requires no such thing but it rather clashes with the first and chiefest Pillar thereof viz. That all the Divine designs and actions are laid and carried on by Infinite Goodness And I have already intimated how much better it is to be this way that I am pleading for than that of this otherwise-ingenious Writer Pag. 125. Since by long and hard exercise in this body the Plastick Life is well tamed and debilitated c. But this is not at all necessary no not in those souls whose Plastick may be deemed the most rampant Dis-union from this Terrestrial body immediately tames it I mean the Terrestrial Congruity of Life and itâ— operation is stopt as surely as a string of a Lutâ— never so smartly vibrated is streightways silenced by a gentle touch of the finger and another single string may be immediately made to sound alone while the other is mute and silent For I say these are the free Laws of the Eternal Wisdom but fatally and vitally not intellectually implanted in the Spirit of Nature and in all Humane Souls or Spirits The whole Universe is as it were the Automatal Harp of that great and true Apollo and as for the general striking of the strings and stopping their vibrations they are done with as exquisite art as if a free intellectual Agent plaid upon them But the Plastick powers in the world are not such but onely Vital and Fatal as I said before Pag. 126. That an Aereal body was not enough for it to display its force upon c. It is far more safe and rational to say that the soul deserts her Aereal Estate by reason that the Period of the Vital Congruity is expired which according to those fatal Laws I spoke of before is determined by the Divine Wisdom But whether a soul may do any thing to abbreviate this Period and excite such symptoms in the Plastick as may shorten her continuance in that state let it be left to the more inquisitive to define Pag. 128. Where is then the difference betwixt the just and the wicked in state place and body Their difference in place I have sufficiently shewn in my Answer to the third Argument against the triple Congruity of Life in the Plastick of Humane Souls how fitly they may be disposed of in the Air. But to the rude Buffoonry of that crude Opposer of the Opinion of Pre-existence I made no Answer It being methinks sufficiently answered in the Scholia upon Sect. 12. Cap. 3. Lib. 3. of Dr. H. Mores Immortalitas Animae if the Reader think it worth his while to consult the place Now for State and Body the difference is obvious The Vehicle is of more pure Air and the Conscience more pure of the one than of the other Pag. 130. For according to this Hypothesis the gravity of those bodies is less because the quantity of the earth that draws them is so c. This is an ingenious invention both to salve that Phaenomenon why Bodies in Mines and other deep subterraneous places should seem not so heavy nor hard to lift there as they are in the superiour Air above the earth and also to prove that the crust of the earth is not of so considerable a thickness as men usually conceive it is I say it is ingenious but not so firm and sure The Quick-silver in a Torricellian Tube will sink deeper in an higher or clearer Air though there be the same Magnetism of the earth under it that was before But this is not altogether so fit an illustration there being another cause than I drive at conjoyned thereto But that which I drive at is sufficient of it self to salve this Phaenomenon A Bucket of water while it is in the water comes up with ease to him that draws it at the Well but so soon as it comes into the Air though there be the same earth under it that there was before it feels now exceeding more weighty Of which I conceive the genuine reason is because the Spirit of Nature which ranges all things in their due order acts proportionately strongly to reduce them thereto as they are more heterogeniously and disproportionately placed as to their consistencies And therefore by how much more crass and solid a body is above that in which it is placed by so much the stronger effort the Spirit of Nature uses to reduce it to its right place but the less it exceeds the crassness of the Element it is in the effort is the less or weaker Hence therefore it is that a stone or such like body in those subterraneous depths seems less heavy because the air there is so gross and thick and is not so much disproportionate to the grossness of the stone as our air above the earth here is nor do I make any doubt but if the earth were all cut away to the very bottom of any of these Mines so that the Air might be of the same consistency with ours the stone would then be as heavy as it is usually to us in this superioor surface of the earth So that this is no certain Argument for the proving that the crust of the earth is of such thinness as this Author would have it though I do not question but that it is thin enough Pag. 131. And the mention of the Fountains of the great Deep in the Sacred History c. This is a more considerable Argument for the thinness of the crust of the earth and I must confess I think it not improbable but that there is an Aqueous hollow Sphaericum which is the Basis of this habitable earth according to that of Psalm 24. 2. For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the flouds Pag. 131. Now I intend not that after a certain distance all is fluid matter to the Centre That is to say After a certain distance of earthly Matter that the rest should be fluid Matter namely Water and Air to the Centre c. But here his intention is directed by that veneration he has for Des Cartes Otherwise I believe if he had freely examined the thing to the bottom he would have found it more reasonable to conclude all fluid betwixt the Concave of the Terrestrial Crust and the Centre of the Earth as we usually phrase it though nothing be properly Earth but that Crust Pag. 131. Which for the most part very likely is a gross and foetid kind of air c. On this side of the Concave of the Terrestrial Crust there may be several Hollows of foetid air and stagnant water which may be so many particular lodgings for lapsed and unruly Spirits But there is moreover a considerable Aqueous Sphaericum upon which the earth is founded and is most properly the Abyss but in a more comprehensive notion all from the Convex thereof to the Centre may be termed the Abyss or the Deepest place that touches our imagination Pag. 131. The lowest and central Regions may be filled with flame and
it but if by true vertue and unfeigned sanctity of mind that eye be opened the Mysteries of Philosophy are the more clearly discovered to it especially if points be studied with singular industry which Mr. Baxter himself acknowledges of the Doctor pag. 21. onely he would there pin upon his back an Humble Ignoramus in some things which the Doctor I dare say will easily admit in many things yea in most and yet I believe this he will stand upon that in those things which he professes to know he will challenge all the world to disprove if they can And for probable Opinions especially if they be useless which many Books are too much stuffed withal he caâ—â—s them out as the lumber of the mind and would willingly give them no room in his thoughts Firmness and soundness of Life is much better than the multiplicitie of uncertain Conceits And lastly whereas Mr. Baxter speaking of himself says And when I presume most I do but most lose my self He has so bewildered and lost himself in the multifarious and most-what needless points in Philosophy or Scholastick Divinity that if we can collect the measures of the Cause from the amplitude of the Effect he must certainly have been very presumptuous He had better have set up his Staff in his Saints everlasting Rest and such other edifying and useful Books as those than to have set up for either a Philosopher or Polemick Divine But it is the infelicity of too many that they are ignorant Quid valeant humeri quid ferre recusent as the Poet speaks or as the Pythagoreans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And so taking upon them a part in a Play which they are unfit for they both neglect that which they are fit for and miscarry by reason of their unfitness in their acting that Part they have rashly undertaken as Epictetus somewhere judiciously observes But if that passage And when I presume most I do but most lose my self was intended by him as an oblique Socratical reproof to the Doctor let him instance if he can where the Doctor has presumed above his strength He has medled but with a few things and therefore he need not envie his success therein especially they being of manifest use to the serious world so many as God has fitted for the reception of them Certainly there was some grand occasion for so grave a preliminary monition as he has given the Doctor You have it in the following Page p. 5. This premised says he I say undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed either as to any certainty or probability That all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter See what Heat and Hast or some worse Principle has engaged Mr. Baxter to do to father a down-right falshood upon the Doctor that he may thence take occasion to bestow a grave admonition on him and so place himself on the higher ground I am certain it is neither the Doctors opinion That all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter nor has he writ so any where He onely says in his Preface to the Reader That all created Spirits are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Souls in all probability and actuate some matter And his expression herein is both modest and true For though it is not certain or necessary yet it is very probable For if there were of the highest Orders of the Angels that fell it is very probable that they had corporeal Vehicles without which it is hard to conceive they could run into disorder And our Saviour Christs Soul which actuates a glorified spiritual Bodie being set above all the Orders of Angels it is likely that there is none of them is so refined above his Humane Nature as to have no bodies at all Not to add that at the Resurrection we become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though we have bodies then which is a shrewd intimation that the Angels have so too and that there are no created Spirits but have so Thirdly Mr. Baxter pag. 6. wrongfully blames the Doctor for being so defective in his studies as not to have read over Dr. Glisson De Vita Naturae and says he has talk'd with diverse high pretenders to Philosophie and askt their judgment of that Book and found that none of them understood it but neglected it as too hard for them and yet contemned it His words to Dr. More are these I marvel that â—hen you have dealt with so many sorts of Dissenters you meddle not with so subtile a piece as that of old Dr. Glissons De Vita Naturae He thinks the subtilty of the Book has deterred the Doctor from reading it as something above his Capacity as also of other high Pretenders to Philosophie This is a Book it seems calculated onely for the elevation of Mr. Baxters subtile and sublime wit And indeed by the benefit of reading this Book he is most dreadfully armed with the affrightful terms of Quoddities and Quiddities of Conceptus formalis and fundamentalis of Conceptus adaequatus and inadaequatus and the like In vertue of which thwacking expressions he has fancied himself able to play at Scholastick or Philosophick Quarter-staff with the most doughty and best appointed Wits that dare enter the Lists with him and as over-neglectful of his flock like some conceited Shepherds that think themselves no small fools at the use of the Staff or Cudgil-play take Vagaries to Fairs or Wakes to give a specimen of their skill so he ever and anon makes his Polemick sallies in Philosophie or Divinity to entertain the Spectators though very oft he is so rapt upon the knuckles that he is forced to let fall his wooden Instrument and blow his fingers Which is but a just Nemesis upon him and he would do well to interpret it as a seasonable reproof from the great Pastor of Souls to whom we are all accountable But to return to his speech to the Doctor I will adventure to answer in his behalf That I marvel that whenas Mr. Baxter has had the curiosity to read so many Writers and some of them sure but of small concern that he has not read that sound and solid piece of Dr. More viz. his Epistola altera ad V. C. with the Scholia thereon where Spinozius is confuted Which if he had read he might have seen Volum Philosoph Tom. 1. pag. 604 605 c. that the Doctor has not onely read that subtile Piece of Doctor Glissons but understands so throughly his Hypothesis that he has solidly and substantially confuted it Which he did in a faithful regard to Religion For that Hypothesis if it were true were as safe if not a safer Refuge for Atheists than the mere Mechanick Philosophie is And therefore you may see there how Cuperus brought up amongst the Atheists from his very childhood does confess how the Atheists now-a-daies explode the Mechanick Philosophie as not being for their turn and betake themselves wholly to such an Hypothesis as Dr. Glissons Vita Naturae But God be thanked Dr. H. More
alone doth all imply 12. Here 's Rest here 's Peace here 's Joy and holy Love The Heaven 's here of true Content For those that hither sincerely move Here 's the true Light Of Wisdom bright And Prudence pure with no self-seeking mient 13. Here Spirit Soul and cleansed Body may Bathe in this Fountain of true Bliss Of Pleasures that will ne're decay All joyful Sights And hid Delights The sense of these renew'd here daily is 14. Come therefore come and take an higher flight Things perishing leave here below Mount up with winged Soul and Spright Quick let 's be gone To him that 's One But in this One to us can all things show 15. Thus shall you be united with that ONE That ONE where 's no Duality For from this perfect GOOD alone Ever doth spring Each pleasant thing The hungry Soul to feed and satisfie 16. Wherefore O man consider well what 's said To what is best thy Soul incline And leave off every evil trade Do not despise What I advise Finish thy Work before the Sun decline FINIS Books Printed for or Sold by Samuel Lownds over against Exeter Exchange in the Strand PArthenissa that Fam'd Romance Written by the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery Clelia an Excellent new Romance the whole Work in Five Books Written in French by the exquisite pen of Monsieur de Scudery The Holy Court Written by N. Causinus Bishop Saundersons Sermons Herberts Travels with large Additions The Compleat Horseman and Expert Farrier in Two Books 1. Shewing the best manner of breeding good Horses with their Choice Nature Riding and Dieting as well for Running as Hunting as also Teaching the Groom and Keeper his true Office 2. Directing the most exact and approved manner how to know and Cure all Diseases in Horses a Work containing the Secrets and best Skill belonging either to Farrier or Horse-Leach the Cures placed Alphabetically with Hundreds of Medicines never before imprinted in any Author By Thomas de Grey Claudius Mauger's French and English Letters upon all Subjects enlarged with Fifty new Letters many of which are on the late great Occurrences and Revolutions of Europe all much Amended and Refined according to the most quaint and Courtly Mode wherein yet the Idiom and Elegancy of both Tongues are far more exactly suited than formerly Very useful to those who aspire to good Language and would know what Addresses become them to all sorts of persons Besides many Notes in the end of the Book which are very necessary for Commerce Paul Festeau's French Grammar being the newest and exactest Method now extant for the attaining to the Elegancy and Purity of the French Tongue The Great Law of Consideration a Discourse shewing the Nature Usefulness and absolute necessity of Consideration in order to a truly serious and Religious Life The Third Edition Corrected and much Enlarged by Anthony Horneck D. D. The Mirror of Fortune or the true Characters of Fate and Destiny Treating of the Growth and Fall of Empires the Misfortunes of Kings and Great Men and the ill fate of Virtuous and handsome Ladies Saducismus Triumphatus or full plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions in Two parts the first Treating of their Possibility the second of their Real Existence by Joseph Glanvil late Chaplain to His Majesty and Fellow of the Royal Society The Second Edition The advantages whereof above the former the Reader may understand out of Dr. Henry More 's Account prefixt thereunto With two Authentick but wonderful stories of Swedish Witches done into English by Anthony Horneck D. D. French Rogue being a pleasant History of his Life and Fortune adorned with variety of other Adventures of no less rarity Of Credulity and Incredulity in things Divine and Spiritual wherein among other things a true and faithful account is given of Platonick Philosophy as it hath reference to Christianity As also the business of Witches and Witchcraft against a late Writer fully argued and disputed By Merick Causabon D. D. one of the Prebends of Canterhury Cicero against Catiline in Four Invective Orations containing the whole manner of discovering that notorious Conspiracy By Christopher Wase Cambridge Jests being Witty Alarms for Melancholy Spirits By a Lover of Ha Ha He. FINIS
were of this opinion Wherefore I think we owe so much at least to the Memory of those grave Sages as to examine this Doctrine of theirs and if neither of the later Hypotheses can ease our anxious minds or free themselves from absurdities and this Grey Dogma fairly clear all doubts and be obnoxious to no such contradictions I see no reason but we may give it a favourable admittance till something else appear more concinnous and rational Therefore let us take some account of what the two first opinions alledge one against another and how they are proved by their promoters and defendants Now if they be found unable to withstand the shock of one anothers opposition we may reasonably cast our eyes upon the third to see what force it brings to vouch its interest and how it will behave it self in the encounter CHAP. II. Daily creation of Souls is inconsistent with the Divine Attributes THe first of these opinions that offers it self to Tryal is that God daily creates humane souls which immediately are united unto the bodies that Generation hath prepared for them Of this side are our later Divines and the generality of the Schoolmen But not to be born down by Authorities Let us consider what reason stands against it Therefore 1 If our Souls came immediately out of the hands of God when we came first into these bodies Whence then are those enormously brutish inclinations that strong natural proclivity to vice and impiety that are exstant in the children of men All the works of God bear his image and are perfect in their kind Purity is his nature and what comes from him proportionably to its capacity partakes of his perfections Every thing in the natural world bears the superscription of his wisdom and goodness and the same fountain cannot send forth sweet waters and bitter Therefore 't is a part of our allegiance to our Maker to believe * that he made us pure and innocent and if we were but just then framed by him when we were united with these terrestrial bodies whence should we contract such degenerate propensions Some tell us that this impurity was immediately derived from the bodies we are united to But how is it possible that purely passive insensible Matter should transfuse habits or inclinations into a Nature that is quite of another Make and Quality How can such a cause produce an effect so disproportionate * Matter can do nothing but by motion and what relation hath that to a moral contagion How can a Body that is neither capable of sense nor sin infect a soul as soon as 't is united to it with such vitious debauched dispositions But others think to evade by saying That we have not these depravities in our natures but contract them by Custome education and evil usages How then comes it about that those that have had the same care and industry used upon them and have been nurtured under the same discipline and severe oversight do so vastly and even to wonder differ in their inclinations * How is it that those that are under continual temptations to vice are yet kept within the bounds of vertue and sobriety And yet that others that have strong motives and allurements to the contrary should violently break out into all kinds of extravagance and impiety Sure there is somewhat more in the matter than those general causes which may be common to both and which many times have quite contrary effects 2. This Hypothesis that God continually Creates humane souls in these bodies consists not with the honour of the Divine Attributes For 1. How stands it with the goodness and benignity of that God who is Love to put pure and immaculate spirits who were capable of living to him and with him into such bodies as will presently defile them deface his image pervert all their powers and faculties incline them to hate what he most loves and love what his Soul hateth and that without any knowledge or concurrence of theirs will quite marre them as soon as he hath made them and of dear Children render them rebels or enemies and in a moment from being like Angels transform them into the perfect resemblance of the first Apostates Devils Is this an effect of those tender mercies that are over all his works And 2. Hath that Wisdom that hath made all things to operate according to their natures and provided them with whatever is necessary to that end made myriads of noble Spirits capable of as noble operations and presently plunged them into such a condition wherein they cannot act at all according to their first and proper dispositions but shall be necessitated to the quite contrary and have other noxious and depraved inclinations fatally imposed upon their pure natures Doth that wisdom that hath made all things in number weight and measure and disposed them in such exact harmony and proportions use to act so ineptly And that in the best and noblest pieces of his Creation Doth it use to make and presently destroy To frame one thing and give it such or such a nature and then undo what he had done and make it another And if there be no such irregular methods used in the framing of inferiour Creatures what reason have we to suspect that the Divine Wisdom did so vary from its self in its noblest composures And 3 Is it not a great affront to the Divine Jâ—stice to suppose as we are commonly taught that asâ—oon as we are born yea and in the Womb we are obnoxious to eternal wrath and torments if our Souls are then immediately created out of nothing For To be just is to give every one his due and how can endless unsupportable punishments be due to innocent Spirits who but the last moment came righteous pure and immaculate out of their Creators hands and have not done or thought any thing since contrary to his will or Laws nor were in any the least capacity of sinning I but the first of our order our General head and Representative sinned and we in him thus we contract guilt as soon as we have a Being and are lyable to the punishment of his disobedience This is thought to solve all and to clear God from any shadow of unrighteousness But whatever truth there is in the thing it self I think it cannot stand upon the Hypothesis of the Souls immediate Creation nor yet justifie God in his proceedings For 1. If I was then newly Created when first in this body what was Adam to me who sinned above 5000 years before I came out of nothing If he represented me it must be as I was in his Loins that is in him as an effect in a cause But so I was not according to this Doctrine for my soul owns no Father but God its immediate progenitour And what am I concern'd then in his sins which had never my will or consent more than in the sins of Mahomâ—t or Julius Caesar Nay than in the sins of Beelzebub or
