Selected quad for the lemma: water_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
water_n	call_v	earth_n	sea_n	3,957	5	6.9260	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26963	The nature and immortality of the soul proved in answer to one who professed perplexing doubtfulness / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1682 (1682)	Wing B1317; ESTC R37298	29,645	74

things moved by God some having a created Life and mind and some none what needs then any further proof § 31. But if you hold That we have now distinct Spirits which are individual Substances why should you fear the loss of our individuation any more than our annihilation or specifick alteration If God made as many substantial individual Souls as men is there any thing in Nature or Scripture which threatneth the loss of Individuation I have shewed you and shall further shew you enough against it § 32. You say page 7. Every thing returneth to its element and loseth its individuatiou Earth to Earth Water to the Sea the Spirit to God that gave it What happiness then can we hope for more than deliverance from the present calamity or what misery are we capable of more than is common to all Ans 1. Bodies lose but their Composition and Spiritual forms Do you think that any Atome loseth its individuation If it be still divisible in partes infinitas it is infinite And if every Atome be infinite it is as much or more than all the world and so is no part of the world and so there would be as many Worlds or Infinites as Atomes It is but an aggregative motion which you mention Birds of a Feather will flock together and yet are Individuals still Do you think any dust or drop any Atome of Earth or Water loseth any thing of it self by its union with the rest Is any Substance lost Is the simple Nature changed Is it not Earth and Water still Is not the Haecceity as they call it continued Doth not God know every dust and every drop from the rest Can he not separate them when he will And if Nature in all things tend to aggregation or union it is then the Perfection of everything And why should we fear Perfection 2. But Earth and Water and Air are partible matter Earth is easily separable The parts of Water more hardly by the means of some terrene Separaror The parts of Air yet more hardly and the Sun-beams or substance of fire yet harder than that tho it's contraction and effects are very different And Spirits either yet harder or not at all Some make it essential to them to be indiscerptible and all must say That there is nothing in the Nature of them tending to division or separation And therefore tho God who can annihilate them can divide them into parts if it be no Contradiction yet it will never be because he useth every thing according to its nature till he cometh to miracles Therefore their dissolu●ion of parts is no more to be feared than their annihilation 3. But if you take Souls to be partible and unible then you must suppose every part to have still its own existence in the whole And do you think that this doth not more advance Souls than abase them Yea you seem to Deifie them while you make them all to return into God as drops into the Sea And if you feign God to be partible is it not more honour and joy to be a part of God who is joy it self than to be a created Soul If a thousand Candles were put out and their light turned into one Luminary as great as they all every part would have its share in the enlightning of the place about it Is it any loss to a single Soldier to become part of a victorious Army 4. But indeed this is too high a Glory for the Soul of man to desire or hope for It is enough to have a blessed union with Christ and the holy Society consistent with our Individuation Like will to like and yet be it self Rivers go to the Sea and not to the Earth Earth turns to Earth and not to the Sun or Fire And the holy and blessed go to the holy and blessed And I believe that their union will be nearer than we can now well conceive or than this selfish state of man desireth But as every drop in the Sea is the same Water it was so every Soul will be the same Soul 2. And as to the incapacity of misery which you talk of why should you think it more hereafter than here If you think all Souls now to be but one doth not an aking Tooth or a gouty Foot or a calculous Bladder suffer pain tho it be not the body that feeleth but the same sensitive Soul is pain'd in one part and pleas'd in another And if all Souls be now but God in divers Bodies or the Anima mundi try if you can comfort a man under the torment of the Stone or other Malady or on the Rack or in terror of Conscience by telling him That his Soul is a part of God Will this make a Captive bear his Captivity or a Malefactor his Death If not here why should you think that their misery hereafter will be ever the less or more tolerable for your conceit that they are parts of God They will be no more parts of him then than they were here But it 's like that they also will have an uniting inclination even to such as themselves or that God will separate them from all true unity and say Go you cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels c. § 33. No doubt it 's true that you say page 7 and 8. That matter is still the same and liable to all the changes which you mention But it 's an unchanged God who doth all this by Spirits as second Causes who are not of such a changeable dissoluble partible nature as Bodies are It is Spirits that do all that 's done in the world And I conjecture as well as you That universal Spirits are universal Causes I suppose That this Earth hath a vegitative form which maketh it as a matrix to receive the Seeds and the more active influx of the Sun But Earth and Sun are but general Causes Only God and the seminal Virtue cause the species as such The Sun causeth every Plant to grow but it causeth not the difference between the Rose and the Nettle and the Oak The wonderful unsearchable Virtue of the Seed causeth that And if you would know that Virtue you must know it by the effects You cannot tell by the Seed only of a Rose a Vine an Oak what is in it But when you see the Plants in ripeness you may see that the Seeds had a specifying Virtue by the influx of the general Cause to bring forth those Plants Flowers c. Neither can you know what is in the Egg but by the ripe Bird nor what the Soul of an Infant is but by Manhood and its Acts. § 34. You here pag. 7. divert from the point of the Immortality or Nature of the Soul to that of the Resurrection of the Body of which I will now say but this Christ rose and hath promised us a Resurrection and nothing is difficult to God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oft signifieth our living another

