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

Ans. 1. My supposition is but the objectors: For if they confess that Spirits are Substances (as cannot with reason be denied; For they that Specify their operations by Motion only yet suppose a pure proper substance to be the subject or thing Moved) then when they talk of Many Souls becoming One, it must be by conjunction and increase of the Substance of that one. Or when they say that they were always One, they will confess withal that they now differ in number, as individuate in the body: And who will say that Millions ⟨p. 32⟩of Millions are no more than one of all those Millions▪ Number is a sort of Quantity: And all Souls in the world are more than Cain's or Abel's only. One feeleth not what another feeleth. One knoweth not what another knoweth. And indeed, though Souls have not such corporeal extension, as passive gross bodily Matter hath, yet as they are more noble, they have a more noble sort of Extension, Quantity or Degrees; according to which all Mankind conceive of all the Spiritual Substance of the Universe, yea all the Angels, or all the Souls on Earth, as being more, and having more Substance than one man's Soul alone. 2. And the Fathers for the most part, especially the Greeks (yea and the Second Council of Nice) thought that Spirits created, had a purer sort of Material Being, which Tertullian called a Body; and doubtless all created Spirits have somewhat of Passiveness; for they do Recipere vel pati from the Divine Influx: Only God is wholly impassive. We are moved when we move; and acted when we act: And it is hard to conceive that (when Matter is commonly called Passive) that which is Passive should have no sort of Matter in a large sense taken: And if it have any parts distinguishable, they are by God divisible. 3. But if the contrary be supposed, that all Souls are no more than One, and so that there is no place for uniting or partition, there is no place then for the Objection of all Souls becoming One; and of losing Individuation, unless they mean by Annihilation.

Ans. 1. My supposition is but the objectors: For if they confess that Spirits are Substances (as cannot with reason be denyed; For they that Specify their operations by Motion only yet suppose a pure proper substance to be the subject or thing Moved) then when they talk of Many Souls becoming One, it must be by conjunction and increase of the Substance of that one. Or when they say that they were alwaies One, they will confess withal that they now differ in number, as individuate in the body: And who will say that Millions