But whither am I going I would conclude here according to promise having rescued the Doctors Definition of a Spirit from Mr. Baxters numerous little Criticisms like so many shrill busie Gnats trumpeting about it and attempting to infix their feeble Proboscides into it and I hope I have silenced them all But there is something in the very next Paragraph which is so wrongfully charged upon the Doctor that I cannot sorbear standing up in his justification The Charge is this That he has fathered upon Mr. Baxter an Opinion he never owned and nick-named him Psychopyrist from his own â—…ction As if says he we said that Souls are â—…re and also took Fire as the Doctor does for Candles and hot Irons c. onely But I answer in behalf of the Doctor as I have a little toucht on this matter before That he does indeed entitle a certain Letter which he answers to a Learned Psychopyrist as the Author thereof But Mr. Baxters name is with all imaginable care concealed So that he by his needless owning the Letter has notched that nick-name as he calls it of Psychopyrist upon himself whether out of greediness after that alluring Epithet it is baited with I know not but that he hangs thus by the gills like a Fish upon the Hook he may thank his own self for it nor ought to blame the Doctor Much less accuse him for saying that Mr. Baxter took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like For in his Preface he expresly declares on the Psychopyrists behalf that he does not make this crass and visible Fire the Essence of a Spirit but that his meaning is more subtile and refined With what conscience then can Mr. Baxter say that the Doctor affirms that he took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like and that he held all Souls to be such Fire whenas the Doctor is so modest and cautious that he does not affirm that Mr. Baxter thinks any to be such though even in this Placid Collation he professes his inclination towards the Opinion that Ignis and Vegetative Spirit is all one pag. 20 21. I have oft professed saith he that I am ignorant whether Ignis and Vegetative Spirit be all one to which I most incline or whether Ignis be an active nature made to be the instrument by which the three spiritual natures Vegetative Sensitive and Mental work on the three passive natures Earth Water Air. And again pag. 66. If it be the Spirit of the world that is the nearest cause of illumination by way of natural activity then that which you call the Spirit of the World I call Fire and so we differ but de nomine But I have saith he as before professed my ignorance whether Fire and the Vegetative nature be all one which I incline to think or whether Fire be a middle active nature between the spiritual and the mere Passive by which Spirits work on bodie And pag. 71. I doubt not but Fire is a Substance permeant and existent in all mixt bodies on Earth In your bloud it is the prime part of that called the Spirits which are nothing but the igneous principle in a pure Aereal Vehicle and is the organ of the Sensitive faculties of the Soul And if the Soul carry any Vehicle with it it 's like to be some of this I doubt you take the same thing to be the Spirit of the world though you seem to vilifie it And pag. 74. I suppose you will say the Spirit of the world does this But call it by what name you will it is a pure active Substance whose form is the Virtus motiva illuminativa calefactiva I think the same which when it operateth on due seminal Matter is Vegetative And lastly pag. 86. I still profess my self in this also uncertain whether Natura Vegetativa and Ignea be all one or whether Ignis be Natura Organica by which the three Superiour he means the Vegetative Sensitive and Intellective Natures operate on the Passive But I incline most to think they are all one when I see what a glorious Fire the Sun is and what operation it hath on Earth and how unlikely it is that so glorious a Substance should not have as noble a formal nature as a Plant. This is more than enough to prove that Mr. Baxter in the most proper sense is inclined to ' Psychopyrism as to the Spirit of the world or Vegetative soul of the Universe that that Soul or Spirit is Fire And that all created Spirits are Fire analogicè and eminenter I have noted above that he does freely confess But certainly if it had not been for his ignorance in the Atomick Philosophie which he so greatly despiseth he would never have taken the Fire it self a Congeries of agitated particles of such figures and dimensions for the Spirit of the world But without further doubt have concluded it onely the instrument of that Spirit in its operations as also of all other created Spirits accordingly as the Doctor has declared a long time since in his Immortalitas Animae Lib. 2. Cap. 8. Sect. 6. And finding that there is one such universal Vegetative Spirit properly so called or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the world he could not miss of concluding the whole Universe one great Plant or if some obscure degree of sense be given to it one large Zoophyton or Plant-animal whence the Sun will be endued or actuated as much by a Vegetative Nature as any particular Plant whatsoever whereby Mr. Baxter might have took away his own disficultie he was entangled in But the truth is Mr. Baxters defectiveness in the right understanding of the Atomick Philosophy and his Aversness therefrom as also from the true System of the world which necessarily includes the motion of the Earth we will cast in also his abhorrence from the Pre-existence of Souls which three Theories are hugely necâ—…ssary to him that would Philosophize with any success in the deepest points of natural Religion and Divine Providence makes him utter many things that will by no means bear the Test of severer Reason But in the mean time this Desectiveness in sound Philosophie neither hinders him nor any one else from being able Instruments in the Gospel-Ministrie if they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a due measure If they have a firm Faith in the revealed Truths of the Gospel and skill in History Tongues and Criticism to explain the Text to the people and there be added a sincere Zeal to instruct their Charge and that they may appear in good earnest to believe what they teach they lead a life devoid oâ—… scandal and osfence as regulated by those Goâ—…pel-Rules they propose to others this though they have little of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly so called that reaches to the deepest account of things but instead thereof Prudence and Ingenuity will
Annotations UPON THE Two foregoing TREATISES LUX ORIENTALIS OR An Enquiry into the OPINION OF THE EASTERN SAGES Concerning the Prae-existence of Souls AND THE Discourse of TRUTH Written for the more fully clearing and further confirming the main DOCTRINES in each TREATISE By one not unexercized in these kinds of SPECULATION LONDON Printed for J. Collins and S. Lounds over against Exeter-Change in the Strand 1682. Annotations UPON LUX ORIENTALIS THese two Books Lux Orientalis and the Discourse of Truth are luckily put together by the Publisher there being that suitableness between them and mutual support of one another And the Arguments they treat of being of the greatest importance that the Mind of man can entertain herself with the consideration thereof has excited so sluggish a Genius as mine to bestow some few Annotations thereon not very anxious or operose but such as the places easily suggest and may serve either to â—…ctifie what may seem any how oblique or illustrate what may seem less clear or make a supply or adde strength where there may seem any further need In which I would not be so understood as that I had such an anxiety and fondness for the Opinions they maintain as if all were gone if they should fail but that the Dogmata being more fully clearly and precisely propounded men may more safely and considerately give their Judgments thereon but with that modesty as to admit nothing that is contrary to the Judgment of the truly Catholick and Apostolick Church Chap. 2. p. 4. That he made us pure and innocent c. This is plainly signified in the general Mosaick History of the Creation that all that God made he saw it was good and it is particularly declared of Adam and Eve that they were created or made in a state of Innocency Pag. 4. Matter can do nothing but by motion and what relation hath that to a moral Contagion We must either grant that the figures of the particles of Matter and their motion have a power to affect the Soul united with the Body and I remember Josephus somewhere speaking of Wine says it does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 regenerate as it were the Soul into another life and sense of things or else we must acknowledge that the parts of Matter are alterable into qualifications that cannot be resolved into mere mechanical motion and figure whether they be thus altered by the vital power of the Spirit of Nature or however it comes to pass But that Matter has a considerable influence upon a Soul united thereto the Author himself does copiously acknowledge in his fourth Chapter of this Book where he tells us that according to the disposition of the Body our Wits are either more quick free and sparkling or more obtuse weak and sluggish and our Mind more chearful and contented or else more morose melancholick or dogged c. Wherefore that he may appear the more consistent with himself it is likely he understands by this Moral Contagion the very venome and malignity of vitious Inclinations how that can be derived from Matter especially its power consisting in mere motion and figuration of parts The Psalmist's description is very apposite to this purpose Psal. 58. The ungodly are froward even from their mothers womb as soon as they are born they go astray and speak lyes They are as venomous as the poyson of a serpent even like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear That there should be such a difference in the Nativity of some from that of others and haply begot also of the same Parents is no slight intimation that their difference is not from their Boâ—… but their Souls in which there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eruptions of vitious Inclinations wâ—… 〈◊〉 had contracted in their former statâ—… 〈◊〉 pressed nor extinct in this by reason oâ—… 〈◊〉 lapse and his losing the Paradisiacal 〈◊〉 which he was created and which should 〈◊〉 had not been for his Fall been transmitted to his Posterity but that being lost the several measures of the pristine Vitiosity of humane Souls discover themselves in this life according to the just Laws of the Divine Nemesis essentially interwoven into the nature of things Pag. 5. How is it that those that are under continual temptations to Vice are yet kept within the bounds of Vertue c. That those that are continually under temptations to Vice from their Childhood should keep within the bounds of Vertue and those that have perpetual outward advantages from their Childhood to be vertuous should prove vitious notwithstanding is not rationally resolved into their free will for in this they are both of them equal and if they had been equal also in their external advantages or disadvantages the different event might well be imputed to the freedom of their Will But now that one notwithstanding all the disadvantages to Vertue should prove vertuous and the other notwithstanding all the advantages to Vertue should prove vitious the reason of this certainly to the considerate will seem to lie deeper than the meer liberty of Will in man But it can be attributed to nothing with a more due and tender regard to the Divine Attributes than to the pre-existent state of humane Souls according to the Scope of the Author Pag. 9. For still it seems to be a diminutive and disparaging apprehension of the infinite and immense goodness of God that he should detrude such excellent Creatures c. To enervate this reason there is framed by an ingenious hand this Hypothesis to vie with that of Pre-existence That Mankind is an Order of Beings placed in a middle state between Angels and Brutes made up of contrary Principles viz. Matter and Spirit indued with contrary faculties viz. Animal and Rational and encompassed with contrary Objects proportioned to their respective faculties that so they may be in a capacity to exercise the Vertues proper and peculiar to their compounded and heterogeneal nature And therefore though humane Souls be capable of subsisting by themselves yet God has placed them in Bodies full of brutish and unreasonable Propensions that they may be capable of exercising many choice and excellent Vertues which otherwise could never have been at all such as Temperance Sobriety Chastity Patience Meekness Equanimity and all other Vertues that consist in the Empire of Reason over Passion and Appetite And therefore he conceives that the creating of humane Souls though pure and immaculate and uniting them with such brutish Bodies is but the constituting and continuing such a Species of Being which is an Order betwixt Brutes and Angels into which latter Order if men use their faculties of the Spiritual Principle in them well they may ascend Forasmuch as God has given them in their Spiritual Principle containing Free Will and Reason to discern what is best a power and faculty of overcoming all their inordinate Appetites This is his Hypothesis mostwhat in his own words and all to his own sence as near as I could with brevity express
it And it seems so reasonable to himself that he professes himself apt to be positive and dogmatical therein And it might very well seem so to him if there were a susficient faculty in the Souls of men in this World to command and keep in order the Passions and Appetites of their Body and to be and do what their Reason and Conscience tells them they should be and do and blames them for not being and doing So that they know more by far than they find an ability in themselves to perform Extreamly few there are if any but this is their condition Whence all Philosophers that had any sense of Vertue and Holiness as well as Jews and Christians have looked upon Man as in a lapsed state not blaming God but deploring the sad condition they found themselves in by some foregoing lapse or fault in Mankind And it is strange that our own Consciences should fhe in our faces for what we could never have helped It is witty indeed which is alleadged in the behalf of this Hypothesis viz. That the Rational part of man is able to command the lower Appetites because if the superiour part be not strong enough to govern the inferiour it destroys the very being of moral Good and Evil Forasmuch as those acts that proceed out of necessity cannot be moral nor can the superiour Faculties be obliged to govern the inferiour if they are not able because nothing is obliged to impossâ—…bilities But I answer if inabilities come upon us by our own fault the defects of action then are upon the former account moral or rather immoral And our Consciences rightly charge us with the Vitiosities of our Inclinations and Actions even before we can mend them here because they are the consequences of our former Guilt Wherefore it is no wonder that there is found a flaw in a subtilty that would conclude against the universal Experience of men who all of them more or less that have any sense of Morality left in them complain that the inferiour powers of the Soul at least for a time were too hard for the superiour And the whole mass of Mankind is so generally corrupt and abominable that it would argue the wise and just God a very unequal Matcher of innocent Souls with brutish Bodies they being universally so hugely foiled or overcome in the conflict if he indeed were the immediate Matcher of them For how can that be the effect of an equilibrious or sufficient Free Will and Power that is in a manner perpetual and constant But there would be near as many Examples one way as the other if the Souls of men in this state were not by some precedent lapse become unable to govern as they ought all in them or about them that is to be subjected to their Reason No fine Fetches of Wit can demolish the steady and weighty structure of sound and general Experience Pag. 9. Wherein he seeth it ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt c. The Expression ten thousand to one is figurative and signifies how hugely more like it is that the Souls would be corrupted by their Incorporation in these Animal or Brutish Bodies than escape Corruption And the effect makes good the Assertion for David of old to say nothing of the days of Noah and Paul after him declare of Mankind in general that they are altogether become abominable there is none that doth good no not one Wherefore we see what efficacy these Bodies have if innocent Souls be put into them by the immediate hand of God as also the force of Custom and corrupt Education to debauch them and therefore how unlikely it is that God should create innocent Souls to thrust them into such ill circumstances Pag. 10. To suppose him assistent to unlawful and unclean Coitions by creating a Soul to animate the impure Foetus c. This seemed ever to those that had any sense of the Divine Purity and Sanctity or were themselves endued with any due sensibleness and discernment of things to be an Argument of no small weight But how one of the more rude and unhewen Opposers of Pre-existence swaggers it out of countenance I think it not amiss to set down for a pleasant Entertainment of the Reader Admit says he that Gods watchful Providence waits upon dissolute Voluptuaries in their unmeet Conjunctions and sends down fresh created Spirits to actuate their obscene Emissions what is here done which is not very high and becoming God and most congruous and proportionable to his immense Grandeur and Majesty viz. To bear a part amongst Pimps and Bawds and pocky Whores and Woremasters to rise out of his Seat for them and by a free Act of Creation of a Soul to set his Seal of Connivance to their Villanies who yet is said to be of more pure Eyes than to endure to behold Wickedness So that if he does as his Phrase is pop in a Soul in these unclean Coitions certainly he does it winking But he goes on For in the first place says he his condescension is hereby made signal and eximious he is gloriously humble beyond a parallel and by his own Example lessons us to perform the meanest works if fit and profitable and to be content even to drudge for the common benefit of the World Good God! what a Rapture has this impure Scene of Venerie put this young Theologer into that it should thus drive him out of his little Wits and Senses and make him speak inconsistences with such an affected Grace and lofty Eloquence If the act of Gods freely creating Souls and so of assisting wretched Sinners in their foul acts of Adultery and Whoredom be a glorious action how is it an Abasement of him how is it his Humiliation and if it be an humbling and debasing of him how is it glorious The joyning of two such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are indeed without parallel The creating of an humane Soul immortal and immaculate and such as bears the Image of God in it as all immaculate Souls do is one of the most glorious actions that God can perform such a Creature is it as the Schools have judged more of value than the frame of the whole visible World But to joyn such a Creature as this to such impure corporeal matter is furthermore a most transcendent Specimen of both his Skill and Soveraignty so that this is an act of further Super-exaltation of himself not of Humiliation What remains then to be his Humiliation but the condescending to assist and countenance the unclean endeavours of Adulterers and Adulteresses Which therefore can be no Lesson to us for Humility but a Cordial for the faint-hearted in Debauchery and degeneracy of Life wherein they may plead so instructed by this rural Theolog that they are content to drudge for the common profit of the World But he proceeds And secondly says he hereby he elicits Good out of Evil causing famous and heroick persons to take their Origine from