Apes or Monkeys in the things they have been taught and the Affairs they have been bred to And could we imagine any man to have lived Twenty or Thirty years in the World without the benefit of Humane Converse What would appear then think you of a rational Soul which the wise man well saw when he asserted the Condition of Men and Beasts to be the same what a meer Ignorant hath Moses himself made of Adam that in his supposed best state knew not that he was naked but I believe the Nine Hundred and Thirty years Experience of his own and the continual Experiments of Posterity in that time communicated to him might quicken his Intellect So that he died with more Reason than he was created and humane nature in his posterity The next Generation was imbellished with his attainments to which their own Experiences still made a new addition The next Generation built on their Foundation and the next on their and so on and we are got on the shoulders of them all So that it 's rather a wonder that we know no more than that we know so much So that what we have seems rather times product through the means aforesaid than what our Natures were at first enricht with The which appears likewise in those whose memory fails and in whom the vestigia of things is wore out the habits they had contracted and manner of working in their several acts being forgotten what silly Animals are they Whereas were the Soul such as repesented who could rob it of its Endowments It 's true the debilitating of a hand may impead a manual labour but rase what hath formerly been done out of the Memory and you render Man a perfect Bruit or worse for he knows not how to give a signification of his own mind And indeed I know not any thing wherein Man excels the Beasts but may be referred to the benefit of Speech and Hands capable of effecting its Conceptions nor find any better way to attain a right knowledg of our selves but by beholding our selves in Adam and enquiring what Nature had endued him with which will fall far short of what we now admire in our selves But now supposing all this answer'd what will it avail us to a Life of Retrobution if all return to one Element and be there immerged as Brooks and Rivers in the Sea If we lose our Individuation and all the Souls that have existed be swallowed up of one where are the Rewards and Punishments of each individual And we have reason to judg it will be thus rather than otherwise because we see every thing tends to its own Centre the Water to the Sea and all that was of the Earth to the Earth from whence they were taken And Solomon saith The spirit returns to God that gave it Every thing then returning to its own Element loseth its Individuation For we see all bodies returning to the earth are no more individual bodies but earth Have we not reason then to judg the same of Spirits returning to their own Element And what happiness then can we hope for more than a deliverance from the present calamity or what misery are we eapable of more than what is common to all The same is more evident in the body with which we converse and are more sensibly acquainted with seems wholly uncapable of either c. For all bodies are material and matter it self is not capable of multiplication but of being changed Therefore Nature cannot multiply bodies but changeth them as some bodies arise others perish Natures expence in continual Productions being constantly supplied by the dissolution of other Compounds were it otherwise her Store-house would be exhausted for it s by continual Circulations Heaven and Earth is maintain'd and by her even Circular motion she keeps her self imployed on the same stock of matter and maintains every species There is no body the same to day it was yesterday matter being in a continual flux neither immediately on the dissolution of a Compound and Corruption of the body doth the earth thereof retain any specifick difference of that body it once was but is immediately bestowed by Nature and ordered to the new production of other things That part of matter therefore which constituteth a humane body in a short time is putrified and made earth which again produceth either other inferior Animals or Grass or Corn for the nourishment of Beasts and Fowl which again are the nourishment of men Thus circularly innumerable times round Nature continually impressing new forms of the same matter So that that matter that now constitutes my body it may be a thousand years ago was the matter of some other mans or it may be of divers mens then putrified which in this time hath suffered infinite changes as it may be sometime Grass or Corn or an Herb or Bird or Beast or divers of them or all and that divers times over before my body was framed who then can say why this matter so changeable should at last be restored my body rather than his whose formerly it was or the body of a Bird or other Animal For by the same Reasons that the body of man is proved to arise again may I think be proved the Restoration of all other bodies which is equally incredible to me if understood at one time For Natures stock of matter being all at first exhausted she could not employ her self in new Productions without destroying some of the old much less can she at once fabricate out of the same quantity of matter all the bodies that ever were are or shall be which yet notwithstanding could she they could not be said to be the same bodies because all bodies suffer such alteration daily that they cannot be said to be the same to day they were yesterday how then can they be capable of Reward or Punishment These are now my doubts but are they the fruits of Diligence and am I thus rewarded for not believing at a common rate A great deal cheaper could I have sate down and believed as the Church believes without a why or a wherefore have been ignorant of these Disputes and never have emerged my self in this gulf than thus by Reflection to create my own disturbance Had I been made a meer Animal I had had none of these Doubts nor Fears that thus torment my mind for doubting happy Bruits happy far more happy than my self With you is none of this with you only is serenity of mind and you only void of Anxieties you only enjoy what this world is able to accommodate with and it may be too have those Caresses we know not of while we your poor purveyors go drooping and disponding doubting fearing and caring about and our whole lives only a preying on one another and tormenting our selves You have the carnal content and satisfaction we nothing but the shell a vain glorious boast of our Lordship over you with which we seek to satisfie our selves as Prodigals