THE GRAND PREROGATIVE OF HUMANE NATURE Namely, The Souls natural or native immortality, and freedom from corruption, showed by many arguments, and also defended against the rash and rude conceptions of a late presumptuous Author, who hath adventured to impugn it.  
By G. H. Gent.  
Now first published according to the perfect Copy, and the Authors mind.  Math. 22.32. 
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.  
LONDON; Printed by ROGER DANIEL, and are to be sold by Antony Williamson, at the Queen's Arms in St. Paul's Churchyard. An. 1653.   

THE PREFACE.  
SO great and sovereign to Man hath been the benignity of indulgent Nature, as that she hath not only bestowed upon his soul, above those of other creatures, the high and singular Prerogative of immortality; but hath moreover imparted to him light whereby he might come unto the knowledge of it, and by that same knowledge be excited to make a diligent inquiry after the obligations that follow on it, and how also in this life he may make his best advantages and preparations for the next. Neither is this same Truth of immortality any new discovery, but acknowledge of old by the Heathenish and Pagan Nations; of which thing we in the Work ensuing are to give in a large evidence, by our producing the many testimonies of a full and frequent Senate of ancient Sages, who, being destitute of revelation, had nothing but nature to instruct them in this same verity.  
Against these powerful impulsives and clearer notions of truth the adverse party hath nothing to oppose but mere surmises or suspicions, such, namely, as the Author of the Book of Wisdom out of their own mouths recordeth, saying, There hath not any one been known to have returned from below: Or else such as Pliny doth imagine, who grafteth the opinion of immortality, not upon an innate, or natural longing and appetite, as he should have done; but, contrariwise, upon a false ambition and greediness in man of never ceasing to be.: Or again, as Lucian, who brings nothing to make good what he conceiveth, besides downright impiety, dressed up and set forth with facetious scoffs and derisory jestings, wherewith nevertheless sundry illaffected spirits and feebler understandings are easier persuaded, then with solid arguments.  
The Chorus of Seneca afterwards alleged, moved, as it may seem, with no better or stronger arguments than these, is driven, as by a storm, into dark and doubtful cogitations touching the souls mortality; and so also is another Chorus consisting of Mahometan Alfaquys in the English Tragedy of Mustapha. By such shadows also as these a late Philosopher was affrighted and before him some of the ancients so fare forth as to be made imagine, that even granting the soul should survive the body, yet that it would not thence follow it were perpetual, but that, contrariwise, in tract of time it might decay, and vapour itself at length to nothing, burning or wasting out it's own substance like a torch or candle; or, at least, have a period of duration set it, connaturally to the principles of constitution, beyond which it was not to pass, but at that term or point presently and naturally to extinguish or return to nothing: of which vain fantasy we are to consider more hereafter.  
But, if suspicions may come to be examined, we shall find that there be other sort of them persuading the souls mortality, that seem more hollow and deceitful than the former are; as namely, a depraved appetite, or an unbridled and untamed sensuality, that solicits perpetually to be satisfied, and is desirous, without fear of future reckon in the other world, to wallow for the present and tumble, like a swine, in the mire of dirty pleasures, and to conceive some shadow of security for it, that so, with the old Epicureans, it might merrily say, 
Ede, bibe, lude, post mortem nulla voluptas.  
Eat, and drink, and play thy fill,  
There's after death nor good nor ill.   
Doubtless these later persuaders seem to be more ruinous and corrupt then the former, and of more dangerous consequence. And thus we see that on either side there want not suspicions, namely, as well for concluding of mortality as of immortality, if we will be guided by them. But into this high Court of judicature, wherein causes so weighty and so grave as this are to be decided, suspicions and dark imaginations will not be allowed for evidence, or be able to cast the business either way.  
To these other proofs which after I allege, I add this one, which I have placed in the frontispiece of this Treatise, namely, these words of Christ, Matth. 22. partly recited by him out of Exodus: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaak, and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. By force of which Text the Sadduces, who denied there surrection, were convinced, and not only they, but this Author also against whom we deal; for the place proves the soul's immortality, as well as the body's resurrection, Because if God be the God of Abraham after death, then must his body one day rise again, to the end that being reunited with the soul there might result an Abraham; again, if he be the God also of the living, then must his soul continue living without any intermission from death; for, as without a body there is no Abraham, so without a soul there is no vivens, or thing endued with life. If you object, that it is sufficient if it live then when the body is to rise, though not before: I answer, that this intermitted living neither is nor can be sufficient, because then according to this same supposition the soul must have a revival and refuscitation, for the which we have no warrant any where, and feign it we must not; or if we do, it will want weight and be rejected. It follows then, that the soul of man after the departure of it from the body must either always live, or never; and so, by consequence, seeing the soul must live once more, it must live always, that is to say, not only at the resurrection, as this Author feigneth, but continually from the time of the separation to the time of the reunion, and so after everlastingly. And this is the conclusion was intended. And thus much touching the argument of the Treatise following.  
Now touching the Adversary. I am to let you know, that if the Readers had not deserved much more regard than he, and besides, if the matter had not required some elucidation, more than his objections did an answer, I had been wholly silent and spared all this labour I have taken.  
Peradventure it may seem to some that over and above an answer given to this erroneous Author, the pains bestowed in opening the cause of the soul's indeficiency, and also the tracing out the several paths which lead unto the places from whence arguments are to be raised for the proving of it, was therefore supper fluous, because we all shall quickly try whether it be so or no, forasmuch as our Pilgrimage in this life cannot be of any large extent, either in old or young. To these men I return no other answer but this one, that if the soul be immort all, that then, indeed, we shall experience whether it be so or no; but if it be not, we, in that case, shall experience nothing: for though a man broad awake does feel himself to live, yet one either dead or in a dead-sleep, feels nothing at all, and knows not what he is. But betting that pass, it cannot be denied but that the knowledge of a soul's being incorruptible must needs be in this life a great consolation to any man, and especially to such as be in great adversity; for by that Truth he learns he may outlive his sorrows, and attein at length unto a wished rest. Besides, by this doctrine he hath a caveat given for his good behaviour here, and that, for the satisfaction of any unreasonable and inordinate desire, he venture not on any thing in this life that may be a hindrance of his felicity in the next.  
It was not the Authors intention to enter here in the following Work into any disputes that were not for every English reader's understanding; but, contrary to his mind, he was forced to stray from that purpose ever now and then, for the satisfying of sundry flying objections; to which condescension he was induced the easier, because such disputes could not be a prejudice to any Reader, in regard that those harder pieces might be passed over by him very easily, and that, besides all those, there was enough wherewith to entertain him: whereas on the other side, all such digressions could not come unwelcome to others whose understandings had been acquainted & exercised with speculations of greater difficulty, and so both sorts of Readers receive contentment, one sort by the easy, the other both by the easy and the hard.   

The Grand Prerogative of humane Nature.  

CHAP. I. The Authors Design, and the occasion of it.  
AS bodies that are foul and do abound with peccant humours be subject to contagion, and apt to be infected by each weak venom, from the danger whereof cleaner and better tempered bodies live secure: so in like manner, minds that be corrupted, and all such understandings as have lost the stays and principles of truth, are easily entrapped by every poor and childish sophistication; and having once left their anchour-hold, float afterwards up and down upon the waves of humane opinations, are dashed against every rock of error, be it never so low, or contemptible, and, like unto small weak flies, are caught and entangled, not always by the strongest and most artificially woven cobweb, but by the very next, though never so rude and slender. This poor and sorrowful manner of defaillance must needs be, of all other, the most hateful, not so much for the deadliness and venom, as for the reproach which follows it; for by it a man loseth not truth alone, but withal his reputation and esteem; it being a judgement very slenderly armed that with a wooden dart can be pierced through. Experience verifies what I affirm; for of late a sorry Animal, better than so I cannot call him, whose soul he himself thinks to be mortal, and whose learning and capacity is so small, as if indeed it were so mean as he imagineth it to be; This sorry Animal, having stepped into the crowd of Scribblers in the defence of an old rotten heresy, condemned and suffocated by consent of the wise, almost at the hour of its birth, hath met with some other dull souls so unhappy as to be persuaded by him, and to think as meanly of themselves as the wisest of all ages have done of beasts, to the dishonour and debasing of their own kind; not elevating beasts to the degree of reason, as sometimes Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, and some others have sought to do, though vainly, and peradventure more for ostentation and argumentation sake, then in any earnest; but contrariwise, reproachfully depressing man, even as low as brute beasts, by ascribing to them both a mortality alike.  