base occasions and so converts the Lusts of sensual Varlets to nobler ends than they designed them As if an heroick Off-spring were the genuine effect of Adultery or Fornication and the most likely way to People the World with worthy Personages How this raw Philosopher will make this comply with his Profession of Divinity I know not whenas it teaches us that Marriage is honourable but Whoremongers and Adulterers God will judge and that he punishes the Iniquities of the Parents on their Children But this bold Sophist makes God adjudge the noblest Off-spring to the defiled Bed and not to punish but reward the Adultery or Whoredom of debauched persons by giving them the best and bravest Children Which the more true it could be found in experience it would be the stronger Argument for Pre-existence it being incredible that God if he created Souls on purpose should crown Adultery and Whoredom with the choicest Off-spring And then thirdly and lastly says he hereby he often detects the lewdness of Sinners which otherwise would be smothered c. As if the All-wise God could find no better nor juster means than this to discover this Villany If he be thus immediately and in an extraordinary way assistant in these Coitions were it not as easie for him and infinitely more decorous to charge the Womb with some Mola or Ephemerous Monster than to plunge an immaculate humane Soul into it This would as effectually discover the Villany committed and besides prevent the charge Parishes are put to in maintaining Bastards And now that we have thus seen what a mere nothing it is that this Strutter has pronounced with such sonorous Rhetorick yet he is not ashamed to conclude with this Appeal to I know not what blind Judges Now says he are not all these Actions and Concerns very graceful and agreeable to God Which words in these circumstances no man could utter were he not of a crass insensible and injudicious Constitution or else made no Conscience of speaking against his Judgment But if he speak according to his Conscience it is manifest he puts Sophisms upon himself in arguing so weakly As he does a little before in the same place where that he may make the coming of a Soul into a base begotten Body in such a series of time and order of things as the Pre-existentiaries suppose and Gods putting it immediately upon his creating it into such a Body to be equally passable he uses this slight Illustration Imagine saith he God should create one Soul and so soon as he had done instantly pop it into a base begotten Body and then create another the matter of an hours space before its precipitation into such a Receptacle which of these Actions would be the most diminutive of the Creators honour would not the difference be insensible and the scandal if any the same in both Yet thus lies the case just betwixt the Pre-existentiaries and us Let the Reader consider how senseless this Author is in saying the case betwixt the Pre-existentiaries and him is just thus when they are just nothing akin for his two Souls are both unlapsed but one of the Pre-existentiaries lapsed and so subjected to the Laws of Nature In his case God acts freely raising himself as it were out of his Seat to create an immaculate Soul and put into a foul Body but in the other case God onely is a looker on there is onely his Permission not his Action And the vast difference of time he salves it with such a Quibble as this as if it were nothing because thousands of Ages ago in respect of God and his Eternity is not an hour before He might as well say the difference betwixt the most glorious Angel and a Flea is nothing because in comparison of God both are so indeed Wherefore this Anti-Pre-existentiary is such a Trifler that I am half ashamed that I have brought him upon the Stage But yet I will commend his Craft though not his Faithfulness that he had the wit to omit the proposing of Buggery as well as of Adultery and the endeavouring to shew how graceful and agreeable to God how congruous and proportionate it were to his immense Grandeur and Majesty to create a Soul on purpose immaculate and undefiled to actuate the obscene Emissions of a Brute having to do with a Woman or of a Man having to do with a Brute For both Women and Brutes have been thus impregnated and brought forth humane Births as you may see abundantly testified in Fortunius Licetus it would be too long to produce Instances This Opinion of Gods creating Souls and putting them into Bodies upon incestuous and adulterous Coitions how exceeding absurd and unbecoming the Sanctity of the Divine Majesty it seemed to the Churches of Aethiopia you may see in the History of Jobus Ludolphus How intolerable therefore and execrable would this Doctrine have appeared unto them if they had thought of the prodigious fruits of successful Buggery The words of Ludolfus are these Perabsurdum esse si quis Deum astrictum dicat pro adulterinis incestuosis partubus animas quotidie novas creare â—…st Aethiop lib. 3. cap. 5. What would they then say of creating a new Soul for the Womb of a Beast bugger'd by a Man or of a Woman bugger'd by a Beast Pag. 12. Methinks that may be done at a cheaper rate c. How it may be done with more agreeableness to the Goodness Wisdom and Justice of God has been even now hinted by me nor need I repeat it Pag. 13. It seems very incongruous and unhandsome to suppose that God should create two Souls for the supply of one monstrous Body And there is the same reason for several other Monstrosities which you may take notice of in Fortunius Licetus lib. 2. cap. 58. One with seven humane heads and arms and Ox-feet others with Mens bodies but with a head the one of a Goose the other of an Elephant c. In which it is a strong presumption humane Souls lodged but in several others certain How does this consist with Gods fresh creating humane Souls pure and innocent and putting them into Bodies This is by the aforesaid Anti-Pre-existentiary at first answered onely by a wide gape or yawn of Admiration And indeed it would make any one stare and wonder how this can consist with Gods immediately and freely intermeddling with the Generation of Men as he did at first in the Creation For out of his holy hands all things come clean and neat Many little efforts he makes afterwards to salve this difficulty of Monsters but yet in his own judgment the surest is the last That God did purposely tye fresh created Souls to these monstrous shapes that they whose Souls sped better might humbly thank him Which is as wisely argued as if one should first with himself take it for granted that God determines some men to monstrous Debaucheries and Impieties and then fancy this the use of it that the Spectators
presently reminds him of the whole scene of things represented in his sleep But neither Sun nor Clouds nor Trees nor any such ordinary thing could in any likelihood have reminded him of his Dream And besides it was the lively resemblance betwixt the Swans he saw in his sleep and those he saw waking that did so effectually rub up his memory The want therefore of such occurrences in this life to remind us of the passages of the former is a very reasonable account why we remember nothing of the former state But here the Opposers of Pre-existence pretend that the joyous and glorious Objects in the other state do so pierce and transport the Soul and that she was inured to them so long that though there were nothing that resembled them here the impression they make must be indelible and that it is impossible she should forget them And moreover that there is a similitude betwixt the things of the upper World and the lower which therefore must be an help to memory But here as touching the first they do not consider what a Weapon they have given into my hand against themselves For the long inuredness to those Celestial Objects abates the piercingness of their transport and before they leave those Regions according to the Platonick or Origenian Hypothesis they grow cooler to such enjoyments so that all the advantages of that piercing transport for memory are lost And besides in vertue of that piercing Transport no Soul can call into memory what she enjoyed formerly but by recalling herself into such a Transport which her Terrestrial Vehicle makes her uncapable of For the memory of external Transactions is sealed upon us by some passionate corporeal impress in conjunction with them which makes them whip Boys sometimes at the boundaries of their Parish that they may better remember it when they are old men which Impress if it be lost the memory of the thing it self is lost And we may be sure it is lost in Souls incorporate in Terrestrial Vehicles they having lost their Aereal and Celestial and being fatally incapacitated so much as to conceit how they were affected by the External Objects of the other World and so to remember how they felt them And therefore all the descriptions that men of a more Aethereal and Entheous temper adventure on in this life are but the Roamings of their Minds in vertue of their Constitution towards the nature of the heavenly things in general not a recovery of the memory of past Experience this State not affording so lively a representment of the Pathos that accompanied the actual sense of those things as to make us think that we once really enjoyed them before That is onely to be collected by Reason the noble exercise of which faculty in the discovering of this Arcanum of our Pre-existence had been lost if it could have been detected by a compendious Memory But if ever we recover the memory of our former State it will be when we are re-entred into it we then being in a capacity of being really struck with the same Pathos we were before in vertue whereof the Soul may remember this was her pristine condition And therefore to answer to the second Though there may be some faintness of resemblance betwixt the things of the other State and this yet other peculiarities also being required and the former sensible Pathos to be recovered which is impossible in this State it is likewise impossible for us to remember the other in this The second Argument of the Author for the proving the unlikeliness of our remembring the other State is the long intermission and discontinuance from thinking of those things For 't is plain that such discontinuance or desuetude bereaves us of the memory of such things as we were acquainted with in this World Insomuch as if an ancient man should read the Verses or Themes he made when he was a School-boy without his name subscribed to them though he pumpt and sweat for them when he made them could not tell they were his own How then should the Soul remember what she did or observ'd many hundreds nay thousands of years ago But yet our Authors Antagonist has the face to make nothing of this Argument neither Because forsooth it is not so much the desuetude of thinking of one thing but the thinking of others that makes us forget that one thing What a shuffle is this For if the Soul thought on that one thing as well as on other things it would remember it as well as them Therefore it is not the thinking of other things but the not thinking of that that makes it forgotten Usus promptâ—…s facit as in general so in particular And therefore disuse in any particular slackens at first and after abolishes the readiness of the Mind to think thereof Whence sleepiness and sluggishness is the Mother of Forgetfulness because it disuses the Soul from thinking of things And as for those seven Chronical Sleepers that slept in a Cave from Decius his time to the reign of Theodosius junior I dare say it would have besotted them without a Miracle and they would have rose out of their sleep no more wise than a Wisp I am sure not altogether so wise as this awkward Arguer for memory of Souls in their Pre-existent state after so hugely long a discontinuance from it But for their immediately coming out of an Aethereal Vehicle into a Terrestrial and yet forgetting their former state what Example can be imagined of such a thing unless that of the Messias who yet seems to remember his former glorious condition and to pray that he may return to it again Though for my part I think it was rather Divine Inspiration than Memory that enabled him to know that matter supposing his Soul did pre-exist Our Authors third and last Argument to prove that lapsed Souls in their Terrestrial condition forget their former state is from observation how deteriorating changes in this earthly Body spoils or quite destroys the Memory the Soul still abiding therein such as Casualties Diseases and old Age which changes the tenour of the Spirits and makes them less useful for memory as also 't is likely the Brain it self Wherefore there being a more deteriorating change to the Soul in coming into an earthly Body instead of an aereal or aethereal the more certainly will her memory of things which she experienced in that state be washed out or obliterated in this Here our Authors Antagonist answers That though changes in body may often weaken and sometimes utterly spoil the memory of things past yet it is not necessary that the Souls changing of her body should therefore do so because it is not so injurious to her faculties Which if it were not onely our Memory but Reason also should have been casheered and loft by our migration out of those Vehicles we formerly actuated into these we now enliven but that still remaining sound and entire it is a signe that our
Memory would do so too if we had pre-existed in other bodies before and had any thing to remember And besides if the bare translocation of our Souls out of one body into another would destroy the memory of things the Soul has experienced it would follow that when People by death are summoned hence into the other state that they shall be quite bereaved of their Memory and so carry neither applause nor remorse of Conscience into the other World which is monstrously absurd and impious This is the main of his Answer and most what in his own words But of what small force it is we shall now discover and how little pertinent to the business For first we are to take notice that the deteriorating change in the Body or deteriorating state by change of Bodies is understood of a debilitative diminutive or privative not depravative deterioration the latter of which may be more injurious to the faculties of the Soul though in the same Body such a deteriorating change causing Phrensies and outragious Madness But as sor diminutive or privative deterioration by change the Soul by changing her Aereal Vehicle for a Terrestrial is comparing her latter state with her former much injured in her faculties or operations of them all of them are more slow and stupid and their aptitude to exert the same Phantasms of things that occurred to them in the other State quite taken away by reason of the heavy and dull though orderly constitution of the Terrestrial Tenement which weight and stupor utterly indisposes the Soul to recall into her mind the scene of her former state this load perpetually swaying down her thoughts to the Objects of this Nor does it at all follow because Reason is not lost therefore Memory if there were any such thing as Pre-existence would still abide For the universal principles of Reason and Morality are essential to the Soul and cannot be obliterated no not by any death but the knowledge of any particular external Objects is not at all essential to the Soul nor consequently the memory of them and thâ—…refore the Soul in the state of silence being stript of them cannot recover them in her incorporation into a Terrestrial Body But her Reason with the general principles thereof being essential to her she can as well as this State will permit exâ—…rcise them upon the Objects of this Scene of the Earth and visible World so far as it is discovered by her outward senses she looking out at those windows of this her earthly Prison to contemplate them And she has the faculty and exercise of Memory still in such a sense as she has of sensitive Perception whose Objects she does remember being yet to all former impresses in the other state a mere Abrasa Tabula And lastly it is a mere mistake of the Opposer or worse that he makes the Pre-existentiaries to impute the loss of memory in Souls of their former state merely to their coming into other Bodies when it is not bare change of Bodies but their descent into worser Bodies more dull and obstupifying to which they impute this loss of memory in lapsed Souls This is a real death to them according to that ancient Aenigm of that abstruse Sage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We live their â—…eath namely of separate Souls but are dead to their life But the changing of our Earthly Body for an Aereal or Aethereal this is not Death but Reviviscency in which all the energies of the Soul are not depressed but exalted and our Memory with the rest quickened as it was in Esdras after he had drunk down that Cup ofsered to him by the Angel full of Liquor like Fire which filled his Heart with Understanding