hipparchus apud Plinium cui est coeli pars Et Africanus apud Ciceronem qui detrahit animum ex illis sempiternis ignibus quae Sidera vocamus quaeque globosae rotundae divinis animatae mentibus circules suos orbesque conficiunt celeritate mirabili Et Seneca qui descendisse eam ex illo coelesti Spiritu ait Et Plato ipse qui alicubi animam vocat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 radians splendidum vehiculum Et Epictetus qui Astra vocat nobis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amica cognata elementa Ipseque cum Peripateticis Aristoteles qui eam quinta essentia constare 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in animabus inesse dicit Inter nostrates quoque Scaliger vocat animam Naturam coelestem quintam essentiam alia quidem à quatuor Elementis naturâ praeditam sed non sine omni materia Eadem Opinio arridet Roherto de Fluctibus c. And what many Fathers say I have elsewhere shewed And yet on condition you will not make the name Substance to signifie no real Being but a meer Relation or Quality I think you and I shall scarce differ in sense § 4. But you magnifie our difference saying In this you and I fundamentally differ in that you omit but I include Penetrability and Indiscerpibility in the Conceptus formalis of a Spirit Ans I think you mean better than you speak and err not fundamentally 1. I do not think that your two hard words are fundamentals nor that one or both are Synonyma to Immaterial 2. I do not think but Purissima includeth all that is true in them and so leaveth them not out 3. I do not leave them out of the Dispositio vel modus Substantiae though I leave them out of the Conceptus formalis 4. Your self affirm the vital Virtue to be the Conceptus formalis And hath a Spirit more forms than one You know of no existent Spirit in the World that hath not its proper specifick form And if your two words had been a Generical Form that 's no form to the species but a Substantiae dispositio Doth he fundamentally err that saith Corpus humanum organicum is not forma hominis Or that the puritas vel subtilitas materiae is not forma â—gnis vel solis but only the materiae dispositio If our little self made words were so dangerous on either side I should fear more hurt by making the form of a Spirit 1. To be but the Consistence or mode of the Substance 2. And that to consist in divers accidents conjunct 3. And those uncertain in part or unintelligible 4. And Spirits
Apple on the Tree hath a certain individuate or numerical Being and yet every one is a part of the Tree And every Herb and Tree is a part of the Garden or Orchard and that a part of England c. and all a part of the Earth in which they grow and no doubt the Earth is as dependant on other parts of the Universe and all on God We dream of no total separation of any Creature from the rest much less Spirits But all the Illuminated Air is more one flamma tenuis though compound of Air and Fire and called by us Light than the Sands are one Earth And I doubt not but that Fire which is the Motive Illuminative and Calefactive Substance in all the Air and elsewhere is yet much less divisible than the Air and Souls than it So that should God make many into one they would be many Individuals no more but one again Divisible by God himself § 3. And you mis-suppose me to suppose that the whole Substance of all Humane Souls are but the same which once in Adam was but one and from him divided Writing is a tedious work because it so hardly causeth men to understand us I suppose that a continued Creative Emanation from the Father of Spirits giveth out all that Spiritual Substantiality which becometh new Souls but that God hath ordained that the Generating Souls shall first receive this Divine Emanation and be organical ☞ in communicating it to the Semen and so to new organical Bodies not that the Parents Souls only dispose the seminal recipient Matter but are themselves partly receptive and then active in the communication It will be a defective similitude if I say as a Burning-glass by a receptive contraction of the Sun Beams is instrumental in kindling combustible matter Rather as one Candle kindleth a thousand and yet the substance of the Lucid and Calid Being is communicated from the Ignite Air by the means of that one Candle For that it is only Motus a Motu I believe not That you have drawn me thus effutire quae circa generationem opinor must help you to be patient with my tediousness And the rather because to avoid offending you I will now pass by any further Answer to your Queries Whether Adam 's Soul was a Legion which else was Adam 's Soul How come they to be Male and Female was that number of Souls expanded or contracted what a change by Venery what becomes of the many Souls in the Chast and the rest I would not by a particular Answer disgrace your Questions or the jocular urgent amplifications No doubt Lights are too low Illustrations but the highest within the reach of sense There was not a Legion of Candles in that which lighted a Legion nor need I tell you which of the lighted Candles was that which lighted it nor why lighting more consumed not the first nor why it kindled a Wax-Candle and a Tallow-Candle c. I knew not till now that you thought Souls differed in Sex because the Persons do But I will not strive against your Conceit The Soul of a Male and Female I better understand than a Male and Female Soul § 4. But you tell me I must consider the Nature of Light throughly and I shall find it nothing but a certain motion of a Medium whose particles are so or so qualified some such way as Cartesianism drives at But here 's not Substances but Motion communicated c. Ans I had as willingly have heard Cartesius tell me any Dream else that ever came into his Brain For this I greatly despise And wonder not that any man is ignorant of the nature of Spirits who is so grosly ignorant of the igneous analogical Nature as he was I have said so much in divers Books against it that I will not here in transitu any further touch so noble a Subject than to tell you that if you have studied the old Stoicks Platonists c. and Patricius Telesius Campanella Lud. le Grand c. as much as Cartesius I pitty you for believing him I doubt not the Substance of Fire hath a Virtus motiva as well as illuminativa catefactiva And consequently that Light and Heat are neither of them without Motion But that they are a tripple operation of the Vna-trina forma ignea I am past doubt after as hard study as you can advise me to But your terms certain motion and an unnamed Medium and particles so and so qualified and some way c. are not notifying terms to me That Lumen is ipse motus methinks a man of half Cartesius's Age should never dream That it 's an effect of Motion many say and think it so as much as Intellection is an effect of mental-Vitality and Volition of Intellection But to lay no stress on Sir Ken. Digby's Arguments I make no doubt Ignis lucens is as truly a Substance as a Spirit is If Light be an Act or Quality it hath some immediate Agent or Subject It doth not exist separated from them It is in the Air but as the Recipient as it is in the Oil of the Candle The Air shineth not of itself as the Night informeth us It is therefore a Substance that moveth and illuminateth the Air And if Cartes will call that Substance Glâ—buli aetherei or mat eria subtilis I need not a game at such toyish words As Motus causeth Sensation and Intellection which yet by meer motion would never have been caused without the conjunct Acts of the Sensitive and Intellective Faculties as such so is it of Light Really when I read how far you have escaped the delusions of Cartesianism I am sorry that 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 Bruits and Vegetables and all the passive Elements if it be not ipsa forma telluris and all the visible actions in this lower World are performed what can that mans Philosophy be worth I therefore return your Counsel study more throughly the Nature of Aethereal Fire I find cause to imagine by your Writings that you are as Mr. Glanvile for the pre-existence of Souls before Generation And when do you think they were all made And what Bodies did all the Souls that have ever since been in the World animate when there was no human Body but Adam's and Eve's Can you conjecture what Animal's they were before they were men's If you on the one extream thinking that God made as many Souls yea Animals the first week as ever are in Being to the end of the World and the Averrhoists on the other extream who think all Souls are but one individuated by receptive Matter as one Sun lighteth many Candles by a Burning-Glass and all return as Candles put out into one again were to dispute it out by meer Philosophy without the
