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
sortioris You think I suppose that which you call the Spirit of the World or Nature bigger in amplitude than the Spirit of a Wren § 8. Ad Sect. 16. You that say Spirits have Extension and Spissitude say that spissitude signifieth more substance in less compass And these Phrases sound liker to Corporeity than any that I have used More substance and less substance spissitude by Contraction signifie much change and signifie that which the Intellect may distinguish into partes extra partes though undivided which would increase a mans doubt whether God be not able to make a bigger Spirit less and a less bigger and to separate the parts that are so distinguishable in amplitude and to make one into two or two into one § 9. Whether Aether or Fire be material methinks you should be as uncertain at least as I. For you say Light is but motus of somwhat exciting the Spirit of the World If it be the Spirit of the world that is the nearest cause of Illumination by way of Natural activity than that which you call the Spirit of the World I call Fire and so we differ but de nomine But I have oft profest my Ignorance whether Fire and the Vegetative Nature be all one which I encline to think or whether Fire be a middle active Nature between the Spiritual and the meer passive by which Spirits work on Bodies I think I shall quickly know all this better than you do Ad SECT XVII XVIII XIX § 1. OF your Doctrine of Atomes I spake before I have no mind to examine the weight of your Reasons publickly § 2. I thought you that so extol the Atomists Doctrine would have deigned to read at least some of the Leaders of the various Sects And my undervaluing them is no excuse to you for as you knew not my judgment so I suppose you do not much esteem it That which I blame them for is that Lud. le Grand over-magnifieth Fire Telesius and Campanella over-magnifie Heat Patricius over-magnifieth Light as Cartesius doth Motion But if the one Principle of Motion Light and Heat had been better handled as one as it is it had been sounder § 3. I need not your hydrostatical experiment of the rising Rundle to convince me of the Motion of the matter of the World by a spiritual power I doubt as little of Spirits as of Bodies But I understand not what greater wonder there is in the rising of your Rundle than in the rising of a piece of Timber from the bottom of the Sea or that the heaviest body should sink lowest if it have way Whether Water consist of oblong flexible Bodies I am not much regardful to know Each of those oblong ones are divisible into Atomes § 4. But as to what hence you infer of Fire I make no doubt but the Flames and the red hot Iron are compouud things and that the oily or sulphureous matter moved and heated is the Substance which we see But I believe not that bare motion as motion were it never so swift wo'd cause this But that these effects are caused in the capable matter by the special action of a permeant Substance in itself invisible as Substance whose form is the Active Virtue of moving illuminating and heating and so is sensible only in this triple Effect And if you call this a Spirit I leave you to your Liberty Ad SECT XX. XXI § 1. THE seven Propositions which you find in my words I own save that the fourth should be thus formed That the Substantiae dispositio in fire distinct from the form beareth some such Analogy to a Spirit if it be not one viz. Vegetative that may somewhat serve us to conceive of it thereby and they that from this Analogy call it Ignis non formaliter sed eminenter are excusable though it can be no strict proper name that cometh not a forma § 2. Ad sect 21. But you ask Whether by Active power I mean a power alwaies exerting itself into act so that this fire is alwaies moving enlightning and hot formaliter else why should it be called Ignis Ans Answer your self when you speak of a power of Sensation and Intellection and Volition in a Soul do you mean a power alwaies exerting itself into sensation Intellection and Volition else why is it called a Soul Ans 2. I mean a power which hath alwaies an inclination to Act hath its own secret immanent act alwaies acts ad extra when it hath fit recipient objects As to your oft mentioned Confutation of Judge Hale having not read it I am no Judge of your performance You Question what is this new igneous substance never heard of before while in all Ages it hath been so famous a controversy when not only the Stoicks but most old Philosophers gave to it so much more than meet when Lud. Le Grand would make us believe that it was almost the only God of all the Heathen World under various names and while so many new Sects