The old and despicable heresy which this obscure author now labours to resuscitate and to conjure up, was raised in Arabia about the time of Origen, and extinguished by his dispute, immediately after its birth, as Eusebius witnesseth l. 6. Hist. c. 30. and according to the division of Rufinus, 27. such as were infected with this error were termed by Saint Augustine de Haeres. c. 83. Arabici, [Of these Arabici and their doctrines concerning the soul, see Abraham Ecchellensis in supplem. Chronici Orientalis, where an account is given of them.] by reason of the Province from whence the error first arose: so that such as now submit unto it may well be termed wild Arabians, which kind of people by reason of their rude condition and volatile natures, were ever as ready to be cozened, first by this heresy, and after by the grand Impostor Mahomet; as the Romans prepared to betray their own liberty, then when Tiberius cried shame upon them for it, saying, O homines ad servitutem paratos! O men prepared for servitude! Tacit. l. 3. Annal. who if he had lived in this age, and noted the pronity of men now adays, to embrace every groundless fancy, and to forgo any ancient and well-grounded truth, would have changed a word or two and said, O mentes ad errorem paratas! O minds prepared for error! O minds corrupt enough for the receiving and applause of any folly, of any error, be it never so absurd, disadvantageous unto them, or derogating from the dignity of humane nature! O curvae in terris animae! About the time of these Arabici, Tatianus in an Oration of his yet extant seems to have held with them, and afterwards some later Sectaries termed by reason of this their foolish error Thnetopsychitae, as Damascene relateth l. de Haeres.  
Lastly, one called Volkelius, hath in our times blindly stumbled upon this same error, teaching it expressly, and also labouring to prove it, l. 5. c. 25. out of which puddle it is not unlikely this Adversary of ours did draw his unwholesome waters of pestiferous doctrine, and went no further for them.  
Upon the consideration of those errors that have of late infected us and betrayed humane nature, I cannot think it a thing improbable, but that the infernal spirit which hath suggested them, and governed the hearts of men as a predominant planet, in these Northern Provinces of Europe, is that martial Devil called, Apocal. 9.11. Abaddon, or Apollyon, that is to say, a Destroyer; for as much as the designs of all such as have disturbed our peace of late days, are generally for ruin and destruction.  
For first, what is the wealth and treasure of man, but the dignity and value of his actions? of this he hath long since been plundered. His eyesight whereby his steps were to be guided, was his knowledge; but this divers have laboured to extinguish by denying, with the old Academics and late Socinians, that there is any certainty in it, and by becoming so witty as to know nothing. His regal sceptte, I mean his natural liberty, by the command of which the Empire of his little world was swayed, is wrested out of his hands, and voiced to be wholly forfeited and not any longer to appertain unto him. His crown and life was the immortality of his better part, as therein chief being superior to beasts and all other things irrational; but behold here also a privy but a dangerous traitor endeavours to despoil him of it; so that in fine, if all these treacherous assailants might have their wills, he shall be wholly mortal, poor, feeble, blind, and miserable, dethroned from his wont dignity, and cast down unto the lower class of Beasts. Profectò plurima homini ex homine mala, as Pliny justly complaineth, even though he himself be one of the Authors of those evils which come from man against himself. Was it not enough that all inferior creatures do rebel against us, but we must basely and treacherously conspire against ourselves? The man that going from Jerusalem to Jericho fell amongst thiefs, had hard measure offered him, for he was despoiled and wounded by them, and left only half alive; but those thiefs amongst whom we are now fallen be fare more cruel, for they would kill us outright, that is to say, both in soul and body, and with less than this will not be contented. But now it is time we begin to examine what urgent reasons, what killing arguments there were that moved this new Author unto so extravagant a course of rigour against all mankind; for if these be not very urgent and invincible, we must conclude this man guilty not only of much folly, but also of heinous malice and temerity against the rights and prerogatives of man, in defence of which we now come into the field against him.   

CHAP. II. His first Class of arguments examined and refuted.  
HIs first arguments be drawn from man's creation, fall, restitution and resurrection: the principal is this,  
That what of Adam was immortal through Innocency, was to be mortalized by transgression.  
But whole Adam (quatenus animal rationale) was in Innocency immortal.  
Ergo all and every part, even whole man liable to death by sin.  
Upon this bungling argument or syllogism the weight of all his cause must lean, which, as I perceive by the posture, should have been a syllogism, if the Author could have cast it into that form; but since that might not be, we will be contented to take it in gross as it lies, rather than pass it over without an answer. We grant then that indeed all Adam for example by sinning became mortal, and all and every part of him; that is to say, he was after so much of his age exspired, to yield up to death and be totally corrupted; or, which is all one, he was to have his two essential parts disunited, and after that, until the resurrection, neither he, nor any of his parts thus dissevered and disunited, to be Adam, or a man any longer, All which might be without that either the matter of his body, or substance of his soul should perish or be destroyed, as Thomas de Argentina expressly teacheth in 2. dist. 17. ar. 1. ad 1. arg. And forasmuch as concerns the matter of his body, it is an evident case, because matter is a thing both ingenerable and incorruptible, and so neither produced by his generation, nor destroyed by his corruption; and as by generation only fashioned and united, so again by corruption or death, only defaced and disunited or dissolved. And as for the soul the other part, there is no more necessity death should destroy it, than there was it should destroy the matter, there being no more reason for the one then for the other. Wherefore Saint Paul wishing death that so he might be with Christ, did not desire to be destroyed, as this silly Authors doctrine would infer, but to be dissolved; for surely if his soul was to have been destroyed, by any natural deficiency, or otherwise, he could not think to be with Christ, during the time of that destruction, or dissolution which he wished, and so his words and wishing would have been very vain, seeing, according to this Author, he should by his being dissolved come never the sooner to be with Christ; because according to him, neither alive nor dead he was to come unto Christ before the general resurrection: nay further, his wish would have made against himself and his own ends, because he knowing Christ a little in this life, might in some small measure enjoy him in it; but if by death his soul be killed as well as his body, he should have no knowledge at all nor comfort of Christ, but be cast further off from him than he was before.  