at first view that such variety of distinct and orderly representations should be made at once upon a single atom or the whole image is imprest upon every point and then there would be as many objects as there are points in this matter and so every thing would be infinitely multiplied in our delâ—sive senses Or finally every part of the soul must receive a proportionable part of the image and then how could those parts communicate their perceptions to each other and what should perceive the whole This Argument is excellently managed by the great Dr. H. More in whose writings this fond Hypothesis is fully triumpht over and defeated Since therefore the very lowest degree of perception single and simple sense is incompatible to meer body or matter we may safely conclude that the higher and nobler operations of imagining remembring reasoning and willing must have a cause and source that is not Corporeal Thus therefore those that build the souls traduction upon this ground of its being only body and modified matter are disappointed in the foundation of their conclusion But 2 Another sort of assertors of traduction teach the Soul to be spiritual and incorporeal and affirm that by a vertue deriv'd from the first benediction it can propagate its like one soul emitting another as the body doth the matter of Generation The manner of which spiritual production useth to be illustrated by one Candle's lighting another and a mans begetting a thought in anothers mind without diminishing of his own This is the most favourable representation of this opinion that I can think on And yet if we nearly consider it it will appear most absuâ—d and unphilosophical For if one soul produce another 't is either out of nothing or something praeexistent If the former 't is an absolute creation which all philosophy concludes impossible for a Creature And if it be pretended that the Parent doth it not by his proper natural virtue but by a strength imparted by God in the first blessing Increase and multiply so that God is the prime agent he only the instrument I rejoin that then either God hath thereby obliged himself to put forth a new and extraordinary power in every such occasion distinct from his influence in the ordinary â—ourse of nature Or else 2 he only concurrs by his providence as he doth to our other natural actions we having this Ability bestowed upon our very natures He that asserts the first runs upon all the rocks that he would avoid in the former Hypothesis of continual Creation and God will be made the cause of the sin and misery of his spotless and blameless Creatures which absurdities he cannot shun by saying that God by interposing in such productions doth but follow the rules of acting which he first made while man was innocent For certainly infinite goodness would never have tyed up it self to such Laws of working as he foresaw would presently bring unavoidable inconvenience misery and ruine upon the best part of his workmanship And for the second way it supposeth God to have no more to do in this action than in our eating and drinking Consequently here is a creation purely natural And methinks if we have so vast a power to bring the ends of contradictories together something out of nothing which some deny to Omnipotence it self 't is much we cannot conserve in being our Creature so produced nor our own intimate selves since conservation is not more than Creation And 't is much that in other things we should give such few specimens of so vast an ability or have a power so divine and excellent and no faculty to discern it by Again 2 if the Soul be immediately produced out of nothing be the agent who it will God or the Parent it will be pure and sinless For supposing our parents to be our Creators they make us but as natural agents * and so can only transmit their natural qualities but not their moral pravities Wherefore there can no better account be given from this way how the Soul is so debauched and infected assoon as it comes into the body than in the former and therefore it fails in the main end it is designed for Thus we see then that the traduction of the Soul supposing it to be produced out of nothing cannot be defended Nor doth the second general way yield any more relief to this Hypothesis For if it be made of any thing praeexistent it is either of matter or spirit The former we have undermined and overthrown already in what was said against those that hold it to be body And if it be made out of any Spiritual substance it must be the soul of the parent except we will revive the old enthusiastick conceit of its being a particle of the divine essence which supposition is * against the nature of an immaterial being a chief property of which is to be indiscerpible Nor do the similitudes I mentioned in the proposal of the Hypothesis at all fit the business for one candle lights another * by separable emissions that pass from the flame of that which is kindled to the wick of the other And flame is a body whose parts are in continual flux as a river But the substance of the soul is stable permanent and indivisible which quite makes it another case And for a mans informing anothers mind with a thought which he had not conceived it is not a production of any substance but only an occasioning him to exert an operation of his mind which he did not before And therefore makes nothing to the illustrating how a Soul can produce a Soul a substance distinct and without it self Thus we see how desperate the case of the souls original is in the Hypothesis of Traduction also But yet to let it have fair play we 'l give it leave to plead it's cause and briefly present what is most material in its behalf There are but two reasons that I can think of worth the naming 1 A man begets a man and a man he is not without a Soul therefore 't is pretended that the soul is begotten But this argument is easily detected of palpable sophistry and is as if one should argue a man is mortal therefore his Soul is mortal or is fat and lusty therefore his Soul is so The absurdity of which kinds of reasoning lyes in drawing that into a strict and rigorous affirmation which is only meant according to vulgar speech and is true only in some remarkable respect or circumstance Thus we say A man begets a man because he doth the visible and only sensible part of him The vulgar to whom common speech is accommodate not taking so much notice of what is past the ken of their senses And therefore Body in ordinary speaking is oft put for Person as here man for the body Sometimes the noblest part is used for the whole as when 't is said 70 Souls went down with Jacob into Egypt therefore such arguments as
it shall go hard but that those whom their education or prejudice have engaged against this Hypothesis will light on some obscure pieces of texts and broken sentences or other that shall seem to condemn what they disapprove of But I am securely confident that there is not a sentence in the sacred volume from end to end that ever was intended to teach that all Souls were not made of old or that by a legitimate consequence would inferr it And if any there be that seem to look another way I dare say they are collateral and were never designed by the divine Authors for the purpose they are made to serve by the enemies of Praeexistence Wherefore not to conceal any thing that with the least shew of probability can be pretended from the sacred volume in discountenance of the Doctrine of Praeexistence I 'le bring into view whatever I know to have the least face of a Testimony to the contrary in the divine Revelations That so when it shall appear that the most specious Texts that can be alledg'd have nothing at all in them to disprove the souls praeexistence we may be secure that God hath not discovered to us in his written will that 't was not his pleasure to create all souls together Therefore 1. It may be pretended that the Doctrine of Praeexistence comports not with that innocence and integrity in which the Scripture determines Adam to have been made Since it supposeth the descent into these bodies to be a culpable lapse from an higher and better state of Life and this to be a state of incarceration for former delinquencies To this I answer 1 No one can object any thing to purpose against Praeexistence from the unconceiveableness of it until he know the particular frame of the Hypothesis without which all impugnations relating to the manner of the thing will be wide of the mark and but little to the business Therefore if the Objector would have patience to wait till we come to that part of our undertaking he would find that there was but little ground for such a scruple But however to prevent all cavillings in this place I 'le shew the invalidity of this objection Wherefore 2 There is no necessity from the Doctrine of Praeexistence to suppose Adam a Delinquent before his noted transgression in a terrestrial body for considering that his body had vast advantages above ours in point of Beauty Purity and Serviceableness to the Soul what harshness is there in conceiving that God might send one of those immaculate Spirits that he had made into such a Tenement that he might be his steward in the affairs of this lower Family and an overseer and ruler of those other Creatures that he had ordered to have their dwelling upon earth I am sure there is no more contrariety to any of the Divine Attributes in this supposition than there is in that which makes God to have sent a pure spirit which he had just made into such a body Yea 3 Supposing that some Souls fell when the Angels did which the process of our discourse will shew to be no unreasonable supposition this was a merciful provision of our Maker and a generous undertaking for a Seraphick and untainted Spirit For by this means fit and congruous matter is prepared for those Souls to reside and act in who had rendred themselves unfit to live and enjoy themselves in more refined bodies And so those Spirits that had sinned themselves into a state of silence and inactivity are by this seasonable means which the divine Wisdom and Goodness hath contrived for them put once more into a capacity of acting their parts anew and coming into play again Now if it seem hard to any to conceive how so noble a Spirit in such an advantagious body should have been imposed upon by so gross a delusion and submit so impotently to the first temptation He may please to consider that the difficulty is the same supposing him just then to have been made if we grant him but that purity and those great perfections both of will and understanding which orthodox theology allows him Yea again 4 I might ask What inconvenience there is in supposing that Adam himself was one of those delinquent Souls * which the divine pity and compassion had thus set up again that so so many of his excellent Creatures might not be lost and undone irrecoverably but might act anew though upon a lower stage in the universe A due consideration of the infinite foecundity and fulness of the divine goodness will if not warrant yet excuse such a supposition But now if it be demanded What advantage Adam's standing had been to his posterity had he continued in the state of innocence and how sin and misery is brought upon us by his Fall according to this Hypothesis I answer that then among many other great priviledges he had transmitted downwards by way of natural generation that excellent and blessed temper of body which should have been like his own happy crasis So that our apprehensions should have been more large and free our affections more regular and governable and our inclinations to what is good and vertuous strong and vigorous For we cannot but observe in this state how vast an influence the temper of our bodies hath upon our minds both in reference to intellectual and moral dispositions Thus daily experience teacheth us how that according to the ebb or flow of certain humours in our bodies our wits are either more quick free and sparkling or else more obtuse weak and sluggish And we find that there are certain clean and healthy dispositions of body which make us cheerful and contented others on the contrary morose melancholy and dogged And 't is easie to observes how age or sickness sowers and crabbs our natures I might instance in almost all other qualities of the mind which are strangely influenc't and modifyed according to the bodies constitution But none will deny so plain a truth and therefore I forbear to insist further on it Nor need I mention any more advantages so many and such great ones being consequent upon this But our great Protoplast and representative falling through his unhappy disobedience besides the integrity and rectitude of his mind he lost also that blessed constitution of Body which would have been so great a priviledg to his off-spring so that it became now corrupt weak and indisposed for the nobler exercises of the Soul and he could transmit no better to us than himself was owner of Thus we sell in him and were made miserable by his transgression We have bodies conveyed to us which strangely do bewitch and betray us And thus we all bear about us the marks of the first apostacy There are other sad effects of his defection but this may suffice for my present purpose Thus we see how that the derivation of original depravity from Adam is as clear in this Hypothesis as can be pretended in either of the
other And upon other Accounts it seems to have much the advantage of both of them As will appear to the unprejudiced in what is further to be discoursed of Finally therefore If the urgers of the Letter of Genesis of either side against this Hypothesis would but consider That the Souls that descend hither for their praevarication in another state lye in a long condition of silence and insensibility before they appear in terrestrial bodies each of them then might from the doctrine of Praeexistence thus stated gain all the advantages which he supposeth to have by his own opinion and avoid all those alsurdities which he seeth the other run upon If the Asserters of daily Creation think it clear from Scripture that God is the Father of Spirits and immediate maker of Souls they 'l find the same made good and assented to in this Hypothesis And if they are unwilling to hold any thing contrary to the Nature of the soul which is immortal and indiscerpible the Doctrine of Praeexistence amicably closeth with them in this also And if the Patrons of Traduction would have a way how sin and misery may be propagated from our first Parent without aspersing the divine Attributes or affirming any thing contrary to the phaenomena of Providence and Nature this Hypothesis will clear the business It giving us so fair an Account how we all dye in Adam without blotting the Wisdom Justice or Goodness of God or affirming any thing contrary to the Appearances of Nature I have been the longer on this Argument because 't is like to be one main objection And we see it is so far from prejudicing that it is no inconsiderable evidence of the truth of Praeexistence And now besides this that I have named I cannot think of any Arguments from Scripture against this Doctrine considerable enough to excuse a mention of them However if the candid Reader will pardon the impertinency I 'le present to view what I find most colourable Therefore 2 It may be some are so inadvertent as to urge against our souls having been of old that Sacred writ says We are but of Yesterday which expression of divine Scripture is questionless to be understood of our appearance on this stage of Earth And is no more an Argument against our Praeexistence than that other phrase of his Before I go hence and Be no more is against our future existence in an other state after the present life is ended Nor will it prove more the business it is brought for than the expression of Rachels weeping for her Children because they were not will inferr that they were absolutely nothing Nor can any thing more be made 3. Of that place in Ecclesiastes Yea better is he than both they meaning the dead and living which hath not yet been since besids that 't is a like scheme of speech with the former it seems more to favour than discountenance Praeexistence for what is absolutely nothing can neither be worse nor better Moreover we coming from a state of silence and inactivity when we drop into these bodies we were before as if we had not been and so there is better ground in this case for such a manner of speaking than in meer non-appearance which yet Scripture phraseth a Not being * And now I cannot think of any place in the Sacred volume more that could make a tolerable plea against this Hypothesis of our Souls having been before they came into these bodies except 4. Any will draw a negative Argument from the History of the Creation concluding that the Souls of men were not made of old because there is no mention there of any such matter To which I return briefly That the same Argument concludes against the being of Angels of whose Creation there is no more say'd in the first story than of this inferiour rank of Spirits Souls The reason of which silence is commonly taken to be because Moses had here to do with a rude and illiterate people who had few or no apprehensions of any thing beyond their senses and therefore he takes notice to them of nothing but what was sensible and of common observation This reason is given also why minerals were omitted 'T were an easy matter to shew how the outward cortex the Letter of this History is adapted to mean and vulgar apprehensions whose narrowness renders them incapable of sublimer speculations But that being more than needs for our present purpose I shall forbear to speak further of it I might 2 further add that great and learned Interpreters tell us that all sorts of Spirits Angels and Souls are symbollically meant by the creation of heaven and light And if it were directly in the way of our present business it might be made appear to be no improbable conjecture But I referr him that is curious in this particular to the great Restorer of the antient Cabbala the Learned Dr. H. More in his conjectura Cabbalistica And now from the consideration of the silence of the first History we descend to the last and most likely to be urged scruple which is to this purpose 5. We are not to step beyond the divine Revalations and since God hath made known no such Doctrine as this of the Souls Praeexistence any where in his word we may reasonably deny it or at least have no ground to imbrace it This is the most important objection of all the rest and most likely to prepossess timorous and wary inquirers against this Hypothesis wherefore I conceive that a full answer to this doubt will prevent many scrupulous Haesitations and make way for an unprejudic'd hearing of what I have further to alledge in the behalf of this opinion And 1. I wish that those that urge Scripture silence to disprove praeexistence would consider how silent it is both in the case of Daily Creation and Traduction we have seen already that there is nothing in Sacred writ to warrant either but only such Generals from which the respective Patrons of either Doctrine would inferr their own conclusion though indeed they all of them with better right and congruity prove Praeexistence 2. I suppose those that argue from Scripture-silence in such cases mistake the design of Scripture which is not to determine points of speculation but to be a rule of Life and Manners Nor doth it otherwise design the teaching of Doctrinals than as they have a tendency to promote the divine life righteousness and Holiness It was never intended by it's inspired Authors to fill our Heads with notions but to regulate our disorderly appetites and affections and to direct us the way to a nobler happiness Therefore those that look for a systeme of opinions in those otherways-designed writings do like him that should see for a body of natural Philosophy in Epictetus his morals or Seneca's Epistles 3. Christ and his Apostles spoke and writ as the condition of the persons with whom they dealt administred occasion as as did also the other pen-men
to act by due and orderly gradations and takes no precipitous leaps from one extream to another 'T is very probable therefore that in our immediately next state we shall have another vehicle And then 2. considering that our Souls are immediately united to a more tenuious and subtile body here than this gross outside 'T is methinks a good presumption that we shall not be stript and divested of our inward stole also when we leave this dull Earth behind us Especially 3 if we take notice how the highest and noblest faculties and operations of the Soul are help'd on by somewhat that is corporeal and that it imployeth the bodily Spirits in its sublimest exercises we might then be perswaded that it always useth some body or other and never acts without one And 4 since we cannot conceive a Soul to live or act that is insensible and since we know not how there can be sense where there is no union with matter we should me seems be induc'd to think that when 't is disjunct from all body 't is inert and silent * For in all sensations there is corporeal motion as all Philosophy and Experience testifies And these motions become sensible representations by virtue of the union between the Soul and its confederate matter so that when it is loose and dis-united from any body whatsoever it will be unconcern'd in all corporeal motions being a penetrable substance and no sense or perception will be conveyed by them Nor will it make any thing at all against this Argument to urge that there are Nâ—â— and purely unembodied Spirits in the Vniverse which live and act without relation to any body and yet these are not insensible For what they know and how they know we are very incompetent Judges of they being a sort of Spirits specifically distinct from our order and therefore their faculties and operations are of a very diverse consideration from ours So that for us to deny what we may reasonably argue from the contemplation of our own natures because we cannot comprehend the natures of a species of creatures that are far above us is a great mistake in the way of reasoning Now how strange soever this Principle may seem to those whom customary opinions have seasoned with another belief yet considering the Reasons I have alledged I cannot forbear concluding it very probable and if it prove hereafter serviceable for the helping us in some concerning Theories I think the most wary and timerous may admit it till upon good grounds they can disprove it The Fifth Pillar 5 The Soul in every state hath such a body as is fittest for those faculties and operations that it is most inclined to exercise 'T Is a known Maxim That every thing that is is for its operation and the Contriver and Maker of the World hath been so bountiful to all Beings as to furnish them with all suitable and necessary requisites for their respective actions for there are no propensities and dispositions in nature but some way or other are brought into actual exercise otherwise they were meer nullities and impertinent appendices Now for the imployment of all kinds of faculties and the exerting all manner of operations all kinds of instruments will not suffice but only such as are proportion'd and adapted to the exercises they are to be used in and the Agents that imploy them 'T is clear therefore that the Soul of Man a noble and vigorous Agent must be fitted with a suitable body according to the Laws of that exact distributive Justice that runs through the Vniverse and such a one is most suitable as is fittest for those exercises it propends to for the body is the Souls instrument and a necessary requisite of action Whereas should it be otherwise God would then have provided worse for his worthiest Creatures than he hath for those that are of a much inferiour rank and order For if we look about us upon all the Creatures of God that are exposed to our Observation we may seal this Truth with an infallible Induction That there is nothing but what is sitted with all suitable requisites to act according to its nature The Bird hath wings to waft it aloft in the thin and subtile aire the Fish is furnisht with fins to move in her liquid element and all other Animals have Instruments that are proper for their peculiar inclinations So that should it be otherwise in the case of Souls it would be a great blot to the wise managements of Providence and contrary to its usual methods and thus we should be dis-furnisht of the best and most convictive Argument that we have to prove that a Prinoiple of exactest wisdom hath made and ordered all things The Sixth Pillar 6 The Powers and Faculties of the Soul are either 1 Spiritual and Intellectual 2 Sensitive Or 3 Plastick NOw 1 by the intellectual powers I mean all those that relate to the soul in its naked and abstracted conception as it is a spirit and are exercised about immaterial Objects as vertue knowledge and divine love This is the Platonical Nâ—â— and that which we call the mind The two other more immediately relate to its espoused matter For 2 the sensitive are exercised about all the objects of sense and are concerned in all such things as either gratifie or disgust the body And 3 the Plastick are those faculties of the soul whereby it moves and forms the body and are without sense or Animadversion The exercise of the former I call the Higher life and the operations of the latter the lower and the life of the body Now that there are such faculties belonging to our natures and that they are exercised upon such and such objects respectively plain experience avoucheth and therefore I may be excused from going about to prove so universally acknowledged a truth Wherefore I pass to The Seventh Pillar 7 By the same degrees that the higher powers are invigorated the lower are consopited and abated as to their proper exercises è contra 1 THat those Powers should each of them have a tendency to action and in their turns be exercised is but rational to conceive since otherwise they had been supersâ—uous And 2 that they should be inconsistent in the supremest exercise and inactuation is to me as probable For the Soul is a finite and limited Being and therefore cannot operate diverse ways with equal intention at once That is cannot at the same time imploy all her faculties in the highest degree of exercise that each of them is capable of For doubtless did it ingage but one of those alone the operations thereof would be more strong and vigorous than when they are conjunctly exercis'd their Acts and Objects being very divers So that I say that these faculties should act together in the highest way they are capable of seems to be contrary to the nature of the Soul And I am sure it comports not with experience for those that are endowed with an high