Experience of apparitions I know not which would get the better Ad SECT XII XIII THe 12. Section being all meer fiction needs no further Answer § 1. It seems you call that the excited Spirit of Nature lighting every Candle which other men call Fire And so you will number Fire with Spirits § 2. Your 13. Section is strange 1. You say Penetrability and indivisibility are not accidents at all no more than Rationale of a man Ans Anima rationalis is forma hominis in the strict proper sense of Forma as an Active Principle Indivisible is a Negative and it and Penetrable are the consistency or mode of the Substance or as you call it Matter As Amplitude Quantity Spissitude Dimensions Locality are by you said to be which are called Forms in another sense as the passive Elements differ from each other But the Principium Activum being the true and only Form of a Spirit these modalities and Consistencies are but conditio materiae as you call it or Substantiae as I call it as to the Form Yet that Dispositio materiae is Essential I have asserted § 3. And yet though all along I deny not your two words to be the conditio omnis Substantiae spiritualis joined with more I still tell you that difficulties make me not lay so much on them as you do To add one more As I told you Quality is penetrable as well as Spirit e. g. heat so yet though we commonly say it is indivisible I wish you would solve this Objection You prove the locality of Spirits by their operation on this or that Body And doubtless you may well prove that the Recipient body is in loco and consequently the Agent relatively But how shall we avoid the division of Qualities or Spirits ex divisione materiae subjectivae E. g. If a red hot Iron be penetrated by the heat yet if this Iron be cut in two while hot and each part set per potentiam superiorem at 20 Miles distance is not the heat divided with the Iron So if a mans Head be struck off and by such a quick mover as you think moveth the Earth the Head in a moment were carried far off while both parts of the Body are yet alive is not the Soul in each part And if the Parts were 20 or 100 Miles a sunder is it still one undivided Soul I can say somwhat to satisfie my self of this but hardly without crossing somwhat that you say § 4. Again when my chief dissent from you is more against your Confidence than your Verity yet you again tell us that we know not bare Essences but Essential Attributes I tell you I take not these to be notifying Expressions We know some Essences either intuitively as Ockam saith or without signs immediately e. g. what it is to see taste hear smell c. and what to understand and will And we know other Essences Scientia abstractiva per signa And what good would the knowledge of Attributes else do us Attributes in notione prima are the thing itself And to know an Essential Attribute and to know ipsam Essentiam Scientia inadaequata is all one But an Essential Attribute as notio secunda is but signum per quod res significata cognoscenda est And this is knowing the Essence too but scientia abstractivâ And all is scientia valde imperfectâ § 5. You say that Neither the faculty nor Operation of Reasoning is the Essence and consequently not rationale Ans Things of so great Moment should not not be obtruded on the World with a bare ipse dico The Act of Intellection or Reasoning is but the Essence in hoc modo but the Faculty is the Essential Form of the Soul When you have confuted the Scotists and my peculiar Disput in Meth. Theol. where I think I fully disprove what you say I may hear you further Ad SECT XIV XV XVI § 1 HEre you would first know How I know that the Vitalitas formalis belongs not to Matter unless I have an Antecedent notion of Spirit distinct from Matter Ans 1. I consent not to Dr. Glisson who thought all Matter had a Vital Form But I undertake not to prove that God cannot endow any Matter with a Vital Form And forma denominat where I find the Form of a Spirit I 'le call it Spirit 2. Dr. Henry Moore in his Metaph. would ask me how I know that a Helmet may not be made of Paper and he and I would agree that Paper is not materia disposita and yet we would not call it Galeae formam § 2. Your denial of Substantiality to be ex traduce I answered before telling you that I think it is both ex emanatione creativa ex traduce but not by either alone nor all Souls that ever will be created in Indisceâ—pible Individuality at once and transmuted from Body to Body § 3. When I say the Negative Immaterial notifieth not the form you say that Immaterial implieth Positiveness Ans Therefore give us the positive notion or you give us no definition nor any notifying word § 4. When you say You believe it is not easie to give an Example that materia is put in lieu of substantia in that adequate sense What abundance of Authors could I name you yea have I oft named besides Dr. Crakenthorp § 5. When you say All created Substance is both Active and Passive in some sense or other It 's but to say all words are ambiguous So all created Substance is matter in some sense or other But one would have thought by your oft repeated denial of the self-moving Power of Matter that you had thought only Spirits have a self-moving power And if so will you yet say that this is a distinction which distinguisheth nothing I think thus Natura activa as meet a name as Spiritus And that yet it hath some Passivity Damascene yea and Augustine de Spir. Anim. c. 8. say that is because the Soul respectu incorporei Dei corporea est though in respect to our Bodies it is Incorporeal Other Fathers say much more but I justify not their words § 6. Ad 15. Sect. I pretend not to have such an Idaea of Spiritual Substance as to denominate its consistence more fitly than by Purity a word which you also use yet not denying your several Attributes § 7. As to your Doctrine of Atomes I think no wise man dare say that God made matter first in divided Atomes and after set them together But that God is able to divide all matter into Atomes or indivisible parts I doubt not The Virtus Formalis of Spirits and so some qualities consist not of Atomes But how far God can divide the ample Substance of them I only tell you that I know not and to pretend to know it would be none of my Wisdom Your Attributes of amplitude quantity dimensions imply that God made some Spirits bigger in amplitude than others as well as Virtutis