Now as all agree that matter throughout all mutations remaineth incorrupted; so also, according to the judgement of sundry knowing men, and diligent inquirers into the works of nature and transmutation of natural compounds, natural and material forms themselves also do not perish at their parting from their matters, but only are dissolved and dissipated, lying after that separation in their scattered atoms within the bosom of nature, from whence they had been before extracted by force of the seed, the result of whose union was the form. So that the entity of the form remains still unperished after corruption, though not in the essence and formality of a form, or totally and completely. Thus teacheth the learned Author of Religio Medici, and exactly declares himself: of the same mind is the famous late Physician Daniel Sennertus in his Hypomnemata, though sometimes not so fully; as for example, when he ascribes to forms precedent the full production of the subsequent; assigning a genital power, or vis prolifica in every form for multiplying of itself: by which doctrine he seems to recede from his former principles of Atoms, and not to stick constantly to them, yea, and besides to deliver a conceit which is hardly understood, and which moreover seems to be improbable; for who can explicate what one form doth when it multiplies another, or what kind of causality it doth then exercise, or by what strange influence that effect is wrought and the form made up of nothing? This same doctrine of Religio Medici, and that also which we deliver here touching the origination of forms, was the doctrine of old Democritus, expressed by him in his constitution of Atoms, or minima naturalia, as we find it largely expressed and illustrated by Joan. Magnenus l. de Philosophia Democriti ' Disp. 2. c. 2. & seqq. as also by Petrus Gassendus in his voluminous work de Philosophia Epicuri tomo 1. with whom in substance agreed Leucippus, as we may find by that which Laertius and others do deliver of him. Not that every Atom did contain a form, as Sennertus seems to think, but rather several pieces for the composition of it; according as every simple or ingredient of Diacatholicon, for example, is not Diacatholicon, but contains something in it of which it is to be made up, and from which as from differing heterogeneal parcels, collected and united by an artificial mixtion, it results; and for want of putting this difference or restraint, Sennertus his own doctrine and explication of Democritus may seem defective. But though we may approve of Physical Atoms for the composition of natural bodies, yet we do not thereby allow of Atoms Mathematical or indivisibles with Zeno; of which point see Arriaga, and our learned countryman and Philosopher Compton otherwise called Carleton. Neither again do we with Epicurus and some other old Philosophers, maintain any casual meeting or accidental confluence of them; but contrariwise, an assembling of them in generation by the force of seminal or spermatick virtue, descending from the forms into the sperm or seeds, and by the Creator infused at the first creation into the forms. As for the composition itself abstracting from these particulars, it was also taught by Anaxagoras, when he affirmed all to be in all, or every thing, and to have a preexistence in the bosom of nature, even before such time as, by the operation of seminal causes, forms be accomplished and made to appear in their own likeness upon this theatre. This is also the judgement of Athanas. Kircherius a late learned writer l. 3. the magnete, part. 3. c. 1. where he shows how rich compounds earth and water be, as Chemic industries for separation have discovered, insomuch as he noteth, there is contained in them a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or general magazine; the common matter being from the first creation not lean and hungry, but foeta and praeseminata with forms partial and incomplete. This also is the inchoations of forms and the rationes seminales pre-existent, which many learned men have often favoured, expressly taught by the great Albertus 1. Phys. tract. 3. c. 15. & 16. &. 1. part. summae tract. 3. q. 14. ar. 2. memb. 2. & tract. 6. q. 26. ar. 2. memb. 1. & part. 2. tract. 1. q. 4. ar. 1. memb. 2. Which doctrine of his being explained in this sense declared, lies no way within the danger of the objections of Gandavensis, Durandus, Dominicus de Flandria, or Thomas de Argentina, who all proceed against it according to a way of understanding, though true in itself, yet quite different from this, and also, as we may justly think, from the true meaning of Albertus, or of Jacobus de Viterbo, related by the aforenominated Argentina l. 2. sent. didst 18. ar. 2. and there impugned by him. The same doctrine for inchoations of forms in the matter before generation, I mean not in materia prima, but in secunda & praeseminata, is largely declared, proved, and defended by our learned countryman Jo. Bacon a Carmelite, l. 1. Quodlibet q. 6. and also in 2. sentent. didst 18. q. unica, in which latter place he shows that this doctrine is according to the meaning of S. Augustine: These same inchoations are the rationes primordiales concreated with the matter, in whose bosom they lie as it were a sleep, until such time as by the genital power and agency of forms, which are in perfection and displayed, they be called out and united, not accidentally, but substantially, into one Compositum, which Compositum when it is to be dissolved, all those unfolded seminal reasons do shrink up again, and withdraw themselves into the self same beds from which they came. And this is the doctrine of Albertus and Bacon, although they do not descend to such particulars as be expressed here, but hold themselves aloof, according to the custom of the Schools, in more general principles and expressions.  
This, lastly, is nothing else but, in a good sense, an eduction of forms ex potentia materiae, which is Aristotle's and his Disciples Doctrine; for it cannot be thought that Aristotle ever intended to press or squeeze any forms out of the dry skeleton of matersa prima, which matter is a principle only receptive, and no promptuary out of which to educe a form by virtue of any natural agent whatsoever; for in such a spare entity as that what fecundity is imaginable?  
And so much touching the original of forms, which is one of the abstrusest and nicest points in all philosophy, and that which by vulgar Authors is meanliest handled, and by the wisest is known but by conjecture.  
Thus his main argument is answered, after which all the rest will fall down headlong with any light touch, though but of a finger.  
Immediately after this he argueth out of Gen. 3.19. where Adam is told, that for his disobedience he must turn into that dust of which he was made; out of which he concludes, that all and every part of Adam must be converted into dust: which if it be so as he saith, than not only his earthly particles, but his airy, watery, and fiery parts must to dust also, and not only his body, but his soul, if he have any, must be turned into the same matter. See what fine conclusions follow out of this mortal souls philosophy. It sufficed then, that so much of his body, or of the whole man, was to return to dust as had been made up of it. And by this alone the commination of God is fulfilled without any more ado.  
After this he comes upon us with his false Latin, saying as followeth. Death reduceth this productio entis ex non-ente ad Non-entens, returns man to what he was before he was: that is, not to be, etc. and by and by, citing impertinently two or three places of Scripture, falls to another argument drawn from the resurrection.  
As for the Latin word Non-entem, whether it be right or no, we will not examine, but apply ourselves to the consideration of the sense, which is as faulty as the Latin can be: know therefore in brief, that death did not reduce Adam to non ens, but to non Adam; it did not cause him absolutely not to be, but only not to be man or Adam any longer. And forasmuch as concerns his body, it is confessed and certain, that it was not turned by death or mortality into nothing, or non ens, but into dust, which is an ens, or something; that is to say, his body was not annihilated, but corrupted; and to die, is not wholly to be destroyed but partially only, which act is all one with dissolution. Now if to the total mortalizing of man it be not necessary that his body be destroyed, then can it not be needful that his soul should be so: and thus our adversaries stout argument is more than mortalized, for it comes to nothing, which man by dying doth not.  
We will not deny him but that the soul of man did die and die again, as much as it was capable of death; for first it died by the being separated from the body, although indeed, according to a philosophical propriety of speaking, this same separation of it be no death, or true manner of dying: secondly, by being subjected unto damnation, which, as we know, is called in Scripture a second death. But as for the annihilation of it or of the body, that is it which we deny; and so to do we have just reason. In fine, as Generation is nothing but the union of the parts, and not the creation or absolute production of them; so again, Death and Corruption is nothing but the disunion, or dissolution of them, and in no wise the annihilation, according as this wise Author would persuade us,  
As for the article of the Resurrection, it proves nothing against the perpetuity of the soul; for we never read of any resurrection besides that of the body: wherefore to aver a resurrection of souls were a grand foolery, and a doctrine never debateable or heard of amongst Christians, till this silly Author came to teach it. And so much for his first chapter.   

CHAP. III. Scripture no way a favourer of the souls mortality.  
HIs places cited out of Scripture in favour of his error are so impertinent, as that it were no small piece of folly to examine them one by one; They all of them signify that man shall die, or sometimes, that for example Joseph or Simeon is not, as Gen. 42.36. all which how they are to be expounded and understood may sufficiently appear by that which hath been said in the precedent chapter, and how again they make nothing at all against the souls immortality.  
Touching the words of Ecclesiastes c. 3. the answer is, that they were no determinations, or resolves, but a history, or an account given of what sometimes came into his thoughts, and what obscurities and desolations of soul he had, and what lastly was one of the first difficulties that troubled him, and stirred him up unto a solicitous enquiry; for certainly this one verity of the immortality of man's soul, is that which is to order man's designs, to regulate his actions, and to put life and vigour into them, this being a truth most fundamental. We see this one was it which moved Clemens Rom. l. 1. recogn. (if he be the true Author of that which passeth under his name) to a serious inquiry and care for the finding out what he was to do, whom to consult, what to esteem most, and in fine what to fear or hope most, and how to order all the passages of his life. This is the question that usually troubles men first of all, & till a resolution be had, suffereth their hearts not to be at quiet, every man at first suspiciously, as Solomon did, ask of himself, as Seneca (in Trod) gallantly expresseth, saying, 
Verum est? an timidos fabula decipit?  
Vmbras corporibus vivere conditis,  
Cum conjux oculis imposuit manum,  
Supremusque dies Solibus obstitit,  
Et tristes cineres Vrna coercuit?  
Non prodest animam tradere funeri,  
Sed restat miseris vivere longius?  