and strengthned his Memory as the Text says Thus we see how all Objections against the three Reasons of lapsed Souls losing the memory of the things of the other state vanish into smoak Wheresore they every one of them single being so sound all three put together methinks should not fail of convincing the most refractory of this Truth That though the Soul did pre-exist and act in another state yet she may utterly forget all the Scenes thereof in this Pag. 46. Now if the reasons why we lose the remembrance of our former life be greater c. And that they are so does appear in our Answer to the Objections made against the said Reasons if the Reader will consider them Pag. 50. And thereby have removed all prejudices c. But there is yet one Reason against Pre-existence which the ingenious Author never thought of urged by the Anti-Pre-existentiaries namely That it implies the rest of the Planets peopled with Mankind it being unreasonable to think that all Souls descended in their lapse to this onely Earth of Ours And if there be lapsed Souls there how shall they be recovered shall Christ undergo another and another death for them But I believe the ingenious Author would have looked upon this but as a mean and trifling Argument there being no force in any part thereof For why may not this Earth be the onely Hospital Nosocomium or Coemeterium speaking Platonically of sinfully lapsed Souls And then suppose others lapsed in other Planets what need Christ die again for them when one drop of his Bloud is sufficient to save myriads of Worlds Whence it may seem a pity there is not more Worlds than this Earth to be redeemed by it Nor is it necessary they should historically know it And if it be the Eclipse of the Sun at his Passion by some inspired Prophets might give them notice of it and describe to them as orderly an account of the Redemption as Moses does of the Creation though he stood not by while the World was framed but it was revealed to him by God And lastly it is but a rash and precarious Position to say that the infinite Wisdom of God has no more ways than one to save lapsed Souls It is sufficient that we are assured that this is the onely way for the saving of the Sons of Adam and these are the fixt bounds of revealed Truth in the Holy Scripture which appertains to us Inhabitants on Earth But as for the Oeconomy of his infinite Wisdom in the other Planets if we did but reflect upon our absolute ignorance thereof we would have the discretion not to touch upon that Topick unless we intended to make our selves ridiculous while we endeavour to make others so Chap. 6. pag. 51. Now as the infinite goodness of the Deity obligeth him always to do good so by the same to do that which is best c. To elude the force of this chief Argument of the Pre-existentiaries an ingenious Opposer has devised a way which seems worth our considering which is this viz. By making the Idea of God to consist mainly in Dominion and Soveraignty the Scriptures representing him under no other notion than as the Supream Lord and Soveraign of the Universe Wherefore nothing is to
of his Classis not withstanding that he might have done otherwise and therefore they will be forward to extend that of the Author to the Hebrews chap. 1. v. 8. Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever the Scepter of Righteousness is the Scepter of thy Kingdom Thou hast loved Righteousness and hated Iniquity therefore God even thy God hath anointed thee with the Oyl of Gladness above thy Fellows to his behaviour in his pre-existent state as well as in this And whenever the Soul of Christ did exist if he was like us in all things sin onely excepted he must have a capacitie of sinning though he would not sin that capacitie not put into act being no sin but an Argument of his Vertue and such as if he was always devoid of he could not be like us in all things sin onely excepted For posse peccare non est peccatum And as â—…or humane Souls changing their Species in their unalterable heavenly happiness the Species is not then changed but perfected and compleated namely that facultie or measure of it in their Plastick essentially latitant there is by the Divine Grace so awakened after such a series of time and things which they have experienced that now they are sirmly united to an heavenly Body or ethereal Vehicle for ever And now we need say little to the other member of the Dilemma but to declare that free will or mutability in humane Souls is no separable Accident but of the essential contexture of them so as it might have its turn in the series of things And how consistent it was with the Goodness of God and his Wisdom not to suppress it in the beginning has been sufficiently intimated above Wherefore now forasmuch as there is no pretext that either the Wisdom or Justice of God should streighten the time of the creation of humane Souls so that their existence may not commence with that of Angels or of the Universe and that this figment of the Supremacy of Gods mere Will over his other Attributes is blown away it is manifest that the Argument for the Pre-existence of Souls drawn from the Divine Goodness holds firm and irrefragable against whatever Opposers We have been the more copious on this Argument because the Opposer and others look upon it as the strongest proof the Pre-existentiaries produce for their Opinion And the other Party have nothing to set against it but a fictitious Supremacy of the Will of God over his Goodness and other Attributes Which being their onely Bulwark and they taking Sanctuary nowhere but here in my apprehension they plainly herein give up the cause and establish the Opinion which they seem to have such an antipathy against But it is high time now to pass to the next Chapter Chap. 10. p. 75. To have contracted strong and inveterate habits to Vice and Lewdness and that in various manners and degrees c. To the unbyassed this must needs seem a considerable Argument especially when the Parties thus irreclaimably profligate from their Youth some as to one Vice others to another are found such in equal circumstances with others and advantages to be good born of the same Parents educated in the same Family and the like Wherefore having the same bodily Extraction and the same advantages of Education what must make this great difference as they grow up in the Body but that their Souls were different before they came into it And how should they have such a vast difference in the proclivity to Vice but that they lived before in the state of Pre-existence and that some were much deeper in rebellion against God and the Divine Reason than others were and so brought their different conditions with them into these Terrestrial Bodies Pag. 75. Then how a Swallow should return to her old trade of living after her Winter sleep c. Indeed the Swallow has the advantages of Memory which the incorporate Soul has not in her incorporation into a Terrestrial Body after her state of Silence But the vital inclinations which are mainly if not onely â—…ted in the Plastick being not onely revived but signally vitious of themselves revived with advantage by reason of the corruption of this coarse earthly Body into which the Soul is incorporate they cannot fail of discovering themselves in a most signal manner without any help of memory but from the mere pregnancie of a corrupt Body and formerly more than ordinarily debauched Plastick in the state of Pre-existence Pag. 76. Whenas others are as fatally set against the Opinions c. And this is done as the ingenious Author takes notice even where neither Education nor Custom have interposed to sophisticate their Judgments or Sentiments Nay it is most certain that they sometime have Sentiments and entertain Opinions quite contrary to their Education So that that is but a slight account to restore this Phaenomenon into Education and Custom whenas Opinions are entertained and stiffly maintained in despight of them This I must confess implies that the aerial Inhabitants philosophize but conjecturally onely as well as the Inhabitants of the Earth And it is no wonder that such Spirits as are lapsed in their Morals should be at a loss also in their Intellectuals and though they have a desire to know the truth in Speculations it suiting so well with their pride that yet they should be subject to various errours and hallucinations as well as we and that there should be different yea opposite Schools of Philosophie among them And if there be any credit to be given to Cardans story of his Father Facius Cardanus things are thus de facto in the aereal Regions And two of the Spirits which Facius Cardanus saw in that Vision left upon Record by him and of which he often told his Son Hieronymus while he was living were two Professors of Philosophie in different Academies and were of different Opinions one of them apertly professing himself to be an Aven-Roist The story is too long to insert here See Dr. H. Moore his Immortality of the Soul book 3. chap. 17. So that lapsed Souls philosophizing in their Aerial State and being divided into Sects and consequently maintaining their disserent or opposite Opinions with heat and affection which reaches the Plastick this may leave a great propension in them to the same Opinions here and make them almost as prone to such and such Errours as to such and such Vices This I suppose the ingenious Author propounds as an Argument credible and plausible though he does not esteem it of like force with those he produced before Nor does his Opposer urge any thing to any purpose against it The main thing is That these Propensities to some one Opinion are not universal and blended with the constitution of every person but are thin sown and grow up sparingly Where there are five says he naturally bent to any one Opinion there are many millions that are free to all If some says he descend into this life
and bluntness of this rude Writer nor are at all surprized at it as a Noveltie that any ignorant rural Hobthurst should call the Spirit of Nature a thing so much beyond his capacitie to judge of a prodigious Hobgoblin But to conclude be it so that there may be other causes besides the pristine inurements of the Pre-existent Soul that may something forcibly determine her to one course of life here yet when she is most forcibly determined if there be such a thing as Pre-existence this may be rationally supposed to concur in the efficiencie But that it is not so strong an Argument as others to prove Pre-existence I have hinted alreadie Pag. 79. For those that are most like in the Temper Air Complexion of their Bodies c. If this prove true and I know nothing to the contrarie this vast difference of Genius's were it not for the Hypothesis of their Classical Character imprinted on Souls at their very creation would be a considerably tight Argument But certainly it is more honest than for the avoiding Pre-existence to resolve the Phaenomenon into a secret Causality that is to say into one knows not what Pag. 82. There being now no other way left but Pre-existence c. This is a just excuse for his bringing in any Argument by way of overplus that is not so apodictically concluding If it be but such as will look like a plausible solution of a Phaenomenon as this of such a vast difference of Genius's Pre-existence once admitted or otherwise undeniably demonstrated the proposing thereof should be accepted with favour Chap. 11. pag. 85. And we know our Saviour and his Apostles have given credit to that Translation c. And it was the authentick Text with the Fathers of the Primitive Church And besides this if we read according to the Hebrew Text there being no object of Job's knowledge expressed this is the most easie and natural sence Knowest thou that thou wast then and that the number of thy days are many This therefore was reckoned amongst the rest of his ignorances that though he was created so early he now knew nothing of it And this easie sence of the Hebrew Text as well as that Version of the Septuagint made the Jews draw it in to the countenancing of the Tradition of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is the Pre-existence of Souls as Grotius has noted of them Pag. 85. As reads a very credible Version R. Menasse Ben Israel reads it so I gave thee Wisdom which Version if it were sure and authentick this place would be fit for the defence of the Opinion it is produced for But no Interpreters besides that I can find following him nor any going before him whom he might follow I ingenuously confess the place seems not of force enough to me to infer the conclusion He read I suppose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Piel whence he translated it Indidi â—…ibi Sapientiam but the rest read it in Cal. Pag. 86. And methinks that passage of our Saviours Prayer Father glorifie me with the glorie I had before the World began c. This Text without exceeding great violence cannot be evaded As for that of Grotius interpreting that I had that which was intended for me to have though it make good sence yet it is such Grammar as that there is no School-boy but would be ashamed of it nor is there for all his pretences any place in Scripture to countenance such an extravagant Exposition by way of Parallelism as it may appear to any one that will compare the places which he alleadges with this which I leave the Reader to do at his leisure Let us consider the Context Joh. 17. 4. I have glorified thee upon earth during this my Pilgrimage and absence from thee being â—…ent hither by thee I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do and for the doing of which I was sent and am thus long absent And now O Father glorifie me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 apud teipsum in thine own presence with the glorie which I had before the world was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 apud te or in thy presence What can be more expressive of a Glorie which Christ had apud Patrem or at his Fathers home or in his presence before the world was and from which for such a time he had been absent Now for others that would salve the business by communication of Idioms I will set down the words of an ingenious Writer that goes that way Those Predicates says he that in a strict and â—…igorous acception agreed onely to his Divine Nature might by a communication of Idioms as they phrase it be attributed to his Humane or at least to the whole Person compounded of them both than which nothing is more ordinarie in things of a mixt and heterogeneous nature as the whole man is stiled immortal from the deathlessness of his Soul thus he And there is the same reason if he had said that man was stiled mortal which certainly is far the more ordinarie from the real death of his Bodie though his Soul be immortal This is wittily excogitated But now let us apply it to the Text expounding it according to his communication of Idioms affording to the Humane Nature what is onely proper to the Divine thus Father glorifie me my Humane Nature with the glorie that I my Divine Nature had before the world was Which indeed was to be the Eternal Infinite and Omnipotent brightness of the Glory of the Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is the Glory which his Divine Nature had before the World was But how can his Humane Nature be glorified with that Glory his Divine Nature had before the world was unless it should become the Divine Nature that it might be said to have pre-existed But that it cannot be For there is no confusion of the Humane and Divine Nature in the Hypostasis of Christ Or else because it is hypostatically united with the Divine Nature but if that be the Glory that he then had already and had it not according to the Opposers of Pre-existence before the world was So we see there is no sence to be made of this Text by communication of Idioms and therefore no sence to be made of it without the Pre-existence of the Humane Nature of Christ. And if you paraphrase me thus My Hypostasis consisting of my Humane and Divine Nature it will be as untoward sence For if the Divine Nature be included in me then Christ prays for what he has already as I noted above For the Glory of the eternal Logos from everlasting to everlasting is the same as sure as he is the same with himself Pag. 86. By his expressions of coming from the Father descending from Heaven and returning thither again c. I suppose these Scriptures are alluded to John 3. 13. 6. 38. 16. 28. I came down from Heaven not to do my own will but the will of him that