Ignis formaliter I have often said that I think Substances differ so gradually that the lower â—ath still some Analogy to the higher And I still say that Natura Mentalis sensitiva are not Ignis formaliter But whether the Natura Vegetativa be any other than ipse ignis I know not but think it is no other Do you that better know its consistence call it Spirit or not as you please Ad Sect. 22. 23 24 25 26 27. § 1. YOU puzzle me more and more Before you said Fire is nothing but motion of sulphureous particles and only in Candles Fire-sticks hot Irons c. And yet now The vehicles of Angels are Igneous or aethereal Is an Angel only in a Candle or hot Iron c. Is motion yea motion of sulphureous particles their vehicle If they are Animals and have bodies as you think they are such as deserve a nobler Character § 2. I tell you still the Greek Fathers I think as well as I call'd mental and sensitive Spirits Ignis but Analogically which you call Symbolically If that satisfy you what have you all this while disputed against And if Fire be the vehicle of Angels it is a substance And when you seâ— the Motion Light and feel the heat dâ— you think what ever is the Recipient moved Matter that the invisible Mover is not present and contiguous It is that immediate mover which I call Fire and am fully satisfied doth it not by Motion only but the exerting of its triple Virtue § 3. You confess Sect. 24. the common use of the name of Fire applied to Souls by the old Philosophers and still you say it was but Symbolically and did they find no Reason to make Fire a Symbol rather than Earth or Water When I still tell you that it is only analogically that Souls may be called Fire did you fairly to pretend the contrary § 4. Yea Sect. 25. You are at it again saying that I seem to conceive the Fathers to speak not symbolically but properly Ans where and when did I say any such thing will you tell the world that a Man holds that which he never said and hath oft written against and write a Book against him on such a supposition and at last have nothing to say but Putarem I use not the words Symbolical and Proper they are not precise enough for this subject I said more when I said that Souls and Angels are called fire only eminenter analogice but not formaliter and forma dat nomen But you are offended that I say those Greek Fathers spake tolerably and informingly and you say It was mischievously inducing men to believe the Soul mortal For Light may be blown out and hot Iron cooled Ans Alas What dry Philosophy is this of Fire Is any thing annihilated when the Candle goeth out Was there not an invisible active principle moving your supposed sulphureous particles which was as immediate an Agent as your Soul is of Sensation or Intellection which remaineth the same But indeed it is Air and not Sulphur which is the first and nearest Recipient of the illuminating Act and is Conjux Ignis I suppose you 'l say The Spirit of the World doth this Ans 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 But the World hath Spiritual Natures more noble than this viz. sensitive and intellective § 5. Ad Sect. 26. You say against the Fathers When we enquire into the distinct Nature of things we must bid adieu to Metaphors Ans When I am ignorant of my own Ignorance I will hear you I am far from dreaming that I have one formal Conception of God but only Analogical Only that of Ens is disputed between the Thomists and Scotists whether it be Univocal de Deo Creaturis And here Analogical is but Metaphorical And yet it is not nothing to see as in a Glass enigmatically And when I can perceive that your two hard words do not only signifie more than negatively and modally or qualitatively but also give us an Idea of a Spirit which hath nothing Metaphorical but all formal I shall magnifie them more than I do § 6. You say we must search out the adequate defiâ—ition Ans That adequate is a word too big for me I dare say that you have not an adequate knowledg of any thing in the World not of one Fly or Flea or Pile of Grass And can you make adequate Definitions of Angels and all Spirits Even who before twice told us that we know not the intimate essence of things but the Attributes Indeed I perceive your Attributes are such as will not notifie Essences I ask my own experience whether Indiscerpible is a word that giveth any Idea of the Essence save negative that it cannot be torn into pieces and modal and I find no other that it maketh on my Mind The common note of Matter is that it hath partes extra partes and I think you thus make Spirits material You make them parts of the compound Animal and you deny them to be toti in toto and you give them locality amplitude quantity And if so though they be indiscerpible they have continued parts intelligible and that part of the Soul is not in one hand which is in the other and as partes Animalis they are actually separable from the matter The Spiritus Mundi you suppose to be a great continued amplitude or extended Substance And Atomes are in some Elements a closely continued Substance You seem to make all Substance to be Atomes spiritual atomes and material atomes And I am not sure that God cannot make material atomes so continued a matter as that no Creature can discerp them is it any contradiction and I doubt not but Souls and Angels are so indivisible as that their Nature tendeth to continued undivided Unity and no Creature can divide them But that God cannot do it I cannot say Even of the Souls Mortality not only Arnobius but many other Christian Writers maintain that it is mortal naturâ but immortal ex dono which is unfitly spoken but well meant that is God hath made their Natures such as have no tendency in themselves to a Dissolution or Destruction but not such as he cannot dissolve or destroy Yea I doubt not but without a continued Divine Sustentation all the World would in a moment be annihilated Preservation being a continued sort of Creation Your owning nothing in Fire but what 's visible I have spoke to Ad SECT XXVIII § 1. THat Spirits are each Ens unum per se so as to have no divided parts or such as tend to dissolution I doubt not that they are each one by the continued uniting Influx of that God who continueth their Being and so far per aliud is past doubt You here make Metaphysical Monades
And I have long thought that so much selfishness as is our sin or imperfection is a potent cause of making all men more regardful of Individuation and fearful of losing it by Union of Spirits than they ought and that holy Souls will be nearlier one with Christ and one another than we can here desire or conceive and yet Individuation secundum quid at least shall be continued But yet I say while there is numerus animarum and it is uncertain whether also each Orb hath not one and you plead for Amplitude and Minority Quantity and the Bodies animated may as vastly differ as a Flea or a Wren or a Pigmy and the Sun it is quite above my reach to know that a change of Individuals by making one many or many one is a contradiction and so impossible And as to Penetrability I repeat that seeing by Penetration I suppose you mean not piercing inter partes but possessing the same place with other things and contraction of itself into less amplitude as I know not how a thing that hath no parts and that extra partes can contract itself into less space which is to contract parts that are no parts so I cannot see but such Contraction and Colocality must needs be limited so as that all the World cannot be deserted and mortified by all Spirits Contraction to one narrow space nor yet that at once every Spirit is every where and when the Contraction and Colocality is come to the narrowest possible in that state Spirits must needs be further impenetrable that is no more can be in that space So that while I am past doubt that God hath made Spirits of no kind of parts but what do naturally abhor separation and so are inseparable unless God will separate them and so there is no fear of altering the Individuation much less the species of Souls I there stop and will put no more into my definitions of Souls or Spirits than I know at least as strongly probable much less by laying the formal Essence on a Composition of hard doubtful words tempt all to believe tkat the very Being of Spirits is as doubtful as those words are Ad SECT XXIII § 1. YOu said That a Spirit is Ens ideoque verum and that True implieth a right matter and form duly conjoined To which I said Do you not here make Spirits material You answered I do not make Spirits material in any sense derogatory to their Nature and Perfections Reply Nor do those that I excused so then after all these Sections you make Spirits consist of Matter and form in a sense agreeable to their nature and perfection And so de nomine you come nearer those that you accuse than I do § 2. But you say That Matter and Form I there speak of is a Matter and Form that belongs to Ens quatenus Ens in a most general notion prescinded from all kinds of Being whatever and therefore belongs to Beings Immaterial Ans If you may say Quidvis de quovis lay not too