have written so many volumes of it who would have believed that even Dr. Henry More had never heard of it before To your question Is it material or immaterial I still answer material is a word of larger or narrower sense ambiguous I know that it hath the aforesaid Actions And by them I know that it hath the Power so to act and by both I know it is a substance capable of such power Acts And I know that the substance is invisible in se but seen in its Effects And my brain is too dark to be confident of more Let him that knoweth more boast of it § 3. You say A material Fire distinct from the flame of a Candle or Fire-stick or red hot Iron there is no more ground for than material Water distinct from Wells Rivers Seas c. Ans Do you not take Cartesius materia subtilis if not globuli aetherei to be invisible not alwaies appearing in Candles or Fire-sticks If a Soul may be a sensitive and intellective Substance and yet not be alwaies feeling or understanding why may there not be Fire where it shineth not It seemeth you take not the illuminated Air to be Ignite because it is not a Candle or Fire-stick I doubt not but Fire is a Substance permeant and existent in all mixt Bodies on Earth in ipsa tellure in Minerals in your Blood it is the prime part of that called the Spirits which are nothing but the Igneous Principle in a pure aerial Vehicle and is the Organ of the Sensitive Faculties of the Soul And if the Soul carry away any Vehicle with it it 's like to be some of this I doubt you take the same thing to be the Spirit of the world while you seem to vilifie it § 4. It 's strange when I tell you that I conceive of a Spirit but as Ignis eminenter and not formaliter that you should still ask whether I take it not for
the truly pious Conclusion in your 34. Sect. I not only agree with you but in my own name and many others humbly tender you unfeigned Thanks § 3. And because I would not seem more distant from you than I am I shall first tell you that on these Subjects your thoughts and mine have been so long working to the same ends much in the same way that 1655. your Book against Atheism and my popular discourses of the unreasonableness of Infidelity coming out together we both used many of the same Histories of Apparitions Witches c. for Confirmation and in that Book of yours you have these following words which if they are not as I think they are not mischievous it 's like mine of the same importance are not so nor are more so proved by you than your own Antid Li. 1. p. 17. The parts of a Spirit can be no more separated though they be dilated than you can cut off the Rays of the Sun by a pair of Scissars made of pellucide Chrystal Appen p. 304. Suppose a point of Light from which rayes out a luminous Orb according to the known Principles of Optiques This Orb of Light doth very much resemble the Nature of a Spirit which is diffused and extended and yet indivisible For wee 'l suppose in this Spirit the Center of Life to be indivisible and yet to diffuse itself by a kind of circumscribed Omnipotency as the point of Light is discernible in every point of the luminous Sphere And yet supposing that central lucid point indivisible there is nothing divisible in all that Sphere of Light For it is ridiculous to think of any Engine or Art whatsoever to separate the luminous Raies from the shining Center and keep them apart by themselves as any man will acknowledge that does but consider the thing we speak of Now there is no difficulty to imagine such an Orb as this as Substance as well as a Quality And indeed this Sphere of Light itself it not inhering in any Subject in the place it occupieth looks far more like a Substance than any Accident And what we fanry unadvisedly to befal Light and Colours that any point of them will thus ray orbicularly is more rationally to be admitted in spiritual Substances whose central Essence spreads out into a secondary Substance as the luminous Rays are conceived to shoot out from a lucid point From whence we are enabled to return an Answer to the greatest difficulty in the foregoing Objection viz. That the conceived parts in a Spirit have an inseparable dependance on the central Essence from which they flow and in which they are radically contained and therefore though there be an extension of this whole substantial power yet one part is not separable or discerpible from another but the entire Substance as well secondary as primary or central is indivisible But let us again cast our Eyes on this lucid point and radiant Orb we have made use of It is manifest that those Raies that are hindered from shooting out so far as they would need not lose their Virtue or Being but only be reflected