An toti morimur? nullaque pars manet,  
Nostri cum profugo spiritus halitu  
Immistus nebulis cessit in aera,  
Et nudum tetigit subdita fax latus?  
Is it a truth? or is't our fears  
Have buzzed a fable in our ears?  
That man's hover spirits do live,  
And their interred corpse survive,  
When grieved consorts hands do close  
Their eyes, and their last days oppose  
Our bright Hyperions beamy light,  
And drowns the slender shades in night,  
Then when our bones to ashes burn,  
To be confined within an urn?  
Be not the funerals our fate,  
But there must be a longer date  
For wretched man? Or doth he die  
Entirely, and entombed lie?  
Or may he not forthwith consume  
And vanish all in slender fume  
Then when his wand'ring spirit flies  
And mingles with the airy skies,  
And when the dismal funeral torch  
His side insensible doth scorch?   
After this sort do anxious and afflicted spirits oftentimes argue and dispute within themselves, laying before their eyes all the doubts and difficulties imaginable, before they descend to the making of any conclusion at all, or to the determining of any settled doctrine. Thus and no otherwise did Solomon, when first revolving in his thoughts the matter of the souls condition, and touching upon the various suspicions of men concerning it, with no small sense and anguish of mind, at length Eccles. c. 12. drawing to a conclusion, he determines, saying, Let the dust return unto the earth from whence it came, and the spirit unto God who gave it. And this text alone is sufficient to confound the Adversary, and to confute whatsoever he hath endeavoured to draw out of Scripture for man's total corruption and mortality.  
I add, according to good Expositors, that Solomon in this place representeth not what he himself did judge, nor what a rational man ought to judge, but rather what Epicureans and voluptuous persons did, or were wont to judge, according either to the desires, or at least to the apparences of sense; for according to them, man and beast do breathe out their lasts alike; but this judgement of theirs Solomon absolutely condemns, as appeareth plainly by that which before hath been alleged out of him.   

CHAP. IU. His argument out of reason viewed and examined.  
WHat the several fancies were of heathen Philosophers touching the nature and definition of the soul, is not much regardable, sundry of them being so monstrous and absurd. But it is a thing very considerable, that amongst so many straggling and wild conceits, all, or most of all at least of the noblest and the best Philosophers, have taught the immortality of the soul itself: howsoever, in other businesses concerning it they might sometimes disagree. Permanere animos arbitramur, saith Cicero Tuscul. l. 1. consensu nationum omnium: qua in sede maneant, qualesque sint ratione discendum est: and again in his Hortensius, as witnesseth Saint Augustine l. 14. c. 19 de Trinitate. Antiquis Philosophis, hisque maximis longeque clarissimis, placuit, quod aeternos ammos divinosque habeamus. We are persuaded by the consent of all nations that souls remain, but must learn of reason of what quality they are, and in what places they remain. Again, in Somnio Scipionis he determineth, saying, Infra Lunam nihil est nisi mortale & caducum, praeter animos generi hominum Deorum munere datos. Beneath the Moon there is nothing which is not corruptible, excepting souls alone bestowed upon mankind by the munificence of the Gods. Thus Cicero, who in his book de senectute delivers himself more at large, as also in the first book of his Tusculan questions, and also bringeth reasons for what he saith. This assertion of Cicero, for consent of Nations and Philosophers in this truth, hath been showed to the eye by the great diligence and learning of Augustinus Steuchus, commonly called Eugubinus, in the 9 book of his excellent work de perenni Philosophia, in which he voucheth to this purpose the authorities of Phere●ides Syrus, who as Cicero witnesseth, was the first that delivered this verity in writing, also of Trismegistus, and the Chaldean monuments of Plato, likewise Pythagoras, Aratus, Philo, Cicero, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Hierocles, and sundry others, as also of Aristotle the Prince of the Peripatetics, who is judged by the greatest searchers into his doctrine to have directly taught the immortality, although he had not declared himself in that point, as in many others, nor as others have done, peradventure concealing himself on set purpose, because he for want of light from divine revelation, was not able to tell what to do with them after death, nor was he willing to make up his matter with fictions poetical, as his master Plato had done before him; and this very reason of Aristotle's reservedness in this point is rendered by Tostatus, Paradox. 5. c. 54. & 55. For this cause peradventure, he held it more expedient to leave his judgement of the souls immortality to be gathered out of the consequence of his doctrine and words, let fall here and there, as it were by chance, rather than to deliver it in express terms, or to handle the question on set purpose. It was enough for him, 1. Ethic. c. 11. to have said, that the fortunes of posterity good or bad were a concernment of the dead; because, out of this one assertion his mind might come to be known: for of a certain, that which is not can have no concernment, wherefore the souls of the deceased were supposed by Aristotle to have a being, and consequently to be still alive, and also to live intellectually; because first of all, as the Philosopher teacheth, Viventibus esse est vivere, To be and to live, is with creatures endued with life all one thing, so that with them to kill is as much as to annihilate; secondly, by the same reason Intellectualibus esse est intelligere, With creatures intellectual, their being is to be intellectual, or to live intellectually; so that if the intellectual part of them be extinguished, they perish wholly, and have neither life nor being left them. In consideration of this we may say, that it is no matter at all to Bucephalus, for example, whether those of his race proved jades or metalled horses: and why is this? because Bucephalus is extinguished & hath no life nor being: but contrariwise, according to Aristotle, it is a matter to the predecessors, whether their posterity prove good or bad, happy or miserable; and why then must this be, but because these have life, though Bucephalus had none, these have a being intellectual, Bucephalus hath none at all? Other places also of Aristotle are consonant to this, as we may find in Javellus l. 3. de Animae q. 3. and again tract. 1. de Indeficientia Anima: in the Conimbricenses tract. de Animasepar. disp. 1. art. 2. and lastly in Albertinus tom. 1. Corollariorum. Moreover, Plutarch. in l. de Consol. ad Apollonium, out of Aristotle's book de Anim. ad Eudemum, reciteth this passage following, as the words of Silenus unto Midas. Wherefore, saith Silenus, O most noble and happy, seeing we esteem those who are departed this life to be happy and blessed, we hold it a thing very wicked to speak of them any thing that is false or contumelious, by that they now are made partakers of a better and more noble nature: and this opinion of ours is so ancient, that the Author and the beginning thereof be wholly unknown, but by an infinite descent of ages hath been devolved upon us. Thus reporteth Plutarch, and it is not unlike but Aristotle who alleged it was of the same mind; and this is probable so much the more, because his chief scholar Theophrastus, a man almost equal to himself, is confessed to have been very positive in this doctrine of immortality. The same Philosophers also are diligently alleged by Monsieur Plessy, in his book de veritate Relig. Christianae c. 15. which is every where extant. Besides, the same doctrine of immortality hath been constantly taught by the learned Aben Sina, or Avicen in the last book of his Metaphysics, and also in his Almahad, in which treatise he maintaineth constantly the immortality of the soul, but earnestly impugneth the body's resurrection, and withal, which is most false and improbable, defends that Mahomet in his law never taught it, but only parabolically and for fashion sake, complying with the people's rudeness, whereby they were not sensible of any doctrine teaching a felicity that was spiritual. Another Arabic Author, who goes under the name of Aristotle, is of the same mind with Avicen: Seeing, saith he, it is manifest out of the books of the ancient, and already proved, that the soul or mind is not a body, nor doth perish, but remain, etc. Thus he l. 1. de divin. sap. secundum Aegyptios, c. 2. p. 1. & 12. consonantly to other Philosophers, though afterwards, in the very next chapter, most absurdly he affirms as much of the souls of Beasts. But his reason was, because he thought the souls of men did, after their separation, pass into the bodies of brute beasts by a transmigration Pythagorical. Afterwards c. 4. he addeth, saying: If our fore elders had been doubtful of the souls immortality, they had never, for the confirmation thereof by natures dictamen, made a law against which no man is, but he who is entangled in vice. And a little after: The soul therefore passing out of this life, and gotten into the other world, doth not at all perish. Lastly, l. 3. c. 1. and again, l. 12. a. c. 10. ad 17. he by many arguments assayeth to prove that the soul is void of corporeity. Thus he, of whose credit and excellency see the judicious censure of Doctor Guiliel. Dunal in Synopsi doctrina Peripatetical. ultimo ..  