great stress on words Ens quatenus Ens hath no Form nor proper Matter Ens is that terminus incomplexus to whose Conception all other are resolved Therefore every other conception incomplex or complex must add somwhat to it It can be no Genu◠or Species If it have any kind of Matter and Form it is more than Ens quatenus Ens And sure that which is prescinded from all particular kinds of Being is prescinded from Material and Immaterial unless the word particular be a Cothurnus To say that Ens hath Matter and Form is to say more than Ens a most general notion as you call it But if Ens as the most general notion have Matter and Form then so hath Spirits and every subordinate for the general is in them all § 3. But you say It 's only materia forma logica To which I answered before That 's but to say It is notio secunda which if it be not fitted ad primam or ut signum ad rem significandam it is false And we suppose you to mean to speak truly and aptly If you should mean neither materia ex qua nor in qua but circa quam so Form may be Matter § 4. You say Nor is the Form adjoined in a Physical Sense to the Matter unless where the Form and Matter are Substances really distinct Ans 1. I believe not this to be true If it be then only Compounds have Form and Matter but I think Simples have Matter and Form that are not two Substances but one As I have oft said Dr. Glisson after others most subtilly laboureth to prove it of every simple Substance that its Matter and Form are not compounding parts but Conceptus inadaequati If the Intellect compound and divide its own Conceptions that maketh not a real Composition of two Substances in the objects but as the Scotists call it of two Formalities or Conceptus objectivi which if you will call a Logical Composition or Intellectual if you explain it the matter is small But besides that Earth Water and Air have their Matter and differencing Forms which are not two Substances so hath Fire in a more noble sense if it be material And by your Application of the word Physical you seem to extend it to Spirits And if so I am past doubt that the Substance and Form of Spirits are not two distinct conjoined Substances Too many Logicians have hitherto taken the Potentia naturalis or Faculties of the Soul to be accidents in the Predicament of Quality Let them call them Qualities if they please but the Scotists have fully prov'd them to be no Accidents but the formal Essence of the Soul and I have answered all Zabarell's Arguments ubi sup And this Virtus formalis vel facultas vel potentia activa is not a Substance joined to a Substance but the form of a simple Substance But I perceive by your next words that you approve all this and speak only of mental Composition as to Spirits And I say that the Mind should conceive and the Tongue speak of things as they are and not at once deny Materiality to Spirits and call them Logically material or at least bear with others that say but the same If Logical Matter speak not Substantiality at least it is delusive Your Interminata amplitudo sounds so like Infinita that I am not willing to say that no Spirit hath any Terminos Substantiae Ad SECT XXXIII XXXIV The Conclusion § 1. YOu say that I wrote not so curtly but that I have sufficiently conveyed my mind to you ans I would have done so had I dream'd of your Printing it But that I did not appeareth by your grand Mistake as if I 〈◊〉 asserted that materiality of Spirits which is proper to Bodies § 2. As in all our difference lieth in a much smaller matter than you thought so in your great design of convincing the blinded Sadduces of this Age and in
light I have would enable me and what to do more I know not except this course I now take prove effectual you inclining to assist me that I know have studied these things My request to you therefore is If your more publick Studies will permit you That you would condescend to satisfie me in the Particulars I shall mention I assure you I have no other design but to know the Truth which in things of such moment certainly cannot be difficult tho to my unfurnished Head they have proved so I hope my shaking may prove my establishment That I may therefore put you to as little trouble as I can I will first tell you what I do believe and then what I stick at First therefore I do really believe and am very well satisfied That there is a God or a first Cause that hath created all things and given to every thing its Being For I am not acquainted with any independent Being I know not any thing that is able to subsist without the Contribution of its Fellow-Creatures I am conscioâ—s to my self when sickness invades me and death summons my Compound to a dissolution I can do nothing to the preservation of the Being I enjoy And if I cannot preserve my self as I am much less could I make my self what I am For when I was nothing I could do nothing And Experience and Sense tells me As it is with me so it is with others as there is none can preserve their Beings so there is none could acquire to themselves the Being they have and if none then not the first man And indeed that was it I enquired after from whence every species had at first their Beings the way how and means by which they are continued I know not any Cause of the Being of any thing of which again I may not enquire the Cause and so from Cause to Cause till through a multitude of Causes I necessarily arrive at the first Cause of all Causes a Being wholly uncaused and without Cause except what it was unto it self My next Enquiry was into my self and my next business to find what Concern I have with my Creator which I knew no better way to attain than by searching the bounds of humane Capacity For I concluded it reasonable to judg those attainments I was capable of in my Creation I was designed for Now if man is nothing more than what is visible or may be made so by Anatomy or Pharmacy he is no Subject capable of enjoying or loving God nor consequently of a life of Retrobution In this Enquiry I found Man consisted of something visible and invisible the Body which is visible and something else that invisibly actuates the same For I have seen the Body the visible part of man when the invisible either through indisposition of its Orgains or its self or being expelled its Mansion hath ceased to act I speak as one in doubt the Body hath been left to outward appearance the same it was yet really void of Sense and wholly debilitated of all power to act But then what this invisible is what to conclude of it I know not Here I am at a stand and in a Labyrinth without a Clue For I find no help any where Many have I acknowledg defended the Souls Immortality but none have proved the existence of such a Being and a life of Retrobution and that copiously enough but none have proved a Subject capable of it I know all our Superior Faculties and Actings are usually attributed to the Soul but what it is in man they call so they tell us not To say it is that by which I reason or that now dictates to me what I write is not satisfactory For I look for a definition and such an one as may not to ought else be appropriated Is it therefore a real Being really different from the Body and able to be without it or is it not If not whatever it be I matter not If it be is it a pure Spirit or meerly material If meerly material and different only from the Body gradually and in some few degrees of subtilty it is then a question whether or not that we call Death and suppose a separation of the Compound be not rather a Concentration of this active Principle in its own Body which through some indisposition of the whole or stoppage in its Orgains through gross Corporeity hath suffocated its actings If it be a pure Spirit I would then know what is meant by Spirit and whether or no all things invisible and imperceptable to Sense are accounted such If so it is then only a term to distinguish between things evident to Sense and things not If otherwise how shall I distinguish between the highest degree of material and the lowest degree of spiritual Beings or know how they are diversified