back toward their shining Center and the Obstacle being removed they may shoot out to their full length again so that there is no Generation of a new Ray. And p. 357. When I speak of Indivisibility that imagination create not new troubles to her self I mean not such an Indivisibility as is fancied in a Mathematical point but as we conceive in a Sphere of Light made from one lucid point or radiant Center For that Sphere or Orb of Light though it be in some sense extended yet it is truly indivisible supposing the Center such For there is no means imaginable to discerpe or separate any one Ray of this Orb and keep it apart by itself disjoined from the Center Now a little to invert the Property of this luminous Orb when we would apply it to a Soul or Spirit As there can be no alteration in the radiant Center but therewith it is necessarily in every part of the Orb so there is also that Vnity and Indivisibility of the exterior parts if I may so call them of a Spirit or Soul with their inmost Center that if any of them be affected the Center of Life is thereby also necessarily affected and these exteriour parts of the Soul being affected by the parts of the Object with such Circumstances as they are in the inward Center receives all so circumstantiated that it hath necessarily the entire and unconfused Images of things without though they be contrived into so small a compass and are in the very Center of this spiritual substance This Symbolical Representation I used before and I cannot excogitate any thing that will better set off the nature of a Spirit c. Here is the same and more than I have said unless you think Light here to be no Fire but take Light for a Substance and Fire but for Motion which if you say I am willing to believe you will recal And that a Spirit is in its Contraction impenetrable let your words testifie p. 312. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I define thus A Power in a Spirit of offering so near to a corporeal Emanation from the Center of Life that it will so perfectly fill the Receptivity of Matter into which it has penetrated that it is very difficult or impossible for any other Spirit to possess the same and of hereby becoming so firmly and closely united to a Body as both to actuate and be acted upon to affect and be affected thereby So here is a Spirit when it hath filled a Body that can no more be penetrated by another Spirit or Body and so in this contracted state is impenetrable So that this is but bringing diffused parts closer together and then no other can be in the same place And is this the necessary Form of a Spirit But may not this extension and Indivisibiliâ—y also be omitted as too hard without all the mischief mentioned by you and a truer notifying Form found out Let us hear your self p. 359. To prevent all such Cavils we shall omit the Spinosities of the Extension or Indivisibility of a Soul or Spirit and conclude briefly thus That the manifold Contradictions and Repugnancies we find in the nature of matter to be able to either think or spontaneously to move itself do well assure us that these operations belong not to it but to some other substance Wherefore we finding those operations in us it is manifest that we have in us an immaterial Being really distinct from the Body which we ordinarily call a Soul The speculation of whose bare Essence though it may well puzzle us yet those properties that we find incompetible to a Body do sufficiently inform us of the different Nature thereof for it is plain she is a Substance indued with the power of Cogitation that is of perceiving and thinking of Objects as also of penetrating and spontaneously moving of a
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
Were it not for the Igneous Nature which is active or for Spirits they would be cessant Therefore you are thus far past the dark That there is in man an Invisible Substance which hath yea which is a Power or Virtue of Vital Action Intellection and Volition V. And that this Active Power is a distinct thing from meer Passive Power or mobilitie per aliud Experience puts past doubt There is in every living thing a Power or Virtue of self-moving else Life were not Life VI. And that this is not a meer accident of the Soul but its essential form I have proved so fully in my Methodus Theologiae in a peculiar Disputation that I will not here repeat it It 's evident That even in the igneous Substance the Vis Motiva Illuminativa Calefactiva is more than an accident even its essential form But were it otherwise it would but follow That if the very accidental Acts or qualities of a Soul be so noble its essential must be greater VII But it is certain That