A14095:252
A discovery of D. Jacksons vanity. Or A perspective glass, whereby the admirers of…A discovery of D. Iacksons vanitie. Or A perspective glasse, wherby the admirers of…
A discovery of D. Jacksons vanity. Or A perspective glass, whereby the admirers of D. Jacksons profound discourses, may see the vanity and weakness of them, in sundry passages, and especially so far as they tend to the undermining of the doctrine hitherto received. Written by William Twice, Doctor of Divinity, as they say, from whom the copy came to the pressA discovery of D. Iacksons vanitie. Or A perspective glasse, wherby the admirers of D. Iacksons profound discourses, may see the vanitie and weaknesse of them, in sundry passages, and especially so farre as they tende to the undermining of the doctrine hitherto received. Written by William Twisse, Doctor of Divinitie, as they say, from whom the copie came to the presse
Amsterdam: printed by the successors of Giles Thorp, 1631
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
I know well that Aquinas entertained the opinion of this possibility, out of zeal to uphold the credit of Aristotle in some measure. But then taking upon him to reconcile seeming contradictions in his opuscula, and one of them being this; If the World were eternal, then the souls of men pa• were infinite, supposing the immortality of them; according to the opinion of Aristotle: And both Aristor. as well as Aquinas himself hold it impossible that there should be infinitum actu either in number or in magnitude: Mark how he reconciles this, and what course he takes to prevent an infinite number of souls; Though the World, and Man (saith he) had been everlasting, yet the first man might have been preserved without generation for an infinite space of time, & not begin to generate till about six thousand years ago.
I know well that Aquinas enterteyned the opinion of this possibility, out of zenle to uphold the creditt of Aristotle in some measure. But then taking upon him to reconcile seeming contradictions in his opuscula, and one of them being this; If the World were eternall, then the soules of men pa• were infinite, supposing the immortality of them; according to the opinion of Aristotle: And both Aristor. as well as Aquinas himselfe hold it impossible that there should be infinitum actu eyther in number or in magnitude: Mark how he reconciles this, and what course he takes to prevent an infinite number of soules; Though the World, and Man (sayth he) had bene everlasting, yet the first man might have bene preserved without generation for an infinite space of time, & not begin to generate till about six thousand yeares agoe.
By this let every sober man judg to what shifts this great Schoolman was put to salve this opinion of a possibility, of the worlds being eternal from contradiction. To this you add that in like sort our actual being or existence whiles it l• steth, is composed of a capacity to be what we are, and of the actuation or filling of this capacity; you might well say so or in like sort, for there seems as like truth in this as in the former. Man as he is unum pierce is said to consist ex potentia et actis, which is as much as to say ex materia et forma rationali; which Maxim had a capacity of receiving this form, upon whose conjunction doth arise that compositum, which we call a man, and us it had a power, so an appetite thereunto, all which was contained under that principium generationis which is called Privatio, According to that saying Materia appetit formam sicut femina virum. But the particular appetite being satisfied with the form, it no longer remaineth, nor the capacity to receive it, that time being now past. But rather an appetite there is in the matter to a new form, by corruption of the present compound, which is the natural ground of mans mortality. And the general appetite of matter is never satisfied.