A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

Fourthly,¹ If so be the soul be not by immediate Creation, then it must be material, corporal, and mortal: for although this consequence is denied, yet the evidence of natural reason will commend this. Its traduced (saith Tertullian) and is a body, yet is immortal: It is by propagation (say the Lutheran Divines) and yet is not a body but a spirit, and immortal: But above all, those abominable Mortalists, they make it to be only the crusis of the body, of which opinion Galen also is said to be, and so they make it mortal: We see then, that its necessary to have a sound judgement about the original of the soul, for the Mortalists have fallen into that deep pit of heresy, because they erred in this first. It is with men, as they say of Fishes, they begin to putrefy in the head first, and so commonly men fall into loose opinions, and then into loose practises: But this rule must be acknowledged, That whatsoever depends upon matter in being, doth also depend upon it in existency: It's Aquinas his rule, (as you heard,) Quicquid dependet à materiâ in fieri, depend quoad esse et existere; That is the reason, why the souls of all beasts are mortal, because they depend upon the matter in being, They cannot be produced but dependently on that, and therefore their souls cannot subsist without their bodies; As it is plain, the souls of men do after death, till the resurrection; So that this Doctrine is injurious, and derogatory to our spiritual and immortal souls.

Fourthly,¹ If so be the soul be not by immediate Creation, then it must be material, corporal, and mortal: for although this consequence is denied, yet the evidence of natural reason will commend this. Its traduced (saith Tertullian) and is a body, yet is immortal: It is by propagation (say the Lutheran Divines) and yet is not a body but a spirit, and immortal: But above all, those abominable Mortalists, they make it to be only the crusis of the body, of which opinion Galen also is said to be, and so they make it mortal: We see then, that its necessary to have a sound judgement about the original of the soul, for the Mortalists have fallen into that deep pit of heresy, because they erred in this first. It is with men, as they say of Fishes, they begin to putrify in the head first, and so commonly men fall into loose opinions, and then into loose practises: But this rule must be acknowledged, That whatsoever depends upon matter in being, doth also depend upon it in existency: It's Aquinas his rule, (as you heard,) Quicquid dependet à materiâ in fieri, depend quoad esse et existere; That is the reason, why the souls of all beasts are mortal, because they depend upon the matter in being, They cannot be produced but dependently on that, and therefore their souls cannot subsist without their bodies; As it is plain, the souls of men do after death, till the resurrection; So that this Doctrine is injurious, and derogatory to our spiritual and immortal souls.