variety may well seem an addition to the felicity of their state And the shadowyness of the Night may help them in the more composing Introversions of their contemplative mind and cast the soul into ineffably pleasing slumbers and Divine extasies so that the transactions of the Night may prove more solacing and beatifick sometimes than those of the day Such things we may guess at afar off but in the mean time be sure that these good and serious Souls know how to turn all that God sends to them to the improvement of their Happiness To the fourth Argument we answer That there are not a few reasons from the nature of the thing that may beget in us a strong presumption that souls recovered into their Celestial Happiness will never again relapse though they did once For first it may be a mistake that the Happiness is altogether the same that it was before For our first Paradisiacal Bodies from which we lapsed might be of a more crude and dilute Aether not so full and saturate with Heavenly glory and perfection as our resurrection-Resurrection-body is Secondly The soul was then unexperienced and lightly coming by that Happiness she was in did the more heedlessly forgo it before she was well aware and her mind roved after new adventures though she knew not what Thirdly It is to be considered whether Regeneration be not a stronger tenour for enduring Happiness than the being created happie For this being wrought so by degrees upon the Plastick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with ineffable groans and piercing desires after that Divine Life that the Spirit of God co-operating exciteth in us when Regeneration is perfected and wrought to the full by these strong Agonies this may rationally be deemed a deeper tincture in the soul than that she had by mere Creation whereby the soul did indeed become Holy innocent and happie but not coming to it with any such strong previous conflicts and eager workings and thirstings after that state it might not be so firmly rooted by far as in Regeneration begun and accomplished by the operation of Gods Spirit gradually but more deeply renewing the Divine Image in us Fourthly It being a renovation of our Nature into a pristine state of ours the strength and depth of impression seems increased upon that account also Fifthly The remembrance of all the hardships we underwent in our lapsed condition whether of Mortification or cross Rancounters this must likewise help us to persevere when once returned to our former Happiness Sixthly The comparing of the evanid pleasures of our lapsed or terrestrial life with the fulness of those Joys that we find still in our heavenly will keep us from ever having any hankering after them any more Seventhly The certain knowledge of everlasting punishment which if not true they could not know must be also another sure bar to any such negligencies as would hazard their setled felicity Which may be one reason why the irreclaimable are eternally punished namely that it may the better secure eternal Happiness to others Eighthly Though we have our triple Vital Congruity still yet the Plastick life is so throughly satisfied with the resurrection-Resurrection-body which is so considerably more full and saturate with all the heavenly richness and Glorie than the former that the Plastick of the soul is as entirely taken up with this one Bodie as if she enjoyed the pleasures of all three bodies at once Aethereal Aereal and Terrestrial And lastly Which will strike all sure He that is able to save to the utmost and has promised us eternal life is as true as able and therefore cannot fail to perform it And who can deny but that we in this State I have described are as capable of being fixed there and confirmed therein as the Angels were after Lucifer and others had faln And now to the fifth and last Argument against the state of Silence I say it is raised out of mere ignorance of the most rational as well as most Platonical way of the souls immediate descent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For the first Mover or stirrer in this matter I mean in the formation of the Foetus is the Spirit of Nature the great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Universe to whom Plotinus somewhere attributes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first Predelineations and prodrome Irradiations into the matter before the particular soul it is preparing for come into it Now the Spirit of Nature being such a spirit as contains Spermatically or Vitally all the Laws contrived by the Divine Intellect for the management of the Matter of the World and of all Essences else unperceptive or quatenus unperceptive for the good of the Universe we have all the reason in the world to suppose this Vital or Spermatical Law is amongst the rest viz. That it transmit but one soul to one prepared conception Which will therefore be as certainly done unless some rare and odd casualty intervene as if the Divine Intellect it self did do it Wherefore one and the same Spirit of Nature which prepares the matter by some general Predelineation does at the due time transmit some one soul in the state of Silence by some particularizing Laws that fetch in such a soul rather than such but most sure but one unless as I said some special casualty happen into the prepared Matter acting at two places at once according to its Synenergetical vertue or power Hence therefore it is plain that there will be no such clusters of Foetus's and monstrous deformities from this Hypothesis of the souls being in a state of Silence But for one to shuffle off so fair a satisfaction to this difficulty by a precarious supposing there is no such Being as the Spirit of Nature when it is demonstrable by so many irrefragable Arguments that there is is a Symptome of one that philosophizes at random not as Reason guides For that is no reason against the existence of the Spirit of Nature because some define it A Substance incorporeal but without sense and animadversion c. as if a spirit without sense and animadversion were a contradiction For that there is a Spirit of Nature is demonstrable though whether it have no sense at all is more dubitable But through it have no sense or perception it is no contradiction to its being a Spirit as may appear from Dr. H. Mores Brief Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit To which I direct the Reader for satisfaction I having already been more prolix in answering these Arguments than I intended But I hope I have made my presage true that they would be found to have no force in them to overthrow the Hypothesis of a threefold Vital Congruity in the Plastick of the soul. So that this fourth Pillar for any execution they can do will stand unshaken Pag. 103. For in all sensation there is corporeal motion c. And besides there seems an essential relation of the Soul to Body according to Aristotles definition thereof he
defining it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which actuates the boby Which therefore must be idle when it has nothing to actuate as a Piper must be silent as to piping if he have no Pipe to play on Chap. 14. pag. 113. The ignobler and lower properties or the life of the body were languid and remiss vâ—… as to their proper exercises or acting for themselves or as to their being regarded much by the Soul that is taken up with greater matters or as to their being much relished but in subserviency to the enjoyment of those more Divine and sublime Objects as the Author intimates towards the end of his last Pillar Pag. 114. And the Plastick had nothing to do but to move this passive and easie body c. It may be added and keep it in its due form and shape And it is well added accordingly as the concerns of the higher faculties required For the Plastick by reason of its Vital Union with the vehicle is indeed the main instrument of the motion thereof But it is the Imperium of the Perceptive that both excites and guides its motion Which is no wonder it can do they being both but one soul. Pag. 114. To pronounce the place to be the Sun c. Which is as rationally guessed by them as if one should fancy all the Fellows and Students Chambers in a Colledge to be contained within the area of the Hearth in the Hall and the rest of the Colledge uninhabited For the Sun is but a common Focus of a Vortex and is less by far to the Vortex than the Hearth to the Ichnographie of the whole Colledge that I may not say little more than a Tennis-ball to the bigness of the earth Pag. 115. Yet were we not immutaâ—…ly so c. But this mutability we were placed in was not without a prospect of a more full confirmation and greater accumulation of Happiness at the long run as I intimated above Pag. 116. We were made on set purpose defatigable that so all degrees of life c. We being such Creatures as we are and finite and taking in the enjoyment of those infinitely perfect and glorious Objects onely pro modulo nostro according to the scantness of our capacity diversion to other Objects may be an ease and relief From whence the promise of a glorified body in the Christian Religion as it is most grateful so appears most rational But in the mean time it would appear most irrational to believe we shall have eyes and ears and other organs of external sense and have no suitable Objects to entertain them Pag. 117. Yea methinks 't is but a reasonable reward to the body c. This is spoken something popularly and to the sense of the vulgar that imagine the body to feel pleasure and pain whenas it is the soul onely that is perceptive and capable of feeling either But 't is fit the body should be kept in due plight for the lawful and allowable corporeal enjoyments the soul may reap therefrom for seasonable diversion Pag. 117 That that is executed which he hath so determined c. Some fancy this may be extended to the enjoying of the fruits of the Invigouration of all the three Vital Congruities of the Plastick and that for a soul orderly and in due time and course to pass through all these dispensations provided she keep her self sincere towards her Maker is not properly any lapse or sin but an harmless experiencing all the capacities of enjoying themselves that God has bestowed upon them Which will open a door to a further Answer touching the rest of the Planets being inhabited namely That they may be inhabited by such kind of souls as these who therefore want not the Knowledge and assistance of a Redeemer And so the earth may be the onely Nosocomium of sinfully lapsed souls This may be an answer to such far-fetched Objections till they can prove the contrarie Pag. 118. Adam cannot withstand the inordinate appetite c. Namely after his own remissness and heedlessness in ordering himself he had brought himself to such a wretched weakness Pag. 121. The Plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken c. There are three Vital Congruities belonging to the Plastick of the Soul and they are to awake orderly that is to operate one after another downward and upward that is to say In the lapse the Aereal follows the Aethereal the Terrestrial the Aereal But in their Recovery or Emergency out of the lapse The Aereal follows the Terrestrial and the Aethereal the Aereal But however a more gross turgency to Plastick operation may haply arise at the latter end of the Aereal Period which may be as it were the disease of the soul in that state and which may help to turn her out of it into the state of Silence and is it self for the present silenced therewith For where there is no union with bodie there is no operation of the Soul Pag. 121. For it hath an aptness and propensity to act in a Terrestrial body c. This aptness and fitness it has in the state of Silence according to that essential order of things interwoven into its own nature and into the nature of the Spirit of the World or great Archeus of the Universe according to the eternal counsel of the Divine Wisdom By which Law and appoyntment the soul will as certainly have a fitness and propensity at its leaving the Terrestrial body to actuate an Aereal oâ—…e Pag. 122. Either by mere natural Congruity the disposition of the soul of the world or some more spontaneous agent c. Natural Congruity and the disposal of the Plastick soul of the world which others call the Spirit of Nature may be joyned well together in this Feat the Spirit of Nature attracting such a soul as is most congruous to the predelineated Matter which it has prepared for her But as for the spontaneous Agent I suppose he may understand his ministry in some supernatural Birth Unless he thinks that some Angels or Genii may be imployed in putting souls into bodies as Gardiners are in setting Pease and Beans in the beds of Gardens But certainly they must be no good Genii then that have any hand in assisting or setting souls in such wombs as have had to do with Adulterie Incest and Buggery Pag. 123. But some apish shews and imitations of Reason Vertue and Religion c. The Reason of the unregenerate in Divine things is little better than thus and Vertue and Religion which is not from that Principle which revives in us in real Regeneration are though much better than scandalous vice and profaness mere pictures and shadows of what they pretend to Pag. 123. To its old celestial abode c. For we are Pilgrims and strangers here on the earth as the holy Patriarchs of old declared And they that speak such things saith the Apostle plainly shew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they seek their native country for so 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies And truly if they had been mindful of that earthly country out of which they came they might saith he have had opportunity of returning But now they desire a better to wit an heavenly Hebr. 11. Pag. 124. But that they step forth again into Airy Vehicles This is their natural course as I noted above But the examples of Enoch and Elias and much more of our ever Blessed Saviour are extraordinary and supernatural Pag. 125. Those therefore that pass out of these bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoyled weakened or orderly unwound according to the tenour of this Hypothesis c. By the favour of this ingenious Writer this Hypothesis does not need any such obnoxious Appendage as this viz. That souls that are outed these Terrestrial bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoiled weakned or orderly unwound return into the state of Inactivity But this is far more consonant both to Reason and Experience or Storie that though the Terrestrial Congruity be still vigorous as not having run out it may be the half part no not the tenth part of its Period the soul immediately upon the quitting of this body is invested with a bodie of Air and is in the state of Activity not of Silence in no sense For some being murdered have in all likelyhood in their own persons complained of their murderers as it is in that story of Anne Walker and there are many others of the same nature And besides it is far more reasonable there being such numerous multitudes of silent souls that their least continuance in these Terrestrial bodies should at their departure be as it were a Magical Kue or Tessera forthwith to the Aereal Congruity of life to begin to act its part upon the ceasing of the other that more souls may be rid out of the state of Silence Which makes it more probable that every soul that is once besmeared with the unctuous moisture of the Womb should as it were by a Magick Oyntment be carried into the Air though it be of a still-born Infant than that any should return into the state of Silence or Inactivity upon the pretence of the remaining vigour of the Terrestrial Congruity of life For these Laws are not by any consequential necessity but by the free counsel of the Eternal Wisdom of God consulting for the best And therefore this being so apparently for the best this Law is interwoven into the Spirit of the World and every particular soul that upon the ceasing of her Terrestrial Union her Aereal Congruity of life should immediately operate and the Spirit of Nature assisting she should be drest in Aereal robes and be found among the Inhabitants of those Regions If souls should be remanded back into the state of Silence that depart before the Terrestrial Period of Vital Congruity be orderly unwound so very few reach the end of that Period that they must in a manner all be turned into the state of Inactivity Which would be to weave Penelope's Web to do and undo because the day is long enough as the Proverb is whenas it rather seems too short by reason of the numerosity of Silent souls that expect their turn of Recovery into Life Pag. 125. But onely follow the clew of this Hypothesis The Hypothesis requires no such thing but it rather clashes with the first and chietest Pillar thereof viz. That all the Divine designs and actions are laid and carried on by Infinite Goodness And I have already intimated how much better it is to be this way that I am pleading for than that of this otherwise-ingenious Writer Pag. 125. Since by long and hard exercise in this body the Plastick Life is well taâ—…ned and debilitated c. But this is not at all necessary no not in those souls whose Plastick may be deemed the most rampant Dis-union from this Terrestrial body immediately tames it I mean the Terrestrial Congruity of Life and its operation is stopt as surely as a string of a Lute never so smartly vibrated is streightways silenced by a gentle touch of the finger and another single string may be immediately made to sound alone while the other is mute and silent For I say these are the free Laws of the Eternal Wisdom but fatally and vitally not intellectually implanted in the Spirit of Nature and in all Humane Souls or Spirits The whole Universe is as it were the Automatal Harp of that great and true Apollo and as for the general striking of the strings and stopping their vibrations they are done with as exquisite art as if a free intellectual Agent plaid upon them But the Plastick powers in the world are not such but onely Vital and Fatal as I said before Pag. 126. That an Aereal body was not enough for it to display its force upon c. It is far more safe and rational to say that the soul deserts her Aereal Estate by reason that the Period of the Vital Congruity is expired which according to those fatal Laws I spoke of before is determined by the Divine Wisdom But whether a soul may do any thing to abbreviate this Period and excite such symptoms in the Plastick as may shorten her continuance in that state let it be left to the more inquisitive to define Pag. 128. Where is then the difference betwixt the just and the wicked in state place and body Their difference in place I have sufficiently shewn in my Answer to the third Argument against the triple Congruity of Life in the Plastick of Humane Souls how fitly they may be disposed of in the Air. But to the rude Buffoonry of that crude Opposer of the Opinion of Pre-existence I made no Answer It being methinks sufficiently answered in the Scholia upon Sect. 12. Cap. 3. Lib. 3. of Dr. H. Mores Immortalitas Animae if the Reader think it worth his while to consult the place Now for State and Body the difference is obvious The Vehicle is of more pure Air and the Conscience more pure of the one than of the other Pag. 130. For according to this Hypothesis the gravity of those bodies is less because the quantity of the earth that draws them is so c. This is an ingenious invention both to salve that Phaenomenon why Bodies in Mines and other deep subterraneous places should seem not so heavy nor hard to lift there as they are in the superiour Air above the earth and also to prove that the crust of the earth is not of so considerable a thickness as men usually conceive it is I say it is ingenious but not so firm and sure The Quick-silver in a Torricellian Tube will sink deeper in an higher or clearer Air though there be the same Magnetism of the earth under it that was before But this is not altogether so fit an illustration there being another cause than I drive at conjoyned thereto But that which I drive at is sufficient of it self to salve this Phaenomenon