neither Souls nor any thing have either Being Power or Action but in constant receptive dependence on the continued emanation of the prime Cause and so no Inviduation is a total separation from him or an Independence or a self-sufficiency Thus far natural light tells you what Souls are § 7. You add you self That those attainments which you were made capable of you were designed to Very right God maketh not such noble Faculties or Capacities in vain much less to engage all men to a life of duty which shall prove deceit and misery But you have Faculties capable of thinking of God as your Beginning Guide and End as your Maker Ruler and Benefactor and of studying your duty to him in hope of Reward and of thinking what will become of you after Death and of hoping for future Blessedness and fearing future Misery all which no Bruit was ever capable of Therefore God designed you to such ends which you are thus capable of § 8. You say p. 3. Many have defended the Souls Immortality but none have proved a Subject capable of a life of Retribution It 's a Contradiction to be immortal or rewarded and not to be a Subject capable For nothing hath no accidents Nothing hath that which it is not capable of haing § 9. You say None tell us what it is How many Score Volumes have told it us I have now briefly told you what it is You say To say it is that by which I reason is not satisfactory I look for a Definition But on Condition you look not to see or feel it as you do Trees or Stones you may be satisfied I have given you a Definition The Genus is Substantia purissima the Differentia is Virtus Vitalis Activa Intellectiva Volitiva trinum a Imago Creatoris What 's here wanting to a Definition I have told you That there is an antecedent more certain Perception than by Definition by which I know that I see hear taste am and by which the Soul in act is conscious of it self § 10. You ask 1. Is it a real Being Answ I told you Nothing can do nothing 2. Is it really different from the Body Answ A Substance which hath in it self an Essential Principle of Life Intellection and Volition and that which hath not are really different Try whether you can make a Body feel or understand without a Soul 2. Those that are seperable are really different 3. You ask Is it able to be without it Answ What should hinder it The Body made not the Soul A viler Substance giveth not being to a nobler 2. Nothing at all can be without continued Divine sustentation But we see Juxta naturam God annihilateth no Substance Changes are but by composition and separation and action but not by annihilation An Atome of Earth or Water is not annihilated and why should we suspect that a Spiritual Substance is Yea the contrary is fully evident tho God is able to annihilate all things § 11. You say If it be meerly material and differ from the Body but gradually Death may be but its concentration of this active Principle in its own Body Answ If you understand your own words it 's well 1. Do you know what material signifieth See Crakenthorp's Metaphysicks and he will tell you in part it 's an ambiguous word Sometime it signifieth the same as substantia and so Souls are material Sometime it signifieth only that sort of Substance which is called corporeal Dr. More tells you That Penetrability and Indivisibility difference them But what if fire should differ from air materially but in degree of subtilty and purity or sensitive Souls from igneous and mental from sensitive but in higher degrees of purity of matter Is it not the form that maketh the specifick difference Air hath not the igneous Virtue of Motion â—â—umination and Calefaction nor igâ—â—s the sensitive Virtues nor meer sensiâ—â—ves the rational Virtues aforesaid Forâ—â— dat esse nomen This maketh not â—meer gradual difference but a speciâ—â— There is in Compounds matter and materiae dispositio receptiva forma There is somewhat answerable 〈◊〉 spiritual uncompounded Beings There is substantia and substantiae dispositio forma These are but intellectually distinct and not 〈◊〉 and are but inadequate conceptions of one thing That substantia is conceptus fundamentalis is confest Some make penetrâ—â—bility and indivisibility substantiae concepâ—â—â— dispositiâ—â— But the Virtus vitalis activa intol◠〈◊〉 volitiva in one is the conceptus formatis 2. But what mean you by the active Principles concentration in its own body It is a strange Fxpression 1. If you mean that it 's annihilated then it remaineth not 〈◊〉 If you mean that it remaineth an active Principle you mean a substance or acciâ—â—â—t If 〈◊〉 substance it seems you acknowâ—â—â—g it a self-subsisting being only not separate from its carcass And if they be two why are