creatures will at length so consume and destroy that insensible pleasure and congruity that unites Soul and Body that the thus miserably cruciated Spirit must needs quit it's unfit habitation and there being no other body within its reach that is capable of a vital union according to the tenor of this Hypothesis it must become senseless and unactive by Axiom 4. And so be buried in a state of silence and inertness At length when these greedy flames shall have devoured what ever was combustible and converted into a smoak and vapour all grosser concretions that great orb of fire that the Cartesian Philosophy supposeth to constitute the center of this Globe shall perfectly have recovered its pristine nature * and so following the Laws of its proper motion shall fly away out of this vortex and become a wandring Comet till it settle in some other But if the next Conflagration reach not so low as the inmost regions of the Earth * so that the central fire remains unconcern'd and unimploy'd in this combustion this Globe will then retain its wonted place among the Planets And that so it may happen is not improbable since there is plenty enough both of fiery principles and materials in those Regions that are nearer to the surface to set the Earth into a Lightsome flame and to do all that execution that we have spoken of Some conceive therefore that the conflagration will not be so deep and universal as this opinion supposeth it But that it may take beginning from a less distance and spend it self upwards And to this purpose they represent the sequel of their Hypothesis The General Restitution THose thick and clammy vapours which erstwhile ascended in such vast measures and had fill'd the vault of Heaven with smoak and darkness must at length obey the Laws of their nature and gravity and so descend again in abundant showres and mingle with the subsiding ashes which will constitute a mudd vegetative and fertile For those warm and benign beams that now again begin to visit the desolate Earth will excite those seminal principles into action which the Divine Wisdom and goodness hath mingled with all things Wherefore they operating according to their natures and the dispositions which they find in the restored matter will shoot forth in all sorts of flowers herbs and trees making the whole Earth a Garden of delight and pleasure And erecting all the Phaenomena proper to this Element By this time the Air will be grown vital again and far more pure and pleasant than before the fiery purgation Wherefore they conceive that the disbodyed Souls shall return from their unactive and silent recess and be joyned again to bodies of purified and duly prepared Air. For their radical aptitude to matter still remained though they fell asleep for want of bodies of fit temper to unite with This is the summ of the Hypothesis as it is represented by the profoundly Learned Dr. H. More with a copious and pompous eloquence Now supposing such a recess of any Souls into a state of inactivity such a Restitution of them to life and action is very reasonable since it is much better for them to live and operate again than to be useless in the universe and as it were nothing for ever And we have seen above that the Divine goodness doth always what is best and his wisdom is not so shallow as to make his Creatures so as that he should be fain to banish them into a state that is next to non-entity there to remain through all duration Thus then will those lately tormented Souls having smarted for their past iniquities be recovered both from their state of wretchedness and insensibility and by the unspeakable benignity of their Maker placed once more in such conditions wherein by their own endeavours and the divine assistance they may amend what was formerly amiss in them and pursue any good Resolutions that they took while under the lash of the fiery tortures Which those that do when their good inclinations are perfected and the Divine Life again enkindled they shall in due time re-ascend the Thrones they so unhappily fell from and be circled about with unexpressible felicity But those that for all this follow the same ways of sensuality and rebellion against their merciful deliverer they shall be sure to be met with by the same methods of punishment and at length be as miserable as ever Thus we see the Air will be re-peopled after the conflagration but how the Earth will so soon be restored to Inhabitants is a matter of some difficulty to determine since it useth to be furnisht from the Aereal regions which now will have none left that are fit to plant it For the good were delivered thence before the conflagration And those that are newly come from under the â—iery lash and latter state of silence are in a hopeful way of recovery At least their aereal congruity cannot be so soon expired as to fit them for an early return to their terrestrial prisons Wherefore to help our selves in this rencounter we must remember that there are continually multitudes of souls in a state of inactivity for want of suitable bodies to unite with there being more that dye to the aery state than are born into this terrestrial In this condition were myriads when the general Fever seiz'd this great destemper'd body who therefore were unconcern'd in the conflagration and are now as ready to return into life and action upon the Earth's happy restauration as if no such thing had hapned Wherefore they will not fail to descend into fitly prepared matter and to exercise all the functions proper to this condition Nor will they alone be inhabitants of the Earth For all the variety of other Animals shall â—â—ve and act upon this stage with them all sorts of souls insinuating themselves into those bodies which are â—it for their respective natures Thus then supposing habitable congruous bodies there is no doubt but there will be humane Souls to actuate and inform them but all the difficulty is to conceive how the matter shall be prepared For who shall be the common Seeds-man of succeeding Humanity when all mankind is swept away by the fiery deluge And to take Sanctuary in a Miracle is unphilosophical and desperate I think therefore it is not improbable I mean according to the duct of this Hypothesis but that in this renewed youth of the so lately calcined and purified Earth there may be some pure efflorescences of balmy matter not to be found now in its exhausted and decrepit Age that may be proper vehicles of life into which souls may descend without further preparation And so orderly shape and form them as we see to this day several sorts of other creatures do without the help of generation For doubtless there will be great plenty of unctuous spirituous matter when the most inward and recondite spirits of all things shall be dislodg'd from their old close residences and
conceptions and Ideas of these natures and their relations can be only so far true * as they conform and agree with the things themselves and the harmony which they have one to another FINIS THE CONTENTS OF THE DISCOURSE of TRUTH Sect. 1. THAT Truth is twofold In the Object and in the Subject That in the Object what it is And that it is antecedent to and independent of any Will or Vnderstanding whatever p. 165 Sect. 2. The necessity of there being certain Arguments Means and Objects for certain Conclusions Ends and Faculties And that every thing will not suit every thing p. 166 Sect. 3. An Instance or two of the gross and horrid Absurdities consequent to the denying the mutual respects and relations of things to be eternal and indispensible p. 167 Sect. 4. The Entrance into the first part of the Discourse which is of Truth in the Object That the Divine Understanding does not make the Respects and Relations of its Objects but finds them or observes them p. 168 Sect. 5. That the Divine Will does not determine the References and Dependences of things because that would subvert his other Attributes p. 169 Sect. 6. The avoidance of the foregoing ill consequences by making God immutable with an Answer thereto p. 172 Sect. 7. An hideous but genuine Inference of a Pamphleteer from this principle That absolute and Sovereign Will is the Spring and Fountain of all Gods actions p. 173 Sect. 8. That the Denial of the mutual Respects and Relations of things unto one another to be eternal and unchangeable despoils God of that universal Rectitude of his Nature p. 174 Sect. 9. That the Denial of the unchangeableness of the said mutual Respects and Relations of things to one another takes away the Knowledge of God and of our own Happiness and lays a foundation of the most incurable Scepticism imaginable p. 176 Sect. 10. That the denying the Eternal and Immutable Respects of things frustrates all the noble Essays of the mind or understanding of man p. 180 Sect. 11. That in the abovesaid Denial are laid the Foundations of Rantism Debauchery and of all Dissoluteness of Life p. 181 Sect. 12. That our Assurance of future Happiness is quite â—ut off by the denying of the Eternal and Immutable Respects of Things p. 182 Sect. 13. Several Objections propounded against the scope of this Discourse hitherto from the Independency of the Divine Understanding and Will. p. 184 Sect. 14. A main Objection more fully insisted upon namely How well the Advancement of Gods Justice in the Damnation of the greatest part of Mankind consists with the scope of this Discourse especially it being so stated as is here set down p. 186 Sect. 15. An Answer to that Objection that concerns the Understanding of God shewing hat the Divine Vnderstanding does not depend upon the natures and mutual Respects of things though they be its Objects p. 187 Sect. 16. An Answer to that Objection which concerns the Will of God shewing That Liberty in the Power or Principle is no where a Perfection where there is not an Indifferency in the things or actions about which it is conversant p. 189 Sect. 17. That the Discourse hitherto does not infer any Dependency of God upon any thing without himself But only occasions are offered to him of acting according to his own intimate Nature and Essence p. 191 Sect. 18. The second part of the Discourse which briefly treats of Truth in the Subject What it is What in God and what in the Creature And that in both it is A representation or conception in the mind conformable to the unchangeable natures and mutual Respects of things p. 193 Annotations UPON THE Two foregoing TREATISES LVX ORIENTALIS OR An Enquiry into the OPINION OF THE EASTERN SAGES Concerning the Prae-existence of Souls AND THE Discourse of TRUTH Written for the more fully clearing and further confirming the main DOCTRINES in each TREATISE By one not unexercized in these kinds of SPECULATION LONDON Printed for J. Collins and S. Lounds over against Exeter-Change in the Strand 1682. Annotations UPON LVX ORIENTALIS THese two Books Lux Orientalis and the Discourse of Truth are luckily put together by the Publisher there being that suitableness between them and mutual support of one another And the Arguments they treat of being of the greatest importance that the Mind of man can entertain herself with the consideration thereof has excited so sluggish a Genius as mine to bestow some few Annotations thereon not very anxious or operose but such as the places easily suggest and may serve either to rectifie what may seem any how oblique or illustrate what may seem less clear or make a supply or adde strength where there may seem any further need In which I would not be so understood as that I had such an anxiety and fondness for the Opinions they maintain as if all were gone if they should fail but that the Dogmata being more fully clearly and precisely propounded men may more safely and considerately give their Judgments thereon but with that modesty as to admit nothing that is contrary to the Judgment of the truly Catholick and Apostolick Church Chap. 2. p. 4. That he made us pure and innocent c. This is plainly signified in the general Mosaick History of the Creation that all that God made he saw it was good and it is particularly declared of Adam and Eve that they were created or made in a state of Innocency Pag. 4. Matter can do nothing but by motion and what relation hath that to a moral Contagion We must either grant that the figures of the particles of Matter and their motion have a power to affect the Soul united with the Body and I remember Josephus somewhere speaking of Wine says it does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 regenerate as it were the Soul into another life and sense of things or else we must acknowledge that the parts of Matter are alterable into qualifications that cannot be resolved into mere mechanical motion and figure whether they be thus altered by the vital power of the Spirit of Nature or however it comes to pass But that Matter has a considerable influence upon a Soul united thereto the Author himself does copiously acknowledge in his fourth Chapter of this Book where he tells us that according to the disposition of the Body our Wits are either more quick free and sparkling or more obtuse weak and sluggish and our Mind more chearful and contented or else more morose melancholick or dogged c. Wherefore that he may appear the more consistent with himself it is likely he understands by this Moral Contagion the very venome and malignity of vitious Inclinations how that can be derived from Matter especially its power consisting in mere motion and figuration of parts The Psalmist's description is very apposite to this purpose Psal 58. The ungodly are froward even from their mothers womb as soon as they are born they go astray and
yet other peculiarities also being required and the former sensible Pathos to be recovered which is impossible in this State it is likewise impossible for us to remember the other in this The second Argument of the Author for the proving the unlikeliness of our remembring the other State is the long intermission and discontinuance from thinking of those things For 't is plain that such discontinuance or desuetude bereaves us of the memory of such things as we were acquainted with in this World Insomuch as if an ancient man should read the Verses or Themes he made when he was a School-boy without his name subscribed to them though he pumpt and sweat for them when he made them could not tell they were his own How then should the Soul remember what she did or observ'd many hundreds nay thousands of years ago But yet our Authors Antagonist has the face to make nothing of this Argument neither Because forsooth it is not so much the desuetude of thinking of one thing but the thinking of others that makes us forget that one thing What a shuffle is this For if the Soul thought on that one thing as well as on other things it would remember it as well as them Therefore it is not the thinking of other things but the not thinking of that that makes it forgotten Vsus promptus facit as in general so in particular And therefore disuse in any particular slackens at first and after abolishes the readiness of the Mind to think thereof Whence sleepiness and sluggishness is the Mother of Forgetfulness because it disuses the Soul from thinking of things And as for those seven Chronical Sleepers that slept in a Cave from Decius his time to the reign of Theodosius junior I dare say it would have besotted them without a Miracle and they would have rose out of their sleep no more wise than a Wisp I am sure not altogether so wise as this awkward Arguer for memory of Souls in their Pre-existent state after so hugely long a discontinuance from it But for their immediately coming out of an Aethereal Vehicle into a Terrestrial and yet forgetting their former state what Example can be imagined of such a thing unless that of the Messias who yet seems to remember his former glorious condition and to pray that he may return to it again Though for my part I think it was rather Divine Inspiration than Memory that enabled him to know that matter supposing his Soul did pre-exist Our Authors third and last Argument to prove that lapsed Souls in their Terrestrial condition forget their former state is from observation how deteriorating changes in this earthly Body spoils or quite destroys the Memory the Soul still abiding therein such as Casualties Diseases and old Age which changes the tenour of the Spirits and makes them less useful for memory as also 't is likely the Brain it self Wherefore there being a more deteriorating change to the Soul in coming into an earthly Body instead of an aereal or aethereal the more certainly will her memory of things which she experienced in that state be washed out or obliterated in this Here our Authors Antagonist answers That though changes in body may often weaken and sometimes utterly spoil the memory of things past yet it is not necessary that the Souls changing of her body should therefore do so because it is not so injurious to her faculties Which if it were not onely our Memory but Reason also should have been casheered and lost by our migration out of those Vehicles we formerly actuated into these we now enliven but that still remaining sound and entire it is a signe that our Memory would do so too if we had pre-existed in other bodies before and had any thing to remember And besides if the bare translocation of our Souls out of one body into another would destroy the memory of things the Soul has experienced it would follow that when People by death are summoned hence into the other state that they shall be quite bereaved of their Memory and so carry neither applause nor remorse of Conscience into the other World which is monstrously absurd and impious This is the main of his Answer and mostwhat in his own words But of what small force it is we shall now discover and how little pertinent to the business For first we are to take notice that the deteriorating change in the Body or deteriorating state by change of Bodies is understood of a debilitative diminutive or privative not depravative deterioration the latter of which may be more injurious to the faculties of the Soul though in the same Body such a deteriorating change causing Phrensies and outragious Madness But as for diminutive or privative deterioration by change the Soul by changing her Aereal Vehicle for a Terrestrial is comparing her latter state with her former much injured in her faculties or operations of them all of them are more slow and stupid and their aptitude to exert the same Phantasms of things that occurred to them in the other State quite taken away by reason of the heavy and dull though orderly constitution of the Terrestrial Tenement which weight and stupor utterly indisposes the Soul to recall into her mind the scene of her former state this load perpetually swaying down her thoughts to the Objects of this Nor does it at all follow because Reason is not lost therefore Memory if there were any such thing as Pre-existence would still abide For the universal principles of Reason and Morality are essential to the Soul and cannot be obliterated no not by any death but the knowledge of any particular external Objects is not at all essential to the Soul nor consequently the memory of them and therefore the Soul in the state of silence being stript of them cannot recover them in her incorporation into a Terrestrial Body But her Reason with the general principles thereof being essential to her she can as well as this State will permit exercise them upon the Objects of this Scene of the Earth and visible World so far as it is discovered by her outward senses she looking out at those windows of this her earthly Prison to contemplate them And she has the faculty and exercise of Memory still in such a sense as she has of sensitive Perception whose Objects she does remember being yet to all former impresses in the other state a mere Abrasa Tabula And lastly it is a mere mistake of the Opposer or worse that he makes the Pre-existentiaries to impute the loss of memory in Souls of their former state merely to their coming into other Bodies when it is not bare change of Bodies but their descent into worser Bodies more dull and obstupifying to which they impute this loss of memory in lapsed Souls This is a real death to them according to that ancient Aenigm of that abstruse Sage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We live their death namely of separate Souls but are
and course to pass through all these dispensations provided she keep her self sincere towards her Maker is not properly any lapse or sin but an harmless experiencing all the capacities of enjoying themselves that God has bestowed upon them Which will open a door to a further Answer touching the rest of the Planets being inhabited namely That they may be inhabited by such kind of â—ouls as these who therefore want not the Knowledge and assistance of a Redeemer And so the earth may be the onely Nosocomium of sinfully lapsed souls This may be an answer to such far-fetched Objections till they can prove the contrarie Pag. 118. Adam cannot withstand the inordinate appetite c. Namely after his own remissness and heedlessness in ordering himself he had brought himself to such a wretched weakness Pag. 121. The Plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken c. There are three Vital Congruities belonging to the Plastick of the Soul and they are to awake orderly that is to operate one after another downward and upward that is to say In the lapse the Aereal follows the Aethereal the Terrestrial the Aereal But in their Recovery or Emergency out of the lapse The Aereal follows the Terrestrial and the Aethereal the Aereal But however a more gross turgency to Plastick operation may haply arise at the latter end of the Aereal Period which may be as it were the disease of the soul in that state and which may help to turn her out of it into the state of Silence and is it self for the present silenced therewith For where there is no union with bodie there is no operation of the Soul Pag. 121. For it hath an aptness and propensity to act in a Terrestrial body c. This aptness and fitness it has in the state of Silence according to that essential order of things interwoven into its own nature and into the nature of the Spirit of the World or great Archeus of the Universe according to the eternal counsel of the Divine Wisdom By which Law and appoyntment the soul will as certainly have a fitness and propensity at its leaving the Terrestrial body to actuate an Aereal one Pag. 122. Either by mere natural Congruity the disposition of the soul of the world or some more spontaneous agent c. Natural Congruity and the disposal of the Plastick soul of the world which others call the Spirit of Nature may be joyned well together in this Feat the Spirit of Nature attracting such a soul as is most congruous to the predelineated Matter which it has prepared for her But as for the spontaneous Agent I suppose he may understand his ministry in some supernatural Birth Unless he thinks that some Angels or Genii may be imployed in putting souls into bodies as Gardiners are in setting Pease and Beans in the beds of Gardens But certainly they must be no good Genii then that have any hand in assisting or setting souls in such wombs as have had to do with Adulterie Incest and Buggery Pag. 123. But some apish shews and imitations of Reason Vertue and Religion c. The Reason of the unregenerate in Divine things is little better than thus and Vertue and Religion which is not from that Principle which revives in us in real Regeneration are though much better than scandalous vice and profaness mere pictures and shadows of what they pretend to Pag. 123. To its old celestial abode c. For we are Pilgrims and strangers here on the earth as the holy Patriarchs of old declared And they that speak such things saith the Apostle plainly shew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they seek their native country for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies And truly if they had been mindful of that earthly country out of which they came they might saith he have had opportunity of returning But now they desire a better to wit an heavenly Hebr. 11. Pag. 124. But that they step forth again into Airy Vehicles This is their natural course as I noted above But the examples of Enoch and Elias and much more of our ever Blessed Saviour are extraordinary and supernatural Pag. 125. Those therefore that pass out of these bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoyled weakened or orderly unwound according to the tenour of this Hypothesis c. By the favour of this ingenious Writer this Hypothesis does not need any such obnoxious Appendage as this viz. That souls that are outed these Terrestrial bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoiled weakned or orderly unwound return into the state of Inactivity But this is far more consonant both to Reason and Experience or Storie that though the Terrestrial Congruity be still vigorous as not having run out it may be the half part no not the tenth part of its Period the soul immediately upon the quitting of this body is invested with a bodie of Air and is in the state of Activity not of Silence in no sense For some being murdered have in all likelyhood in their own persons complained of their murderers as it is in that story of Anne Walker and there are many others of the same nature And besides it is far more reasonable there being such numerous multitudes of silent souls that their least continuance in these Terrestrial bodies should at their departure be as it were a Magical Kue or Tessera forthwith to the Aereal Congruity of life to begin to act its part upon the ceasing of the other that more souls may be rid out of the state of Silence Which makes it more probable that every soul that is once besmeared with the unctuous moisture of the Womb should as it were by a Magick Oyntment be carried into the Air though it be of a still-born Infant than that any should return into the state of Silence or Inactivity upon the pretence of the remaining vigour of the Terrestrial Congruity of life For these Laws are not by any consequential necessity but by the free counsel of the Eternal Wisdom of God consulting for the best And therefore this being so apparently for the best this Law is interwoven into the Spirit of the World and every particular soul that upon the ceasing of her Terrestrial Union her Aereal Congruity of life should immediately operate and the Spirit of Nature assisting she should be drest in Aereal robes and be found among the Inhabitants of those Regions If souls should be remanded back into the state of Silence that depart before the Terrestrial Period of Vital Congruity be orderly unwound so very few reach the end of that Period that they must in a manner all be turned into the state of Inactivity Which would be to weave Penelope's Web to do and undo because the day is long enough as the Proverb is when as it rather seems too short by reason of the numerosity of Silent souls that expect their turn of Recovery into Life Pag. 125. But onely follow the clew of this Hypothesis The Hypothesis