infinite and unbounded Wisdom of God that he should detrude those Souls which he so seriously designes to make happy into a state so hazardous wherein he seeth it to be ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt and defile themselves and so make them more miserable here and to eternity hereafter A strange method of recovering this to put them into such a fatal necessity of perishing 't is but an odd contrivance for their restauration to Happiness to use such means to compass it which 't is ten thousand to one but will make them infinitely more miserable This he objects in reference to what the Author of Lux Orientalis writes chap. 2. where he says It is a thousand to one but Souls detruded into these bodies will corrupt and desile themselves and so make themselves miserable here and to eternity hereafter And much he quotes to the same purpose out of the Account of Origen Where the Souls great disadvantages to Vertue and Holiness what from the strong inclinations of the Body and what from National Customs Education in this Terrestrial State are lively set out with a most moving and tragical Eloquence to shew how unlikely it is that God should put innocent and immaculate Souls of his own creation immediately into such Bodies and so hard and even almost fatal condition of miscarrying Upon which this subtile Anti-Pre-existentiary Thus you see saith he what strong Objections and Arguments the Pre-existentiaries urge with most noise and clamour are against themselves If therefore these Phaenomena be inexplicable without the Origenian Hypothesis they are so too with it and if so then the result of all is that they are not so much Arguments of Pre-existence as Aspersions of Providence This is smartly and surprizingly spoken But let us consider more punctually the state of the matter Here then we are first to observe how cunningly this shrewd Antagonist conceals a main stroke of the Supposition viz. That the Divine Pity and Compassion to lapsed Souls that had otherwise fallen into an eternal state of Silence and Death had set up Adam for their relief and endued him with such a Paradisiacal body of so excellent a constitution to be transmitted to all his Posterity and invesled him in vertue of this with so full power non peccandi that if he and his Posterity were not in an happy flourishing condition as to their eternal interest of Holiness and Vertue it would be long of himself And what could God do more correspondently to his Wisdom and Goodness dealing with free Agents such as humane Souls are than this And the thing being thus stated no Objections can be brought against the Hypothesis but such as will invade the inviolable Truths of Faith and Orthodox Divinity Secondly We are to observe how this cunning Objector has got these two Pre-existentiaries upon the hip for their youthful flowers of Rhetorick when one says it is hundreds to one the other ten thousand to one that Souls will miscarry put into these disadvantages of the Terrestrial state by which no candid Reader will understand any more than that it is exceeding difficult for them to escape the pollutions of this lower World once incorporated into Terrestrial Bodies But it being granted possible for them to emerge this is a great grace and favour of the Divine Goodness to such peccant wretches that they are brought out of the state of eternal Silence and Death to try their Fortunes once more though incumbred with so great difficulties which the Divine Nemesis suffers to return upon them That therefore they are at all in a condition of recovery is from the Goodness and Mercy of God that their condition is so hard from his Justice they having been so foully peccant And his wisdom being only to contrive what is most agreeable to his Mercy and Justice it is not at all derogatory to the infinite and unbounded Wisdom of God thus to deal with lapsed Souls For though he does seriously intend to make them happy yet it must be in a way correspondent to his Justice as well as Mercy Thirdly and Lastly Besides that the Spirit of the Lord pervades the whole Earth ready to assist the sincere there is moreover a mighty weight of mercy added in the Revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the world so that the retriving of the Souls of men out of their Death and Silence into this Terrestrial state in which there is these helps to the sincere it is manifestly worthy the Divine Wisdom and Goodness For those it takes no effect with they beginning the world again on this stage they shall be judged onely according to what they have done here there being an eternal obliteration as well as oblivion of the acts of their Pre-existent state but those that this merciful Dispensation of God has taken any effect upon here their sincere desires may grow inâ—…o higher accomplishments in the future state Which may something mitigate the honour of that seeming universal squalid estate of the Sons of men upon earth Which in that it is so ill is rightly imputed by both Jews and Christians and the divinest Philosophers to a Lapse and to the Mercy and Grace of God that it is no worse From whence it may appear that that argument for Pre-existence that God does not put newly created innocent Souls into such disadvantageous circumstances of a terrestrial Incorporation though partly out of Mercy partly out of Justice he has thought fit lapsed Souls should be so disposed of that this I say is no aspersion of Divine Providence Pag. 36. And now I cannot think of any place in the sacred Volume more that could make a tolerable plea against this Hypothesis c. It is much that the ingenious Author thought not of Rom. 9. 11. For the Children being not yet born neither having done either good or evil that the purpose of God according to Election might stand not of works but of him that calleth This is urged by Anti-pre-existentiaries as a notable place against Pre-existence For say they how could Esau and Jacob be said neither to have done good nor evil if they pre-existed before they came into this world For if they pre-existed they acted and if they acted they being rational Souls they must have done either good or evil This makes an handsome shew at first sight but if we consult Gen. 25. we shall plainly see that this is spoke of Jacob and Esau yet strugling in the Womb as it is said in this Text For the Children being not yet born but strugling in the Womb as you may see in the other Which plainly therefore respects their actions in this life upon which certainly the mind of St. Paul was fix'd As if he should have expresly said For the Children being not yet born but strugling in the Womb neither having done either good or evil in this life as being still in the Womb it was said of them to Rebeckah The elder shall
serve the younger Which sufficiently illustrates the matter in hand with St. Paul that as Jacob was preferred before Esau in the Womb before either of them was born to act here on the Earth and that therefore done without any respect to their actions so the purpose of God touching his people should be of free Election not of Works That of Zachary also Chap. 12. 1. I have heard alledged by some as a place on which no small stress may be laid The Lord is there said to be the Former of the Spirit of Man within him Wherefore they argue If the Spirit of Man be formed within him it did never pre-exist without him But we answer That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is but the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And then the sence is easie and natural that the Spirit that is in man God is the Former or Creator of it But this Text defines nothing of the time of forming it There are several other Texts alledged but it is so easie to answer them and would take up so much time and room that I think fit to omit them remembring my scope to be short Annotations not a tedious Commentary Pag. 41. Mr. Ben Israel in his Problems De Creatione assures us that Pre-existence was the common belief c. That this was the common opinion of the wiser men amongst the Jews R. Menasse Ben Israel himself told me at London with great freedom and assurance and that there was a constant tradition thereof which he said in some sence was also true concerning the Trinity but that more obscure But this of Pre-existence is manifest up and down in the Writings of that very ancient and learned Jew Philo Judaeus as also something toward a Trinity if I remember aright Chap. 5. Pag. 46. We should doubtless have retained some remembrance of that condition And the rather as one ingeniously argues because our state in this life is a state of punishment Upon which he concludes That if the calamities of this life were inflicted upon us only as a punishment of sins committed in another Providence would have provided some effectual means to preserve them in our memories And therefore because we find no remainders of any such Records in our minds 't is says he sufficient evidence to all sober and impartial inquirers that our living and sinning in a former state is as false as inevident But to this it may be answered That the state we are put in is not a state only of punishment but of a merciful trial and it is sufficient that we find our selves in a lapsed and sinful condition our own Consciences telling us when we do amiss and calling upon us to amend So that it is needless particularly to remember our faults in the other world but the time is better spent in faithfully endeavouring to amend our selves in this and to keep our selves from all faults of what nature soever Which is a needless thing our memory should discover to us to have been of old committed by us when our Consciences urge to us that they are never to be committed and the Laws of holy Law-givers and divine Instructers or wise Sages over all the world assist also our Conscience in her office So that the end of Gods Justice by these inward and outward Monitors and by the cross and afflicting Rancounters in this present state is to be attained to viz. the amendment of Delinquents if they be not refractory And we were placed on this stage as it were to begin the world again so as if we had not existed before Whence it seems meet that there should be an utter obliteration of all that is past so as not to be able by memory to connect the former life and this together The memory whereof if we were capable of it would be inconsistent with the orderly proceedings of this and overdoze us and make us half moped to the present Scene of things Whenas the Divine Purpose seems to be that we should also experience the natural pleasures and satisfactions of this life but in an orderly and obedient way keeping to the prescribed rules of Virtue and Holiness And thus our faithfulness being exercised 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in those things which are more estranged from our nobler and diviner nature God may at last restore us to what is more properly our own But in the mean time that saying which the Poet puts in the mouth of Jupiter touching the inferiour Deities may not misbeseem the mercy and wisdom of the true God concerning lapsed Souls incorporate into terrestrial Bodies Has quoniam coeli nondum dignamur honore Quas dedimus certè terras habitare sinamus Let them not be distracted betwixt a sensible remembrance of the Joys and Glories of our exteriour Heaven above and the present fruition of things below but let them live an holy and heavenly life upon Earth exercising their Graces and Vertues in the use and enjoyment of these lower earthly Objects till I call them up again to Heaven where after this long swoond they are fallen into they will more seasonably remember their former Paradisiacal state upon its recovery and reagnize their ancient home Wherefore if the remembring or forgetting of the former state depend absolutely upon the free contrivance of the Divine Wisdom Goodness and Justice as this ingenious Opposer seems to suppose I should even upon that very point of fitness conceive that an utter oblivion of the former state is interwoven into the fate and nature of lapsed Souls by a Divine Nemesis though we do not conceive explicitely the manner how And yet the natural reasons the Author of Lux Orientalis produces in the sequel of his Discourse seem highly probable For first As we had forgot some lively Dream we dreamt but last night unless we had met with something in the day of a peculiar vertue to remind us of it so we meeting with nothing in this lower stage of things that lively resembles those things in our former state and has a peculiar fitness to rub up our Memory we continue in an utter oblivion of them As suppose a man was lively entertain'd in his sleep with the pleasure of dreaming of a fair Crystal River whose Banks were adorned with Trees and Flags in the flower and those large Flies with blue and golden-colour'd Bodies and broad thin Wings curiously wrought and transparent hovering over them with Birds also singing on the Trees Sun and Clouds above and sweet breezes of Air and Swans in the River with their wings sometimes lifted up like sails against the wind Thus he passed the night thinks of no such thing in the morning but rising goes about his occasions But towards evening a Servant of a Friend of his presents him with a couple of Swans from his Master The sight of which Swans striking his Perceptive as sensibly as those in his Dream and being one of the most extraordinary and eximious Objects of his Night-vision
were as certain of getting an Alms from him as a Traveller is to quench his thirst at a publick Spring near the Highway would those that received Alms from him think themselves not obliged to Thanks It may be you will say they will thank him that they may not forfeit his Favour another time Which Answer discovers the spring of this Misconceit which seems founded in self-love as if all Duty were to be resolved into that and as if there were nothing owing to another but what implied our own profit But though the Divine Goodness acts necessarily yet it does not blindly but according to the Laws of Decorum and Justice which those that are unthankful to the Deity may find the smart of But I cannot believe the ingenious Writer much in earnest in these points he so expresly declaring what methinks is not well consistent with them For his very words are these God can never act contrary to his necessary and essential properties as because he is essentially wise just and holy he can do nothing that is foolish unjust and wicked Here therefore I demand Are we not to thank him and praise him for his actions of Wisdom Justice and Holiness though they be necessary And if Justice Wisdom and Holiness be the essential properties of God according to which he does necessarily act and abstain from acting why is not his Goodness when it is expresly said by the Wisdom of God incarnate None is good save one that is God Which must needs be understood of his essential Goodness Which therefore being an essential property as well as the rest he must necessarily act according to it And when he acts in the Scheme of Anger and Severity it is in the behalf of Goodness and when he imparts his Goodness in lesser measures as well as in greater it is for the good of the Whole or of the Universe If all were Eye where were the Hearing c. as the Apostle argues So that his Wisdom moderates the prompt outflowings of his Goodness that it may not outflow so but that in the general it is for the best And therefore it will follow that if the Pre-existence of Souls comply with the Wisdom Justice and Holiness of God that none of these restrain his prompt and parturient Goodness that it must have caused humane Souls to pre-exist or exist so soon as the Spirits of Angels did And he must have a strange quick-sightedness that can discern any clashing of that act of Goodness with any of the abovesaid Attributes Chap. 7. pag. 56. God never acts by mere Will or groundless Humour c. We men have unaccountable inclinations in our irregular and depraved Composition have blind lusts or desires to do this or that and it is our present ease and pleasure to fulfil them and therefore we fancy it a priviledge to be able to execute these blind inclinations of which we can give no rational account but that we are pleased by fulfilling them But it is against the Purity Sanctity and Perfection of the Divine Nature to conceive any such thing in Him and therefore a weakness in our Judgments to fancy so of him like that of the Anthropomorphites that imagined God to be of Humane shape Pag. 59. That God made all things for himself It is ignorance and ill nature that has made some men abuse this Text to the proving that God acts out of either an humourous or selfish principle as if he did things merely to please himself as self not as he is that soveraign unself-inreressed Goodness and perfect Rectitude which ought to be the measure of all things But the Text implies no such matter For if you make 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Compound of a Preposition and Pronoun that so it may signifie for himself which is no more than propter se it then will import that he made all things to satisfie his own Will and Pleasure whose Will and Pleasure results from the richness of his eternal Goodness and Benignity of Nature which is infinite and ineffable provided always that it be moderated by Wisdom Justice and Decorum For from hence his Goodness is so stinted or modified that though he has made all things for his own Will and Pleasure who is infinite Goodness and Benignity yet there is a day of Evil for the Wicked as it follows in the Text because they have not walked answerably to the Goodness that God has offered them and therefore their punishment is in behalf of abused Goodness And Bayns expresly interprets this Text thus Universa propter seipsum fecit Dominus that is says he Propter bonitatem suam juxta illud Augustini DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA Quia bonus est Deus sumus in quantum sumus boni sumus But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be a Compound of a Participle and a Pronoun and then it may signifie for them that answer him that is walk anserably to his Goodness which he affords them or for them that obey him either way it is very good sence And then in opposition to these it is declared that the Wicked that is the Disobedient or Despisers of his Goodness he has not made them wicked but they having made themselves so appointed them for the day of Evil. For some such Verb is to be supplied as is agreeable to the matter as in that passage in the Psalms The Sun shall not burn thee by day neither the Moon by night Where burn cannot be repeated but some other more suitable Verb is to be supplied Chap. 8. pag. 63. Since all other things are inferiour to the good of Being This I suppose is to be understood in such a sence as that saying in Job Skin for skin and all that a man has will he give for his life Otherwise the condition of Being may be such as it were better not to be at all whatever any dry-fancied Metaphysicians may dispute to the contrary Pag. 67. Indeed they may be morally immutable and illapsable but this is Grace not Nature c. Not unless the Divine Wisdom has essentially interwoven it into the natural constitution of our Souls that as after such a time of the exercise of their Plaistick on these Terrestrial Bodies they according to the course of Nature emerge into a plain use of their Reason when for a time they little differed from Brutes so after certain periods of time well improved to the perfecting their Nature in the sense and adherence to Divine things there may be awakened in them such a Divine Plastick faculty as I may so speak as may eternally fix them to their Celestial or Angelical Vehicles that they shall never relapse again Which Faculty may be also awakened by the free Grace of the Omnipotent more maturely Which if it be Grace and Nature conspire together to make a Soul everlastingly happy Which actual Immutability does no more change the species of a Soul than the actual exercise of Reason does after the