Amongst the Poets let us heart ancient Epicharmus, who, as Plutarch relateth out of him, pronounced sentence as followeth touching one departed this life. A collection was first, now a dissolution follows, and he is returned from whence he came, the earth downward, the spirit upward. So he, in Plutarch l. de Consol. ad Apollonium, Conform to whom is Euripides in Supplic.  
Res unde quaeque sumserat exordium,  
Eò recipitur, spiritus c●●le redit,  
Corpusque terra.  
Each part returns from whence 'twas given;  
Man's corpse to earth, his soul to heaven.  
Next unto these I produce Manilius, yet not as a light Poet, but as a sage Philosopher; he flourished in the time of Caesar Julius. This same Author l. 1. Astronomicoon, speaking of the Galaxia, and endeavouring to give a reason of it, writeth on the manner following.  
Nec mihi celanda est famae vulgata vetustas  
Mollior, ex niveo lactis fluxisse liquorem  
Pectore reginae divum, coelumque colore  
Infecisse suo, quapropter lacteus orbis  
Dicitur, & nomen causa descendit ab●ista.  
An major densa stellarum turba Corona  
Contexit flammas, & crasso lumine candet,  
Et fulgore nitet collato clarior orbis.  
An fortes animae dignataque nomina coelo,  
Corporibus resoluta suis, terraque remissa,  
Hue migrant ex orbe, suumque habitantia coelum  
Aethereos vivunt annos mundoque fruuntur.  
Nor will we hid what ancient fame professed,  
How milk that gushed from Juno's snowy breast,  
In heaven that splendent path and circle drew;  
From whence the name, as erst the colour grew.  
Or troops of unseen stars there join their light,  
And with their mingled splendours shine more bright.  
Or souls Heroic from their bodies freed  
And earthly parts, attain their virtues meed,  
This shining Orb, and from their lowly hearse  
Ascending high, enjoy the Universe,  
And live Ethereal lives.  
And again,  
Jam capto potimur mundo nostrumque parentem  
Pars sua conspicimus, genitique accedimus astris.  
Nec dubium est habitare Deum sub pectore nostro,  
In coelumque redire animas, coeloque venire.  
Of all the world we be now possessed,  
And clear behold our Parent blest,  
A part of him, and from these wars  
Make our approaches to the stars.  
No doubt but under humane breast  
A sacred Deity doth rest;  
And that our souls from heaven came,  
And thither must return again.  
Lo here how he doth signify, not only the souls of men be divine and immortal, but besides, that they had not their original from the earth, or from any earthly agent: with whom consenteth a Greek Philosopher salustius Emescenus, in his book de Diis & mundo lately published and vindicated from the moths by Leo Allatius; This Philosopher c. 8. teacheth on this sort. First saith he let us know what the soul is. The soul is that which makes things living, or animate, differ from the liveless, or inanimate. Their difference consists in motion, sense, fantasy, and intelligence. The soul devoid of reason is a life that serves apparences and the senses, but the rational, using reason, bears rule over the sense and fantasy. Indeed, a soul destitute of reason follows the affections of the body, for it desires and is angry without reason; but a rational, according to the rule of reason, contemns the body, and entering into combat with the soul irrational, if it get the better doth follow virtue, if vanquished declines to vice. This of necessity must be immortal, because it knows the Gods, and no mortal thing can know that which is immortal; besides, it contemns humane things, as if they were belonging to some other person, and being itself incorporeal, is averse from things corporeal, which bodies, if they be fair and fresh, it languisheth, if old, it gins to flourish. Also every diligent soul makes use of the mind. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉; the soul is not generated by the body, for how should any thing that wanteth reason generate that which hath it? Thus salustius, out of whose words we have, first, That the soul differs from the body. 2. That the rational from the irrational, or the sense. 3. That the rational is immortal, and the reason why. 4. That it is ingenerable, and for what cause. With this Greek salustius agrees the Roman, who l. de bello Jugurth. sayeth, Ingenii egregia facinora, sicut anima immortalia sunt: The egregious achievements of the wit are like the soul immortal: and, by and by, Omnia orta occidunt, aucta senescunt, animus incorruptus, aeternus, rector humani generis: All things which rise do fall, and being increased do wax old, the mind is incorrupt and eternal, etc.  
From these Philosophers we descend to inquire after the disciples of Hypocrates, being desirous to learn what their opinion was, of which we are to make no small account, they being the chief Mystae, or Hierophantae of nature, and men most knowing, especially in the transmutation of bodies; and not only in the Anatomising by dissection of such bodies as be organical, but also of others by the Art of Chemistry, which teaches how to dissolve natural compounds, though not so fare as into their first elements, yet into their secondary parts of composition. True it is, that divers of this excellent profession have been suspected of some sinister cogitations touching the immortal soul, as namely, that it was like that of beasts, that is to say, only a thin and fading exhalation raised out of the pure substance of the blood, etc. But I must do them right; such of them as have been guilty of these thoughts, or rather mean conceptions, were not any of their Grandees, no Apollines, nor Aesculapii, but, contrariwise, men of a fare meaner condition, and only of a middling size at the most, such, I say, as, by reason of their weaker understandings, have lost themselves amongst the rubbish of material and grosser objects and there perished. Whereas the diviner understandings have sped better, as being able, from material things, to take a higher flight, and by a curious inspection into the effects, to find out the first cause and mover, and by the diviner operations of the soul, to conclude the immortality thereof. And of this eminent sort, in our days Italy hath afforded us an Argenterius & a Jul. Scal. Spain a Vallesius & a Mercatus: France a Fernelius & a Laurentius: Portugal a Zacutus: Germany a Sennertus: to say nothing of the great Aldrovandus, Dodonaeus and others. As then, as Cicero observeth they were Minutuli, little petty Philosophers, who denied the souls immortality, so also may we say that those Physicians who did the same, were but an inferior sort of men, and half-witted, in comparison of those other who did maintain it. And as for Galen, a most principal master in that profession, he inclineth to the asserting of immortality; for though sometimes he seem much perplexed, not knowing what to determine, then, namely, when he only considered how the habilities of the mind held a constant proportion with the several structures and temperatures of the body, rising and falling with them; yet at other times, when he beheld the sublimer operations of the ●…de, he durst not affirm them to be the effects of temperature, nor of any corporeal principle: and so being reduced into great straits, confesses finally his own ignorance, and that he knows not whence they do proceed; as namely, l. Quod anima sequatur temperaturam corporis. & again, l. De usu spirat. l. De causis pulsuum. and l. 2. De causis symptom. After all which, l. 7. De Placitis Hippocratis, he grows more resolute, declaring plainly, That the mind, or original of those operations, is either some body Etherall, or else a substance wholly incorporeal: and finally, l. de Conceptu, his conclusion is delivered by him in these following words; The soul, saith he, is a particle of that great soul of the Universe, descending from the region celestial, is capable of science, aspiring evermore, by a way sorting to itself, unto such a substance as hath affinity therewith, and relinquishing things that are earthly, soaring towards the highest, partaking of divinity celestial, and often contemplating the heavenly mansion it gives an attendance to the Moderator of the Universe. Thus Galen, as cited by Fernelius l. 2. de abditis rerum causis e. 4. and the self same he defineth l. de Demonstratione, alleged by the ancient and learned Nemesius, l. de Anima c. 1. Also, before Galen, Hypocrates resolved the very same, whose words, l. de Carne, are these: Of things, saith he, celestial and sublime, I am, as it to me seems, to say nothing, save only that men and other creatures which live upon the earth and are bred there, have their Original from thence, and that the soul is from heaven. Now will I declare my opinion. Verily, it seems to me that the thing which we term hot and heat, is something which is not mortal. So he, according as we find him cited by Fernelius in the place before quoted; and so much for the honour of Physicians in order to this truth.  