and fountain of Truth That in these I say consists the Truth in the Object and that the Truth in the Subject is a conception conformable to these or to the Truth of them whether in the uncreated or created Understanding So that the niceness of the point is this Whether the Transcendental Truth of things exhibited in their Objective Existence to the Theoretical Intellect of God consists in their Conformity to that Intellect or the Truth of that Intellect in its Conformity with the immutable natures and Relations or Respects of things exhibited in their Objective Existence which the Divine Intellect finds to be unalterably such not contrives them at its own pleasure This though it be no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or strife about mere words yet it seems to be such a contest that there is no harm done whethersoever side carries the Cause the two seeming sides being but one and the same Intellect of God necessarily and immutably representing to it self the natures Respects and Aptitudes of all things such as they appear in their Objective Existence and such as they will prove whenever produced into act As for example The Divine Understanding quatenns exhibitive of Idea's which a Platonist would call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does of its infinite pregnancy and fecundity necessarily exhibit certain and unalterable Idea's of such and such determinate things as suppose of a Cylinder a Globe and a Pyramid which have a setled and unalterable nature as also immutable properties references and aptitudes immediately consequential thereto and not arbitrariously added unto them which are thus necessarily extant in the Divine Intellect as exhibitive of such Idea's So likewise a Fish a Fowl and a four-footed beast an Ox Bear Horse or the like they have a setled nature exhibited in their Idea's and the properties and aptitudes immediately â—lowing therefrom As also have all the Elements Earth Water and Air determinate natures with properties and aptitudes immediately issuing from them Nor is a Whale fitted to fly in the Air nor an Eagle to live under the Water nor an Ox or Bear to do either nor any of them to live in the Fire But the Idea's of those things which we call by those names being unchangeable for there are diâ—ferences indeed of Idea's but no changing of one Idea into another state but their natures are distinctly setled and to add or take away any thing from an Idea is not to make an alteration in the same Idea but to constitute a new one As Aristotle somewhere in his Metaphysicks speaks of Numbers where he says that the adding or taking away of an Unite quite varies the species And therefore as every number suppose Binary Quinary Ternary Denary is such a setled number and no other and has such properties in it self and references immediately accrewing to it and aptitudes which no other number besides it self has so it is with Idea's the Idea's I say therefore of those things which we call by those names above-recited being unchangeable the aptitudes and references immediately issuing from their nature represented in the Idea must be also unalterable and necessary Thus it is with Mathematical and Physical Idea's and there is the same reason concerning such Idea's as may be called Moral Forasmuch as they respect the rectitude of Will in whatever Mind created or uncreated And thus lastly it is with Metaphysical Idea's as for example As the Physical Idea of Body Matter or Substance Material contains in it immediately of its own nature or intimate specifick Essence real Divisibility or Discerpibility Impenetrability and mere Passivity or Actuability as the proper fruit of the Essential Difference and intimate Form thereof unalterably and immutably as in its Idea in the Divine Intellect so in any Body or Material Substance that does exist So the Idea of a Spirit or of a Substance Immaterial the opposite Idea to the other contains in it immediately of its own nature Indiscerpibility Penetrability and Self-Activity as the inseparable fruit of the essential difference or intimate form thereof unalterably and immutably as in its Idea in the Divine Intellect so in any Immaterial Substance properly so called that doth exist So that as it is a contradiction in the Idea that it should be the Idea of Substance Immaterial and yet not include in it Indiscerpibility c. so it is in the being really existent that it should be Substance Immaterial and yet not be Indiscerpible c. For were it so it would not answer to the Truth of its Idea nor be what it pretendeth to be and is indeed an existent Being Indiscerpible which existent Being would not be Indiscerpible if any could discerp it And so likewise it is with the Idea of Ens summè absolutè perfectum which is a setled determinate and immutable Idea in the Divine Intellect whereby were not God himself that Ens summè absolutè perfectum he would discern there were something better than Himself and consequently that he were not God But he discerns Himself to be this Ens summè absolutè perfectum and we cannot but discern that to such a Being belongs Spirituality which implies Indiscerpibility and who but a mad man can imagine the Divine Essence discerpible into parts Infinity of Essence or Essential Omnipresence Self-Causality or necessary Existence immediately of it self or from it self resulting from the absolute and peculiar perfection of its own nature whereby we understand that nothing can exist ab aeterno of it self but He. And lastly Omniscience and Omnipotence whereby it can do any thing that implies no contradiction to be done Whence it necessarily follows that all things were Created by Him and that he were not God or Ens summè perfectum if it were not so And that amongst other things he created Spirits as sure as there are any Spirits in the world indiscerpible as himself is though of finite Essences and Metaphysical Amplitudes and that it is no derogation to his Omnipotence that he cannot discerp a Spirit once created it being a contradiction that he should Nor therefore any argument that he cannot create a Spirit because he would then puzzle his own Omnipotence to discerp it For it would then follow that he cannot create any thing no not Metaphysical Monads nor Matter unless it be Physically divisible in infinitum and God Himself could never divide it into parts Physically indivisible whereby yet his Omnipotence would be puzzled And if he can divide matter into Physical Monads no further divisible there his Omnipotence is puzzled again And by such sophistical Reasoning God shall be able to create nothing neither Matter nor Spirit nor consequently be God or Ens summè absolutè perfectum the Creator and Essentiator of all things This is so Mathematically clear and true that I wonder that Mr. Rich. Baxter should not rather exult in his Placid Collation at the discovery of so plain and useful a truth than put himself p. 79. into an Histrionical
in the fore-cited place has perfectly routed that fond and foul Hypothesis of Dr. Glisson and I dare say is sorry that so good and old a Knight errant in Theologie and Philosophie as Mr. Richard Baxter seems to be should become benighted as in a wood at the Close of his daies in this most horrid dark Harbour and dismal Receptacle or Randevouz of wretched Atheists But I dare say for him it is his ignorance not choice that has lodged him there The fourth Disingenuity of Mr. Baxter towards the Doctor is in complaining of him as if he had wronged him by the Title of his Answer to his Letter in calling it an Answer to a Psychopyrist pag. 2. 82. As if he had asserted that materiality of Spirits which belongs to bodies pag. 94. In complaining also of his inconsistency with himself pag. 10. as if he one while said that Mr. Baxter made Spirits to be Fire or material and another while said he made them not Fire or material But to the first part of this Accusation it may be answered That if it is Mr. Baxter that is called the Learned Psychopyrist how is the thing known to the world but by himself It looks as if he were ambitious of the Title and proud of the â—ivil treating he has had at the hands of the Doctor though he has but ill repai'd his civility in his Reply And besides this there is no more harshness in calling him Psychopyrist than if he had called him Psycho-Hylist there being nothing absurd in Psychopyrism but so far forth as it includes Psycho-Hylism and makes the Soul material Which Psycho-Hylism that Mr. Baxter does admit it is made evident in the Doctors Answer Sect. 16. And Mr. Baxter in his Placid Collation as he mis-calls it for assuredly his mind was turbid when he wrote it pag. 2. allows that Spirits may be called Fire Analogicè and Eminenter and the Doctor in his Preface intimates that the sense is to be no further stretched than the Psychopyrist himself will allow But now that Mr. Baxter does assert that Materiality in created Spirits that belongs to bodies in the common sense of all Philosophers appears Sect. 16. where his words are these But custom having made MATERIA but especially CORPVS to signifie onely such grosser Substance as the three passive Elements are he means Earth Water Air I yield says he so to say that Spirits are not Corporeal or Material Which plainly implies that Spirits are in no other sense Immaterial than Fire and Aether are viz. than in this that they are thinner matter And therefore to the last point it may be answered in the Doctors behalf that he assuredly does nowhere say That Mr. Baxter does not say that Spirits are Material as Material is taken in the common sense of all Philosophers for what is impenetrable and discerpible Which is Materia Physica and in opposition to which a Spirit is said to be Immaterial And which briefly and distinctly states the Question Which if Mr. Baxter would have taken notice of he might have saved himself the labour of a great deal of needless verbosity in his Placid Collation where he does over-frequently under the pretence of more distinctness in the multitude of words obscure knowledge Fifthly Upon Sect. 10. pag. 21. where Mr. Baxters Question is How a man may tell how that God that can make many out of one cannot make many into one c. To which the Doctor there answers If the meaning be of substantial Spirits it has been already noted that God acting in Nature does not make many substances out of one the substance remaining still entire for then Generation would be Creation And no sober man believes that God assists any creature so in a natural course as to enable it to create And then I suppose that he that believes not this is not bound to puzzle himself why God may not as well make many substances into one as many out of one whenas he holds he does not the latter c. These are the Doctors own words in that Section In reply to which Mr. Baxter But to my Question saies he why God cannot make two of one or one of two you put me off with this lean Answer that we be not bound to puzzle our selves about it I think saies he that Answer might serve to much of your Philosophical disputes Here Mr. Baxter plainly deals very disingenuously with the Doctor in perverting his words which affirm onely That he that denies that God can make two substances of one in the sense above-declared need not puzzle himself how he may make one of those two again Which is no lean but full and apposite Answer to the Question there propounded And yet in this his Placid Collation as if he were wroth he gives ill language and insinuates That much of the Doctors Philosophical Disputes are such as are not worth a mans puzling himself about them whenas it is well known to all that know him or his Writings that he concerns himself in no Theories but such as are weighty and useful as this of the Indiscerpibility of Spirits is touching which he further slanders the Doctor as if it were his mere Assertion without any Proof As if Mr. Baxter had never read or forgot the Doctors Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit or what he has writ in the further Defence thereof See Sect. 26 28 30 31. Thus to say any thing in an angry mood verily does not become the Title of a Placid Collation Sixthly The Doctor in Sect. 11. of his Defence of his Notion of a Spirit writes thus I desire you to consider the nature of Light throughly and you shall find it nothing but a certain motion of a Medium whose parts or particles are so or so qualified some such way as Cartesianism drives at To this Mr. Baxter replies against the Doctor pag. 59. Really saies he when I read how far you have escaped the delusions of Cartesianism I am sorry you yet stick in so gross a part of it as this is when he that knoweth no more than motion in the nature of Fire which is the Active Principle by which Mental and Sensitive Nature operateth on Man and Brutes and Vegetables and all the Passive Elements and all the visible actions in this lower world are performed what can that mans Philosophie be worth I therefore return your Counsel study more throughly the nature of Ethereal Fire Satis pro imperio very Magisterially spoken and in such an igneous Rapture that it is not continuedly sense Does Mental and Sensitive Nature act on Brutes and Vegetables and all the Passive Elements But to let go that Is all the Doctors Philosophie worth nothing if he hold with Des Cartes touching the Phaenomenon of Light as to the Material part thereof It is the ignorance of Mr. Baxter that he rejects all in Des Cartes and Judiciousness in the Doctor that he retains some things and supplies where his
the Disingenuity of the omission before yet to be just to Mr. Baxter I must commend his discretion and judgment in being willing to omit them they appearing to me now they are produced so weak and invalid But such as they are I shall gather them out of his Reply and bring them into view First then pag. 13. It is alledged That nothing hath two forms univocally so called But if Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie be added to the Virtus Vitalis to the Vital Power of a Spirit it will have two forms Therefore Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie are to be omitted in the notion of a Spirit See also p. 22. Secondly pag. 14. Penetrable and Indiscerpible can be no otherwise a form to Spirits than Impenetrable and Discerpible are a form to Matter But Impenetrable is onely a modal Conceptus of Matter and Discerpible a Relative notion thereof and neither one nor both contrary to Virtus vitalis in a Spirit Thirdly pag. 14. He sees no reason why Quantity and the Trina Dimensio may not as well be part of the form of Matter as Discerpibilitie and Impenetrabilitie Fourthly pag. 15 16. Nothing is to be known without the mediation of Sense except the immediate sensation itself and the acts of intellection and volition or nolition and what the Intellect inferreth of the like by the perception of these Wherefore as to the modification of the substance of Spirits which is contrary to Impenetrabilitie and Divisibilitie I may grope says he but I cannot know it positively for want of sensation Fifthly pag. 16 17. If Indiscerpibilitie be the essential character of a Spirit then an Atom of matter is a Spirit it being acknowledged to be Indiscerpible Wherefore Indiscerpibilitie is a false character of a Spirit Sixthly pag. 17 18. Penetrable whether actively or passively understood can be no proper Character of a Spirit forasmuch as Matter can penetrate a Spirit as well as a Spirit Matter it possessing the same place See pag. 23. Seventhly pag. 40 41. Immaterialitie says he Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie in your own judgment I think are none of them proper to Spirit For they are common to diverse Accidents in your account viz. to Light Heat Cold. And again in his own words Eighthly pag. 77. If your Penetrabilitie says he imply not that all the singular Spirits can contract themselves into a Punctum yea that all the Spirits of the world may be so contracted I find it not yet sufficiently explained See also pag. 52 78 89 90. Ninthly pag. 50. Seeing says he you ascribe Amplitude Quantitie and Dimensions and Logical Materialitie to the Substantialitie of Spirits I see not but that you make them Intellectually divisible that is that one may think of one part as here and another there And if so though man cannot separate and divide them if it be no contradiction God can Tenthly and lastly pag. 90. The putting of Penetrability and Indiscerpibility into the notion of a Spirit is needless and hazardous it being sufficient to hold that God hath made Spirits of no kind of parts but what do Naturally abhor Separation and so are inseparable unless God will separate them and so there is no fear of losing our Personality in the other State But Penetrability and Indiscerpibility being hard and doubtful words they are better left out lest they tempt all to believe that the very Being of Spirits is as doubtful as those words are Thus have I faithfully though briefly brought into view all Mr. Baxters Arguments against the Penetrability and Indiscerpibility of Spirits which I shall answer in order as they have been recited To the first therefore I say that the Doctors Definition of a Spirit which is A Substance immaterial intrinsecally indued with life and a faculty of motion where Substance is the Genus and the rest of the terms comprize the Differentia which Mr. Baxter calls Conceptus formalis and Forma I say that this Difference or Form though it consist of many terms yet these terms are not Heterogeneal as he would insinuate pag. 22. but Congenerous and one in order to another and essentially and inseparably united in that one substance which is rightly and properly called Spirit and in vertue of that one substance though their Notions and Operations differ they are really one inseparable specifick Difference or Form as much as Mr. Baxters Virtus vitalis un a-trina is that is to say they are specifick knowable terms succedaneous to the true intimate specifick Form that is utterly unknowable and therefore I say in this senâ—e these knowable terms are one inseparable specifick Difference or Form whereby Spirit is distinguished from Bodie or Matter in a Physical acception Which the Universality of Philosophers hold to consist in Impenetrability and Discerpibilitie and Self-inactivitie Which if Mr. Baxter would have been pleased to take notice of viz. that a Spirit is said to be a Substance Immaterial in opposition to Matter Physical he might have saved himself the labour of a deal of tedious trisling in explication of words to no purpose But to shew that this Pretence of more Forms than one in one Substance is but a Cavil I will offer really the same Definition in a more succinct way and more to Mr. Baxters tooth and say As Corpus is Substantia Materialis where Materialis is the specifick Difference of Corpus comprized in one term so Spiritus is Substantia Immaterialis where Immaterialis the specifick Difference of Spiritus is likewise comprized in one term to please the humour of Mr. Baxter But now as under that one term Materialis are comprized Impenetrabilitie Discerpibilitie and Self-Inactivity so also under that one term Immaterialis are comprized as under one head Penetrability Indiscerpibility and Intrinsecal life and motion that is an essential facultie of life and motion which in one word may be called Self-Activity Whence Penetrability Indiscerpibility and Self-Activity are as much one Form of a Spirit as Mr. Baxters Vita Perceptio and Appetitus is one Form thereoâ— For though in both places they are three distinct notions at least as Mr. Baxter would have it yet they are the essential and inseparable Attributes of one substance and the immediate fruit and result of the Specifick nature thereof They are inseparably one in their Source and Subject And this I think is more than enough to take off this first little Cavil of Mr. Baxters against the Doctors including Penetrability and Inseparability in the Form or Specifick difference of a Spirit For all that same is to be called Form by which a thing is that which it is as far as our Cognitive faculties will reach and by which it is essentially distinguished from other things And if it were not for Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie Spirit would be confounded with Body and Matter And Body or Physical Matter might be Self-Active Sentient and Intelligent To the Second I answer That whosoever searches things to the bottom he will find this a sound
as a Spirit does Spirit and matter which Matter cannot do This is a certain Character of a Spirit And his instancing in Light as Indiscerpible is as little to the purpose For the substance of Light viz. the Materia subtilissima and Globuli are discerpible And the motion of them is but a Modus but the point in hand is Indiscerpibilitie of Substance To the Eighth I Answer That Mr. Baxter here is hugely unreasonable in his demands as if Penetrabilitie of Spirits were not sufficiently explained unless it can be made out that all the Spirits in the world Universal and particular may be contracted into one Punctum But this is a Theme that he loves to enlarge upon and to declaim on very Tragically as pag. 52. If Spirits have parts which may be extended and contracted you will hardly so easily prove as say that God cannot divide them And when in your Writings shall I find satisfaction into how much space one Spirit may be extended and into how little it may be contracted and whether the whole Spirit of the World may be contracted into a Nut-shell or a Box and the Spirit of a Flea may be extended to the Convex of all the world And again pag. 78. You never tell into how little parts onely it may be contracted And if you put any limits I will suppose that one Spirit hath contracted itself into the least compass possible and then I ask Cannot another and another Spirit be in the same compass by their Penetration If not Spirits may have a contracted Spissitude which is not Penetrable and Spirits cannot penetrate contracted Spirits but onely dilated ones If yea then quaero whether all created Spirits may not be so contracted And I should hope that the Definition of a Spirit excludeth not God and yet that you do not think that his Essence may be contracted and dilated O that we knew how little we know This grave moral Epiphonema with a sorrowful shaking of the Head is not in good truth much misbecoming the sly insinuating cunning of Mr. Richard Baxter who here makes a shew speaking in the first person We of lamenting and bewailing the ignorance of his own ignorance but friendly hooks in by expressing himself in the plural number the Doctor also into the same condemnation Solamen miseris as if He neither did understand his own ignorance in the things he Writes of but will be strangely surprised at the hard Riddles Mr. Baxter has propounded as if no Oedipus were able to solve them And I believe the Doctor if he be called to an account will freely confess of himself That in the things he positively pronounces of so far as he pronounces that he is indeed altogether ignorant of any ignorance of his own therein But that this is by reason that he according to the cautiousness of his Genius does not adventure further than he clearly sees ground and the notion appears useful for the Publick As it is indeed useful to understand that Spirits can both Penetrate matter and Penetrate one another else God could not be Essentially present in all the parts of the Corporeal Universe nor the Spirits of Men and Angels be in God Both which notwithstanding are most certainly true to say nothing of the Spirit of Nature which particular Spirits also Penetrate and are Penetrated by it But now for the Contraction and Dilatation of Spirits that is not a propertie of Spirits in general as the other are but of particular created Spirits as the Doctor has declared in his Treatise of the Immortalitie of the Soul So that that hard Question is easily answered concerning Gods contracting and dilating himself That he does neither he being no created Spirit and being more absolutely perfect than that any such properties should be competible to him And it is reasonable to conceive that there is little actually of that propertie in the Spirit of Nature it being no particular Spirit though created but an Universal one and having no need thereof For the corporeal world did not grow from a small Embryo into that vast amplitude it is now of but was produced of the same largeness it now has though there was a successive delineation and orderly polishing and perfecting the vast distended parts thereof And to speak compendiously and at once That God that has Created all things in number weight measure has given such measures of Spiritual Essence and of the facultie of contracting and dilating the same as also of Spiritual Subtilty of substance as serves the ends of his Wisdom and Goodness in creating such a species of Spirit So that it is fond unskilful and ridiculous to ask if the whole Spirit of the world can be contracted into a Nut-shell and the Spirit of a Flea extended to the Convex of the Universe They that talk at this rate err as Aliens from the Wisdome of God and ignorant of the Laws of Nature and indeed of the voice of Scripture itself Why should God make the Spirit of a Flea which was intended for the constituting of such a small Animal large enough to fill the whole world Or what need of such a contraction in the Spirit of Nature or Plastick Soul of the corporeal Universe that it may be contrived into a Nut-shell That it has such Spiritual subtiltie as that particular Spirits may contract themselves in it so close together as to be commensurate to the first Inchoations of a Foetus which is but very small stands to good reason and Effects prove it to be so As also this smalness of a Foetus or Embryo that particular Spirits are so far contracted at first and expand themselves leisurely afterwards with the growth of the bodie which they regulate But into how much lesser space they can or do contract themselves at any time is needless to know or enquire And there is no Repugnancie at all but the Spirit of Nature might be contracted to the like Essential Spissitude that some particular Spirits are but there is no reason to conceit that it ever was or ever will be so contracted while the World stands Nor lastly is there any Inconvenience in putting indefinite limits of Contraction in a Spirit and to allow that after such a measure of Contraction though we cannot say just what that is it naturally contracts no further nor does another so contracted naturally penetrate this thus contracted Spirit For as the usefulness of that measure of Self-Penetrability and Contraction is plain so it is as plain that the admitting of it is no incongruitie nor incommoditie to the Universe nor any confusion to the Specifick modes of Spirit and Bodie For these two Spirits suppose contracted to the utmost of their natural limits may naturally avoid the entring one another not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as in Bodies or Matter but by a vital Saturitie or natural Uneasiness in so doing Besides that though at such a contracted pitch they are naturally impenetrable to one
