A26976:33
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.
This premised I say, undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed, either as to any certainty or probability, that all Spirits are Souls, and actuate Matter. Alas how should we come to know it. Neither Nature nor Scripture tells it us.
This premised I say, undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed, either as to any certainty or probability, that all Spirits are Souls, and actuate Matter. Alass how should we come to know it. Neither Nature nor Scripture tells it us.
But 1. If this be so, the difference between you and the Psychopyrists must be opened as it is (much like that of Mammertus and Faustus,) whether the Soul (or a Spirit) have Matter by composition, or simply ⟨p. 6⟩uncompounded: for a body you suppose it still to have. Is it separable from a Body or not? If it be, why should you think that it is never separated? If it can subsist without a Body, who can say that it doth not? If it cannot but be inseparable, it is a strange composition that God cannot dissolve. And if it perish upon the dissolution, then it was but an Accident of the body, and not a compounding Substance. Dr. Glisson's and Campanella's way is as probable as this; And I marvel that when you have dealt with so many sorts of Dissenters you meddle not with so subtle a piece as that old Doctor's de Vita Naturae: I have talked with divers high pretenders to Philosophy here of the new strain, and asked them their judgment of Dr. Glisson's Book, and I found that none of them understood it, but neglected it as too hard for them, and yet contemned it. He supposeth all Matter to be animated without composition, the Matter and Form being but conceptus inadequati, ⟨p. 7⟩of an uncompounded being, however that Matter as such be divisible, into atoms, every atom still being uncompounded living Matter. You suppose all Spirit to be in Matter. but by way of composition as distinct substances. I go the middle way, and suppose that substance (simple) is Active or Passive: that the three Passive Elements, Earth, Water and Air are animated only by composition, or operation of the active; But that the active substances have no composition, (but intellectual) but Substance and Form are conceptus ejusdem inadequati. So that what Dr. Glisson saith of every clod and stone, I say only of Spirits, (of fire I shall speak after.)