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

§ 15. 1. We find now that our various Faculties have various Objects suitable to their Natures: The Objects of Sense are things sensible; and the Objects of Imagination things Imaginable, and the Objects of Intellection things Intelligible, and the Objects of the Will things amiable: The Eye that is a nobler Sense than some others, hath Light for its Object, which to other Senses is none: and so of the rest. Therefore we have cause to suppose, that as far as our Glorified Souls, and our Spiritual Glorified Bodies, will differ, so far Christ's Glorified Soul and Body will respectively be their several Objects: And beholding the Glory of both will be part of our Glory.

§ 16. Yet is it not hence to be gathered that the separated Soul before the Resurrection shall not have Christ's Glorified Body for its Object: For the Objects of the Body are also the Objects of the Soul, or to speak more properly, the Objects of Sense are also the Objects of Intellection and Will, though all the Objects of the Intellect and Will are not Objects of Sense. The Separated Soul can know Christ's Glorified Body, though our present Bodies cannot see a Soul. But how much our Spiritual Bodies will excel in Capacity and Activity these passive Bodies, that have so much Earth and Water we cannot tell.

§ 17. And though now our Souls are as a Candle in a Lantern, and must have extrinsic Objects admitted by the Senses before they can be understood, yet it followeth not that therefore a separated Soul cannot know such Objects: 1. Because it now knoweth them Abstractively per species, because its act of Ratiocination is Compound as to the Cause (Soul and Body.) But it will then know such things Intuitively (as now it can do ⟨p. 72⟩it self) when the Lantern is cast by. 2. And (what ever many of late, that have given themselves the title of Ingenious have said to the contrary) we have little reason to think that the sensitive faculty is not an Essential, inseparable power of the same Soul that is Intellectual, and that sensation ceaseth to separated Souls, (however the modes of it may cease with their several Uses and Organs:) To Feel Intellectually, or to understand, and will feelingly, we have cause to think will be the Action of separated Souls: And if so, why may they not have communion with Christ's Body and Soul as their Objects in their separated State? 3. Besides that we are uncertain whether the separated Soul have no Vehicle or Body at all: Things unknown to us must not be supposed True or False: Some think that the sensitive Soul is Material, and as a Body to the Intellectual, never separated: I am not of their Opinion that make them two substances; but I cannot say, I am certain that they err: Some think that the Soul is Material, of a purer substance than things visible, and that the common Notion of its substantiality meaneth nothing else but a pure (as they call it Spiritual) Materiality: Thus thought not only Tertullian, but almost all the old Greek Doctors of the Church that write of it, and most of the Latin, or very many, as I have elsewhere showed; and as Faustus reciteth them in the Treatise answered by Mammertus: Some think that the Soul (as Vegetative) is an Igneous Body, such as we call Aether or Solar Fire, or rather of a higher purer kind, and that Sensation and Intellection are those formal Faculties which Specifically difference it from inferior mere Fire or Aether. There were few of the Old Doctors that thought it not some of these ways Material: And consequently extensive and divisible per potentiam Divin […], though not