Our next authority is that of Apollonius Tyaneus that famous Pythagorean Philosopher, whose life Philostratus Lemnius hath writ at large, and amongst other accidents, l. 8. relates of him how, after his decease, he appeared to a young man a student in philosophy, resolving him as followeth. The soul is immortal, and no humane thing, but proceedeth from the providence divine. This therefore, after the body is corrupted, as a swift courser released from his bonds & delivered from a troublesome servitude, removeth up and down, and intermingles with the gentle ●ire. Thus he: to whom consenteth most expressly Hierocles in his commentary upon the golden verses of Pythagoras in sundry places, telling us that the the soul is not only incorruptible, but also made immediately, not by procreation, but the hand of God. See him of the Greek and Latin edition of Paris pag. 101. 103, 132.  
Seneca the famous Stoics mind may be learned easily out of his three several consolatory Tractates; namely, to Polybius, Helvia and Martia, and Epist. 121. as also out of other places wheresoever occasion was given. His words to Martia be these. Mobilis & inquieta mens homini data est, etc. A mind, saith he, restless and unquiet is given unto man, and no wonder, if we look up unto the first Original; it is no concretion of any dull or earthly body, but descendeth from a spirit celestial, is to be in motion incessantly: it flieth and is carried on with a swift course, etc. Thus he, out of whose words we may gather three things; first, that the soul is from above, and not by any natural generation. Secondly, that it is immortal. Thirdly, that after once it is released from corporeal Organs, it acts continually, and never sleepeth.  
I will add to these the words of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, commonly called Aurel. de vita sua l. 4. n. 13. according to Merick Casaubon's division. If souls, saith he, remain, how from all eternity could the air hold them, or how the earth retain their bodies? As here the bodies after they have line a while within the earth are changed, and being dissipated, leave space for other carcases; so souls carried up into the air, after they have been there some time, whether kindled or liquefied, are conjoined to the common 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, that is, unto the original mind, or great soul of the world. Thus he, as if he had said with Solomon, the spirit returns to God that made it; for the great soul of the Universe, or the original mind of all, is nothing else. Horace consenteth, saying, Melior pars nostri vitabit libitinam. and Tacitus in vit. Jul. Agric. Siquis piorum manibus locus, sive, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguuntur magnae animae, placide quiescas. If to the spirits of the pious there be any place remaining, if, as wise men do conceive, great souls be not together with their bodies extinguished, mayest thou rest in peace. To these Ovid subscribeth Metamor. l. 15. Morte carent animae, etc. Souls be exempt from death, & l. ult.  
Cum volet ille dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus  
Jus habet, incert● spatium mihi finiat aevi:  
Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis  
Astra ferar nomenque erit indelebile nostrum,  
Come when it will my Death's uncertain hour,  
Which of this body only hath a power;  
Yet shall my better part transcend the sky,  
And my immortal name shall never die.  
Some may here imagine that this same immortality of the better part mentioned by Horace and Ovid, is, according to them, nothing else but a neverdying fame: yet this cannot be, because fame, though never so lasting, is no part at all of us, neither better nor worse.  
The same doctrine is constantly taught by Pythagoras, as appears by his doctrine of Metempsychosis and Palingenesia, as also both Jamblichus and Porphyry in their several histories of his life do witness of him, as also Diogenes Lacrtius. Porphyr. l. de Abstinentia is also of the same opinion.  
I conclude this Jury with the judgement of Macrobius, who c. 14. in somnium Scipionis, after he had recited sundry and differing fancies of several Philosophers touching the nature of the soul, concludes as followeth. Obtinuit tamen, non minus de incorporalitate ejus, quam de immortalitate sententia. Nevertheless, the opinion touching the incorporeity of the soul, as well as touching the immortality of it hath been prevalent. Against all these therefore it imports little that Dicaearchus Messenius a Peripatetic Philosopher and Scholar to Aristotle, or that Aristoxenus should, as Cicero relateth in the first of his Tusculans and in the second of his Academics, hold and defend it to be mortal, or that both he, and, as Cicero reporteth out of him, another more ancient Philosopher, by name Pherecrates, one of the lineage of Deucalion, did think there was no soul at all, neither in man nor beast. And forasmuch as concerneth the same Dicaearchus, we read in Sextus Empiricus and Tertullian, l. 2. Hypot. c. 5; as also in Job. Fr. Picus of Mirandula, l. de Doctrine, vanit. Genti●●●, c. 14. he was of the same opinion: for there is nothing so absurd which some one Philosopher or other hath not maintained. Sextus Empiricus was of the same mind also, as he l. adv. Mathematices acknowledgeth.  
As for Epicurus and his associates, they cannot be admitted to give sentence here, and therefore their adverse judgement is not prejudicial to our cause. First, because the common Epicureans were slaves to voluptuousness and vice, using Philosophy only as a cloak wherewith to palliate their enormities. Secondly, because they themselves are guilty persons, and that in a high manner also; for although, as Tostatus in Genes. determineth, the right Epicureans were men of great gravity, yet they offended grossly against the light of nature in sundry passages of Philosophy concerning the highest verities. Moreover, though Petrus Gassendus in his late voluminous tractates De vita & Philosophia Epicuri, hath freed Epicurus from many foul objections and imputations, and with much labour hath washed him, and wrung him, and perfumed him; yet many stains do rest behind, which with all his art he was not able to fetch out; neither could he sweeten him so fully, but that he smells still of the hogge-sty, and that also so strongly, as he is not fit to enter into the Senate-house of Philosophy, or to have a voice therein allowed him. What was the occasion of his error is needless to examine, but the error itself, and the reasons brought for it by Lucretius, are exactly refuted by the same Gassendus, as also his other impious doctrines.  
Neither, again, can the words of Pomponatius and Cromoninus be of any weight, although they be men much adored by some superstitious followers of Aristotle; for if we consider these two men attentively, we shall find them to be wooden Idols, because their chief talon lay only in canvasing several texts of Aristotle, and, foot by foot, tracing out his senses and ways of discoursing: so that, in fine, they are rather Commentatous than Philosophers a Philosopher's office being to prove his doctrines by reason and strength of argument, which way these two never take; but yet doubtless would have done, if their habilities had served them for it. Wherefore these men are of too low a class to be made Judges here, and have not law enough in them for the deciding of the controversy in hand.  
After these Philosophers of name, which I have alleged as favourers and asserters of immortality, I produce the whole companies of the Esseni, the Druids, the Magis, the Gymnosophists, the brahmin's, all which were tribes and Schools of selected spirits, that in several ages and regions did profess Philosophy, and all subscribed to this one truth, as we may find in Pliny, Caesar, Josephus, Solinus, Mela, Philostratus, Diodorus, Porphyrius, and others. Neither can it be any prejudice to the authority of all these, that during the night of Gentilism, an Epicurus, or a Dicaearchus, though men of note, should stumble and fall into an error: but now after the sun is up, it were a great shame for a Pomponatius, or a Cremoninus to fall into a ditch, and teach such doctrine as the wisest of the most early ages judged to be erroneus and absurd.  
But now, by the way, I note how sublimely most of these heathen wise men did Philosophise, when as they conclude the souls original to be from heaven, and how much above the low pitch of certain depressed spirits of this age, who after their continual poring into objects material, and raking in the mud of corruptible things, will needs draw out of that dirt the nobler substances of our souls and natures intellectual, by assigning for them no more perfect principle then generation; of which number this sorry Author, against whom we now deal, is one, yea and one also of the grossest that ever meddled about this business, as by his demeanour in it doth appear. Hierocles in express terms determines saying, It seems, saith he, that God himself produced the several souls of every particular man, and left the souls of Beasts to be produced by the hand of nature, according to the judgements of Plato and of Timaeus the Pythagorean. So he come. in caerm. aurea Pythagorae pag: 133. of the Greek and Latin Edition of Paris Anni 1583.  
I know well, that amongst these ancients the word Anima, or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, is equivocal, because sometimes it is taken only for an exhalation of purer blood, sometimes again for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, men's, or Animus, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, by which words the ruling, the spiritual, and intellective, and lastly, the immortal part of man is signified; and not any material, or fading exhalation, which here by the way I note, for the avoiding of exceptions and mistake.  