or be certain the Being of the Soul is rightly appropriated For to me an immaterial and spiritual Being seems but a kind of Hocus and a Substance stript of all materiality a substantial nothing For all things at first had their Origine from the deep dark Waters witness Moses Philosophy in the 1st of Genesis on which the Spirit of God is said to move I am far from believing those Waters such as that Element we daily make use of but that they were material appears by those multitudes of material Productions they brought forth And if those Waters were material such were all things they dâ—d produce among which was Man of whom the Text asserts nothing more plain for it saith God created man of the dust of the earth the most gross part and sedement of those Waters after all things else were created Now the Body only is not Man for Man is a living Creature it is that therefore by which the Body lives and acts that constitutes the Man Now the Apostle mentioneth Man to consist of Body Soul and Spirit My Argument then is this God created man of the dust of the earth But Man consists of a Body Soul and Spirit Therefore Body Soul and Spirit are made of the dust c. and are material The major and minor are undeniable and therefore the conclusion Yet do I not therefore conclude its annihilation for I know all matter is eternal but am rather perswaded of its concentration as afore in its own body But of its real Being purely spiritual and stript of all materiality really distinct from its body I doubt Because that by several accidents happening to the body the man is incapacited from acting rationally as before as in those we call Ideots there is not in some of them so much a sign of a reasonable Soul as to distinguish them from Bruits Whereas were the Soul such as represented it would rather cease to act than act at a rate below it self Did it know its Excellencies such as we make them it would as soon desert its being as degrade its self by such bruitish acts It is not any defect in
its Organs could rob the Soul of its Reason its Essential Faculty Tho the Workman breaks his Tools his hands do not lose their skill but ceaseth to act rather than to do ought irregularly so likewise would the Soul then act contrary to its own nature Secondly Because all the species both of the Mineral Vegitable and Animal Kingdoms appear to me but as the more eminent Works of a most excellent Operator as Engines of the most accurate Engineer they all live and have a Principle of Life manifest in their growth and augmentation and so far as they are living weights as I can perceive from the same source But then comes in those Natures and Faculties whereby each is distinguished from other even like several pieces of Clock or Watch-work the one shews the hour of the day and no more the next shews the hour and minutes another shews both the former and likewise the Age of the Moon another hath not only the three former motions but an addition of the rise and fall of Tides yet all this and many more that in that way are performed are several distinct motions arising all from the same Cause the Spring or Weight the Principle of motion in them So among living Weights the first do only grow and augment their bulk and have no possibility in nature to augment their kind the next to wit Vegitables do not only grow and increase their bulk but likewise have a power of propagating their like the third Family I mean the Animal Kingdom do not only live and encrease their kind but likewise are made sensative And lastly we our selves that are not only possest of all the former but of something I know not what we think more excellent and call Reason and all this from the same source namely that we live which if we did not we could not perform any of these acts For life in us is the same as the Spring or Weight in the Watch or Clock which ceasing all other motion ceaseth as in a Watch or Clock the Spring or Weight being down As Life therefore is the Cause of all Motion and all natural Operation and Faculties yet those multifarious Operations and Faculties manifest in and proper to the particular species of the Three Kingdoms requires not divers Principles of Life no more than divers motions specified in a Watch or Clock requires divers Weights or Springs And as the diversity of motion in Watch or Clock ariseth not from diversity of Weights or Springs but rather from other means so those diversities of Natures and Faculties manifest throughout the Three Kingdoms arise not from divers Principles of Life but from one Principle of Life manifesting its power in Bodies diversly organized So that a Tree or Herb that only vegitates and propagates its kind hath no other Principle of Life than an Animal that hath Sense and more eminent Faculties The difference only as I conceive is this Principle of Life in the vegitable is bound up in a Body organized to no other eud by which Life is hindred exerting any other power but in the Animal it 's kindled in a purer matter by which it 's capacitated to frame more excellent Orgains in order to the exerting more eminent Acts. For the Principle of Life can no more act rationally in matter capable of naught but vegitation for it acts in matter according to the nature thereof advancing it to its utmost excellency than a man can saw with a Coult-Staff or file with an Hatcher or make a Watch with a Betle and Wedges I am apt to believe those rare Endowments and eminent Faculties wherewith men seem to excel meer Sensatives are only the improvement of Speech wherein we have the advantage of them and the result of reiterated Acts until they become habits For by the first we are able to communicate our Conceptions and Experiments each to other and by the other we do gradually ascend to the knowledg of things For is all the knowledg either in the acts Liberal or Mechanical any more than this acts reiterated until they become habits which when they are we are said to know them And what is all our reasoning but an Argument in Discourse tossed from one to another till the Truth be found like a Ball between two Rackets till at last a lucky blow puts an end to the sport We come into the World hardly men and many whose natures want cultivation live having nothing to distinguish them from Brutes but the outward form speech and some little dexterity such as in Apes or Monkeys in the things they have been taught and the Affairs they have been bred to And could we imagine any man to have lived Twenty or Thirty years in the World without the benefit of Humane Converse What would appear then think you of a rational Soul which the wise man well saw when he asserted the Condition of Men and Beasts to be the same what a meer Ignorant hath Moses himself made of Adam that in his supposed best state knew not that he was naked but I believe the Nine Hundred and Thirty years Experience of his own and the continual Experiments of Posterity in that time communicated to him might quicken his Intellect So that he died with more Reason than he was created and humane nature in his posterity The next Generation was imbellished with his attainments to which their own Experiences still made a new addition The next Generation built on their Foundation and the next on their and so on and we are got on the shoulders of them all So that it 's rather a wonder that we know no more than that we know so much So that what we have seems rather times product through the means aforesaid than what our Natures were at first enricht with The which appears likewise in those whose memory fails and in whom the vestigia of things is wore out the habits they had contracted and manner of working in their several acts being forgotten what silly Animals are they Whereas were the Soul such as represented who could rob it of its Endowments It 's true the debilitating of a hand may impead a manual labour but rase what hath formerly been done out of the Memory and you render Man a perfect Bruit or worse for he knows not how to give a signification of his own mind And indeed I know not any thing wherein Man excels the Beasts but may be referred to the benefit of Speech and Hands capable of effecting its Conceptions nor find any better way to attain a right knowledg of our selves but by beholding our selves in Adam and enquiring what Nature had endued him with which will fall far short of what we now admire in our selves But now supposing all this answer'd what will it avail us to a Life of Retrobution if all return to one Element and be there immerged as Brooks and Rivers in the Sea If we lose our Individuation and all the Souls that have
