A26976:17
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.
5. I distinguish Spiritual Substances as such by the Purity of the Substance, besides the Formal Difference.
6. Yet I doubt not but all Created Spirits are somewhat Passive, quia influxum causae primae recipiunt: And you grant them a Spissitude and Extension, which signify as much as many mean that call them Material. But Custom having made Materia, but specially Corpus, to signify only such grosser Substance as the three Passive Elements have, I yield so to say, that Spirits are not Corporeal or Material.
6. Yet I doubt not but all Created Spirits are somewhat Passive, quia influxum causae primae recipiunt: And you grant them a Spissitude and Extension, which signifie as much as many mean that call them Material. But Custom having made Materia, but specially Corpus, to signifie onely such grosser Substance as the three Passive Elements have, I yield so to say, that Spirits are not Corporeal or Material.
7. Though I run not into the excess of Ludov. Le Grand de Igne (nor of Telesius or Patricius) I would Ignis were better studied: But this Room will not serve me to say what I think of it. But in brief, He that knoweth that Ignis is a Substance, whose Form is the Potentia Activa movendi, ⟨image 6⟩illuminandi, calesaciendi, these as received in a gross Passive Body, being but their Accidents oft, but the Igneous Substance in act operating on them, and conceiveth of Spirits, but as Ignis eminenter, that is, of a purer substance than Ignis is, which we best conceive of (next the Formal Virtue) by its similitude, I think knows as much as I can reach of the Substance of Created Spirits. And the Greek Fathers that called Spirits Fire, and distinguished Ignem per formas into Intellective, Sensitive, and Vegetative or Visible Fire, (as it is in Aere Ignito,) allowing an Incomprehensible purity of Substance in the higher above the lower (as in Passives Air hath above Water, &c.) I think did speak tolerably, and as informingly as are the notions of Penetrability and Indivisibility; though perhaps thse also may be useful.