over his Wisdom and Goodness He willed it should be so because he would it should be so though it had been sar better if the Messiah had come sooner But see the difference betwixt an inspired Apostle and a young hot-headed Theologist This latter resolves these unsearchable and unintelligible Decrees of God and passagâ—…s of Providence into the mere Will of God lording it over the Divine Wisdom and Goodness But the Apostle by how much more unsearchable his Judgments and Decrees are and the ways of his Providence past finding our the greater he declares the depth of the richness of his Wisdom which is so ample that it reaches into ways and methods of doing for the best beyond the Understandings of men For most assuredly while the depth of the Wisdom of God is acknowledged to carry on the ways of Providence it must be also acknowledged that it acts like itself and chuseth such ways as are best and most comporting with the Divine Goodness or else it is not an act of Wisdom but of Humour or Oversight But it may be the Reader may have the curiosity to hear briesly what those gâ—…at Arguments are that should induce this young Writer so confidently to pronounce that it had been far better that the Messiah should have come in the Infancy of the World than in the times he came The very quintessence of the force of his arguing extracted out of the verbosity of his affected style is neither more nor less than this That the World before the coming of Christ who was to be the Light of the World was in very great Darkness and therefore the sooner he came the better But to break the assurance of this Arguer for the more early coming of Christ First we may take notice out of himself chap. 3. That the Light of Nature is near akin not onely to the Mosaick Law but â—…o the Gospel itself and that even then there were the assistances of the Holy Ghost to carry men on to such vertuous Accomplishments as might avail them to eternal Salvation This he acknowledges probable and I have set it down in his own words Whence considering what a various Scene of things there was to be from the Fall of Adam to the end of the World it became the great and wise Dramatist not to bring upon the Stage the best things in the first Act but to carry on things pompously and by degrees something like that Saying of Elias Two thousand years under the Light of Nature two thousand under the Law and then comes the Nativity of the Messiah and after a due space the happy Millennium and then the Final Judgment the compleated Happiness of the Righteous in Heaven and the Punishment of the Wicked in Hell-fire But to hasten too suddenly to the best is to expect Autumn in Spring and Virility or Old Age in Infancy or Childhood or the Catastrophe of a Comedy in the first Act. Secondly we may observe what a weak Disprover he is of Pre-existence which like a Gyant would break in upon him were it not that he kept him out by this false Sconce of the Supremacy of the Divine Will over his Wisdom and Goodness which Conceit how odious and impious it is has been often enough hinted already But letting Pre-existence take place and admitting that there is according to Divine Providence an orderly insemination of lapsed Souls into humane Bodies through the several Ages of the World whose lapses had several circumstantial differences and that men therefore become differently sitted Objects of Grace and Favour how easie is it to conceive God according to the fitnesses of the generality of Souls in such or such periods of times as it was more just agreeable or needful for them so and in such measures to have dispensed the Gifts of his ever-watchful and all-comprehending Providence to them for both time and place This one would think were more tolerable than to say That God wills merely because he wills which is the Character of a frail Woman rather than of a God or else as this Writer himself acknowledges of a Fiend or Devil For such says he is God in the rest of his Attributes if you seclude his Goodness What then is that action which proceeds onely from that part from which Goodness is secluded So that himself has dug down the Sconce he would entrench himself in and lets Pre-existence come in upon him whether he will or no like an armed Giant whom let him abhor as much as he will he is utterly unable to resist And thirdly and lastly Suppose there were no particular probable account to be given by us by reason of the shortness of our Understandings and the vast fetches of the all-comprehensive Providence of God why the coming of the Messiah was no earlier than it was yet according to that excellent Aphorism in Morality and Politicks Optimè praesumâ—…ndum est de Magistratu we should hope nay â—…e assured it was the best that he came when he did it being by the appointment of the infinite good and all-wise God and cry out wiâ—…h St. Paul Oh the depth of the riches of both the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out And in the Psalmist Thy judgments are like a great deep O Lord thou preservest man and beast And so acknowledge his Wisdom and Goodness in the ordering his Creatures even there where his ways are to our weak and scant Understandings most inexplicable and unsearchable Which Wisdom and Goodness as we have all reason to acknowledge in all matters so most of all in matters of the greatest concernment that there most assuredly God wills not thus or thus merely because he wills but because his Wisdom discerns that it is for the best And this is sufficient to shew the weakness of this third Evidence for proving the Supremacy of the Divine Will over his Wisdom anâ—… Goodness His fourth Evidence is The Perpetuity of Hell and interminableness of those Tortures which after this life vex the Wicked For says he had the penalties of mens sins here been rated by pure Goodness free and 〈◊〉 by any other principle it is not proâ—…able that thâ—…y should have been punished by an eternal Calamity the pleasures of them being 〈◊〉 and sugitive Thuâ—… he argues 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the very same â—…ords and there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the â—…thority of Gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and â—…ro suo 〈◊〉 having the Supremacy over his Goodness over-swayed the more benign Decree and Will because it would have it so doomed sinners to these eternal Torments But I would ask this Sophister Did the Will of God in good earnest sentence sinners thus in Decree merely because he willed it not because it was either good or just What a black and dismal Reproach is here cast upon the Divine Majesty That he sentences sinners thus because he will not because it is just The sence whereof is So he will do right or
it is plain that Justice and the execution thereof is for the best and that so Goodness not mere Will upon pretence of having a Supremacy over Goodness would be the measure of this sentencing such obdurate sinners to eternal punishment And this eternal punishment as it is a piece of vindicative Justice upon these obdurate sinners so it naturally contributes to the establishment of the Righteous in their Celestial Happiness Which this Opposer of Pre-existence objects somewhere if Souls ever fell from they may fall from it again But these eternal Torments of Hell if they needed it would put a sure bar thereto So that the Wisdom and Goodness also of God is upon this account concerned in the eternal punishments of Hell as well as his Justice That it be to the unreclaimable as that Orphick Hemistichium calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The fifth and last forcible Argument as he calls them for the proving the Soveraignty of Gods Will over his Goodness is this If Gods Goodness saith he be not under the command of his Will but does always what is best why did it not perpetuate the Station of Pre-existent Souls and hinder us if ever we were happy in a sublimer state from lapsing into these Regions of Sin and Death But who does not at first sight discern the weakness of this Allegation For it is plainly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an absurd thing and contrary to Reason to create such a species of Being whose nature is free and mutable and at the first dash to dam up or stop the exercise of that freedom and capacity of change by confining it to a fixt Station As ridiculous as to suppose a living Creature made with wings and feet and yet that the Maker thereof should take special care it should never flie nor go And so likewise that the mere making of such an Order of Beings as have a freedom of Will and choice of their Actions that this is misbecoming the Goodness of God is as dull and idiotical a conceit and such as implies that God should have made but one kind of Creature and that the most absolutely and immutably happy that can be or else did not act according to his Goodness or for the best Which is so obvious a Falshood that I will not confute it But it is not hard to conceive that he making such a free-willed Creature as the Souls of men simul cum mundo condito and that in an happy condition and yet not fixing them in that Station may excellently well accord with the Soveraignty of his Goodness nor any one be constrained to have recourse to the Supremacy of his Will over his Goodness as if he did it because he would do it and not because it was best For what can this freedom of Will consist in so much as in a temptableness by other Objects that are of an inseriour nature not so divine and holy as the other to which it were the security of the Soul to adhere with all due constancy and therefore her duty But in that she is temptable by other Objects it is a signe that her present enjoyment of the more Divine and Heavenly Objects are not received of her according to their excellency but according to the measure and capacity of her present state which though very happy may be improved at the long run and in an orderly series of times and things whether the Soul lapse into sin or no. For accession of new improvements increaseth Happiness and Joy Now therefore I say suppose several and that great numbers even innumerable myriads of pre-existent Souls to lapse into the Regions of Sin and Death provided that they do not sin perversely and obstinately nor do despight to the Spirit of Grace nor refuse the advantageous offers that Divine Providence makes them even in these sad Regions why may not their once having descended hither tend to their greater enjoyment when they shall have returned to their pristine Sâ—…tion And why may not the specifical nature of the Soul be such that it be essentially interwoven into our Being that after a certain period of times or ages whether she sin or no she may arrive to a fixedness at last in her heavenly Station with greater advantage to such a Creature than if she had been fixed in that state at first The thing may seem least probable in those that descend into these Regions of Sin and Mortality But in those that are not obstinate and refractorie but close with the gracious means that is offered them for their recoverie their having been here in this lower State and retaining the memorie as doubtless they do of the transactions of this Terrestrial Stage it naturally enhances all the enjoyments of the pristine selicitie they had lost and makes them for ever have a more deep and vivid resentment of them So that through the richness of the Wisdom and Goodness of God and through the Merits and conduct of the Captain of their Salvation our Saviour Jesus Christ they are after the strong conslicts here with sin and the corruptions of this lower Region made more than Conquerours and greater gainers upon the losses they sustained before from their own solly And in this most advantageous state of things they become Pillars in the Temple of God there to remain for ever and ever So that unless straying Souls be exceedingly perverse and obstinate the exitus of things will be but as in a Tragick Comedy and their perverseness and obstinacie lies at their own doors for those that finally miscarrie whose number this confident Writer is to prove to be so considerable that the enhanced happiness of the standing part of pre-existent Souls and the recovered does not far preponderate the infelicitie of the others condition Which if he cannot do as I am confident he cannot he must acknowledge That God in not forcibly fixing pre-existent Souls in the state they were first created but leaving them to themselves acted not from the Supremacy of his Will over his Goodness but did what was best and according to that Soveraign Principle of Goodness in the Deitie And now for that snitling Dilemma of this eager Opposer of Pre-existence touching the freedom of acting and mutabilitie in humane Souls whether this mutabilitie be a Specifick property and essential to them or a separable Accident For if it were essential says he then how was Christ a persect man his humane nature being ever void of that lapsabilitie which is essential to humanitie and how come men to retain their specifick nature still that are translated to Celestial happiness and made unalterable in the condition they then are To this I answer That the Pre-existentiaries will admit that the Soul of the Messiah was created as the rest though in an happie condition yet in a lapsable and that it was his peculiar merit in that he so faithfully constantly and entirely adhered to the Divine Principle incomparably above what was done by others
big with aptnesses and proclivities to peculiar Theories why then should not all supposing they pre-existed together do the like As if all in the other Aereal State were Professors of Philosophie or zealous Followers of them that were The solution of this difficulty is so easie that I need not insist on it Pag. 78. Were this difference about sensibles the influence of the body might then be suspected for a cause c. This is very rationally alleadged by our Author and yet his Antagonist has the face from the observation of the diversity of mens Palates and Appetites of their being differently affected by such and such strains of Musick some being pleased with one kind of Melodie and others with another some pleased with Aromatick Odours others offended with them to reason thus If the Bodie can thus cause us to love and dislike Sensibles why not as well to approve and dislike Opinions and Theories But the reason is obvious why not because the liking or disliking of these Sensibles depends upon the grateful or ungrateful motion of the Nerves of the Bodie which may be otherwise constituted or qualified in some complexions than in other some But for Philosophical Opinions and Theories what have they to do with the motion of the Nerves It is the Soul herself that judges of those abstractedly from the Senses or any use of the Nerves or corporeal Organ If the difference of our Judgment in Philosophical Theories be resolvible into the mere constitution of our Bodie our Understanding itself will hazard to be resolved into the same Principle also And Bodie will prove the onely difference betwixt Men and Brutes We have more intellectual Souls because we have better Bodies which I hope our Authors Antagonist will not allow Pag. 78. For the Soul in her first and pure nature has no Idiosyncrasies c. Whether there may not be certain different Characters proper to such and such Classes of Souls but all of them natural and without blemish and this for the better order of things in the Universe I will not rashly decide in the Negative But as the Author himself seems to insinuate if there be any such they are not such as fatally determine Souls to false and erroneous apprehensions For that would be a corruption and a blemish in the very natural Character Wherefore if the Soul in Philosophical Speculations is fatally determined to falshood in this life it is credible it is the effect of its being inured thereto in the other Pag. 79. Now to say that all this variety proceeds primarily from the mere temper of our Bodies c. This Argument is the less valid for Pre-existence I mean that which is drawn from the wonderful variety of our Genius's or natural inclinations to the employments of life because we cannot be assured but that the Divine Providence may have essentially as it were impressed such Classical Characters on humane Souls as I noted before And besides if that be true which Menander says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That every man as soon as he is born has a Genius appointed him to be his Instructer and Guide of his Life That some are carried with such an impetus to some things rather than others may be from the instigations of his assisting Genius And for that Objection of the Author's Antagonist against his Opinion touching those inclinations to Trades which may equally concern this Hypothesis of Menander that it would then be more universal every one having such a Genius this truth may be smothered by the putting young people promiscuously to any Trade without observing their Genius But the Chineses suppose this truth they commonly shewing a Child all the Employs of the Citie that he may make his own choice before they put him to any But if the Opinion of Menander be true that every man has his guardian Genius under whose conduct he lives the Merchant the Musician the Plowman and the rest it is manifest that these Genii cannot but receive considerable impressions of such things as they guide their Clients in And pre-existent Souls in their aereal estate being of the same nature with these Daemons or Genii they are capable of the same Employment and so tincture themselves deep enough with the affairs of those parties they preside over And therefore when they themselves after the state of Silence arâ—… incorporated into earthly Bodies they may have a proneness from their former tincture to such methods of life as they lived over whom they did preside Which quite spoils the best Argument our Author's Antagonist has against this Topick which is That there are several things here below which the Geniusses of men pursue and follow with the hottest chase which have no similitude with the things in the other state as Planting Building Husbandrie the working of Manufactures c. This best Argument of his by Menander's Hypothesis which is hard to confute is quite defeated And to deny nothing to this Opposer of Pre-existence which is his due himself seems unsatisfied in resolving these odd Phaenomena into the temper of Bodie And therefore at last hath recourse to a secret Causality that is to he knows not what But at last he pitches upon some such Principle as that whereby the Birds build their Nest the Spider weaves her Webs the Bees make their Combs c. Some such thing he says though he cannot think it that prodigious Hobgoblin the Spirit of Nature may produce these strange effects may byass also the fancies of men in making choice of their Employments and Occupations If it be not the Spirit of Nature then it must be that Classical Character I spoke of above But if not this nor the preponderancies of the Pre-existent state nor Menander's Hypothesis the Spirit of Nature will bid the fairest for it of any besides for determining the inclinations of all living Creatures in these Regions of Generation as having in itself vitally though not intellectually all the Laws of the Divine Providence implanted into its essence by God the Creator of it And speaking in the Ethnick Dialect the same description may belong to it that Varro gives to their God Genius Genius est Deus qui praepositus est ac vim habet omnium rerum gignendarum and that is the Genius of every Creature that is congenit to it in vertue of its generation And that there is such a Spirit of Nature not a God as Varro vainly makes it but an unintelligent Creature to which belongs the Nascency or Generation of things and has the management of the whole matter of the Universe is copiously proved to be the Opinion of the Noblest and Ancientest Philosophers by the learned Dr. R. Cudworth in his System of the Intellectual World and is demonstrated to be a true Theorem in Philosophie by Dr. H. Moore in his Euchiridion Metaphysicum by many and those irrefutable Arguments and yet I dare say both can easily pardon the mistake