by a self-moving power also Else there were no living creature but bodies in themselves dead animated by God But it would be too tedious to say all against this that 's to be said § 20. When you tell us of One life in all differenc'd only by diversity of Organs you mean God or a common created Soul If God I tell you where I have confuted it It 's pity to torment or punish God in a murderer or call him wicked in a wicked man or that one man should be hang'd and another prais'd because the Engines of their bodies are diverse But the best Anatomists say That nothing is to be seen in the brain of other Animals why they might not be as rational as Men. And if it be an Animâ— creata communis that you mean either 〈◊〉 think it is a universal Soul to the universâ—â— world or only to this Earth or Vortex If to all the World you feign it to have 〈◊〉 Prerogative If to part of the world 〈◊〉 each Vortex Sun Star c. have a distâ—â—â— individuate superior Soul why not 〈◊〉 so inferiors And why may not millions of individual Spirits consist with more common or universal Spirits as well as the life 〈◊〉 Worms in your belly with yours That which hath no Soul or Spirit of its own 〈◊〉 not fit for such reception and communion with superior Spirits as that which hath Communion requireth some similitude We see God useth not all things alike because he makes them not like § 21. But if the difference between Beasts Trees Stones and Men be only the organical contexture of the body then 1. Either all these have but one Soul and 〈◊〉 are but one save corporeally 2. Or 〈◊〉 very Stone Tree and Beast hath an Intellectual Soul for it is evident that man hath by its Operations I. Had you made but Virtue and Vice to be only the effects of the bodies contexture sure you would only blame the maker â—f your body and not your self for any of your Crimes For yon did not make your own body if you were nothing Is the common light and sense of Nature no Evidence Doth not all the world difference Virtue and Vice moral good and evil Is it only the difference of an Instrument in Tune and out of Tune Either then all called sin is good or God or the universal Soul only is to be blamed Then to call you a Knave or a Lyar or Perjured c. is no more disgrace than to say that you are sick or blind Then all Laws are made only to bind God or the Amima mundi and all punishment is threatned to God or this common Soul And it is God or the common Soul only in a body which sorroweth feareth feeleth pain or pleasure II. And if you equal the Souls of Beasts Trees Stones and Men you must make them all to have an Intellectual Soul If man had not he could never understand And if they have so also frustra fit potentia quae nunquam producitur in actum It is certain that it is not the body Earth Air or Water that feeleth much less that understandeth or willeth If therefore all men have but one Soul why is it not you that are in pain or joy when any or all others are so Tour suffering and joys are as much theirs You hurt your self when you hurt a Malefactor Why are you not answerable for the Crimes of every Thief if all be one § 22. You vainly liken several Natures and Faculties to several pieces of Clock-work For Natures and Faculties are self-acting Principles under the prime Agent but a Clock is only passive moved by another Whether the motus gravitationis in the poise be by an intrinslck Principle or by another 〈◊〉 active Nature is all that 's controvertible there All that your similitude will infer is this That as the gravitation of one poise moves every wheel according to its receptive aptitude so God the universal Spirit moveth all that is moved according to their several aptitudes passives as passive actives as active vitals as self-movers intellectuals as intellectual-free-self-movers under him No Art can make a Clock feel see or understand But if the world have but one soul what mean you by its concentring in the Carcass Is the universal Soul there fallen asleep or imprisoned in a Grave or what is it § 23. Add page 5. You well say That Life is the cause of all motion Yea infinite Life Wisdom and Love is the cause of all but there be second Causes under it Plurima ex uno And it maketh things various which it moveth variously and maketh them vital sensitive or mental which he will move to vital sensitive and mental acts Operari sequitur esse § 24. You are apt to believe That those eminent Faculties wherewith men seem meer Sensitives are only the improvement of Speech and reiterated Acts till they become Habits Ans 1. I had a Parrot that spoke so very plainly that no Man could discern but he could have spoke as well as a Man if he had but had the Intellect of a Man and quickly would learn new words but shewed no understanding of them 2. Many men born deaf and dumb are of a strong understanding enquire of a Brother of Sir Richard Dyett's a Son of Mr. Peter Whalley of Northampton a Son in Law of the Lord Wharton's c. 3. The Faculty and the Habit are Two things The Faculty is the Essential form of the Substance The Habit or Act is but an Accident The Faculty is nothing but the active Power And the Power goeth before the Act. Doth acting without Power to act cause the Power What need you the Power if you can act without it And what 's a Contradiction if this be not to say I do that which I cannot do or I can do that which I have no power to do You are not a man without the Faculty but you are without the Act or else you are no man in your sleep The act then is but the Faculties act and Habits are nothing but the Faculties promptitude to act And this indeed is caused sometime by very strong acts and sometime and usually by frequent acts and sometime suddenly by a special Divine Operation No doubt but Oratory and all Arts and Sciences are caused by frequent acts and their Objects But those acts are caused by humane Faculties under God the first Cause You can never cause a Carcass or a Parrot or any Bruit to think of God and the glory to come nor to do any proper humane act Credible History assureth us That Devils or separate Souls have acted Carcasses and discoursed in them and seemed to commit Fornication in them and left them dead behind them and they were known to be the same that were lately executed or dead and were re-buried Here the dead Organ was capable when a Spirit did but use it You too much confound Intelléction and Ratiocination The prime acts of
