A26976:46
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 I know not why you might not as well have named divers other Accidents or Modes, especially Quantity, and the trina dimensio, and called them all the Form of Matter, as well as your two.
Indeed when we have from sense a true notion of Matter, we must know that it hath Quantity, and is somewhere, and therefore that one part of it, and another part cannot possess just the same place; and so we grant you the Impenetrability: And how far you prove Spirits to be such substances as are extended, and have Amplitude (as you say pag. 105.) and spissitude, and be in loco, and in more or less ⟨p. 15⟩space variously, and yet that they have no dimensions which the Divine Intellect or Power itself can measure; and whether all the Spirits in the universe can be in eodem puncto, and all that are finite, contracted into that one point, I leave this to Wits more subtle than mine to judge of.
Indeed when we have from sense a true notion of Matter, we must know that it hath Quantity, and is somewhere, and therefore that one part of it, and another part cannot possess just the same place; and so we grant you the Impenetrability: And how far you prove Spirits to be such substances as are extended, and have Amplitude (as you say pag. 105.) and spissitude, and be in loco, and in more or less ⟨p. 15⟩space variously, and yet that they have no dimensions which the Divine Intellect or Power itself can measure; and whether all the Spirits in the universe can be in eodem puncto, and all that are finite, contracted into that one point, I leave this to Wits more subtil than mine to judge of.
For to tell you the truth, I know nothing at all without the mediation of sense, except the immediate sensation it self, & the acts of Intellection & Volition or Nolition, & what the Intellect inferreth of the like, by the perception of these. I have seen & felt how Water differeth from Earth, and from that sensation my Intellect hath that Idea of the difference which it hath: But without that seeing and feeling it, all the definitions in the world, and all the names of hard and soft, and dry and moist, would have given me no true notice of the formal difference. Now hence I infer, that I have no sense at all of the difference of a Spirits Substantiality in such modes and accidents from that of Matter; and therefore how can I know it? I know by knowing what knowing is, and by willing what willing is: And I know that these Acts prove a power (for nothing doth that which it cannot do,) and that Act and Power prove a Substance, (for