Attributes of a Spirit contrarie to Matter are not in vain For whenas a Plastick Spirit is to actuate and organize Matter and inwardly dispose it into certain forms Penetrability is needful that it may possess the Matter and order it throughout As also that Oneness of Essence and Indiscerpibility that it may hold it together For what should make any mass of Matter one but that which has a special Oneness of Essence in it self quite different from that of Matter And forasmuch as all Souls are indued with the Plastick whether of Brutes or Men not to add the Spirits of Angels still there holds the same reason in all ranks that Spirits should be as well Penetrable and Indiscerpible as Vital And if there be any Platonick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that have no Plastick yet Penetrability must belong to them and is of use to them if they be found to be within the verges of the Corporeal Universe and why not they as well as God himself and Indiscerpibility maintains their Supposital Unitie as it does in all Spirits that have to do with Matter and are capable of a vital coalescencie therewith But I have accumulated here more Theorie than is needful And I must remember that I am in a Digression To return therefore to the particular point we have been about all this while I hope by this time I have made it good that the Dr.'s Definition of a Spirit is so clear so true so express and usefully instructive and that is the scope of the Doctors Writings that neither he himself nor any body else let them consider as much as they can will ever be able to mend it And that these affected Cavils of Mr. Baxter argue no defects or slaws in the Doctors Definition but the ignorance and impotencie of Mr. Baxters Spirit and the undue elation of his mind when notwithstanding this unexceptionableness of the Definition he pag. 82. out of his Magisterial Chair of Judicature pronounces with a gracious nod You mean well but all our Conceptions here must have their ALLOWANCES and we must confess their weakness This is the Sentence which grave Mr. Baxter alto supercilio gives of the Doctors accurate Definition of a Spirit to humble him and exalt himself in the sight of the populacie But is it not a great weakness or worse to talk of favourable allowances and not to allow that to be unexceptionable against which no just exception is found But to give Mr. Baxter his due though the extream or extimate parts of this Paragraph pag. 82. which you may fancie as the skin thereof may seem to have something of bitterness and toughness in it yet the Belly of the Paragraph is full of plums and sweet things For he saies And we are all greatly beholden to the Doctor for his so industrious calling foolish Sensualists to the study and notion of invisible Beings without which what a carcass or nothing were the world But is it not pity then while the Doctor does discharge this Province with that faithfulness and industrie that Mr. Baxter should disturb him in his work and hazzard the fruits and efficacie thereof by eclipsing the clearness of his Notions of Spiritual Beings for Bodies may be also invisible by the interposition or opposition of his own great Name against them who as himself tells the world in his Church-History has wrote fourscore Books even as old Dr. Glisson his Patron or rather Pattern in Philosophy arrived to at least fourscore Years of age And Mr. Baxter it seems is for the common Proverb The older the wiser though Elihu in Job be of another mind who saies there I said Days should speak and multitude of Years should teach Wisdom But there is a Spirit in man and the Inspiration of the Almighty giveth him Vnderstanding But whither am I going I would conclude here according to promise having rescued the Doctors Definition of a Spirit from Mr. Baxters numerous little Criticisms like so many shrill busie Gnats trumpeting about it and attempting to insix their feeble Proboscides into it and I hope I have silenced them all But there is something in the very next Paragraph which is so wrongfully charged upon the Doctor that I cannot forbear standing up in his justification The Charge is this That he has fathered upon Mr. Baxter an Opinion he never owned and nick-named him Psychopyrist from his own fiction As if says he we said that Souls are Fire and also took Fire as the Doctor does for Candles and hot Irons c. onely But I answer in behalf of the Doctor as I have a little toucht on this matter before That he does indeed entitle a certain Letter which he answers to a Learned Psychopyrist as the Author thereof But Mr. Baxters name is with all imaginable care concealed So that he by his needless owning the Letter has notched that nick-name as he calls it of Psychopyrist upon himself whether out of greediness after that alluring Epithet it is baited with I know not but that he hangs thus by the gills like a Fish upon the Hook he may thank his own self for it nor ought to blame the Doctor Much less accuse him for saying that Mr. Baxter took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like For in his Preface he expresly declares on the Psychopyrists behalf that he does not make this crass and visible Fire the Essence of a Spirit but that his meaning is more subtile and refined With what conscience then can Mr. Baxter say that the Doctor affirms that he took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like and that he held all Souls to be such Fire whenas the Doctor is so modest and cautious that he does not affirm that Mr. Baxter thinks any to be such though even in this Placid Collation he professes his inclination towards the Opinion that Ignis and Vegetative Spirit is all one pag. 20 21. I have oft professed saith he that I am ignorant whether Ignis and Vegetative Spirit be all one to which I most incline or whether Ignis be an active nature made to be the instrument by which the three spiritual natures Vegetative Sensitive and Mental work on the three passive natures Earth Water Air. And again pag. 66. If it be the Spirit of the world that is the nearest cause of illumination by way of natural activity then that which you call the Spirit of the World I call Fire and so we differ but de nomine But I have saith he as before professed my ignorance whether Fire and the Vegetative nature be all one which I incline to think or whether Fire be a middle active nature between the spiritual and the mere Passive by which Spirits work on bodie And pag. 71. I doubt not but Fire is a Substance permeant and existent in all mixt bodies on Earth In your bloud it is the prime part of that called the
infinite fulness is to be communicating and overflowing And the most congruous apprehension that we can entertain of the Infinite and eternal Deity is * to conceive him as an immense and all glorious Sun that is continually communicating and sending abroad its beams and brightness which conception of our Maker if 't were deeply imprinted on us would I am confident set our apprehensions right in many Theories and chase away those black and dismal notions which too many have given harbour to But I come to erect the Second Pillar 2 Then There is an exact Geometrical Justice that runs through the Vniverse and is interwoven in the contexture of things THis is a result of that wise and Almighty Goodness that praesides over all things For this Justice is but the distributing to every thing according to the requirements of its nature And that benign wisdom that contrived and framed the natures of all Beings doubtless so provided that they should be suitably furnisht with all things proper for their respective conditions And that this Nemesis should be twisted into the very natural constitutions of things themselves is methinks very reasonable since questionless Almighty Wisdom could so perfectly have formed his works at first as that all things that he saw were regular just and for the good of the Vniverse should have been brought about by those stated Laws which we call nature without an ordinary engagement of absolute power to effect theâ— And it seems to me to be very becoming the wise Author of all things so to have made them in the beginning as that by their own internal spring and wheels they should orderly bring about whatever he intended them for without his often immediate interposal For this looks like a more magnificent apprehension of the Divine power and Prescience since it supposeth him from everlasting ages to have foreseen all future occurrences and so wonderfully to have seen and constituted the great machina of the world that the infinite variety of motions therein should effect nothing but what in his eternal wisdom he had concluded fit and decorous But as for that which was so it should as certainly be compast by the Laws he appointed long ago as if his omnipotence were at work every moment On the contrary to engage Gods absolute and extraordinary power in all events and occurrences of things is mâ—sâ—â—ms to think meanly of his wisdom as if he had made the world so as that it should need omnipotence every now and then to mend it or to bring about those his destinations which by a shorter way he could have effected by his instrument Nature Can any one say that our supposition derogates from the Divine concourse or Providence For on these depend continually both the being and operations of all things since without them they would cease to act and return to their old nothing And doubtless God hath not given the ordering of things out of his own hands but holds the power to alter innovate or change the course of nature as he pleaseth And to act by extraordinary means by absolute omnipotence when he thinks fit to do so The sum of what I intend is that Gods works are perfect and as his Goodness is discover'd in them so is his Justice wrought into their very essential constitutions so that we need not suppose him to be immediately engaged in every event and all distributions of things in the world or upon all occasions to exercise his power in extraordinary actions but that he leaves such managements to the Oeconomy of second causes And now next to this for they are of kâ—n I raise The third Pillar 3 Things are carried to their proper place and state by the congruity of their natures where this fails we may suppose some arbitrary managements THE Congruity of things is their suitableness to such or such a state or condition And 't is a great Law in the Divine and first constitutions that things should incline and move to what is suitable to their natures This in sensibles is evident in the motions of consent and sympathy And the ascent of light and descent of heavy bodies must I doubt when all is done * be resolv'd into a principle that is not meerly corporeal Yea supposing all such things to be done by the Laws of Mechanicks why may we not conceive that the other rank of Beings Spirits which are not subject to corporeal motions are also dispos'd of by a Law proper to their natures which since we have no other name to express it by we may call congruity We read in the sacred History that Judas went to his own place And 't is very probable that Spirits are conveyed to their proper states and residence * as naturally as the fire mounts or a stone descends The Platonists would have the Soul of the world to be the great Instrument of all such distributions as also of the Phaenomena that are beyond the powers of matter And 't is no unlikely Hypothesis But I have no need to ingage further about this nor yet to speak more of this first part of my Principle since it so nearly depends on what was said in behalf of the former Maxim Yet of the latter we need a word or two When therefore we cannot give account of things either by the Laws of Mechanicks or conceivable Congruities * as likely some things relating to the States of Spirits and immaterial Beings can be resolv'd by neither I say then we may have recourse to the Arbitrary managements of those invisible Ministers of Equity and Justice which without doubt the world is plentifully stored with For it cannot be conceived that those active Spirits are idle or unimployed in the momentous concerns of the Vniverse Yea the sacred volume gives evidence of their interposals in our affairs I shall need mention but that remarkable instance in Daniel of the indeavours of the Prince of Persia and of Grecia to hinder Michael and the other Angel that were ingaged for the affairs of Judea Or if any would evade this what think they of all the apparitions of Angels in the old Testament of their pitching their Tents about us and being Ministring Spirits for our good To name no more such passages Now if those noble Spirits will ingage themselves in our trifling concernments doubtless they are very sedulous in those affairs that tâ—nd to the good and perfection of the Vniverse But to be brief I advance The Fourth Pillar 4 * The Souls of men are capable of living in other bodies besides Terrestrial And never act but in some body or other FOr 1. when I consider how deeply in this state we are immersed in the body I can methinks scarce imagin that presently upon the quitting on 't we shall be stript of all corporeity for this would be such a jump as is seldom or never made in nature since by almost all instances that come under our observation 't is manifest that she useth
place of light and blessedness by Principle 3d. But particularly to describe and point at this paradisaical residence can be done only by those that live in those serene regions of lightsome glory Some Philosophers indeed have adventured * to pronounce the place to be the Sun that vast Orb of splendor and brightness though it may be 't is more probable that those immense tracts of pure and quiet aether that are above Saturn are the joyous place of our ancient celestial abode But there is no determination in matters of such lubricous uncertainty where ever it is 't is doubtless a place and state of wonderful bliss and happiness and the highest that our natures had fitted us to In this state we may be supposed to have lived in the blissful exercise of vertue divine love and contemplation through very long tracts of duration But though we were thus unconceivably happy * yet were we not immutably so for our highest perfections and noblest faculties being but finite may after long and vigorous exercise somewhat abate and remit in their sublimest operations and Adam may fall asleep In which time of remission of the higher powers the lower may advance and more livelily display themselves than they could before by Axiom 7 for the soul being a little slackt in its pursuits of immaterial objects the lower powers which before were almost wholly taken up and imployed in those high services are somewhat more releast to follow a little the tendencies of their proper natures And now they begin to convert towards the body and warmly to resent the delights and pleasures thereof Thus is Eve brought forth while Adam sleepeth The lower life that of the body is now considerably awakened and the operations of the higher proportionably abated However there is yet no anomy or disobedience for all this is but an innocent exercise of those faculties which God hath given us to imploy and as far as is consistent with the divine laws to gratifie For it was no fault of ours that we did not uncessantly keep our spiritual powers upon the most intense exercises that they were capable of exerting * we were made on set purpose defatigable that so all degrees of life might have their exercise and our Maker designed that we should feel and taste the joys of our congenite bodies as well as the pleasures of those seraphick aspires and injoyments And me thinks it adds to the felicity of that state that our happiness was not one uniform piece or continual repetition of the same but consisted in a most grateful variety viz. in the pleasure of all our faculties the lower as well as the higher for those are as much gratified by suitable exercises and enjoyments as these and consequently according to their proportion capable of as great an happiness Nor is it any more derogation from the divine goodness that the noblest and highest life was not always exercised to the height of its capacity than that we were not made all Angels all the Planets so many Suns and all the variety of the Creatures formed into one Species Yea as was intimated above 't is an instance of the divine benignity that he produced things into being according to the vast plenitude of Forms that were in his all-knowing mind and gave them operations suitable to their respective natures so that it had rather seemed a defect in the divine dispensations if we had not had the pleasure of the proper exercise of the lower faculties as well as of the higher * Yea me thinks 't is but a reasonable reward to the body that it should have its delights and gratifications also whereby it will be fitted for further serviceableness For doubtless it would be in time spent and exhausted were it continually imployed in those high and less proportioned operations Wherefore God himself having so order'd the matter that the inferiour life should have its turn of invigoration it can be no evil in us * that that is executed which he hath so determined as long as we pass not the bounds that he hath set us Adam therefore was yet innocent though he joyed in his beloved Spouse yea and was permitted to feed upon all the fruits of this Paradise the various results of corporeal pleasure as long as he followed not his own will and appetites contrarily to the divine commands and appointments But at length unhappily the delights of the body betray us through our over indulgence to them and lead us captive to anomy and disobedience The sense of what is grateful and pleasant by insensible degrees gâ—ts head over the apprehension of what is just and good the Serpent and Eve prove successful tempters * Adam cannot withstand the inordinate appetite but feeds on the forbidden fruit viz. the dictates of his debauched will and sensual pleasure And thus now the body is gotten uppermost the lower faculties have greater exercise and command than the higher those being very vigorously awakened and these proportionably shrunk up and consopited wherefore by Axiom 3. and 5. the soul contracts a less pure body which may be more accommodate to sensitive operations and thus we fall from the highest Paradise the blissful regions of life and glory and become Inhabitants of the Air. Not that we are presently quite divested of our Aethereal state as soon as we descend into this less perfect condition of life for retaining still considerable exercises of the higher life though not so ruling and vigorous ones as before the soul must retain part of its former vehicle to serve it as its instrument in those its operations For the aethereal body contracts crasness and impurity by the same degrees as the immaterial faculties abate in their exercise so that we are not immediately upon the expiring of the highest congruity wholly stript of all remains of our celestial bodies but still hold some portion of them within the grosser vehicle while the spirit or higher life is in any degree of actuation Nor are we to suppose that every slip or indulgence to the body can detrude us from our aethereal happiness but such a change must be wrought in the soul as may spoil its congruity to a celestial body which in time by degrees is effected Thus we may probably be supposed to have fallen from our supream felicity But others of our order have made better use of their injoyments and the indulgences of their Maker and though they have had their Perigae's as well as their Apogae's I mean their Verges towards the body and its joys as well as their Aspires to nobler and sublimer objects yet they kept the station of their Natures and made their orderly returns without so remarkable a defection And though possibly some of them may sometimes have had their slips and have waded further into the pleasures of the body than they ought to have done yet partly by their own timely care and consideration and partly by the divine assistance they recover themselves
