A27004:144
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural evidence the being of God ... : the second part, of Christianity, proving by evidence supernatural and natural, the certain truth of the Christian belief ... / by Richard Baxter ... ; also an appendix defending the soul's immortality against the Somatists or Epicureans and other pseudo-philosophers.
London: printed by R. White for Fran. Titon, 1667
Part 1 › Chapter 4: Of Man, and other things, as produced by their first Cause.
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 if all this were so, who made the things inanimate, that have no souls of their own to make them? For my part I made them not. And my Soul is conscious that it is a dependent being, that cannot illuminate it self, nor know what it would know, nor be what it would be, nor do what it would do, nor can support its body or it self an hour. It looketh dependently to something higher for help, and protection, and supply, and mercy, and is past all doubt that it is no God.
If it be said that all Souls are but one, even parts of the universal Soul of the World,1 and that individuation is by Matter only, and that so though my Soul be not the whole first cause and being, it is a part of it: I answer, 1. I note by the way, that this hypothesis acknowledgeth that which I am searching after, viz. that there is a God: and it asserteth higher things of man than I am proving, viz. That he hath not only an immortal Soul, but a Soul that is part of God himself. 2. And according to this, the Soul of every Heliogabalus, Sardanapalus, Idiot or Toad, should be part of God. 3. And then all souls should be alike, if all be God; the Soul of ⟨p. 12⟩a murderer,2 and of him that is murdered, of a Nero and a Saint, yea, of Caesar and of his Dog. And how then cometh there so much enmity between them, and so great disparity? why is one wise, and another foolish or brutish, and one the Ruler of the other? The Soul of a Bird or Horse seemeth to be lodged in as good a kind of matter as Mans; or at least, the Soul of a Nero in as good a matter as the Soul of Paul; or at least, the Soul of one that turneth to villainy from virtue, hath the same matter which it had before. And certainly it is not matter that principally individuateth, but forms. Nor is the difference between good men and bad, and between Men, and Serpents or Beasts, so much in Matter as in the Soul.
If it be said that all Souls are but one, even parts of the universal Soul of the World,