A26976:140
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
OF THE NATURE OF SPIRITS: › Section 12-13: Ad SECT. XII, XIII.
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.
§ 3. And yet though all along I deny not your two words to be the conditio omnis Substantiae spiritualis (joined with more) I still tell you that difficulties make me not lay so much on them as you do. To add one more, As I told you Quality is penetrable; as well as Spirit, e. g. heat, so yet though we commonly say, it is indivisible, I wish you would solve this Objection: You prove the locality of Spirits by their operation on this or that Body, (And doubtless you may well prove that the Recipient body is in loco, and consequently the Agent relatively.) But how shall we avoid the division of Qualities or Spirits ex divisione materiae subjectivae. E. g. If a red hot Iron be penetrated by the heat, yet if this Iron be cut in two, while hot, and each part set (per potentiam superiorem) ⟨p. 62⟩at 20 Miles distance. is not the heat divided with the Iron? So if a mans Head be struck off, and (by such a quick mover as you think moveth the Earth) the Head in a moment were carried far off, while both parts of the Body are yet alive, is not the Soul in each part? And if the Parts were 20 or 100 Miles a sunder, is it still one undivided Soul?
I can say somewhat to satisfy my self of this; but hardly without crossing somewhat that you say.
I can say somwhat to satisfie my self of this; but hardly without crossing somwhat that you say.
§ 4. Again when my chief dissent from you is more against your Confidence than your Verity, yet you again tell us, that we know not bare Essences, but Essential Attributes. I tell you I take not these to be notifying Expressions: We know some Essences either intuitively (as Ockam saith) or without signs, immediately, e. g. what it is to see, taste, hear, smell, &c. and what to understand and will. And we know other Essences Scientia abstractiva per signa. And what good would the knowledge of Attributes else do us. Attributes in notion prima are the thing itself: And to know an Essential Attribute, and to know ipsam Essentiam Scientia inadaequata is all one. But an Essential Attribute as notio secunda, is but signum per quod res significata