again to their condition of primigenial innocence But we must leave them to their felicity and go on with the History of our own descent Therefore after we are detruded from our aethereal condition we next descend into the Aereal The Aereal State NOw our bodies are more or less pure in this condition proportionably to the degrees of our apostacy So that we are not absolutely miserable in our first step of descent but indeed happy in comparison of our now condition As yet there may be very considerable remains of vertue and divine love though indeed the lower life that of the body be grown very strong and rampant So that as yet we may be supposed to have lapst no lower than the best and purest Regions of the Air by Axiom 2 and 3. And doubtless there are some who by striving against the inordinacy of their Appetites may at length get the victory again over their bodies and so by the assistance of the Divine Spirit who is always ready to promote and assist good beginnings may re-enkindle the higher life and so be translated again to their old celestial habitations without descending lower But others irreclaimably persisting in their Rebellion and sinking more and more into the body and the relish of its joys and pleasures these are still verging to a lower and more degenerate state so that at the last the higher powers of the Soul being almost quite laid asleep and consopited and the sensitive also by long and tedious exercises being much tired and abated in their vigour * the plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken so that a body of thin and subtile air will not suffice its now so highly exalted energy no more than the subtile Aether can suffice us terrestrial animals for respiration wherefore the aereal-congruity of life expires also and thus are we ready for an earthly body But now since a soul cannot unite with any body but with such only as is fitly prepared for it by Principle 3. and there being in all likelyhood more expirations in the Air than there are prepared bodies upon earth it must needs be that for some time it must be destitute of any congruous matter that might be joyned with it And consequently by Principle 4. 't will lye in a state of inactivity and silence Not that it will for ever be lost in that forgotten recess and solitude * for it hath an aptness and propeâ—sity to act in a terrestrial body which will be reduced into actual exercise when fit matter is prepared The Souls therefore that are now laid up in the black night of stupidity and inertness will in their proper seasons be awakened into life and operation in such bodies and places of the earth as by their dispositions they are fitted for So that no sooner is there any matter of due vital temper afforded by generation but immediately a soul that is suitable to such a body * either by meer natural congruity the disposition of the soul of the world or some more spontaneous agent is attracted or sent into this so befitting tenement according to Axiom 2 and 3. Terrestrial State NOw because in this state too we use our sensitive faculties and have some though very small reliques of the higher life also therefore the soul first makes it self a vehicle out of the most spiritous and yielding parts of this spumous terrestrial matter which hath some analogy both with its aethereal and aereal state This is as it were its inward vest and immediate instrument in all its operations By the help of this it understands reasons and remembers yea forms and moves the body And that we have such a subtile aery vehicle within this terrestrial our manifest sympathizing with that element and the necessity we have of it to all the functions of life as is palpable in respiration is me thinks good ground for conjecture And 't is not improbable but even within this it may have a purer fire and aether to which it is united being some little remain of what it had of old In this state we grow up merly into the life of sense having little left of the higher life * but some apish shews and imitations of reason vertue and religion By which alone with speech we seem to be distinguisht from Beasts while in reality the brutish nature is predominant and the concernments of the body are our great end our only God and happiness this is the condition of our now degenerate lost natures However that ever over-flowing goodness that always aims at the happiness of his creatures hath not left us without all means of recovery but by the gracious and benign dispensations which he hath afforded us hath provided for our restauration which some though but very few make so good use of that being assisted in their well meant and sincere indeavours by the divine spirit they in good degree mortifie and subdue the body conquer self-will unruly appetites and disorderly passions and so in some measure by Principle 7. awaken the higher life which still directs them upwards to vertue and divine love which where they are perfectly kindled carry the Soul when dismist from this prison * to it s old celestial abode For the spirit and noblest faculties being so recovered to life and exercise require an aethereal body to be united to and that an aethereal place of residence both which the divine Nemesis that is wrought into the very nature of things bestoweth on them by Principle the second But they are very few that are thus immediately restored to the celestial paradise upon the quitting of their earthly bodies For others that are but in the way of recovery and dye imperfectly vertuous meer Philosophy and natural reason within the bounds of which we are now discoursing can determin no more * but that they step forth again into aery vehicles that congruity of life immediately awakening in them after this is expired In this state their happiness will be more or less proportionably to their vertues in which if they persevere we shall see anon how they will be recover'd But for the present we must not break off the clue of our account by going backwards before we have arriv'd to the utmost verge of descent in this Philosophical Romance or History the Reader is at his choice to call it which he pleaseth Wherefore let us cast our eyes upon the Most in whom their life on earth hath but confirmed and strengthened their degenerate sensual and brutish propensions And see what is like to become of them when they take their leave of these terrestrial bodies Only first a word of the state of dying Infants and I come immediately to the next step of descent * Those therefore that pass out of these bodies before the terrestrial congruity be spoil'd weakened or orderly unwound according to the tenour of this Hypothesis must return into the state of inactivity For the Plastick in them is too highly awakened to inactuate
Souls use a kind of Geometry c. This alludes to that pretty conceit of Des Cartes in his Dioptricks the solidity of which I must confess I never understood For I understand not but that if my Soul should use any such Geometry I should be conscious thereof which I do not find my self And therefore I think those things are better understood out of that Chapter of the Book even now mentioned Pag. 17. And were the Soul quite void of all such implicit Notions it would remain as senseless c. There is no sensitive Perception indeed without Reflection but the Reflection is an immediate attention of the Soul to that which affects her without any circumstance of Notions intervening for enabling her for sensitive Operations But these are witty and ingenious Conjectures which the Author by reading Des Cartes or otherhow might be encouraged to entertain To all sensitive Objects the Soul is an Abrasa Tabula but for Moral and Intellectual Principles their Idea's or Notions are essential to the Soul Pag. 18. For Sense teacheth no general Propositions c. Nor need it do any thing else but exhibit some particular Object which our Understanding being an Ectypon of the Divine Intellect necessarily when it has throughly sifted it concludes it to answer such a determinate Idea eternally and unalterably one and the same as it stands in the Divine Intellect which cannot change and therefore that Idea must have the same properties and respects for ever But of this enough here It will be better understood by reading the Discourse of Truth and the Annotations thereon Pag. 18. But from something more sublime and excellent From the Divine or Archetypal Intellect of which our Understanding is the Ectypon as was said before Pag. 21. And so can onely transmit their natural qualities They are so far from transmitting their Moral Pravities that they transmit from themselves no qualities at all For to create a Soul is to concreate the qualities or properties of it not out of the Creator but out of nothing So that the substance and all the properties of it are out of nothing Pag. 22. Against the nature of an immaterial Being a chief property of which is to be indiscerpible The evasion to the force of this Argument by some Anti-Pre-existentiaries is that it is to philosophize at too high a rate of confidence to presume to know what the nature of a Soul or Spirit is But for brevities sake I will refer such Answerers as these to Dr. H. Moore 's brief Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit printed lately with Saducismus Triumphatus and I think he may be thence as sure that Indiscerpibility is an essential property of a Spirit as that there are any Spirits in the Universe and this methinks should suffice any ingenuous and modest Opposer But to think there is no knowledge but what comes in at our Senses is a poor beggarly and precarious Principle and more becoming the dotage of Hobbianism than men of clearer Parts and more serene Judgments Pag. 22. By separable Emissions that pass from the flame c. And so set the Wick and Tallow on motion But these separable Emissions that pass from the flame of the lighted Candle pass quite away and so are no part of the flame enkindled So weak an Illustration is this of what these Traducters would have Chap. 4. pag. 32. Which the Divine Piety and Compassion hath set up again that so so many of his excellent Creatures might not be lost and undone irrecoverably but might act anew c. To this a more elegant Pen and refined Wit objects thus Now is it not highly derogatory to the infinite and unbounded Wisdom of God that he should detrude those Souls which he so seriously designes to make happy into a state so hazardous wherein he seeth it to be ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt and defile themselves and so make them more miserable here and to eternity hereafter A strange method of recovering this to put them into such a fatal necessity of perishing 't is but an odd contrivance for their restauration to Happiness to use such means to compass it which 't is ten thousand to one but will make them infinitely more miserable This he objects in reference to what the Author of Lux Orientalis writes chap. 2. where he says It is a thousand to one but Souls detruded into these bodies will corrupt and defile themselves and so make themselves miserable here and to eternity hereafter And much he quotes to the same purpose out of the Account of Origen Where the Souls great disadvantages to Vertue and Holiness what from the strong inclinations of the Body and what from National Customs Education in this Terrestrial State are lively set out with a most moving and tragical Eloquence to shew how unlikely it is that God should put innocent and immaculate Souls of his own creation immediately into such Bodies and so hard and even almost fatal condition of miscarrying Upon which this subtile Anti-Pre-existentiary Thus you see saith he what strong Objections and Arguments the Pre-existentiaries urge with most noise and clamour are against themselves If therefore these Phaenomena be inexplicable without the Origenian Hypothesis they are so too with it and if so then the result of all is that they are not so much Arguments of Pre-existence as Aspersions of Providence This is smartly and surprizingly spoken But let us consider more punctually the state of the matter Here then we are first to observe how cunningly this shrewd Antagonist conceals a main stroke of the Supposition viz. That the Divine Pity and Compassion to lapsed Souls that had otherwise fallen into an eternal state of Silence and Death had set up Adam for their relief and endued him with such a Paradisiacal body of so excellent a constitution to be transmitted to all his Posterity and invested him in vertue of this with so full power non peccandi that if he and his Posterity were not in an happy flourishing condition as to their eternal interest of Holiness and Vertue it would be long of himself And what could God do more correspondently to his Wisdom and Goodness dealing with free Agents such as humane Souls are than this And the thing being thus stated no Objections can be brought against the Hypothesis but such as will invade the inviolable Truths of Faith and Orthodox Divinity Secondly We are to observe how this cunning Objector has got these two Pre-existentiaries upon the hip for their youthful flowers of Rhetorick when one says it is hundreds to one the other ten thousand to one that Souls will miscarry put into these disadvantages of the Terrestrial state by which no candid Reader will understand any more than that it is exceeding difficult for them to escape the pollutions of this lower World once incorporated into Terrestrial Bodies But it being granted possible for them to emerge this is a great grace
〈◊〉 animarum And as our Saviour Christ passed it for an innocent Opinion so did the Primitive Church the Book of Wisdom being an allowable book with them and read in publick though it plainly declare for Pre-existence Chap. 8. 20. Chap. 12. p. 93. Therefore let the Reader if he please call it a Romantick Scheme or imaginary Hypothesis c. This is very discreetly and judiciously done of the Author to propose such things as are not necessary members or branches of Pre-existence and are but at the best conjectural as no part of that otherwise-useful Theory For by tacking too fast these unnecessary tufts or tassels to the main Truth it will but give occasion to wanton or wrathful whelps to worry her and tug her into the dirt by them And we may easily observe how greedily they catch at such occasions though it be not much that they can make out of them as we may observe in the next Chapter Chap. 13. pag. 96. Pill 1. To conceive him as an immense and all-glorious Sun that is continually communicating c. And this as certainly as the Sun does his light and as restrainedly For the Suns light is not equally imparted to all subjects but according to the measure of their capacity And as Nature limits here in natural things so does the Wisdom and Justice of God in free Creatures He imparts to them as they capacitate themselves by improving or abusing their Freedom Pag. 100. Pill 3. Be resolved into a Principle that is not meerly corporeal He suspects that the descent of heavy bodies when all is said and done must be resolved into such a Principle But I think he that without prejudice peruses the Eleventh and Thirteenth Chapters with their Scholia of Dr. Mores Enchiridion Metaphysicum will find it beyond suspition that the Descent of heavy bodies is to be resolved into some corporeal Principle and that the Spirit of Nature though you should call it with the Cabalists by that astartling name of Sandalphon is no such prodigious Hobgoblin as rudeness and presumptuous ignorance has made that Buckeram Writer in contempt and derision to call it Pag. 101. As naturally as the fire mounts and a stone descends And as these do not so though naturally meerly from their own intrinsick nature but in vertue of the Spirit of the Vniverse so the same reason there is in the disposal of Spirits The Spirit of Nature will range their Plasticks as certainly and orderly in the Regions of the World as it does the matter it self in all places Whence that of Plotinus may fitly be understood That a Soul enveigled in vitiousness both here and after death according to her nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is thrust into the state and place she is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if she were drawn thither by certain invisible or Magical strings of Natures own pulling Thus is he pleased to express this power or vertue of the Spirit of Nature in the Universe But I think that transposition she makes of them is rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a transvection of them rather than pulsion or traction But these are overnâ—ce Curiosities Pag. 101. As likely some things relating to the state of Spirits c. That is to say Spirits by the ministry of other Spirits may be carried into such regions as the Spirit of Nature would not have transmitted them to from the place where they were before whether for good or evil Of the latter kind whereof I shall have occasion to speak more particularly in my Notes on the next Chapter Pag. 102. Pill 4. The souls of men 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 alledged 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 terrestrial men 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-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 they 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-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 â—lesh 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
as entirely taken up with this one Bodie as if she enjoyed the pleasures of all three bodies at once Aethereal Aereal and Terrestrial And lastly Which will strike all sure He that is able to save to the utmost and has promised us eternal life is as true as able and therefore cannot fail to perform it And who can deny but that we in this State I have described are as capable of being fixed there and confirmed therein as the Angels were after Lucifer and others had faln And now to the fifth and last Argument against the state of Silence I say it is raised out of mere ignorance of the most rational as well as most Platonical way of the souls immediate descent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For the first Mover or stirrer in this matter I mean in the formation of the Foetus is the Spirit of Nature the great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Universe to whom Plotinus somewhere attributes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first Predelineations and prodrome Irradiations into the matter before the particular soul it is preparing for come into it Now the Spirit of Nature being such a spirit as contains Spermatically or Vitally all the Laws contrived by the Divine Intellect for the management of the Matter of the World and of all Essences else unperceptive or quatenus unperceptive for the good of the Universe we have all the reason in the world to suppose this Vital or Spermatical Law is amongst the rest viz. That it transmit but one soul to one prepared conception Which will therefore be as certainly done unless some rare and odd casualty intervene as if the Divine Intellect it self did do it Wherefore one and the same Spirit of Nature which prepares the matter by some general Predelineation does at the due time transmit some one soul in the state of Silence by some particularizing Laws that fetch in such a soul rather than such but most sure but one unless as I said some special casualty happen into the prepared Matter acting at two places at once according to its Synenergetical vertue or power Hence therefore it is plain that there will be no such clusters of Foetus's and monstrous deformities from this Hypothesis of the souls being in a state of Silence But for one to shuffle off so fair a satisfaction to this difficulty by a precarious supposing there is no such Being as the Spirit of Nature when it is demonstrable by so many irrefragable Arguments that there is is a Symptome of one that philosophizes at random not as Reason guides For that is no reason against the existence of the Spirit of Nature because some define it A Substance incorporeal but without sense and animadversion c. as if a spirit without sense and animadversion were a contradiction For that there is a Spirit of Nature is demonstrable though whether it have no sense at all is more dubitable But though it have no sense or perception it is no contradiction to its being a Spirit as may appear from Dr. H. Mores Brief Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit To which I direct the Reader for satisfaction I having already been more prolix in answering these Arguments than I intended But I hope I have made my presage true that they would be found to have no force in them to overthrow the Hypothesis of a threefold Vital Congruity in the Plastick of the soul So that this fourth Pillar for any execution they can do will stand unshaken Pag. 103. For in all sensation there is corporeal motion c. And besides there seems an essential relation of the Soul to Body according to Aristotles definition thereof he defining it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which actuates the boby Which therefore must be idle when it has nothing to actuate as a Piper must be silent as to piping if he have no Pipe to play on Chap. 14. pag. 113. The ignobler and lower properties or the life of the body were languid and remiss viz. as to their proper exercises or acting for themselves or as to their being regarded much by the Soul that is taken up with greater matters or as to their being much relished but in subserviency to the enjoyment of those more Divine and sublime Objects as the Author intimates towards the end of his last Pillar Pag. 114. And the Plastick had nothing to do but to move this passive and easie body c. It may be added and keep it in its due form and shape And it is well added accordingly as the concerns of the higher faculties required For the Plastick by reason of its Vital Union with the vehicle is indeed the main instrument of the motion thereof But it is the Imperium of the Perceptive that both excites and guides its motion Which is no wonder it can do they being both but one soul Pag. 114. To pronounce the place to be the Sun c. Which is as rationally guessed by them as if one should fancy all the Fellows and Students Chambers in a Colledge to be contained within the area of the Hearth in the Hall and the rest of the Colledge uninhabited For the Sun is but a common Focus of a Vortex and is less by far to the Vortex than the Hearth to the Ichnographie of the whole Colledge that I may not say little more than a Tennis-ball to the bigness of the earth Pag. 115. Yet were we not immutably so c. But this mutability we were placed in was not without a prospect of a more full confirmation and greater accumulation of Happiness at the long run as I intimated above Pag. 116. We were made on set purpose defatigable that so all degrees of life c. We being such Creatures as we are and finite and taking in the enjoyment of those infinitely perfect and glorious Objects onely pro modulo nostro according to the scantness of our capacity diversion to other Objects may be an ease and relief From whence the promise of a glorified body in the Christian Religion as it is most grateful so appears most rational But in the mean time it would appear most irrational to believe we shall have eyes and ears and other organs of external sense and have no suitable Objects to entertain them Pag. 117. Yea methinks 't is but a reasonable reward to the body c. This is spoken something popularly and to the sense of the vulgar that imagine the body to feel pleasure and pain whenas it is the soul onely that is perceptive and capable of feeling either But 't is fit the body should be kept in due plight for the lawful and allowable corporeal enjoyments the soul may reap therefrom for seasonable diversion Pag. 117 That that is executed which he hath so determined c. Some fancy this may be extended to the enjoying of the fruits of the Invigouration of all the three Vital Congruities of the Plastick and that for a soul orderly and in due time
