A26976:226
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 33-34: Ad SECT. XXXIII, XXXIV.
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 because I would not seem more distant from you than I am, I shall first tell you, that on these Subjects your thoughts and mine have been so long working to the same ends & much in the same way, that, 1655. your Book ⟨p. 95⟩against Atheism and my popular discourses of the unreasonableness of Infidelity coming out together, we both used many of the same Histories of Apparitions, Witches, &c. for Confirmation; and in that Book of yours, you have these following words, which if they are not (as I think they are not) mischievous, it's like mine of the same importance are not so, nor are more so proved by you than your own.
Antid. Li. 1. p. 17. [The parts of a Spirit can be no more separated though they be dilated, than you can cut off the Rays of the Sun by a pair of Scissors made of pellucid Chrystal.]
Antid. Li. 1. p. 17. [The parts of a Spirit can be no more separated though they be dilated, than you can cut off the Rays of the Sun by a pair of Scissars made of pellucide Chrystal.]
Appen. p. 304. [Suppose a point of Light, from which rays out a luminous Orb according to the known Principles of Optics: This Orb of Light doth very much resemble the Nature of a Spirit, which is diffused and extended, and yet indivisible: For we'll suppose in this Spirit the Centre of Life to be indivisible, and yet to diffuse itself by a kind of circumscribed Omnipotency, as the point of Light is discernible in every point of the luminous Sphere. And yet supposing that central lucid point indivisible, there is nothing divisible in all that Sphere of Light. For it is ridiculous to think of any Engine or Art whatsoever to separate the luminous Rays from the shining Centre, and keep them apart by themselves, as any man will acknowledge that does but consider the thing we speak of. Now there is no difficulty to imagine such an Orb as this, as Substance as well as a Quality. And indeed this Sphere of Light itself, it not inhering in any Subject in the place it occupieth, looks far more like a Substance than any Accident. And what we fancy unadvisedly to befall Light and Colours, that any point of them will thus ray orbicularly, is more rationally to be admitted in spiritual Substances, whose central Essence spreads out into a secondary Substance, as the