Let us come now unto our Author, who would gladly father upon Aristotle, Nemesius, and Ambrose Paraeus, that the soul is all the external and internal faculties of man jointly considered. Which charge is strange seeing it is well known that Aristotle defines the soul after no such way, but saith it is Actus corporis Organici, and a substance by which we live, have sense, and do understand; and if a substance, then can it not receive intention and remission, as every young Logician hath learned.  
The ancient and learned writer Nemesius, whom the adversary allegeth, doth no way favour him. First, because, at that time both he and sundry others did hold that rational souls were created before their bodies; but the faculties organical and external, could not be then created. Secondly, because l. de natura hom. c. 1. he delivers doctrine diametrically opposite to that for which this Author doth allege him. Moreover, saith Nemesius, the soul is a substance, because susceptible of contrarieties; it is a subject, but harmony a quality. Now substance and quality be things distinct, and therefore the soul from harmony: and though it may have harmony in it, yet is it not therefore any harmony, no more than it is a virtue therefore because it is partaker of virtue. Galen determines nothing of this point, witnessing in his book the Demonst. that he hath affirmed nothing of the soul: yet that he doth say showeth him inclinable to judge it to be a temperature therefore, because the difference in manners does follow it, and this he labours to confirm out of Hypocrates. If this be so, then doubtless he holds it to be mortal, though not all, but so much only of it as is devoid of reason, for of that portion of it he in these words makes a question ...... But, that the soul cannot be a complexion, or temperature of the body, it appeareth hence, namely, because every body, etc. Hitherto Nemesius, whose doctrine as we may see is flatly opposite to the Adversaries.  
His pretention to Ambrose Paraeus, a late writer of Chiturgery, is as wide from the mark as this other before of Nemesius was, as may appear plainly by the perusal of c. 5. l. 1. & c. 11. l. 23. wherein his doctrine is very good, and also consonant to that which is delivered commonly, and we here defend. Wherefore let us now hear further.  
All the faculties of man are mortal, as well those peculiar to man, as those other which are common to him with beasts: and if all those with his corpulent matter completing man be proved mortal, than the invention of the soul upon that ground vanisheth, which thus I prove.  
All elementary compositions or temperatures are mortal. But man's faculties, à minore ad majus, are temperatures. Ergo mortal.  
The minor is denied, namely that all man's faculties be temperatures; for, to instance, neither the understanding nor the will be temperatures, and yet are principal faculties of man.  
He proves the minor. That which is subject to intention and remission is a temperature.  
But such are all man's faculties, yea those of reason, consideration, science etc. All that distinguisheth man from beast is augmented by learning, education, etc. lessened by negligence, idleness; and quite nullified by madness. Ergo.  
Of this kill argument there be but two propositions fall, that is to say, both the major and the minor of it, and then what kind of conclusion it hath we may easily judge. For first, it is false that every thing is a temperature, universally speaking, which is subject to intention and remission, excepting such things only as be subject unto them per se and by their own nature, and not by accident only: and this appears in the very business now in agitation between us; for a greater clerk than this man is, will hardly ever prove that the augment or diminution, which is found in the acts of knowledge, do arise from any internal alteration in the intellective faculty, and not contrariwise from the difference, advantage, and alteration in the organ, or the species and forms intentional: for this reason therefore, a man may understand better than a child, namely, not because his faculty intellective is better than a child's, but only for betterness in the organ; also a learned man better than an illiterate, and a diligent than a negligent, because those may have acquired more species, or forms intentional, or else have kept them better than these other that be illiterate and negligent, and not for any intention or remission in the faculty. This I say may be the reason of the difference, and is likely so to be, and not any variation in the faculty itself, notwithstanding any thing which this Author hath said; and therefore this proof of his is defective and of no validity.  
In the same sense we deny the minor also: for it does not follow that the faculties rational be more or less, because the acts of it be more or less, in regard that there may be more causes than one of this intention or remission, as namely, the different perfection of the organ, as well as the several measure of the faculty itself. Wherefore it belongeth to this Author to prove that this ebbing or flowing of acts of knowledge, is to be referred to the soul's or understanding's wanings and increases, and not to the differences of the organs; which thing since he faileth to do, his argument can by no means conclude, or be admitted as good.  
He argueth again. Temperature is a quality. A quality may be absent without the destruction of the subject. Reason and understanding may be so: therefore they are temperatures, or qualities, and not substances immortal. The minor is proved by example of madness, falling sickness, etc.  
In answer, First, I deny it to follow, that because Reason is a quality, therefore it is a temperature, for there be many qualities which neither are temperatures nor belong unto them, because no other qualities belong to temperature, but only such as be elementary.  
Secondly, I deny absolutely that reason or understanding can be absent without the destruction of the soul, or of man. I know the act of reason may be absent, and the effluence of it hindered, more or less, as in infants, mad men, a poplectick persons, and such like, but still the root remains, and without death cannot be removed. Hence I infer against this Author, that although sundry actual intellections may be improved, or impaired by sense, yet the radical cannot, but is wholly independent. Nay further, even some acts of the soul are in the manner of working independent of the body, and wholly inorganical, as divers learned Authors have showed.  
Some old authors have ascribed to the soul a body Aethereal; but that itself was a body Aerial or Elementary, I conceive none of them ever yet affirmed. What that obscure writer saith whom he calleth Woolnor, I neither know nor regard, for he is no classical Author, nor hath any voice allowed him in the Philosopher's Parliament.  
The several absurdities: which afterwards this Author labours to infer, do not follow out of the doctrine of immortality, but only out of his own mistakes, erroneous and ignorant conceptions, and therefore he may take them all home to himself, which to do, I know it must be to his great loss; for throughout his whole book he swarms so much with this kind of vermin, as they eat up all the substance of his undertake and discourse.  
He addeth. Every form depends of the matter, and by separation perishes. But we must tell him that this is false doctrine and can never be proved. If it were not so, saith he, than one might be generated without the other, a soul without a body, and a woman be brought to bed of a spirit.  
I answer, That an immortal soul cannot at all be generated; as first, being by itself and its own nature ingenerable; and secondly, having no principle here on earth, either material or efficient, that is able to beget it, all agents created in this kind being impotent, as afterwards we intent to show against this Author, as also against Sennertus, Religio Medici, and some others.  
What reason is there, saith he, man's and beasts Anatomy being both considered and compared together, that man's faculties in a higher degree should be an immortal spirit, more than beasts in a lower degree, but both elementary and finite?  
For the finiteness we grant you that both are finite, but not both elementary, or mortal: and this we collect not from the Anatomy, but from the operations, by which we do collect not a gradual difference betwixt the two souls bestial and humane, but an essential. 
See Aquinas l. 2. contr. Gent. c. 66. & Ferrariensis, ibid.  So that call it reason which is in beasts, or call it what you will that reason which is in man is essentially superior unto it: and if that of beasts be reason, then doth man's reason deserve another better term whereby to signify the essential pre-eminence of it, as Campanellae himself acknowledges in divers works of his, and proves in his Metaphysics at large. We know that bordering nations do a little symbolise in their natures, but yet are not therefore the same: so then, albeit the highest of vegetables, as the herba viva, or the Agnus Tartaricus (if there be such a plant) and the Zoophyta, have some resemblance to creatures of sense, yet nevertheless are they different from them, and the Zoophyta themselves belong only to one class or other, and not to both. So, in like sort, although the most perfect of animals have acts of sensation that something resemble the apprehensive, discursive, and judging faculties of man, yet are they wholly and essentially distinct. Wherefore, as some erroneously may imagine, the sense in beasts is not a weak or imperfect reason; nor again, in man is reason a strong and perfect sense, for these two faculties be wholly different even in one and the same man, as manifestly appeareth, First, by the several degrees of subordinate perfections found in creatures, which perfections, whensoever extant in several sorts of creatures, be specifically, or essentially distinct; as namely, the degree of vegetation is distinguished from that other next inferior to it in all things that be destitute of life; & so again, is the degree superior of sensation from the inferior of vegetation: wherefore in like sort, & in proportion to these, we are to think that the degree of reason, though never so imperfect, is essentially distinct from that of sense, though never so perfect, and is superior unto it. As than it would be no small absurdity for us to confound the confining degrees of life and no life, sense and vegetation; so also would it be to confound sense and reason, and to allow between them a difference no greater than accidental secundum magis & minus. Secondly, the same appeareth by the different objects of either faculty; Reason, for example, is sensible of religion, of spirits, of future times, of shame, of compassion; but Brutes have no sense at all of these, no feeling of them, neither more nor less, neither perfect nor imperfect. But if the degrees of sense and reason differed only accidentally, that is to say, according to greater or less gradual perfection, and no more; then would it follow that whatsoever reason apprehends perfectly, sense also would apprehend, at least imperfectly, in one degree or other; which seeing sense does not, we may safely infer from thence, that reason is essentially different from sense, and again, that sense is not an imperfect reason, but contrariwise no reason at all, perfect nor imperfect.  