intellective Perception are before Ratiocination And there are a multitude of Complex Verities which all sound men know without Syllogisms The disposition to know them is so strong that some call it Actual Knowledg § 25. Add page 6. It 's well known That the Natives in New England the most barbarous Abassines Gallanes c. in Ethicpia have as good natural Capacities as the Europeans So far are they from being but like Apes and Monkeys if they be not Ideots or mad they sometime shame learned men in their words and deeds I have known those that have been so coursly clad and so clownishly bred even as to Speech Looks and Carriages that Gentlemen and Scholars at the first congress have esteemed them much according to your description when in Discourse they have proved more ingenious than they And if improvement can bring them to Arts the Faculty was there before When will you shew us an Ape or a Monkey that was ever brought to the Acts or Habits before mentioned of Men Yea of those that were born deaf and dumb § 26. Your mistake of Adam's casâ—â— and Solomon's words is so gross that I will not confute it lest the description of it offend you § 17. The case of failing memories is answered before in the case of Infancy and Apopâ—exies c. Our memory faileth in our sleep and yet when we awake we find that there remains the same knowledg of Arts and Sciences They did not end at night and were not all new made tne next morning The Acts ceased because the receptivity of the passive Organ ceased but the Habit and Faculty continued And when memory in old men faileth about names and words and little matters their judgments about great things are usually stronger by better Habits than young mens § 28. You say You know nothing wherein Man excels Beasts but may be referred to the benefit of speech and hands capable of effecting its Conceptions Ans This is answered before Those Conceptions are the cause of words and actions and is there no cause of those Conceptions And if mans Conceptions differ from the beasts the causes differed And if the first Conceptions did not differ the Subsequent would not differ neither without a difference in the causal Faculties Why do not Beasts speak as well as Men Parrots shew That it is not in all for want of a speaking Organ If one be born dumb and not deaf he will know but little the less for his dumbness If he be born deaf and dumb and not blind he will still be rational as Dr. Wallis can tell you who hath taught such to talk and converse intelligibly by their fingers and other signs without words I confess if all the outward Senses were stopt from the Birth I see not how the Soul could know outward sensible things as being no Objects to it And how it would work on it self alone we know not but understand and will we are sure it doth and therefore can do it And it 's one thing to prove Beasts to be men or rational and another thing to prove Men to be Beasts or irrational If you could prove the former viz. That Beasts have Souls that can think of God and the Life to come if they could but speak this would rather prove them immortal than prove man unreasonable or of a mortal Soul Your whole speech makes more to advance bruits than to deny the reason of man § 29. You say You know no better way to attain a right knowledg of our selves than by beholding our selves in Adam and enquiring what Nature had endued him with which will fall far short of what we now admire in our selves Answ 1. As a multitude of Objects and Experiences more tend to Wisdom than one alone so to know both what Adam was and what all men are and do doth evidence more to our information than to know Adam's first Case alone 2. Adam's first Powers are to be known by his acts and his acts were not to be done at once in a minute or a day And we have not the History of his Life much after his Fall But we may be sure that Adam's Nature in Innocency was no baser than ours corrupted And therefore Adam had the Powers of doing whatever other men since have done 3. But let us come to your Test 1. Adam was made a living Soul by the breath of God after the making of his body of the earth 2. Adam and Eve were blessed with a generative multiplying Faculty but they did not generate God nor did every bruit that had also that Faculty Therefore there is a Soul which is not God in every Animal nor yet an Universal Soul 3. Adam no doubt could not know external sensible Objects till they were brought within the reach of his sense no more can we 4. Adam knew the Creatures as soon as he saw them and gave them Names suitable This is more than we could so soon do 5. Adam had a Law given him and therefore knew that God was his Ruler He knew that God was to be obeyed he knew what was his Law else it had been no sin to break it He knew that he ought to love and believe and trust God and cleave to him else it bad been no sin to forsake him and to believe the Tempter and to love the forbidden Fruit better than God He knew that Death was the threatned Wages of Sin In a word He was made in the Image of God And Paul tells us it is that Image into which we are renewed by Christ And he describeth it to consist in wisdom righteousness and true holiness 6. And we have great reason to think that it was Adam that taught Abel to offer Sacrifice in Faith and delivered to his Posterity the Traditions which he had from God Tho Adam did not do all this at once he did not receive a new Soul or Faculty for every new act Can Apes and Monkeys do all this Doth God give them Laws to know and keep as moral free-agents But you say Adam knew not that he was naked Ans What! and yet knew God and his Law and how to name the Creatures and how to dress and keep the Garden He knew not that nakedness was shameful for he had newly made it shameful Perhaps you think of Adam's forbidden desire of knowledg and his miserable attainment of it But that did not make him a new Soul that had no such Faculty before Adam was the Son of God by Creation Luk. 3. and it was his duty and interest to live as a Son in absolute trust on his Fathers care and love and instead of this he was tempted to self-dependance and must needs know more than his duty his fathers love and reward He must know good and evil for himself like a Child that must know what Food and Rayment and Work is fittest for him which he should know only by trusting his Faâ—thers choice or as a Patient that
must needs know every Ingredient in his Physick and the Nature and Reason of it before he will take it when he should implicitly trust his Physician Man should have waited on God for all his Notices and sought to know no more than he revealed But a distrustful and a selfish knowledg and busy enquiring into unrevealed things is become our sin and misery § 36. You say Suppose all this answered what will it avail as to a life of Retribution if all return to one element and be there immerged as Brooks and Rivers in the Sea and we lose our individuation Ans I answer'd this in the Appendix to the Reas of the Christian Religion I add 1. Do you believe that each one hath now one individual Soul or not If not how can we lose that which we never had If we have but all one universal mover which moveth us as Engines as the Wind and Water move Mills how come some motions to be so swift as a Swallow and others so slow or none at all in as mobile a body Yea how cometh motion to be so much in our Power that we can sit still when we will and rise and go and run and speak when we will and cease or change it when we will A stone that falls or an arrow that is shot cannot do so Sure it is some inward formal Principle and not a material Mechanical mobility of the matter which can cause this difference Indeed if we have all but one Soul it 's easie to love our Neighbours as our selves because our Neighbours are our selves But it 's as easie to hate our selves as our Enemies and the good as the bad if all be one for forma dat nomen esse But it 's strange that either God or the Soul of the World shall hate it self and put it self to pain and fight against it self as in Wars c. But if you think still That there is nothing but God and dead matter actuated by him I would beg your Answer to these few Questions 1. Do you really believe that there is a God that is an eternal infinite self-being who hath all that power knowledg and goodness of will in transcendent Eminency which any Creature hath formally and is the efficient Governor of all else that is If not all the world condemneth you for it is not an uncaused Being and can have nothing but from its Cause who can give nothing greater than it self 2. Do you think this God can make a Creature that hath a subordinate Soul or Spirit to be the Principle of its own Vital Action Intellection and Volition or not Cannot God make a Spirit If not it is either because it is a Contradiction which none can pretend or because God is not Omnipotent that is is not God and so there is no God and so you deny what you granted But if God can make a Spirit 3. Why should you think he would not Some of your mind say That he doth all the good that he can or else he were not perfectly good Certainly his goodness is equal to his greatness and is commmunicative 4. Hath