A26976:11
Of the immortality of mans soul, and the nature of it and other spirits.…
Of the immortality of mans soul, and the nature of it and other spirits. Two discourses, one in a letter to an unknown doubter, the other in a reply to Dr. Henry Moore's Animadversions on a private letter to him, which he published in his second edition of Mr. Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus triumphatus, or, History of apparitions by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for B. Simons, 1682
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 distinguish Natures into Active and Passive; and Passivity is a word that serveth me as well as materiality: But whence the Descensus gravium is, I despair of knowing; and if it be of an innate principle, I call it not therefore a Spirit, because it is but passivorum motus aggregativus ad unionem in quiet, when Spirits motion is vital and so essential to them, that they tend not to union in quiescence, but in everlasting activity; quiescence in inactivity, being as much against their nature as motion against a Stones. So ⟨image 4⟩that I think we are agreed of the formal notice of a Spirit in general, and of an intellective, sensitive, and vegetative in specie.
I distinguish Natures into Active and Passive; and Passivity is a word that serveth me as well as materiality: But whence the Descensus gravium is, I despair of knowing; and if it be of an innate principle, I call it not therefore a Spirit, because it is but passivorum motus aggregativus ad unionem in quiete, when Spirits motion is vital and so essential to them, that they tend not to union in quiescence, but in everlasting activity; quiescence in inactivity, being as much against their nature as motion against a Stones. So ⟨image 4⟩that I think we are agreed of the formal notice of a Spirit in general, and of an intellective, sensitive, and vegetative in specie.
But truly I am at a loss about the conceptus fundamentalis, wherein the true difference lieth between Substantia and Materia. Do we by—Substantia mean a conceptus realis, or only Relative. To say it doth substare accidentibus, speaks but a Relation directly, and leaves the question unanswered, Quid est quod substat accidentibus. To say it is not an Accident, tells us not what it is, but what it is not. To say it doth subsist per se, either saith no more than that it is Ens real, or else tells us not what it is that doth subsist. Quoad notationem nominis distinct from use▪ doth not materia and substantia signify the same fundamental conceptus? And is not the form the notifying difference? You difference Substance and Matter antecedently to the formal difference by Penetrability