Richard Baxter's dying thoughts upon Phil. I, 23 written for his own life and…

But we know, That, 1. If even then it differed not in its formal •ower from the Souls of Brutes, it would not so much afterward differ in Act: And it would never be raised to that which was not virtually in its Nature at the first. 2. And we find, that even very little Children have quick and strong knowledge of such Objects as ••e brought within their reach: And that their Ignorance is not for want of an Intellectual Power, but for want of Objects, or Images of things which time, and use, and conversation among Objects, must furnish their Phantasies and Memories with. And so a Soul in the Womb, or in an Apoplexy, hath not Objects of Intellection within its reach to act upon; but is as the Sun to a Room that hath no windows to let in its light. 3. And what if its profound Vitality, Self perception, and Self-love be by a kind of Sensation and Intuition, rather than by Discursive Reason? I doubt not but some late Philosophers make snares to themselves and others, by too much vilifying sense and sensitive Souls, as if sense were but some loseable Accident of contempered Atoms: But Sensation (though diversified by Organs and Uses, and so far mutable) is the Act of a noble Spiritual Form and Virtue. And as Chamber and some others make Brutes a lower rank of Rationals, and Man another higher species, as having his nobler Reason for higher Ends; so for Man to be the noblest Order (here) of Sensitives, and to have an Intellect to Order and Govern Sensations, and connex them and improve them, were a noble work, ⟨p. 21⟩if we had no higher. And if Intellection and Volition were but a higher species of Internal Sensation, than Imagination, and the Fantasy and Memory are, it might yet be a height that should set Man specifically above the Brutes. And I am daily more and more persuaded, that Intellectual Souls are essentially sensitive and more, and that their Sensation never ceaseth. 4. And still I say, that it is to Nature it self a thing unlikely that the God of Nature will long continue a Soul that hath formally or naturally an Intellective Power, in a state in which it shall have no use of it.

But we know, That, 1. If even then it differed not in its formal •ower from the Souls of Brutes, it would not so much afterward differ in Act: And it would never be raised to that which was not virtually in its Nature at the first. 2. And we find, that even very little Children have quick and strong knowledge of such Objects as e brought within their reach: And that their Ignorance is not for want of an Intellectual Power, but for want of Objects, or Images of things which time, and use, and conversation among Objects, must furnish their Phantasies and Memories with. And so a Soul in the Womb, or in an Apoplexy, hath not Objects of Intellection within its reach to act upon; but is as the Sun to a Room that hath no windows to let in its light. 3. And what if its profound Vitality, Self perception, and Self-love be by a kind of Sensation and Intuition, rather than by Discursive Reason? I doubt not but some late Philosophers make snares to themselves and others, by too much vilifying sense and sensitive Souls, as if sense were but some loseable Accident of contempered Atoms: But Sensation (though diversified by Organs and Uses, and so far mutable) is the Act of a noble Spiritual Form and Virtue. And as Chambre and some others make Brutes a lower rank of Rationals, and Man another higher species, as having his nobler Reason for higher Ends; so for Man to be the noblest Order (here) of Sensitives, and to have an Intellect to Order and Govern Sensations, and connex them and improve them, were a noble work,