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

Let others that will enquire whether it shall have a Vehicle or none to act in, and whether aerial, or igneous, and ethereal, and whether it be really an Intellectual sort of Fire, as material as the solar Fire, whose (not compounding, but) inadequate-conceptus objectivi are, an Igneous substance, and a Formal Virtue of Life, Sense, and Intellection, with other such puzzling doubts; it satisfieth me, that God will not continue its noblest Powers in vain; and how they shall be exercised, is known to him: And that God's Word tells us more than Nature. And withal, LIFE, INTUITION and LOVE (or Volition) are Acts so natural to the Soul (as Motion, Light and Heat, quoad actum to Fire) that I cannot conceive how its Separation should hinder them, but rather that its Incorporation hindereth the two latter by hiding Objects, whatever be said of abstractive knowledge and memory.

Let others that will enquire whether it shall have a Vehicle or none to act in, and whether aereal, or igneous, and ethereal, and whether it be really an Intellectual sort of Fire, as material as the solar Fire, whose (not compounding, but) inadequate-conceptus objectivi are, an Igneous substance, and a Formal Virtue of Life, Sense, and Intellection, with other such puzzling doubts; it satisfieth me, that God will not continue its noblest Powers in vain; and how they shall be exercised, is known to him: And that God's Word tells us more than Nature. And withal, LIFE, INTUITION and LOVE (or Volition) are Acts so natural to the Soul (as Motion, Light and Heat, quoad actum to Fire) that I cannot conceive how its Separation should hinder them, but rather that its Incorporation hindereth the two latter by hiding Objects, whatever be said of abstractive knowledge and memory.

§ 33. VII. But the greatest difficulty to Natural Knowledge is, Whether Souls shall continue their individuation, or rather fall into one common Soul, or return so to God that gave them, as to be no more divers (or many) individuals as now; as extinguished Candles are united to the illuminated Air, or to the Sun beams. But of ⟨p. 22⟩this I have elsewhere said much for others; and for my self I find I need but this: 1. That as I said before, either Souls are partible substances, or not: If not partible. how are they unible? If Many may be made One by conjunction of substances, then that One may (by God) be made Many again by partition. Either All (or Many) Souls are now but One (individuate only by Matter, as many gulfs in the Sea, or many Candles lighted by the Sun) or not: If they are not One now in several bodies, what reason have we to think that they will be One hereafter, any more than now? Augustine (de Anim.) was put on the question, 1. Whether Souls are One, and not Many: (and that he utterly denieth.) 2. Whether they are Many, and not One; (and that it seemeth he could not digest.) 3. Whether they were at once both One and Many (which he thought would seem to some ridiculous, but he seemeth most to incline to:) And as God is the God of Nature, so Nature (even of the Devils themselves) dependeth on him, as I said, more than the Leaves or Fruit do on the Tree: And we are all his Off-spring, and Live, and Move, and Are in Him,