A27004:147
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.
Moreover God can wrong no man, but one man may wrong another. God need not fear doing any thing amiss, but the Soul of man must fear it. No part of God can be so unhappy as to choose to be a Toad, or a wicked or miserable man. God hath no Body, but so have these Souls; else when men eat a plant, or bird, or any flesh, they eat part of the Body of God.
Moreover I find, that it is Bodies only that are Quantitative or Extensive, and so divisible into parts: many parts of one Body may be animated by one Soul, but not by many parts of that one Soul, (except the Soul be material it self.)
But why (may some object) may I not hold, that all the Orbs being one world, or one Body of one informing Soul, which is God; and so that really those which you call individuals, are but parts of this one animated world. Answ. This is confuted by what is said. Whether the world be animated by one *universal Soul, we are not now enquiring. But that God is not this informing ⟨p. 13⟩Soul is before disproved. In point of efficiency we grant that he is as the Soul of Souls, effecting more than Souls do for their Bodies, but not in point of Constitution. He is much more than the Soul of the world, but is not formally its Soul. But, 2. Those men that will think so, must acknowledge, that as they take the Horse and the Rider to be both parts of God, and the Child and the Father, and the Subject and the Prince, and the Malefactor and the Judge, and the flagitious wretch and the best of men; so it is no other membership than what consisteth with the difference of moral good and evil, of wise and foolish, of Governors and Subjects, of Rewards and Punishments, of Happiness and Misery, which are the things that I am seeking after. But so few lay this claim to Deity, that I need no further mind them.