A26976:269
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.
In this Enquiry I found Man consisted of something visible and invisible; the Body which is visible, and something else that invisibly actuates the same. For I have seen the Body, the visible part of man; when the invisible, either through indisposition of its Organs, or its self, or being expelled its Mansion, hath ceased to act (I speak as one in doubt): the Body hath been left to outward appearance the same; it was yet really void of Sense, and wholly debilitated of all power to act: But then what this invisible is, what to conclude of it, I know not: Here I am at a stand, and in a Labyrinth, without a Clue: For I find no help any where. Many have, I acknowledge, defended the Souls Immortality; but none have proved the existence of such a Being, and a life of Retribution,1 and that copiously enough; but none have proved a Subject capable of it. I know all our Superior ⟨p. 8⟩Faculties and Actings, are usually attributed to the Soul; but what it is in man they call so, they tell us not. To say it is that by which I reason, or that now dictates to me what I write, is not satisfactory: For I look for a definition, and such an one, as may not to ought else be appropriated. Is it therefore a real Being, really different from the Body, and able to be without it? or is it not? If not, whatever it be, I matter not. If it be, is it a pure Spirit, or merely material? If merely material, and different only from the Body gradually, and in some few degrees of subtlety, it is then a question, whether or not that we call Death, and suppose a separation of the Compound, be not rather a Concentration of this active Principle in its own Body, which through some indisposition of the whole, or stoppage in its Organs, through gross Corporeity, hath suffocated its actings. If it be a pure Spirit, I would then know, what is meant by Spirit? and whether or no all things invisible, and imperceptible to Sense, are accounted such? If so, it is then only a term to distinguish between things evident to Sense, and things not. If otherwise, how shall I distinguish between the highest degree of material, and ⟨p. 9⟩the lowest degree of spiritual Beings, or know how they are diversified, or be certain the Being of the Soul is rightly appropriated. For to me, an immaterial and spiritual Being, seems but a kind of Hocus, and a Substance stripped of all materiality, a substantial nothing.