they not separable If separable why not separated When the dust of the Carcass is scattered is the Soul concentred in every atome or but in one And is it many or one concentred Soul If you mean That it 's but an accident that 's disprov'd before what accident is it If conâ—â—ntred in the body the body and every dust of it is vital and intellectual And if so every clod and stone is so which I will not so much wrong you as to imagine that you think § 12. But you would know what 's meant by a spirit whether all that is not evident to sense Ans It is a pure substance saith Dr. More penetrable and indivisible essentially vital perceptive and appetitive § 13. You add How shall I know the difference between the highest degree of materials and lowest of immaterials To me an immaterial and spiritual being seems a kind of Hccus a substantial nothing Ans If you take matter for the same with substance it is material But not if you take matter as it 's
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
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
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
here And I know not why you might not as well have named divers other Accidents or Modes especially Quantity and the trina dimensio and called them all the Form of Matter as well as your two Indeed when we have from sense a true notion of Matter we must know that it hath Quantity and is somewhere and therefore that one part of it and another part cannot possess just the same place and so we grant you the Impenetrability And how far you prove Spirits to be such substances as are extended and have Amplitude as you say pag. 105. and spissitude and be in loco and in more or less space variously and yet that they have no dimensions which the Divine Intellect or Power itself can measure and whether all the Spirits in the universe can be in eodem puncto and all that are finite contracted into that one point I leave this to Wits more subtil than mine to judge of For to tell you the truth I know nothing at all without the mediation of sense except the immediate sensation it self the acts of Intellection Volition or Nolition what the Intellect inferreth of the like by the perception of these I have seen felt how Water differeth from Earth and from that sensation my Intellect hath that Idea of the difference which it hath But without that seeing and feeling it all the definitions in the world and all the names of hard and soft and dry and moist would have given me no true notice of the formal difference Now hence I infer that I have no sense at all of the difference of a Spirits Substantiality in such modes and accidents from that of Matter and therefore how can I know it I know by knowing what knowing is and by willing what willing is And I know that these Acts prove a power for nothing doth that which it cannot do and that Act and Power prove a Substance for nothing hath nothing and can do nothing ab est tertii adjecti ad est secundi valet argumentum And I know that unless Light might be called Spirit Spirits are to me invisible And so I can knowingly say 1. What they do 2. What they can do 3. What they are in the genus of Substantiality 4. And what they are not as to many Attributes proper to Visible Substances or Bodies 5. And I have elsewhere fully proved in a special Dispute in Methodo Theol. that the Power of Vital Action Intellection and Volition is not a meer Accident of them but their very essential form But as to that Modification of their Substance which is contrary to Impenetrability and Divisibility I may grope but I cannot know it positively for want of sensation § 2. Is an Atom Matter or is it not If one Atom be no matter then two is none and then there is none If an Atom be matter is it Discerpible or not If not how is this the Form of Matter If it be divisible it is not an Atom that 's a contradiction And if every Atom be divisible in infinitum it is as great or greater than the world and then there are as many Infinites as Atoms That three Atoms united cannot be divided just in the middle etiam per Divinam Potentiam is because it implieth a contradiction viz. that an Atom is divisible so that by you an Atom is a Spirit Do you take the word Penetrable actively or passively or both If actively according to you Matter is penetrable for it can penetrate a Spirit that is possess the same place But I perceive you mean that Spirits can penetrate Bodies also that they can penetrate one another And I suppose that by Penetration you mean not that which separateth parts of the Matter cometh in between these parts but you mean possessing the same place as is said And if so do you put no limitation or what I