are capable of living in other bodies besides terrestrial c. For the Pre-existentiaries allow her successively to have lived first in an Ethereal body then in an Aereal and lastly after the state of Silence to live in a Terrestrial And here I think though it be something early it will not be amiss to take notice what the Anti-pre-existentiaries alledge against this Hypothesis for we shall have the less trouble afterwards First therefore they say That it does not become the Goodness of God to make Mans Soul with a triple Vital Congruity that will fit as well an Aereal and Terrestrial condition as an Aethereal For from hence it appears that their Will was not so much in fault that they sinned as the constitution of their Essence And they have the face to quote the account of Origen pag. 49. for to strengthen this their first Argument The words are these They being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this terrestrial matter it seems necessary according to the course of nature that they should sink into it so appear terrestrialmen And therefore say they there being no descending into these earthly bodies without a lapse or previous sin their very constitution necessitated them to sin The second Argument is That this Hypothesis is inconsistent with the bodies Resurrection For the Aereal bodie immediately succeeding the Terrestrial and the Aethereal the Aereal the business is done there needs no resuscitation of the Terrestrial body to be glorified Nor is it the same numerical body or flesh still as it ought to be if the resurrection-Resurrection-body be Aethereal The third is touching the Aereal Body That if the soul after death be tyed to an Aereal body and few or none attain to the Aethereal immediately after death the souls of very good men will be forced to have their abode amongst the very Devils For their Prince is the Prince of the Air as the Apostle calls him and where can his subjects be but where he is So that they will be enforced to endure the companie of these foul Fiends besides all the incommodious changes in the Air of Clouds of Vapours of Rain Hail Thunder tearing Tempests and Storms and what is an Image of Hell it self the darkness of Night will overwhelm them every four and twenty hours The fourth Argument is touching the Aethereal state of Pre-existence For if souls when they were in so Heavenly and happy an estate could lapse from it what assurance can we have when we are returned thither that we shall abide in it it being but the same Happiness we were in before and we having the same Plastick with its triple Vital Congruity as we had before Why therefore may we not lapse as before The fifth and last Argument is taken from the state of Silence Wherein the Soul is supposed devoid of perception And therefore their number being many and their attraction to the place of conception in the Womb being merely Magical and reaching many at a time there would be many attracted at once so that scarce a Foetus could be formed which would not be a multiform Monster or a cluster of Humane Foetus's not one single Foetus And these are thought such weighty Arguments that Pre-existence must sink and perish under their pressure But I believe when we have weighed them in the balance of unprejudiced Reason we shall find them light enough And truly for the first It is not only weak and slight but wretchedly disingenuous The strength of it is nothing but a maimed and fraudulent Quotation which makes ashew as if the Author of the Account of Origen bluntly affirmed without any thing more to do that souls being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this terrestrial matter it seems necessary according to the course of nature that they should sink into it and so appear terrestrial men Whenas if we take the whole Paragraph as it lies before thâ—…y cast themselves into this fatal necessity they are declared to have a freedom of will whereby they might have so managed their happy Estate they were created in that they need never have faln His words are these What then remains but that through the faulty and negligent use of themselves whilst they were in some better condition of life they rendred themselves less pure in the whole extent of their powers both Intellectual and Animal and so by degrees became disposed for the susception of such a degree of corporeal life as was less pure indeed than the former but exactly answerable to their present disposition of Spirit So that after certain Periods of time they might become far less fit to actuate any sort of body than the terrestrial and being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this too and in it to exercise the Powers and functions of life it seems necessary c. These are the very words of the Author of the Account of Origen wherein he plainly affirms that it was the fault of the Souls themselves that they did not order themselves then right when they might have done so that cast them into this terrestrial condition But what an Opposer of Pre-existence is this that will thus shamelesly falsifie and corrupt a Quotation of an ingenious Author rather than he will seem to want an Argument against his Opinion Wherefore briefly to answer to this Argument It does as much become the Goodness of God to create souls with a triple Vital Congruity as to have created Adam in Paradise with free Will and a capacity of sinning To the Second the Pre-existentiaries will answer That it is no more absurd to conceive nor so much that the soul after death hath an Airy body or it may be some an Ethereal one than to imagine them so highly happy after death without any body at all For if they can act so fully and beatifically without any body what need there be any Resurrection of the body at all And if it be most natural to the soul to act in some body in what a long unnatural estate has Adams soul been that so many thousand years has been without a body But for the soul to have a body of which she may be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 certainly is most natural or else she will be in an unnatural state after the Resurrection to all Eternitie Whence it is manifest that it is most natural for the soul if she act at all to have a body to act in And therefore unless we will be so dull as to fall into the drouzie dream of the Pyschopannychites we are to allow the soul to have some kind of body or other till the very Resurrection But those now that are not Psychopannychites but allow good Souls the joys and glories of Paradise before the Resurrection of the Body let them be demanded to what end the soul should have a resurrection-Resurrection-body and what they would answer for themselves the Pre-existentiaries will answer for their position that holds
the Soul has an Aethereal body already or an Aereal one which may be changed into an Aethereal body If they will alledge any Concinnity in the business or the firm promise of more highly compleating our Happiness at the union of our terrestrial bodies with our souls at the Resurrection This I say may be done as well supposing them to have bodies in the mean time as if they had none For those bodies they have made use of in the interval betwixt their Death and Resurrection may be so thin and dilute that they may be no more considerable than an Interula is to a Royal Robe lined with rich Furrs and embroidered with Gold For suppose every mans bodie at the Resurrection framed again out of its own dust bones sinews and flesh by the miraculous Power of God were it not as easie for these subtile Spirits as it is in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to enter these bodies and by the Divine Power assisting so to inactuate them that that little of their Vehicle they brought in with them shall no more destroy the individuation of the Body than a draught of wine drunk in does the individuation of our body now though it were immediately upon the drinking actuated by the Soul And the soul at the same instant actuating the whole Aggregate it is exquisitely the same numerical bodie even to the utmost curiosity of the Schoolmen But the Divine Assistance working in this it is not to be thought that the soul will loose by resuming this Resurrection-body but that all will be turned into a more full and saturate Brightness and Glory and that the whole will become an heavenly spiritual and truly glorified Body immortal and incorruptible Nor does the being thus turned into an heavenly or spiritual Body hinder it from being still the same Numerical body forasmuch as one and the same Numerical matter let it be under what modifications it will is still the same numerical matter or body and it is gross ignorance in Philosophie that makes any conceive otherwise But a rude and ill-natured Opposer of Pre-existence is not content that it be the same numerical body but that this same numerical body be still flesh peevishly and invidiously thereby to expose the Author of the Account of Origen who pag. 120. writes thus That the bodie we now have is therefore corruptible and mortal because it is flesh and therefore if it put on incorruption and immortality it must put off it self first and cease to be flesh But questionless that ingenious Writer understood this of natural flesh and bloud of which the Apostle declares That flesh and bloud cannot inherit the Kingdom of God But as he says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body So if he had made application of the several kinds of Flesh he mentions of Men of Beasts of Fishes and Birds he would have presently subjoyned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is a natural flesh and there is a spiritual flesh And 't is this spiritual Flesh to which belongs incorruption and immortality and which is capable of the Kingdom of Heaven But for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the natural flesh it must put off it self and cease to be natural flesh before it can put on immortality and incorruption So little inconsistency is there of this Hypothesis as touching the souls acting in either an Aereal of Aethereal Vehicle during the interval betwixt the Resurrection and her departure hence with the Resurrection of the bodie But in the mean time there is a strong bar thereby put to the dull dream of the Psychopanychites and other harshnesses also eased or smoothed by it Now as for the third Argument which must needs seem a great Scare-crow to the illiterate there is very little weight or none at all in it For if we take but notice of the whole Atmosphere what is the dimension thereof and of the three Regions into which it is distributed all these Bugbears will vanish As for the Dimension of the whole Atmosphere it is by the skilful reputed about fifty to Italick miles high the Convex of the middle Region thereof about four such miles the Concave about half a mile Now this distribution of the Air into these three Regions being thus made and the Hebrew tongue having no other name to call the Expansum about us but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heaven here is according to them a distribution of Heaven into three and the highest Region will be part of the third Heaven This therefore premised I answer That though the souls of good men after death be detained within the Atmosphere of the Air and the Air it self haply may reach much higher than this Atmosphere that is bounded by the mere ascent of exhalations and vapours yet there is no necessity at all that they should be put to those inconveniencies which this Argument pretends from the company of Devils or incommodious changes and disturbances of the Air. For suppose such inconveniencies in the middle and lowest Region yet the upper Region which is also part of the third Heaven those parts are ever calm and serene And the Devils Principality reaching no further than through the middle and lowest Region next the earth not to advertise that his quarters may be restrained there also the souls of the departed that are good are not liable to be pester'd and haunted with the ungrateful Presence or Occursions of the deformed and grim Retinue or of the vagrant vassals of that foul Feind that is Prince of the Air he being onely so of these lower parts thereof and the good souls having room enough to consociate together in the upper Region of it Nor does that promise of our Saviour to the thief on the Cross that that very day he should be with him in Paradise at all clash with this Hypothesis of Aereal Bodies both because Christ by his miraculous power might confer that upon the penitent thief his fellow-sufferer which would not fall to the share of other penitents in a natural course of things and also because this third Region of the Air may be part of Paradise it self In my Fathers house there are many Mansions and some learned men have declared Paradise to be in the Air but such a part of the Air as is free from gross Vapours and Clouds and such is the third Region thereof In the mean time we see the souls of good men departed freed from those Panick fears of being infested either by the unwelcome company of Fiends and Devils or incommodated by any dull cloudy obscurations or violent and tempestuous motions of the Air. Onely the shadowy Vale of the Night will be cast over them once in a Nycthemeron But what incommodation is that after the brisk active heat of the Sun in the day-time to have the variety of the more mild beams of the Moon or gentle though more quick and chearful scintillations of the twinkling Stars This