for the settlement of the Church in the objects of their Divine Worship And therefore they might be the better assured that the assistance of the Holy Ghost would not be wanting upon so weighty an occasion And secondly in that those two first Councils were called while the Church was Symmetral and before the Apostasie came in according to the testimony of the Spirit in the Visions of the Apocalypse Which Visions plainly demonstrate that the Definitions of those Councils touching the Triunity of the Godhead and Divinity of Christ are not Idolatrous else the Apostasie had begun before the time these Oracles declare it did and if not Idolatrous then they are most certainly true And all these four Councils driving at nothing else but these necessary points to be decided and their decision being thus plainly approved by the suffrage of the Holy Ghost in the Apocalypse I appeal to any man of sense and judgment if they have not a peculiar prerogative to be believed above what other pretended General Council soever and consequently with what special or rather Divine sagacity our first Reformers have laid so peculiar a stress on these four and how consistent our Mother the Church of England is to herself that the decisions of General Councils have neither strength nor Authority further than the matter may be cleared out of the Holy Scriptures For here we see that out of the Holy Scriptures there is a most ample testimony given to the Decisions of these four General Councils So that if one should with Theodosius the Prior of Palestine in a fit of Zeal anathematize all those that did not believe them as true as the four Evangelists he would not want a fair Plea for his religious fury But for men after the Symmetral times of the Church upon Piques and private quarrels of Parties to get General Councils called as they fancy them to conclude matters that tend neither to the confirmation of the real Articles of the Christian Faith or of such a sense of them as are truly useful to life and godliness and herein to expect the infallible assistances of the Holy Spirit either upon such terms as these or for rank worldly interest is such a presumption as to a free Judgment will look little better than Simony as if they could hire the assistance of the Holy Ghost for money Thus have I run further into the consideration of General Councils and the measure of their Authority than was requisite upon so small an occasion and yet I think there is nothing said but if seriously weighed may be useful to the intelligent Reader whether he favour Pre-existence or not Which is no further to be favoured than is consistent with the known and approved Doctrines of the Christian Faith nor clashes any thing with the soundest Systemes of Divinity as Dr. H. More shews his way of exhibiting the Theorie does not in his General Preface to his Collectio Philosophica Sect. 19. whose cautious and castigate method I have imitated as near as I could in these my Annotations And he has indeed been so careful of admitting any thing in the Hypothesis that may justly be suspected or excepted against that his Friend Mr. Glanvil mâ—ght have enlarged his Dedication by one word more and called him Repurgatorem Sapientiae Orientalis as well as Restauratorem unless Restaurator imply both It being a piece of Restauration to free an Hypothesis from the errours some may have corrupted it with and to recover it to its primeval purity and sincerity And yet when the business is reduced to this harmless and unexceptionable state such is the modesty of that Writer that he declares that if he were as certain of the Opinion as of any demonstration in Mathematicks yet he holds not himself bound in conscience to profess it any further than is with the good-liking or permission of his Superiours Of which temper if all men were it would infinitely contribute to the peace of the Church And as for my self I do freely profess that I am altogether of the self-same Opinion and Judgment with him Annotations UPON THE Discourse of TRUTH Into which is inserted By way of DIGRESSION A brief Return To M r. BAXTER's Reply Which he calls A Placid COLLATION With the Learned Dr. HENRY MORE Occasioned by the Doctors ANSWER to a LETTER of the Learned Psychopyrist Whereunto is annexed A DEVOTIONAL HYMN Translated for the use of the sincere Lovers of true PIETY LONDON Printed for J. Collins and S. Lownds over against Exeter-Change in the Strand 1683. THE Annotatour TO THE READER ABout a fortnight or three weeks ago while my Annotations upon the two foregoing Treatises were a printing there came to my hands Mr. Baxter's Reply to Dr. Mores Answer to a Letter of the learned Psychopyrist printed in the second Edition of Saducismus Triumphatus Which Reply he styles a Placid Collation with the Learned Dr. Henry More I being fully at leasure presently fell upon reading this Placid Collation which I must confess is so writ that I was much surprized in the reading of it I expecting by the Title thereof nothing but fairness and freeness of Judgment and calmness of Spirit and love and desire of Truth and the prosperous success thereof in the World whether our selves have the luck to light on it or where ever it is found But instead of this I found a Magisterial loftiness of Spirit and a studie of obscuring and suppressing of the Truth by petty crooked Artifices strange distortions of the sense of the Doctors Arguments and Falsifications of Passages in his Answer to the Letter of the Psychopyrist Which surprize moved me I confess to a competent measure of Indignation in the behalf of the injured Doctor and of the Truth he contends for And that Indignation according to the Idiosyncrasie of my Genius stirred up the merry Humour in me I being more prone to laugh than to be severely angry or surly at those that do things unhandsomely And this merry humour stirred up prevailing so much upon my Judgment as to make me think that this Placid Collation was not to be answered but by one in a pleasant and jocular humor And I finding my self something so disposed and judging the matter not of that moment as to be buzzed upon long and that this more lightsome brisk and jocular way of answering the Placid Collation might better befit an unknown Annotatour than the known Pen and Person of the Doctor I presently betook my self to this little Province thinking at first onely to take notice of Mr. Baxters Disingenuities towards the Doctor but one thing drawing on another and that which followed being carefully managed and apparently useful I mean the Answering all Mr. Baxters pretended Objections against the Penetrability or Indiscerpibility of a Spirit and all his smaller Criticisms upon the Doctors Definition thereof in finishing these three Parts I quickly completed the whole little Work of what I call the Digression inserted into my
Philosophie is deficient He names here onely the Mechanical Cause of Light viz. Motion and duly modified Particles But in his Enchiridium he intimates an higher principle than either Fire or Aether or any thing that is Material be it as fine and pure as you please to fancie it See his Enchirid Metaphys Cap. 19. where he shews plainly that Light would not be Light were there not a Spiritus Mundanus or Spirit of Nature which pervades the whole Universe Mr. Baxters ignorance whereof has cast him into so deep a dotage upon Fire and Light and fine discerpible Corporeities which he would by his Magisterial Prerogative dubb Spirits when to nothing that Title is due but what is Penetrable and Indiscerpible by reason of the immediate Oneness of its Essence even as God the Father and Creator of all Spirits is one Indiscerpible Substance or Being And therefore I would advise Mr. Baxter to studie more throughly the true nature of a Spirit and to let go these Ignes Fatui that would seduce him into thick mists and bogs For that universal Spirit of Nature is most certainly the Mover of the matter of the world and the Modifier thereof and thence exhibits to us not onely the Phaenomena of Light and Fire but of Earth and Water and frames all Vegetables into shape and growth and Fire of it self is but a dead Instrument in its hand as all is in the hand of God who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Synesius if I well remember somewhere calls him in his Hymns Seventhly That is also less ingenuously done of Mr. Baxter when the Doctor so friendly and faithfully puts him in a way of undeceiving himself Sect. 17. touching the Doctrine of Atoms that he puts it off so slightly And so Sect. 18. where he earnestly exhorts him to studie the nature of Water as Mr. Baxter does others to studie the nature of Fire he as if he had been bitten and thence taken with that disease the Physicians call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and which signifies the fear of Water has slunk away and quite neglected the Doctors friendly monition and is so small a Proficient in Hydrostaticks that pag. 68. he understands not what greater wonder there is in the rising of the Dr.'s Rundle than in the rising of a piece of Timber from the bottom of the Sea Which is a sign he never read the 13th Chapter of the Dr.'s Enchiridion Metaphysicum much less the Scholia thereon For if he had he would discern the difference and the vast usefulness of the one above that of the other to prove a Principium Hylarchicum distinct from the matter of the Universe against all evasions and tergiversations whatsoever But these things cannot be insisted on here Eighthly Mr. Baxter pag. 76. charges the Doctor with such a strange Paradox as to half of it that I cannot imagine from whence he should fetch it You seem says he to make all substance Atoms Spiritual Atoms and Material Atoms The latter part of the charge the Doctor I doubt not but will acknowledge to be true But may easily prove out of Mr. Baxter pag. 65. that he must hold so too For his words there are these Thaâ— God is able to divide all matter into Atoms or indivisible parts I doubt not And can they be Physically divided into parts of which they don't consist But Mr. Baxter by the same reason making Spirits divisible by God though not by any Creature makes them consist of Spiritual Atoms for they cannot but consist of such parts as they are divisible into And if they be divisible by God into larger shreds onely but not into Atoms then every created Spirit especially particular ones are so many subtil living Puppets made up of spiritual rags and clouts But if God can divide them neither into spiritual Atoms nor larger spiritual parcels he can't divide them at all And so according to what the Doctor contends for they will be as they ought to be absolutely indiscerpible I omit here to take notice of another absurdity of Mr. Baxters That though the substance of a Spirit he will have to be divisible yet he will have the form indivisible pag. 50 99. and yet both parts to be Spirit still which implies a contradiction For then one of the parts will be without the form of a Spirit and consequently be no Spirit and yet be a Spirit according to Mr. Baxter who makes Spirits divisible into parts of the same denomination as when water is divided into two parts each part is still water pag. 53. Ninthly That which occurrs pag. 48. is a gross Disingenuity against the Doctor where Mr. Baxter says And when you make all Spirits to be Souls and to animate some matter you seem to make God to be but Anima Mundi How unfair and harsh is this for you Mr. Baxter who has been so tenderly and civilly handled by the Doctor in his Answer to your Letter he constantly hiding or mollifying any thing that occurred therein that might overmuch expose you to represent him as a favourer of so gross a Paradox as this That there is no God but an Anima Mundi which is the Position of the Vaninian Atheists which himself has expresly confuted in his Mystery of Godliness and declared against lately in his Advertisements on Jos Glanvils Letter to himself in the second Edition of Saducismus Triumphatus This looks like the breaking out of unchristian rancour in a Reply which bears the Specious Title of a Placid Collation Which is yet exceedingly more aggravable for that this odious Collection is not made from any words of the Doctor but from a fiction of Mr. Baxter For the Doctor has nowhere Written nor ever thought that all Spirits but only all Created Spirits might probably be Souls that is to say actuate some matter or other And those words are in his Preface to his Answer to the Letter of the Psychopyrist as I noted before I might reckon up several other Disingenuities of Mr. Baxters towards the Doctor in this his Placid Collation but I have enumerated enough already to weary the Reader and I must remember I am but in a Digression I shall onely name one Disingenuity more which was antecedent to them all and gave occasion both to Mr. Baxters Letter and to the Doctors Answer thereto and to this Reply of Mr. Baxter And that was That Mr. Baxter in his Methodus Theologiae as he has done also in a little Pamphlet touching Judge Hales without giving any reasons which is the worst way of traducing any man or his sâ—ntiments slighted and slurred those two essential Attributes of a Spirit Penetrability and Indiscerpibility which for their certain Truth and usefulness the Doctor thought fit to communicate to the World But forasmuch as Mr. Baxter has in this his Reply produced his Reasons against them I doubt not but the Doctor will accept it for an amends And I as I must disallow of
Principle in Philosophie That there is nothing in the whole Universe but what is either Substantia or Modus And when a Mode or several Modes put together are immediately and essentially inseparable from a Substance they are lookt upon as the Form or the onely knowable Specifick difference of that Substance So that Impenetrability and Discerpibility which are immediately essential to and inseparable from Body or Matter and Self-Inactivitie as Irrational is made the specifick difference of a Brute may be added also These I say are as truly the Form or Specifick difference of Body or Matter as any thing knowable is of any thing in the world And Self-Inactivity at least is contrary to the Virtus vitalis of a Spirit though Impenetrability and Discerpibility were not So that according to this oeconomy you see how plainly and exquisitely Body and Spirit are made opposite Species one to another And 't is these Modal differences of Substances which we only know but the Specifick Substance of any thing is utterly unknown to us however Mr. Baxter is pleased to swagger to the contrarie p. 44 62. Where he seems to mis-understand the Doctor as if by Essence he did not understand Substance as both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Essentia usually signifie especially with the Ancients but any Being at large But of Substance it is most true we know it onely by its essential Modes but the Modes are not the Substance it self of which they are Modes otherwise the Substance would want Modes or every Substance would be more substances than one And Mr. Baxter himself saith pag. 62. To know an essential Attribute and to know ipsam essentiam scientiâ inadaequatâ is all one Which inadequate or partial knowledge say I is this the knowing of the Essential Mode of the Substance and not knowing the Substance it self Otherwise if both the Essential Modes were known and also the Specifick Substance to which the Modes belong more than that those Modes belong to that Substance the knowledge would be full and adequate and stretcht through the whole Object So that Mr. Baxters Scientia inadoequata and the Doctors denying the bare Substance it self to be known may very well consist together and be judged a mere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which is an exercise more grateful it 's likely to Mr. Baxter than to the Doctor To the third I say Any one that considers may find a necessarie reason why Quantitie or Trina Dimensio should be left out in the Form of Body or Matter especially why the Doctor should leave it out because he does professedly hold That whatever is has Metaphysical Quantitie or Metaphysical Trina Dimensio Which no man can denie that holds God is Essentially present every-where And no man I think that does not dote can denie that Wherefore allowing Matter to be Substance in that Generical nature Trina Dimensio is comprized and need not be again repeated in the Form But when in the Forma or Differentia Discerpible and Impenetrable is added this is that which makes the Trina Dimensio included in the Genus Substantia of a Corporeal kind and does constitute that Species of things which we call Corpora This is so plain a business that we need insist no longer upon it Now to the fourth I answer briefly That from what knowledge we have by the mediation of the Senses and inference of the Intellect we arrive not onely to the knowledge of like things but of unlike or rather contrary As in this very example we being competently well instructed indeed assured by our Senses that there is such a kind of thing as Body whose nature is to be Impenetrable and Discerpible and our Reason certainly informing us as was noted even now that whatever is has a kind of Amplitude more or less or else it would be nothing hence we are confirmed that not Extension or Trina Dimensio but Impenetrabilitie and Discerpibilitie is the determinate and adequate nature of what we call Body and if there be any opposite species to Body our Reason tells us it must have opposite Modes or Attributes which are Penetrability and Indiscerpibility This is a plain truth not to be groped after with our fingers in the dark but clearly to be discerned by the eye of our understanding in the light of Reason And thus we see and many examples more we might accumulate That by the help of our Senses and Inference of our Vnderstanding we are able to conclude not onely concerning like things but their contraries or opposites I must confess I look upon this allegation of Mr. Baxter as very weak and faint And as for his fifth I do a little marvel that so grave and grandaevous a person as he should please himself in such little â—â—irts of Wit and Sophistry as this of the Indiscerpibility of an Atom or Physical Monad As if Indiscerpibility could be none of the essential or specifical Modes or Attributes of a Spirit because a Physical Monad or Atom is Indiscerpible also which is no Spirit But those very Indiscerpibilities are Specifically different For that of a Spirit is an Indiscerpibility that arises from the positive perfection and Oneness of the Essence be it never so ample that of an Atom or Physical Monad from imperfection and privativeness from the mere littleness or smalness thereof so small that it is impossible to be smaller and thence onely is Indiscerpible The sixth also is a pretty juvenile Ferk of Wit for a grave ancient Divine to use That Penetrability can be no proper Character of a Spirit because Matter can penetrate Spirit as well as Spirit Matter they both possessing the same space Suppose the bodie A. of the same amplitude with the bodie B. and thrust the bodie A. against the bodie B. the bodie A. will not nor can penetrate into the same space that the bodie B. actually occupies But suppose the bodie A. a Spirit of that amplitude and according to its nature piercing into the same space which the bodie B. occupies how plain is it that that active piercing into the same space that the bodie B. occupies is to be attributed to the Spirit A. not to the bodie B For the bodie A. could not get in These are prettie forc'd distortions of Wit but no solid methods of due Reason And besides it is to be noted that the main Character of a Spirit is as to Penetrability that Spirit can penetrate Spirit but not Matter Matter And now the Seventh is as slight as the Fifth Diverse Accidents saith he penetrate their Subjects as Heat Cold c. Therefore Penetrabilitie is no proper Character of a Spirit But what a vast difference is there here The one pierce the matter or rather are in the matter merely as continued Modes thereof the other enters into the matter as a distinct Substance therefrom Penetration therefore is here understood in this Character of a Spirit of Penetratio Substantialis when a substance penetrates substance
another yet they demonstrate still their Spirituality by Self-Penetration haply a thousand and a thousand times repeated And though by a Law of life not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are kept from penetrating one another yet they both in the mean time necessarily penetrate Matter as undergoing the diverse measures of essential Spissitude in the same So that by the increase of that essential Spissitude they may approach near to a kind of Hylopathick disposition of Impenetrability and thence by the Matter of the Universe out of which they never are be curb'd from contracting themselves any further than to such a degree and I noted at first that spiritual Subtilty as well as Amplitude is given in measure to created Spirits So that Penetrabilitie is still a steadie Character of a Spiritual Essence or Substance to thâ— utmost sense thereof And to argue against Impenetrability its being the propertie of Matter from this kind of Impenetrability of contracted Spirits is like that quibbling Sophistrie against Indiscerpibility being the propertie of a Spirit because a Physical Monad is also indiscerpible The ninth Objection is against the Indiscerpibility of Spirits and would infer that because the Doctor makes them intellectually divisible therefore by Divine Power if it imply no contradiction a Spirit is Discerpible into Physical parts But this is so fully satisfied already by the Doctor in his Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit and its Defence to say nothing of what I have said already above to prove it does imply a contradiction that I will let it go and proceed To the tenth and last Allegation which pretends That these two terms Penetrable and Indiscerpible are needless and hazardous in the Notion of a Spirit But how useful or needful Penetrability is is manifest from what we have said to the eighth Objection And the needfulness of Indiscerpibility is also sufficiently shewn by the Doctor in his Defence of the true Notion of a Spirit Sect. 30. But now for the Hazardousness of these terms as if they were so hard that it would discourage men from the admitting of the Existence of Spirits It appears from what has been said to the eighth Objection That Penetrability is not onely intelligible and admittable but necessarily to be admitted in the Notion of a Spirit as sure as God is a Spirit and that there are Spirits of men and Angels and that the Souls of men are not made of Shreds but actuate their whole grown bodie though at first they were contracted into the compass of a very small Foetus And that there is no Repugnancie that an Essence may be ample and yet indiscerpible Mr. Baxter himself must allow who pag. 51. plainly declares That it is the vilest contradiction to say that God is capable of division So that I wonder that he will call Penetrable and Indiscerpible hard and doubtful words and such as might stumble mens belief of the Existence of Spirits when they are terms so plain and necessary Nor can that Vnitie that belongs to a Spirit be conceived or understood without them especially without Indiscerpibilitie And indeed if we do not allow Penetrability the Soul of a man will be far from being one but a thing discontinued and scatter'd in the pores of his corporeal consistencie We will conclude with Mr. Baxters Conceit of the Indivisibleness of a Spirit and see how that will corroborate mens faith of their Existence and put all out of hazard Various Elements saith he pag. 50. vary in Divisibility Earth is most divisible Water more hardly the parts more inclining to the closest contact Air yet more hardly and in Fire no doubt the Discerpibility is yet harder And if God have made a Creature so strongly inclined to the unitie of all the parts that no Creature can separate them but God onely as if a Soul were such it is plain that such a Being need not fear a dissolution by Separation of parts Ans This is well said for an heedless and credulous multitude but this is not to Philosophize but to tell us that God works a perpetual Miracle in holding the small tenuious parts of the Soul together more pure and â—ine than those of Fire or Aether but here is no natural cause â—â—om the thing it self offered unless it be that in every Substance or rather Matter the parts according to the tenuitie and puritie of the Substance incline to a closer Contact and inseparable Union one with another which is a conceit repugnant to experience and easily confuted by that ordinarie accident of a Spinner hanging by its weak thread from the brim of ones Hat which â—eeble line yet is of force enough to divide the Air and for that very reason because it consists of thinner parts than Water or Earth As also we can more easily run in the Air than wade in the Water for the very same reason These things are so plain that they are not to be dwelt upon But Mr. Baxter is thus pleased to shew his Wit in maintaining a weak â—ause which I am perswaded he has not so little judgment as that he can have any great confidence in And therefore in sundry places he intimates that he does allow or at least not deny but that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie is contained in the Notion of a Spirit but not as part of the Conceptus formalis but as Dispositio or Modus substantiae but yet withal such a Dispositio as is essential to the substance that with the Conceptus formalis added makes up the true Notion of a Spirit See pag. 30 32 61 85. And truly if Mr. Baxter be in good earnest and sincere in this agreement without all equivocation that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie is Essential to the true Notion of a Spirit onely they are to be admitted as Dispositio Substantiae not as Pars Formae I confess as he declares pag. 94. That the diâ—â—erence betwixt him and the Doctor lyeth in a much smaller matter than was thought and the Doctor I believe will easily allow him to please his own fancy in that But then he must understand the terms of Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie in the Doctors sense viz of a Spirits penetrating not inter partes but per partes materiâ—â— and possessing the same space with them And of an Indiscerpibleness not arising from thinner and thinner parts of matter as he imagines Air to be more hardly discerpible than Earth or Water forasmuch as by reason of its thinness its parts lye closer together as was above noted but from the immediate essential Oneness of substance in a Spirit according to the true Idea of an Indiscerpible Being in the Divine Intellect which whether in Idea or in Actual Existence it would cease to be or rather never was such if it were discerpible and therefore implies a contradiction it should be so But if a Spirit be not Penetrable in the Doctors sense it is really Impenetrable and if not Indiscerpible in his sense