ask before can all the Created Spirits in Heaven and Earth be in the same Atom of matter If so are they then absent from all other place or is every Spirit ubiquitary You confute the Nullibists by the operation of the Soul on the Body Ibi operatur ergo ibi est And do you think that all the Angels in Heaven and all Created Souls may be in one Body by Penetration If so Are they one Soul there or innumerable in one man And if they may be all in one point and so be all one may they not be divided again I confess my ignorance of the Consistence of spiritual Substance is so great that I am not able to say that God who hath given Souls quantitatem discretam and made them innumerable is not able to make one of two or many and to turn that one into two or many again I am not sure that it is a contradiction especially if it be true that Sennertus and many more say of the multiplication of Forms by Generation But if you take Penetrability passively then you mean that Spirits may be penetrated by Bodies or by one another or both No doubt you mean both and so as I said Bodies also are penetrable both actively and passively that is Bodies can penetrate Spirits and be penetrated by Spirits Whether any Bodies penetrate each other viz. whether Light or its vehicle at least be a Body and whether it penetrate the body of Glass or Chrystal with more about these matters I have heretofore spoken in my Reasons of the Christian Religion Append. Obj. 2. p. 525. and forward § 3. To conclude this as in natural mixt Bodies there are three principles Materia Materiae Dispositio for that I think is a fitter expression than Privatio Forma so in simple Beings there are three not parts but conceptus inadaequati answerable hereto viz. I. In the three passive Elements Earth Water and Air there is in each 1. The Matter 2. The Disposition of that matter by contexture and various modes of which Impenetrability and Divisibility are parts 3. The passive Form resulting from all these which consisteth in their various aptitude to their uses especially their Receptivity of the Influx of the Active Natures Here you put two Attributes together which are both but parts of the Materiae Dispositio and call them two the Form II. In the Active Natures there is 1. The Substantiality 2. The Substantiae Dispositio 3. The Form Of the first not part but inadequate Conceptus Substantiality we agree of the second Conceptus we differ That such Substances have an incomprehensible Purity of which we can have no distinct Idea for want of Sensation but a General Conception only and that this Purity whatever it be is not the Form of Spirits but the Substantiae Dispositio is that which I say And you say that Penetrability and Indivisibility are the Form which at most are but the Dispositio Substantiae and yet you joyn the Vital Virtue as part of the formal Conception too which is quite of another conception
Spirits should be a meer Virtus or Potentia Activa or Actus seemeth hard to believe And many words intimate that it is not your Judgment but that Substantiality signifieth not only the Modus of the Existence of the Actus Entitativus or Virtus but is the first half and fundamental Conceptus of a Spirit as Res speaking halfly its Entity In this I think we agree And now if this be so this very Conceptus of Fundamental Reality is but that same which Schibler and abundance others call Materia Metaphysica as different from Materia Physica and which Dr. Crakenthorpe many others take the general and most proper sense of Materia to contain therefore I say but that you should not take an equivocal word for univocal and lay so great a stress on an ambiguous name And I confess still all your names of Indiscerpibility Penetrability and Immateriality give me no scientifical notion of the true difference between the lowest Substantiality of a Spirit and the highest of Fire or Aether or Aristotelis quinta Essentia which you call Matter But I am fully satisfied of an Incomprehensible Purity of Substance 2. And of the true Form of a Soul and I find my self to need no more § 2. The Thomists take the Faculties of the Soul to be but Accidents as Mr. Pemble de Orig. Formar doth the Souls of Brutes to be but Qualities of Matter which I have elsewhere confuted And these must needs think that the Notion of 〈◊〉 is almost all of the Soul § 3. You add out of your Ethicks nulliuâ—◠〈◊〉 inâ—â—mam nudamque essentiam cognosci posse sed Attributa tantum essentialia essentialesque habitudines We are not any way able to discover the very bare Essence or Substance of any thing Ans Yet you say before What can be more plain and It 's obvious to every observing Eye I contess I understand you not I know