A26976:315
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.
Ans. If you take matter for the same with substance, it is material. But not if you take matter, as it's usually taken, for corporeal; or gross, and impenetrable, and divisible substance, uncapable of essential, vital, selfmoving perception and appetite. If this seems nothing to you, God seems nothing to you, and true Nature, which is Principium motus, seems nothing to you: And all that performeth all the action which you see in the world; seems nothing to you. It's pity that you have conversed so little with God and your self, as to think both to be nothing.
Ans. If you take matter for the same with substance, it is material. But not if you take matter, as it's usually taken, for corporeal; or gross, and impenetrable, and divisible substance, uncapable of essential, vital, selfmoving perception and appetite. If this seems nothing to you, God seems nothing to you, and true Nature, which is Principium motus, seems nothing to you: And all that performeth all the action which you see in the world; seems nothing to you. It's pity that you have converst so little with God and your self, as to think both to be nothing.
§. 14. What you say out of Gen. 1. is little else but mistake, when you say [all was made out of the deep waters by the spirit of God]. The Text nameth what was made of them. It saith nothing of the Creation of Angels, or Spirits, out of them (no, nor of the Light, or Earth, or Firmament).
And whereas you say, [God made man of the dust of the ground; but the body only is not man, ergo. Ans. You use your self too unkindly, to leave out half the words, Gen. 2. 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul; when the Text tells us the two works by which God made man, will you leave out one, and then argue exclusively against it? What if I said, [The Chandler made a Candle of Tallow, and then by another kindled it]? or [a man made an house of Bricks, and cemented them with Mortar, &c.]? will you thence prove, That he made a Candle burning without fire, or the House without Mortar? Words are useless to such Expositors.