it is really Discerpible and consequently divisible into Physical Monads or Atoms and therefore constituted of them and the last Inference will be that of the Epigrammatist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To this sense All a vain Jest All Dust All Nothing deem For of mere Atoms all composed been And thus the fairest and firmest structures of Philosophical Theorems in the behalf of the Providence of God the Existence of Spirits and the Immortality of the Soul will become a Castle of Come-Down and fall quite to the ground Whence it was rightfully done of the Doctor to lay such stress upon these two terms Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie they being the essential Characteristicks of what is truly a Spirit and which if they were taken out of the world all would necessarily be Matter I mean Physical Matter to prevent all quibblings and fiddlings about words and phrases and this Physical Matter would be the Subject and Source of all Life whatever Intellective Sensitive and Vegetative And Mr. Baxter did ill in not onely omitting these terms himself in his Notion of a Spirit but in publickly slighting and disgracing of the Doctors using of them and afterwards in so stomaching his vindication of the same in publick whenas we see that without them there can be nothing but Physical Matter in the world and God and Angels and the Souls of men must be such Matter if they be any thing a◠all and therefore in such an errour as this Mr. Baxter with Christian patience might well have born with the Doctors calling it not onely a Mistake but a Mischief And I hope by this time he is such a proficient in that Vertue that he will chearfully bear the publication of this my Answer in the behalf of the Doctor to all his Objections against these two essential and necessarie Characters of a Spirit and not be offended if I briefly run over his smaller Criticisms upon the Doctors Definition of the same which do occur pag. 80 81. and elsewhere as I shall advertise The Doctors Definition of a Spirit in his Discourse of that Subject Sect. 29. is this A Spirit is a Substance immaterial intrinsecally indued with life and the facultie of motion where he notes that Immaterial contains virtually in it Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Now let us hear how Mr. Baxter criticizes on this Definition First saies he pag. 80. Your Definition is common good and true allowing for its little imperfections and the common imperfection of mans knowledge of Spirits If by Immaterial you mean not without Substance it signifieth truth but a negation speaketh not a formal Essence Ans How very little these imperfections are I shall note by passing through them all and for the common imperfection of mans knowledge of Spirits what an unskilful or hypocritical pretence that is the Doctor hath so clearly shewn in his Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit Sect. 16 17 18 19. that it is enough to send the Reader thither for satisfaction But as for Immaterial how can any one think that thereby is meant without Substance but those that think there is nothing but Matter in the Physical sense of the word in the world As if Substance Immaterial was intended to signifie Substance without Substance And lastly the Doctor will denie that In in Immaterial signifies negatively here more than in Immortal Incorruptible or Infinite but that it is the indication of opposite properties to those of Physical Matter viz. Impenetrability and Discerpibility and that therefore Immaterial here includes Indiscerpibility and Penetrability Secondly pag. 81. Spirit it self saies he is but a metaphor Ans Though the word first signified other things before it was used in the sense it is here defined yet use has made it as good as if it were originally proper With your Logicians in those Definitions Materia est Causa ex qua res est Forma est Causa per quam res est id quod est Materia and Forma are Metaphorical words but use has made them in those Definitions as good as proper nor does any sober and knowing man move the least scruple touching those Definitions on this account To which you may add that Aristotles caution against Metaphors in defining things is to be understood of the Definition it self not the Definitum but Spirit is the Definitum here not the Definition Thirdly Intrinsecally indued with lise tells us not that it is the Form Qualities and proper Accidents are intrinsecal Ans Mr. Baxter I suppose for clearness sake would have had Form written over the head of this part of the Definition as the old bungling painters were wont to write This is a Cock and this a Bull or as one wittily perstringed a young Preacher that would name the Logical Topicks he took his Arguments from saying he was like a Shoemaker that offered his Shoes to sale with the Lasts in them I thought Mr. Baxter had been a more nimble Logician than to need such helps to discern what is the Genus in the Definition what the Differentia or Forma And for intrinsecally indued I perceive he is ignorant of the proper force and sense of the word Intrinsecùs which signifies as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 onely which implies that this life is from the intimate Essence of a Spirit quatenus a Spirit and therefore can be no common qualitie nor a facultie clarted on as Mr. Baxter fancies God may clart on Life the specifick Form of Spirit as he himself acknowledges on Matter though Materia quatenus Materia implies no such thing but I say Spiritus quatenus Spiritus does which is both the Source and proper Subject of life But it is the effect of an ill perturbed sight to fancie flaws where there are really none And to fancie that a Vis Vitalis or Power of living can belong to Materia Physica immediately which power must necessarily be the Result of an Essence specifically distinct from Physical Matter I think may justly be called clarting of this Power on a Subject it belongs not to nor is intrinsecal to it there being no new specifick Essence from whence it should spring Fourthly The Facultie of motion saies he is either a Tautologie included in Life or else if explicatorie of Life it is defective Ans It is neither Tautological nor Exegetical no more than if a man should define Homo Animal rationale risibile Risibile there is neither Tautological though included in Animal rationale nor Exegetical it signifying not the same with Rationale And the Definition is as true with Risibile added to it as if omitted But the addition of Risibile being needless is indeed ridiculous But it is not Ridiculous to add the faculty of motion in this Definition of a Spirit because it is not needless but is added on purpose to instruct such as Mr. Baxter that an intrinsecal facultie of motion belongs to Spirit quatenus Spirit and
indued with Life whenas yet he pag. 35. will not admit that self-motion is an indication of Life in the subject that moves itself although it is the very prime argument that his beloved and admired Dr. Glisson useth to prove that there is universally life in Matter But it is the symptome of an over Polemical Fencer to deny a thing merely because he finds it not for his turn In the mean time it is plain the Doctor has not added the facultie of motion rashly out of over sight but for the instructing the ignorant in so important a truth That there is no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but there is Life and Spirit This is so great a truth that the Platonists make it to be the main Character of Soul or Spirit to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as you may see in Proclus Fifthly No man saith he can understand that the Negative Immaterial by the terms includeth Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie Ans No man that rightly understands himself but must conceive that Immaterial signifies an opposite or contrary condition to Material and he knowing as who is ignorant of it that the proper and essential characters of Material in substantia materialis is to be Impenetrable and Discerpible he will necessarily even whether he will or no discover that Immaterial which signifies the opposite to these in substantia immaterialis must denote Penetrability and Indiscerpibility Sixthly You do not say here saith he that they are the Form but elsewhere you do and the Form should be exprest and not onely vertually contained as you speak Ans What would you have him in the very Definition it self which is so clear an one say This is the Genus this the Form as those bunglers I mentioned above writ the names of the Animals they had so badly drawn And that the Form should be exprest is true but it is sufficient it be exprest in such a comprehensive term as contains under it all that belongs to such a Species As when we have divided Vivens into Planta and Animal if we then define Animal to be Vivens sensu praeditum that one word sensus is sufficient because it reaches any Species of Animal and none but Animals And yet here the Doctor is not so niggardly as to pinch the expression of all the Form or Difference into that one word Immaterial whereby he here onely intimates Penetrability and Indiscerpibility but for fuller explication addeth Intrinsecally indued with Life and the facultie of motion But lastly For his elsewhere calling Penetrability and Indiscerpibility the Form of a Spirit he nowhere makes them the whole Form of a Spirit but makes the Logical Form or Differentia of a Spirit to be all that which he has expressed in this Definition viz. Immaterial which denotes Penetrability and Indiscerpibility and Intrinsecal life and motion And it is evident that when he calls this Differentia in his Definition Form that he does not mean the very specifick Substance or Essence whereby a Spirit is a Spirit but onely essential or inseparable Attributes which onely are known to us and which are only in an improper sense said to be the Form it self or specifick Nature They are onely the Result of the Form and Notes of an Essence or Substance Specifically distinct from some other Substance It is not so in substantial Forms as in Geometrical Forms or Figures as to Visibilitie or Perceptibilitie Dic tu formam hujus lapidis says Scaliger to Cardan Phyllida solus habeto But there are inseparable and essential Properties of a substantial Form necessarily resulting from the Form it self as there are in external Forms or Figures As for example from the form of a Globe which is a round Form defined from the equalitie of all lines from one point drawn thence to the Superficies From this form does necessarily and inseparably result the Character of an easie rouling Mobilitie That a bodie of this Form is the most easily moved upon a Plain of any bodie in the world And so from the Form of a piece of Iron made into what we call a Sword Fitness for striking for cutting for stabbing and for defending of the hand is the necessarie result from this Form thereof And so I say that from the intimate and essential Form of a Spirit suppose essentially and inseparably result such and such properties by which we know that a Spirit is a distinct Species from other things though we do not know the very specifick essence thereof And therefore here I note by the by that when the Doctor saies any such or such Attributes are the Form of a Spirit he does datâ operâ balbutire cum balbutientibus and expresses himself in the language of the Vulgar and speaks to Mr. Baxter in his own Dialect For it is the declared opinion of the Doctor that the intimate Form of no Essence or Substance is knowable but onely the inseparable Fruits or Results thereof Which is a Principle wants no proof but an appeal to every mans faculties that has ordinarie wit and sinceritie Seventhly They are not the Form saith he but the Dispositio vel Conditio ad formam Ans You may understand out of what was said even now that Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie are so far from being Dispositio ad formam that they are the Fruits and Results of the intimate and Specifick Form of a Spirit and that they suppose this Specifick Form in order of nature to precede them as the Form of a Globe precedes the rouling mobilitie thereof In vertue of a Spirits being such a Specifick substance it has such inseparable attributes resulting from it as a Globe has mobilitie And as the Globe is conceived first and mobilitie inseparably resulting from it so the Specifick Nature of a Spirit which is its true and intimate Form and made such according to the eternal Idea thereof in the Intellect of God being one simple Specifick substance or Essence has resulting from it those essential or inseparable properties which we attribute to a Spirit itself in the mean time remaining but one simple self-subsistent Actus Entitativus whose Penetrabilitie and Indivisibilitie Mr. Baxter himself pag. 99. says is easily defendible And the Doctor who understands himself I dare say for him defends the Penetrabilitie and Indivisibilitie of no Essences but such Eighthly If such Modalities says he or Consistence were the Form more such should be added which are left out Ans He should have nominated those which are left out He means I suppose Quantity and Trina Dimensio which it was his discretion to omit they being so impertinent as I have shewn above in my Answer to his third Objection against the Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie of a Spirit Ninthly Penetrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie are two Notions and you should not give us says he a compound Form Ans This implies that Penetrability and Indiscerpibility are the Form of a Spirit but I have said again and again they are but the Fruits
and Result of the Form A Spirit is one simple Specifick Essence or substance and that true Specifickness in its Essence is the real and intimate Form or Conceptus formalis thereof but that which we know not as I noted above out of Julius Scaliger though we know the essential and inseparable Attributes thereof which may be many though in one simple specifick Substance as there are many Attributes in God immediately and inseparably resulting from his most simple specifick Nature Tenthly Yea you compound saith he Peâ—etrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie with a quite different notion life and the faculty of motion which is truly the Form and is one thing and not compounded of notions so different as Consistence and Vertue or Power Ans I say again as I said before that neither Penetrability nor Indiscerpibility nor Life nor Motion are the specifick Form it self of a Spirit which is a simple Substance but the Fruits and Results of this specifick Form and all these have a proper Cognation with one another as agreeing in Immateriality or Spirituality and how the common sagacitie of mankind has presaged that the most noble functions of life are performed by that which is most subtile and most one as Penetrability and Indiscerpibility makes the consistence of a Spirit to be the Doctor has noted in his Discourse of the true notion of a Spirit Mr. Baxter in reading Theological Systems may observe That Attributes as much differing among themselves as these are given to the most simple Essence of God Eleventhly You say says he pag. 82. Life intrinsecally issues from this Immaterial Substance But the Form is concreated with it and issues not from it Ans I grant that the Form is concreated with the Spirit For a Spirit is nothing else but such a specifick simple Substance or Essence the Specifickness of whose nature onely is its real intimate Form And if we could reach by our Conception that very Form it self it would be but the Conceptus inadaequatus of one simple Substance and be the true Conceptus formalis thereof and the Conceptus fundamentalis to speak in Mr. Baxters or Dr. Glissons language would be Substance in general which is contracted into this Species by this real intimate Form which both considered together being but one simple Essence they must needs be created together according to that Idea of a Spirit which God has conceived in his eternal mind And life will as naturally and necessarily issue from such a Species or Specifick Essence or from Substance contracted into such a Species by the abovesaid Form as Mobility does issue from the form of a Globe From whence it is plainly understood how Life does intrinsecally issue from immaterial Substance nor is the Form it self but the Fruit thereof And as it were but trifling to say that the power of easie rolling every way on a Plain were the very Form of a Globe the word Power or Vertue being but a dark loose general dilute term and which belongs to every thing and is restrained onely by its Operation and Object but it is the Form or Figure of the Globe that is the immediate cause that that Vertue or Power in general is so restrained to this easie rolling so it is in Mr. Baxters pretended Form of a Spirit which he makes Virtus vitalis a power of living Power there is such a dark dilute term loose and general But that it is determined to life it is by that intimate specifick Form which we know not but onely this we know That it is to the Power of living as the Figure of a Globe is to the Power of easie rolling and that in neither one can be without the other There must be a Specifick Essence which is the root of those Powers Properties or Operations from whence we conclude distinct Species of things For 't is too coarse and slovenly to conceit that these are clarted on them but the Specifick Powers arise immediately and inseparably from the Specifick Nature of the thing else why might they not be other powers as well as these Twelfthly and lastly pag. 32. But do you verily believe saith he that Penetrability or Subtility is a sufficient Efficient or Formal cause of Vitalitie Perception and Appetite and so of Intellection and Volition I hope you do not Ans I hope so of the Doctor too and before this I hoped that Mr. Baxter had more insight into the nature of a Formal cause and into the Laws of Logick than once to imagine that any one in his Wits could take Penetrability to be the Formal cause of Intellection and Volition For then every Spirit being Penetrable every Spirit even of a plant at least of the vilest Animalonium would have Intellection and Volition Nor for the same reason can any body think that Penetrability is a sufficient Efficient cause of Intellection and Volition Nor is it so much as the Efficient cause of Vitality Perception Appetite much less the Formal So infinitely is Mr. Baxter out in these things But the case stands thus The Substance of that species of things which we call a Spirit and is so by that intimate specifick Form which I named before this substance is the cause of Vitality in such a sense as the round Form of a Globe or any matter of that Form is quatenus of that Form the cause of its own rolling Mobilitie I say therefore that Vitality is as immediate and necessarie a Fruit or Effect of the real and intimate Form of a Spirit as that easie mobilitie is of the Form of a Sphere or Globe And such a kind of Vitality Vegetative Sensitive Intellective of such a Species of Spirit These kinds of Vitalities are the Fruits or Effects necessarie and immediate of the abovesaid so specificated Substances that is to say they are immediately Self-living and all of them Penetrable and Indiscerpible of themselves quatenus Spirits all these essential attributes arising from the simple essence or specificated substance of every Spirit of what Classis soever created according to its own Idea eternally shining in the Divine Intellect As for example In the Idea of a Plastick Spirit onely Penetrability Indiscerpibility and Plastick Vitality whereby it is able to organize Matter thus and thus are not three Essences clarted upon some fourth Essence or glewed together one to another to make up such an Idea But the Divine Intellect conceives in itself one simple specifick Essence immediately and intrinsecally of it self indued with these essential Properties or Attributes So that when any thing does exist according to this Idea those three properties are as immediately Consequential to it and as effectually as Mobility to the Form of a Globe It is the specifick Substance that is the necessary Source of them and that acts by them as its own connate or natural instruments fitted for the ends that the eternal Wisdom and Goodness of God has conceived or contrived them for For it is manifest that those essential
Spirits which are nothing but the igneous principle in a pure Aereal Vehicle and is the organ of the Sensitive faculties of the Soul And if the Soul carry any Vehicle with it it 's like to be some of this I doubt you take the same thing to be the Spirit of the world though you seem to vilifie it And pag. 74. I suppose you will say the Spirit of the world does this But call it by what name you will it is a pure active Substance whose form is the Virtus motiva illuminativa calefactiva I think the same which when it operateth on due seminal Matter is Vegetative And lastly pag. 86. I still profess my self in this also uncertain whether Natura Vegetativa and Ignea be all one or whether Ignis be Natura Organica by which the three Superiour he means the Vegetative Sensitive and Intellective Natures operate on the Passive But I incline most to think they are all one when I see what a glorious Fire the Sun is and what operation it hath on Earth and how unlikely it is that so glorious a Substance should not have as noble a formal nature as a Plant. This is more than enough to prove that Mr. Baxter in the most proper sense is inclined to Psychopyrism as to the Spirit of the world or Vegetative soul of the Vniverse that that Soul or Spirit is Fire And that all created Spirits are Fire analogicè and eminenter I have noted above that he does freely confess But certainly if it had not been for his ignorance in the Atomick Philosophie which he so greatly despiseth he would never have taken the Fire it self a Congeries of agitated particles of such figures and dimensions for the Spirit of the world But without further doubt have concluded it onely the instrument of that Spirit in its operations as also of all other created Spirits accordingly as the Doctor has declared a long time since in his Immortalitas Animae Lib. 2. Cap. 8. Sect. 6. And finding that there is one such universal Vegetative Spirit properly so called or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the world he could not miss of concluding the whole Vniverse one great Plant or if some obscure degree of sense be given to it one large Zoophyton or Plant-animal whence the Sun will be endued or actuated as much by a Vegetative Nature as any particular Plant whatsoever whereby Mr. Baxter might have took away his own difficultie he was entangled in But the truth is Mr. Baxters defectiveness in the right understanding of the Atomick Philosophy and his Aversness therefrom as also from the true System of the world which necessarily includes the motion of the Earth we will cast in also his abhorrence from the Pre-existence of Souls which three Theories are hugely necessary to him that would Philosophize with any success in the deepest points of natural Religion and Divine Providence makes him utter many things that will by no means bear the Test of severer Reason But in the mean time this Desectiveness in sound Philosophie neither hinders him nor any one else from being able Instruments in the Gospel-Ministrie if they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a due measure If they have a firm Faith in the revealed Truths of the Gospel and skill in History Tongues and Criticism to explain the Text to the people and there be added a sincere Zeal to instruct their Charge and that they may appear in good earnest to believe what they teach they lead a life devoid of scandal and offence as regulated by those Gospel-Rules they propose to others this though they have little of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly so called that reaches to the deepest account of things but instead thereof Prudence and Ingenuity will sufficiently enable them to be Guides to the people especially by adhering in Matters of moment to the Ancient Apostolick and unapostatized Church and presuming nothing upon their private spirit against the same Such questionless will prove able and safe Pastors and will not fail of being approved of by our Lord Jesus the great Shepherd and Bishop of our Souls But if any such as I noted above for that they conceit themselves also dapper fellows at Cudgils or Quarter-staff shall leaving their Flocks solitary in the fields out of an itch after applause from the Country-Fry gad to Wakes and Fairs to give a proof of their dexterity at those Rural exercises if they shall I say for their pains return with a bruised knuckle or broken pate who can help it it will learn them more wit another time Thus much by way of Digression I thought fit to speak not out of the least ill-will to Mr. Baxter but onely in behalf of the Doctor hoping though it is far from all that may be said that yet it is so much and so much also to the purpose that it will save the Doctor the labour of adding any thing more thereto So that he may either enjoy his Repose or betake himself to some design of more use and moment In the mean time I having dispatcht my Digression I shall return to the main business in hand I think it may plainly appear from what has been said that it is no such harsh thing to adventure to conclude That the Truth of the Divine Intellect quatenus conceptive speculative or observative which a Platonist would be apt to call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Divine Intellect exhibitive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for though it be but one and the same Intellect yet for distinctness sake we are fain to speak as of two does consist in its Conformity with the Divine Intellect exhibitive with the immutable Idea's Respects and References of things there In conceiving and observing them as I may so speak to be such as they are represented in the said Intellect quatenus necessarily and unalterably representing such Idea's with the immediate Respects and References of them In this consists the Truth of the Divine Intellect Speculative But the Transcendental Truth of things consists in their Conformity to the Divine Intellect Exhibitive For every thing is true as it answers to the immutable Idea of its own nature discovered in the Divine Intellect Exhibitive To which also the same Divine Intellect quatenus Conceptive Speculative or Observative gives its suffrage steadily and unalterably conceiving these immutable Idea's of things in their Objective Existence what their natures will be with their necessary references aptitudes or ineptitudes to other things when they are produced into act From whence we may discern how that saying of this ingenious Author of the Discourse of Truth is to be understood Where he writes It is against the nature of all Vnderstanding to make its Object Which if we will candidly interpret must be understood of all understanding quatenus merely conceptive speculative or observative and of framing of its Object at its pleasure Which as it is not done in the setled