no essentia that is not intima And if by nudam you mean accidentibus nudatam we know no Substance so because there is none such created but we can abstract the Essence from the Accidents And if we know not the nudam essentiam of any accident we know nothing Essential Attributes and Habitudes are hard words If by the Attributes you mean the names or second signal notions we know the Essence of Letters Names Sentences but by them ut per signa we know the things themselves but scientia abstractiva non intuitivâ But this is true knowledge of the Essence signified If by the Attributes you mean any Accidents signified by those Names those are not essential Attributes But if you mean the Essence signified you say and unsay I am past doubt that we know the Essences of the immediate Objects of Sense and also of our own Intellectual Acts. But how There is scientia adaequata and inadaequata I am past doubt that nihil scitur scientiâ adaequatâ but only inadaequata And so stricte Res ipsa non scitur quia tot a ejus Essentia non scitur but aliquid rerum scitur and this is true of the Essence itself All our knowledge is partial and imperfect a half Science but it reacheth Essences Ad SECT VIII § 1. WHereas I think that only Vsage must expound the difference between the sense of Substance and Matter you deny it not but still mis-suppose that use taketh Matter but in one sense and never applieth it to spiritual Substance All this de nomine is to little purpose but I will recite some words of your own Ench. Metaph. c. 2. p. 8 9 10. Essentia quae nihil aliud est quam materia forma simul sumptae Duo principia illa Entis interna incomplexa quatenus ens est esse Materiam formam Logicam Et uniuscujusque rei quatenus ens est Essentia consistit ex Amplitudine Differentia quae amplitudinem ab amplitudine discriminat Nam quod res quaelibet aliquatenus Ampla sit ex eo patet tum quod id voci materiae valde consonum sit quae tanquam principium Entis quatenus Ens est consideratur tum etiam quod nullam aliam ideam menti nostrae ea afferre potest praeter hanc amplitudinem Nec revera quicquam ab animis nostris concipi omni amplitudine destitutum p. 10. Ex quibus omnibus tandem profluit praeclarum hoc consectarium quod omne Ens quatenus Ens est Quantum Quale Ens dicitut respectu formae legitimaeque conditionis materiae Quod omne Ens sit Quantum ex illius Materiâ intelligitur Then you blame them qui imaginantur quaedam Entia omni Materia carentia etiam hac Logica omnique ad materiam relatione p. 12. Omnis substantia ex eo quod Ens sit Materiam quandam vel Amplitudinem in se includat You see here how much more now you write against your self than me I never said that Spirits are material nor that every Substance hath some matter as you do § 2. But this is but Materia Logica Ans And those that I excuse do but call it Materia metaphysica And what 's the meaning of Materia Logica If Logick or Grammar use second Notions Names and Signs if they be not rebus aptata they are false What is it now but the aptitude of the Name that we speak of Yea you that make Spatium to be God calling it Locus internus really distinct from Bodies yet say that you prove by Apodectical Arguments that it is tribus dimensionibus praeditum And no doubt God is a Spirit so that you your self make a Spirit even the Father of Spirits to be Matter that hath Amplitude Quantity and the three dimensions And yet write a Book against one as asserting Spirits to be matter who never asserted it unless the word Matter signifie but Substance For I ascribe no more to it than your Amplitude if so much And yet I take the word Amplitude to signifie no form at all no more than Quantity or Dimensions or Indivisibility or Penetrability but to be the Consistent Dispositio Substantiae And you once hit on that true notion of the Conditio materiae as a necessary Conceptus Entis praeter ipsam materiam formam Metaphys c. 2. p. 10. Verum Ens dicitur respectu formae Legitimaeque Conditionis materiae Neque enim Galea ex tenui Papyro fabricata concinnata vera galea est sed potius ludicrum illius imitamentum And so elsewhere Yet now you make the 〈…〉 to be the Form 〈…〉 you make all Spirits to 〈…〉 some matter You 〈…〉 to be but Anima Mundâ—◠〈…〉 it either as a 〈…〉 Substance as we say 〈…〉 the Body or else as the forma 〈…〉 which is but Conceptus inadaequatu◠〈◊〉 Vitality is forma animae If in the first 〈◊〉 you that say that operation of the Soul proveth locality and ascribe Amplitude and Quantity to God and the three dimensions do seem to make
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
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
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