he not imprinted his Perfections in some measure in his Works Do they not shew his glory Judg of his Greatness by the Sun Stars and Heavens and of his Wisdom by the wonderful Order Contexture and Goverument of all things Even the Fabrick of a Fly or any Animal poseth us And do you think that his love and goodness hath no answerable effect 5. Do you think that passive matter doth as much manifest Gods Perfection and honour the Efficient as vital and Intellectual Spirits If it be a far nobler Work for God to make a free vital mental Spirit to act under him freely mentally and vitally than to make meer atomes why should you think that God will not do it 6. And do you not dishonour or blaspheme the prime Cause by such dishonouring of his Work as to say he never made any thing more noble than Atomes and Compositions of them 7. Is there not in the Creature a communicative disposition to cause their like Animals generate their like Fire kindleth fire Wise men would make others wise God is essential infinite Life Wisdom and Love and can he or would he make nothing liker to himself than dead Atomes Yea you feign him to make nothing but by Composition while you say That matter it self is eternal 8. But when the matter of Fact is evident and we see by the actions that there is a difference between things moved by God some having a created Life and mind and some none what needs then any further proof § 31. But if you hold That we have now distinct Spirits which are individual Substances why should you fear the loss of our individuation any more than our annihilation or specifick alteration If God made as many substantial individual Souls as men is there any thing in Nature or Scripture which thteatneth the loss of Individuation I have shewed you and shall further shew you enough against it § 32. You say page 7. Every thing returneth to its element and loseth its individuation Earth to Earth Water to the Sea the Spirit to God that gave it What happiness then can we hope for more than deliverance from the present calamity or what misery are we capable of more than is common to all Ans 1. Bodies lose but their Composition and Spiritual forms Do you think that any Atome loseth its individuation If it be still divisible in partes infinitas it is infinite And if every Atome be infinite it is as much or more than all the world and so is no part of the world and so there would be as many Worlds or Infinites as Atomes It is but an aggregative motion which you mention Birds of a Feather will flock together and yet are Individuals still Do you think any dust or drop any Atome of Earth or Water loseth any thing of it self by its union with the rest Is any Substance lost Is the simple Nature changed Is it not Earth and Water still Is not the Haecceity as they call it continued Doth not God know every dust and every drop from the rest Can he not separate them when he will And if Nature in all things tend to aggregation or union it is then the Perfection of every thing And why should we fear Perfection 2. But Earth and Water and Air are partible matter Earth is easily separable The parts of Water more hardly by the means of some terrene Separaror The parts of Air yet more hardly and the Sun-beams or substance of fire yet harder than that tho it's contraction and effects are very different And Spirits either yet harder or not at all Some make it essential to them to be indiscerptible and all must say That there is nothing in the Nature of them tending to division or separation And therefore tho God who can annihilate them can divide them into parts if it
unquestionable proof tho there be very many Cheats Read Mr. Glanvill's new Book published by Dr. Moore Lavater de Spectris Zanchy de Angilii Manlii Collect. Bodin's Daemonolog Remigius of Witches besides all the Mallei Malificorum and doubt if you can If you do I can give you yet more with full proof § 38. III. But all that I have said to you is but the least part in comparison of the assurance which you may have by the full revelats on of Jesus Christ who hath brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel where the state the doom the rewards and punishment of souls is asserted And without dark and long Ambages or Roman Juggles we prove the truth of this Gospel briefly and infallibly thus I. The History of Christ's Life Miracles Doctrine Death Resurrection Ascension the Apostles Miracles c. is proved by such forementioned evidence as hath physical certainty Not such as dependeth only on mens honesty or moral argument much less on a pretended determining authority but such as dependeth on necessary acts of man even the consent of all sorts of contrary minds and interests as we know the Statutes of the Land or other certain History But we are so far from needing to ask which part of Christians it is that is this Church that is to be believed that it tendeth to the assertaining of us that all the Christian World Papists Protestants Greeks Moscovites Armenians Jacobites Nestorians c. herein agree even while they oppose each other To know whether there was a Julius or Augustus Caesar a Virgil Ovid Cicero and which are their Works yea which are the Acts of Councils no man goeth to an authorized determining Judg for the matter of Fact but to historical proof And this we have most full II. And if the History be true the Doctrine must needs be true seeing it is fully proved by the matters of Fact Christ being proved to be Christ all his words must needs be true § 39. The Gospel of Christ hath these four parts of its infallible evidence I. The antecedent and inhererent Prophecies fulfilled II. The inherent impress of Divinity on the Gospel it self unimitable by man It hath Gods Image and Superscription and its Excellency propria luce is discernible III. All the Miracles and Resurrection and Ascention of Christ the Gift of his Spirit and extraordinary Miracles of the Apostles and first Churches IV. The sanctifying work of the Spirit by this Gospel on all Believers in all Ages of the World by which they have the Witness in themselves A full constant unimitable Testimony § 40. And now how highly soever you think of Bruits think not too basely of Men for whom Christ became a Saviour And yet think not so highly of Men Bruits and Stones as to think that they are God And think not that your true diligence hath confounded you but either your negligence or seducers or the unhappy stifling of obvious truth by the ill ordering of your thoughts And I beseech you remember that Gods Revelationt are suited to mans use and our true knowledg to his Revtlations He hath not told us all that man would know but what we must know Nothing is more known to us than that of God which is necessary for us Yet nothing so incomprehensible as God There is much of the Nature of Spirits and the world to come unsearchable to us which will pose all our Wits yet we have sufficient certainty of so much as tells us our duty and our hopes God hath given us Souls to use and to know only so far as is useful He that made your Watch taught not you how it 's made but how to use it Instead therefore of your concluding complaints of your condition thank God who hath made man capable to seek him serve him love him praiâ—e him and rejoyce in hope of promised Perfection Live not as a willful stranger to your Soul and God Use faithfully the Faculties which he hath given you sin not willfully against the truth revealed and leave things secret to God till you come into the clearer light and you shall have no cause to complain that God whose goodness is equal to his greatness hath dealt hardly with mankind Instead of trusting fallible man trust Christ who hath fully proved his trustiness and his Spirit will advance you to higher things than bruits are capable of God be merciful to us dark unthankful sinners Mar. 14. 1681. Ri. Baxter ERRATA IN the Second Part p 12. l. 9. for primus r. Primae p. 16. l. 21. for is r. are I have not leisure to gather the rest if there be any Here 〈◊〉 whaâ— wan◠〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 Copâ—