therefore would not adventure of any so called for the adjudging any matters Heresie But if any pretended to be such their Authority should no further prevail than as they made out things by express and plain words of Canonical Scripture And for other Synods whether the Seventh which is the second of Nice or any other that the Church of Rome would have to be General in defence of their own exorbitant points of Faith or Practice they will be found of no validity if we have recourse to the sixth seventh eighth and ninth Heads Fifthly In reference to the fifth Head This fifth Council loseth its Authority in anathematizing what in Origen seems to be true according to that express Text of Scripture John 16. 28. especially compared with others See Notes on Chap. II. I came forth from the Father and am come into the world again I leave the world and go to the Father He came forth from his Father which is in Heaven accordingly as he taught us to pray to him the Divine Shechina being in a peculiar manner there He leaves the world and goes to the Father which all understand of his Ascension into Heaven whence his coming from the Father must have the same sense or else the Antithesis will plainly fail Wherefore it is plain he came down from Heaven as he signifies also in other places as well as returns thither But he can neither be truly said to come from heaven nor return thither according to his Divine Nature For it never lest Heaven nor removes from one place to another and therefore this Scripture does plainly imply the Pre existence of the Soul of the Messiah according to the Doctrine of the Jews before it was incarnate And this stricture of the old Cabala may give light to more places of St. Johns Writings than is fit to recite in this haste I will onely name one by the by 1 John 4. 2. Every Spirit that confesseth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Jesus is the Christ come in the flesh that is to say is the Christ incarnate is of God For the Messiah did exist viz. his Soul before he came into the flesh according to the Doctrine of the Jews Which was so well known that upon the above-cited saying John 16. 28. of our Saviour they presently answered Lo now speakest thou plainly and speakest no Parable because he clearly discovers himself by this Character to be the expected Messias incarnate Nor is there any possible evasion out of the clearness of this Text from the communication of Idioms because Christ cannot be said to come down from Heaven according to his Humane Nature before it was there therefore his Humane Nature was there before it was incarnate And lastly The Authority of the Decision of this Council if it did so decide is lessened in that contrary to the second Head as was hinted above it decides a point that Faith and Godliness is not at all concerned in For the Divinity of Christ which is the great point of Faith is as firmly held supposing the Soul of the Messias united with the Logos before his incarnation as in it So that the spight onely of Pelagius against Theodorus to multiply Anathematisms against Origen no use or necessity of the Church required any such thing Whence again their Authority is lessened upon the account of the third Head These things may very well suspend a careful mind and loth to be imposed upon from relying much upon the Authority of this fifth Council But suppose its Authority entire yet the Acts against Origen are not to be found in the Council And the sixth Council in its Anathematisms though it mention Theodorets Writings the Epistle of Ibas and Theodorus Mopsuestenus who were concerned in the fifth Council yet I find not there a syllable touching Origen And therefore those that talk of his being condemned by that fifth Coâ—…ncil have an eye I suppose to the Anathematisms at the end of that Discourse which Justinian the Emperour sent to Menas Patriarch of Constantinople according to which form they suppose the errours of Origen condemned Which if it were true yet simple Pre-existence will escape well enough Nor do I think that learned and intelligent Patriarch Photius would have called the simple Opinion of Pre-existence of souls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but â—…or those Appendages that the injudiciousness and rashness of some had affixed 〈◊〉 it Partly therefore reâ—…lecting upon that first Anathematism in the Emperours Discouâ—…se that makes the pre-existent souls of men first to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if their highest felicity consisted in having no body to inactuate which plainly clashes with both sound Philosophy and Christianity as if the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Rephaim were all one and they were not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 till they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 grown cold to the Divine Love and onely gathered body as they gathered corruption and were alienated from the Life of God which is point-blank against the Christian Faith which has promised us as the highest prize a glorified body And partly what himself adds that one soul goes into several bodies Which are impertinent Appendages of the Pre-existence of the soul false useless and unnecessary and therefore those that add these Appendages thereto violate the sincerity of the Divine Tradition to no good purpose But this simple Doctrine of Pre existence is so unexceptionable and harmless that the third collection of Councils in Justellus which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though it reckon the other errours of Origen condemned in the fifth Council omits this of Pre-existence Certainly that Ecclesiastick that framed that Discourse for the Emperour if he did it not himself had not fully deliberately and impartially considered the Dogma of Pre-existence taken in its self nor does once offer to answer any Reasons out of Scripture or Philosophy that are produced for it Which if it had been done and this had been the onely errour to be alledged against Origen I cannot think it credible nay scarce possible though their spight had been never so much against some loâ—…ers of Origen that they could have got any General Council to have condemned so holy so able so victorious a Champion for the Christian Church in his life-time for an Hâ—…retick upon so tolerable a punctilio about three hundred years after his death What Father that wrote before the first four General Councils but might by the Malevolent for some odd passage or other be doomed an Heretick if such severity were admittable amongst Christians But I have gone out further than I was aware and it is time for me to be think me what I intended Which was the justifâ—…ing of my self in my seeming to prefer the Discretion of our own Church in leaving us free to hold the Incorporeity and Immortality of the soul by any of the three handles that best fitted every mans Genius before the Judgment of the fifth General Council that would
neither he being no created Spirit and being more absolutely perfect than that any such properties should be competible to him And it is reasonable to conceive that there is little actually of that propertie in the Spirit of Nature it being no particular Spirit though created but an Universal one and having no need thereof For the corporeal world did not grow from a small Embryo into that vast amplitude it is now of but was produced of the same largeness it now has though there was a successive delineation and orderly polishing and perfecting the vast distended parts thereof And to speak compendiously and at once That God that has Created all things in number weight measure has given such measures of Spiritual Essence and of the facultie of contracting and dilating the same as also of Spiritual Subtilty of substance as serves the ends of his Wisdom and Goodness in creating such a species of Spirit So that it is fond unskilful and ridiculous to ask if the whole Spirit of the world can be contracted into a Nut-shell and the Spirit of a Flea extended to the Convex of the Universe They that talk at this rate err as Aliens from the Wisdome of God and ignorant of the Laws of Nature and indeed of the voice of Scripture itself Why should God make the Spirit of a Flea which was intended for the constituting of such a small Animal large enough to fill the whole world Or what need of such a contraction in the Spirit of Nature or Plastick Soul of the corporeal Universe that it may be contrived into a Nut-shell That it has such Spiritual subtiltie as that particular Spirits may contract themselves in it so close together as to be commensurate to the first Inchoations of a Foetus which is but very small stands to good reason and Effects prove it to be so As also this smalness of a Foetus or Embryo that particular Spirits are so far contracted at first and expand themselves leisurely afterwards with the growth of the bodie which they regulate But into how much lesser space they can or do contract themselves at any time is needless to know or enquire And there is no Repugnancie at all but the Spirit of Nature might be contracted to the like Essential Spissitude that some particular Spirits are but there is no reason to conceit that it ever was or ever will be so contracted while the World stands Nor lastly is there any Inconvenience in putting indefinite limits of Contraction in a Spirit and to allow that after such a measure of Contraction though we cannot say just what that is it naturally contracts no further nor does another so contracted naturally penetrate this thus contracted Spirit For as the usefulness of that measure of Self-Penetrability and Contraction is plain so it is as plain that the admitting of it is no incongruitie nor incommoditie to the Universe nor any confusion to the Specifick modes of Spirit and Bodie For these two Spirits suppose contracted to the utmost of their natural limits may naturally avoid the entring one another not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as in Bodies or Matter but by a vital Saturitie or natural Uneasiness in so doing Besides that though at such a contracted pitch they are naturally impenetrable to one another yet they demonstrate still their Spirituality by Self-Penetration haply a thousand and a thousand times repeated And though by a Law of life not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are kept from penetrating one another yet they both in the mean time necessarily penetrate Matter as undergoing the diverse measures of essential Spissitude in the same So that by the increase of that essential Spissitude they may approach near to a kind of Hylopathick disposition of Impenetrability and thence by the Matter of the Universe out of which they never are be curb'd from contracting themselves any further than to such a degree and I noted at first that spiritual Subtilty as well as Amplitude is given in measure to created Spirits So that Penetrabilitie is still a steadie Character of a Spiritual Essence or Substance to the utmost sense thereof And to argue against Impenetrability its being the propertie of Matter from this kind of Impenetrability of contracted Spirits is like that quibbling Sophistrie against Indiscerpibility being the propertie of a Spirit because a Physical Monad is also indiscerpible The ninth Objection is against the Indiscerpibility of Spirits and would infer that because the Doctor makes them intellectually divisible therefore by Divine Power if it imply no contradiction a Spirit is Discerpible into Physical parts But this is so fully satisfied already by the Doctor in his Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit and its Defence to say nothing of what I have said already above to prove it does imply a contradiction that I will let it go and proceed To the tenth and last Allegation which pretends That these two terms Penetrable and Indiscerpible are needless and hazardous in the Notion of a Spirit But how useful or needful Peneâ—…rability is is manifest from what we have said to the eighth Objection And the needfulness of Indiscerpibility is also susficiently shewn by the Doctor in his Defence of the true Notion of a Spirit Sect. 30. But now for the Hazardousness of these terms as if they were so hard that it would discourage men from the admitting of the Existence of Spirits It appears from what has been said to the eighth Objection That Penetrability is not onely intelligible and admittable but necessarily to be admitted in the Notion of a Spirit as sure as God is a Spirit and that there are Spirits of men and Angels and that the Souls of men are not made of Shreds but actuate their whole grown bodie though at first they were contracted into the compass of a very small Foetus And that there is no Repugnancie that an Essence may be ample and yet indiscerpible Mr. Baxter himself must allow who pag. 51. plainly declares That it is the vilest contradiction to say that God is capable of division So that I wonder that he will call Penetrable and Indiscerpible hard and doubtful words and such as might stumble mens belief of the Existence of Spirits when they are terms so plain and necessary Nor can that Unitie that belongs to a Spirit be conceived or understood without them especially without Indiscerpibilitie And indeed if we do not allow Penetrability the Soul of a man will be far from being one but a thing discontinued and scatter'd in the pores of his corpcreal consistencie We will conclude with Mr. Baxters Conceit of the Indivisibleness of a Spirit and see how that will corroborate mens faith of their Existence and put all out of hazard Various Elements saith he pag. 50. vary in Divisibility Earth is most divisible Water more hardly the parts more inclining to the closest contact Air yet more hardly and in Fire no doubt the Discerpibility is
Ignes Fatui whenas it is most certain that Christ is the only way the Truth and the Life and he that does not clearly see that when he has opportunity to know it let his pretence to other knowledge be what it will it is a demonstration that as to Divine things he is slark blind But no man can really adhere to Christ and unwaveringly but by union to him through his Spirit nor obtain that Spirit of life but by resolved Mortification of his own will and a deadness to all worldly vanities that we may be restored at last to our solid happiness which is through Christ in God without whose Communion no soul can possibly be happy And therefore I think it not amiss to close these my Theoretical Annotations on these two Treatises with that more Practical and Devotional Hymn of A. B. that runs much upon the mortification of our own Wills and of our Union and Communion with God translated into English by a Lover of the Life of our Lord Jesus THE Devotional HYMN 1. O Heavenly Light my Spirit to Thee draw With powerful touch my senses smite Thine arrows of Love into me throw With flaming dart Deep wound my heart And wounded seize for ever as thy right 2. O sweetest Sweet descend into my Soul And sink into its low'st abyss That all false Sweets Thou mayst controul Or rather kill So that Thy will Alone may be my pleasure and my bliss 3. Do thou my faculties all captivate Unto thy self with strongest tye My will entirely regulate Make me thy Slave Nought else I crave For this I know is perfect Liberty 4. Thou art a Life the sweetest of all Lives Nought sweeter can thy Creature taste 'T is this alone the Soul revives Be Thou not here All other chear Will turn to dull satiety at last 5. O limpid Fountain of all vertuous Leare O well-spring of true Joy and Mirth The root of all contentments dear O endless Good Break like a floud Into my Soul and water my dry earth 6. That by this Mighty power I being reft Of every Thing that is not ONE To Thee alone I may be left By a firm will Fixt to Thee still And inwardly united into one 7. And so let all my Essence I Thee pray Be wholly fill'd with thy dear Son That thou thy Splendour mayst display With blissful rays In these hid ways Wherein Gods nature by frail Man is won 8. For joyned thus to Thee by thy sole aid And working whilst all silent stands In mine own Soul nor ought's assay'd From Self-desire I 'm made entire An instrument fit for thy glorious Hands 9. And thus henceforwards shall all workings cease Unless 't be those Thou dost excite To perfect that Sabbatick Peace Which doth arise When Self-will dies And the new Creature is restored quite 10. And so shall I with all thy Children dear While nought debars Thy workings free Be closely joyn'd in union near Nay with thy Son Shall I be one And with thine own adored Deitie 11. So that at last I being quite releas'd From this strait-lac'd Egoity My soul will vastly be encreas'd Into that ALL Which ONE we call And one in 't self alone doth all imply 12. Here 's Rest here 's Peace here 's Joy and holy Love The Hâ—…aven's here of true Content For those that hither sincerely move Here 's the true Light Of Wisdom bright And Prudence pure with no self-seeking mient 13. Here Spirit Soul and cleansed Body may Bathe in this Fountain of true Bliss Of Pleasures that will ne're decay All joyful Sights And hid Delights The sense of these renew'd here daily is 14. Come therefore come and take an higher flight Things perishing leave here below Mount up with winged Soul and Spright Quick let 's be gone To him that 's One But in this One to us can all things show 15. Thus shall you be united with that ONE That ONE where 's no Duality For from this perfect GOOD alone Ever doth spring Each pleasant thing The hungry Soul to feed and satisfie 16. Wherefore O man consider well what 's said To what is best thy Soul incline And leave off every evil trade Do not despise What I advise Finish thy Work before the Sun decline FINIS Books Printed for or Sold hy Samuel Lownds over against Exeter Exchange in the Strand PArthenissa that Fam'd Romance Written by the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery Clelia an Excellent new Romance the whole Work in Five Books Written in French by the exquisite pen of Monsieur de Scudery The Holy Court Written by N. Cansinus Bishop Saundersons Sermons Herberts Travels with large Additions The Compleat Horseman and Expert Farrier in Two Books 1. Shewing the best manner of breeding good Horses with their Choice Nature Riding and Dieting as well for Running as Hunting as also Teaching the Groom and Keeper his true Office 2. Directing the most exact and approved manner how to know and Cure all Diseases in Horses a Work containing the Secrets and best Skill belonging either to Farrier or Horse-Leach the Cures placed Alphabetically with Hundreds of Medicines never before imprinted in any Author By Thomas de Grey Claudius Mauger's French and English Letters upon all Subjects enlarged with Fifty new Letters many of which are on the late great Occurrences and Revolutions of Europe all much Amended and Refined according to the most quaint and Courtly Mode wherein yet the Idiom and Elegancy of both Tongues are far more exactly suited than formerly Very useful to those who aspire to good Language and would know what Addresses become them to all sorts of persons Besides many Notes in the end of the Book which are very necessary for Commerce Paul Festeau's French Grammar being the newest and exactest Method now extant for the attaining to the Elegancy and Purity of the French Tongue The Great Law of Consideration a Discourse shewing the Nature Usefulness and absolute necessity of Consideration in order to a truly serious and Religious Life The Third Edition Corrected and much Enlarged by Anthony Horneck D. D. The Mirror of Fortune or the true Characters of Fate and Destiny Treating of the Growth and Fall of Empires the Misfortunes of Kings and Great Men and the ill fate of Virtuous and handsome Ladies Saducismus Triumphatus or full plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions in Two parts the first Treating of their Possibility the second of their Real Existence by Joseph Glanvil late Chaplain to His Majesty and Fellow of the Royal Society The Second Edition The advantages whereof above the former the Reader may understand out of Dr. Henry More 's Account prefixt thereunto With two Authentick but wonderful stories of Swedish Witches done into English by Anthony Horneck D. D. French Rogue being a pleasant History of his Life and Fortune adorned with variety of other Adventures of no less rarity Of Credulity and Incredulity in things Divine and Spiritual wherein among other things a true and faithful account is given of Platonick Philosophy as it hath reference to Christianity As also the business of Witches and Witchcraft against a late Writer fully argued and disputed By Merick Causabon D. D. one of the Prebends of Canterhury Cicero against Catiline in Four Invective Orations containing the whole manner of discovering that notorious Conspiracy By Christopher Wase 〈◊〉 Jests being Witty Alarms for Melanâ—… Spirits By a Lover of Ha Ha He. FINIS To this sense All a vain Jest All Dust All Nothing deem For of mere Atoms all composed been