A26976:324
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.
And as it is not made to do all its acts freely and rationally, so neither at all times, as in Apoplexies, Infancy, Sleep, &c. It is essential to the Soul, to have the active power or virtue of Intellection and Free-will, but not always to use it. As it is essential to the substance of fire, tho latent in a flint, to have the power of motion, light and heat.
And as it is not made to do all its acts freely and rationally, so neither at all times, as in Apoplexies, Infancy, Sleep, &c. It is essential to the Soul, to have the active power or virtue of Intellection and Free-will, but not always to use it. As it is essential to the substance of fire, tho latent in a flint, to have the power of motion, lighe and heat.
And its considerable, that as a traveller in his journey, thinking and talking only of other things, retaineth still a secret act of intending his end, (else he would not go on) when he perceiveth and observeth it not at all. He that playeth on the Lute or Harpsical, ceaseth when his Instrument is, out of ⟨p. 38⟩tune; because he acteth by free-will.
But the Soul of an Idiot or mad-man acteth only per modum naturae, not by free-acts, but necessitated by God by the order of nature. Only moral acts are free; and that some other are but brutish, and some but vegetative, is no-more a wonder, than that it should understand in the head, and be sensible only in the most of the body, and vegetative only in the hairs and nails. It operateth in all the body by the Spirits, as called; but about the eyes, and open sensoria, by Spirits also as lucid, for that use.
But the Soul of an Idiot or mad-man acteth only per modum naturae, not by free-acts, but necessitated by God by the order of nature. Only moral acts are free; and that some other are but brutish, and some but vegitative, is no-more a wonder, than that it should understand in the head, and be sensible only in the most of the body, and vegitative only in the hairs and nails. It operateth in all the body by the Spirits, as calid; but about the eyes, and open sensoria, by Spirits also as lucid, for that use.