Again, we see that Reason bridles Sense, and, like a shore, confines it, and therefore Reason and Sense are no more one thing, than the Bridle and the Horse or then the Shoar and the Ocean. Of which point more may be seen in Aquinas & his Commentatour Ferrariensis l. 2. cont. Gentes c. 66.  
Thirdly, the same also doth appear out of the contrariety and disagreement which we daily do experience betwixt the two judgements of reason and sense, as also between the two appetites sensual and rational, and the great repugnancy we find between them throughout our whole life, and by the great business and sharp conflicts which are caused thereby, much to our cost and labour.  
The opposition betwixt the indication of sense and the judgement of reason is evident: because the sense, for example, judgeth the sun's diameter to be but a span; reason here opposeth, and concludeth it to be much greater than the diameter of the whole earth. Infinite other examples might be given, but this one may suffice for all.  
The disagreement of the two appetites, and how they draw several ways, and torture the heart of man, is evident, First, by every man's experience; Secondly, by the suffrages of the Genes. Ovid brings in Medea complaining tragically in these words, Metamorph. l. 17. 
— Aliudque cupido,  
Mens aliud suadet. Video melioraproboque,  
Deteriora sequor,  
A new-felt force my striving powers invades,  
Affection this, discretion that persuades.  
I see the better and approve it too,  
The worse I follow.  Seneca in Hippolyto accords, 
Quae memoras scio  
Vera esse, Nutrix, sed furor cogit sequi, etc.  
Good Nurse, thy counsel I confess is true,  
But forced by fury, I the worst pursue.   
The writings of Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Hierocles, and other Philosophers, abound with the doctrine of making resistance against passions and the unruly appetitions of the body.  
Aristotle l. 1. Ethic. c. ult. & l. 7. c. 23. The pleasures, saith he, of the mind be repugnant to those of the body, and those actions which delight the mind are praeternatural to the body. So he. The same lesson is taught us by the Author of Pythagoras his life extant in the Bibliotheca of Photius. Wherefore, saith the Author, we being made up of various faculties, do lead a toilsome life and incommodious, forasmuch as every other creature is governed by one simple nature, but we by several, which natures do draw ways contrary to one another; as namely, we are sometimes moved to the better by that within us which is divine; but at other fits, the portion irrational being predominant, we are overwrought unto the worse.  
But admit, say you, all this is so, yet it proves no peculiar perfection in man above that of other creatures of sense, because this same contrariety of appetites is common to him with brute beasts, for example, it is found in a dog, which, having an appetite to a piece of meat, dares not touch it for fear of blows; lo then, here is one appetite of eating and another contrary unto it, which is, of keeping his bones whole, which later being the greater, crosses the former, and makes him to refrain.  
I answer, by denying that here is any contrariety between those two appetites, but only an accidental inconsistency between the objects of them, which hinders him at that time from satisfying of them both: no contrariety, I say, because one of them does not oppose directly, or condemn the other, for he both likes the meat, and likes also the saving of his skin harmless, just as a man thievishly disposed likes to steal a horse, and likes also the keeping of his person safe from the severity of the laws; in which case the dog and the thief are much at one, both of them being disposed like beasts: but now with an honest and rational man it is fare otherwise, for, as with one appetite he is incited to the stealing of the horse, so with another he disapproves it, and condemns it as an act unjust and irrational; and herein consists the difference of these appetites from the former. So, in fine, although the objects of the appetites, such as beasts and bestial men do covet, might be consistent, as many times they may, as for example, that a man may both steal a horse which he likes, and also escape the law, which to do he likes as well; yet, nevertheless, the rational appetite would contradict and countermand the theft, as an act irrational and unjust.  
Lastly, the Holy Scripture is plentiful in this argument. The Spirit, saith our Blessed Saviour, is willing, but the Flesh is weak. And his Disciples advise, Walk ye in the Spirit, and the desires of the flesh you shall not fulfil. The spirit coveteth against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit. I find in my members a law leading me captive unto sin. I do not that which I will, etc. Mark 14.38. Gal. 5.17. Rom. 7.22.23. Also Rom. 7.21. I am delighted with the law of God according to the interior man, but in my loins I see another law repugnant to the law of God, and captivating me in the law of sin. Yea, so apparent was this disagreement, as that Galen. l. 5. de dogmat. Hippoc. thought they could not subsist in one and the same soul, and therefore concludes, that in man there must be two different souls: and into this same error afterwards fell the Manichees, as S. Augustine testifieth. l. de duab. Animab. & l. 1. Retractat. c. 9 Which erroneous believers deduced also falsely, that there were two first principles, or Gods, one of them good, the other bad; that from the good the rational soul proceeded, and from the bad the sensual; from one the appetites of good, from the other the desires of evil. Pythagoras, Aristotle, Julianus, Augustus, etc. do all note this contrariety of desires in man, but none do note the same to be in beasts; for even Plutarch in his Gryllus doth observe the contrary.  
Thus we see what opposition reason finds in man from sense: but reason cannot be contrary unto itself, nor doth it struggle and strive with its own powers and dictamen: and therefore it is a different power from sense. And so much in answer to this chapter, omitting the particular examination of his other inferences of absurdities, as he calls them, against the doctrine of immortality, because either they are answered beforehand in that which hath been said already, or else are such wretched fluff as they can afford no matter for any sensible answer, or serious undertaking.   

CHAP. V Arefutation of certain shifting Answers given unto sundry Texts of holy Scripture.  
THe first place 2 Cor. 5.6.8. where Saint Paul declareth, that while we are present, or at home 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, in the body, we are absent from our Lord; but he desireth rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with our Lord.  
Out of this it may be inferred, not that immediately after death we all shall be present with God, and attain to glory, as this Author idly objecteth; but that during the time of our absence from the body, we may be present with Christ and enjoy God, whether this be immediately after death, or no, about which point we do not now contend.  
His answer is, that the Apostle speaks not of the interim betwixt Death and the last Judgement, but of the state of the Resurrection.  
This Gloss of his corrupts the Text, for the state of the Resurrection is not the state of separation, or separated souls; but the Apostle speaks plainly and expressly of absence or peregrination from the body, which is the state of separation, during which state, he might (as he saith) be present with Christ. I do not deny, but that in the precedent and subsequent Texts he may speak also of the Resurrection; but it does not therefore follow, that he speaks of that state only: and as for his words, they clearly bear witness to the contrary; therefore after death, and before any reunion with the body the soul remaineth. And by this clear sense his second shift is taken away, whereby he seeks to elude a like place of the same Apostle, Phil. 1.23, 24.  
Gen. 35.18. It is said of a woman, that her soul was departing: therefore there was such a thing as a soul that continued after death.  
He answers, that the meaning was, she died. Be it so, yet the words do not import that only; but besides, that this dying of hers was by the departing of her soul from her body, and not by the perishing or destruction of the soul departing. For example, when we say, The enemy is departed from such or such a place, we do not mean, he is slain, but only gone, and do intimate that he is still alive. She could not die, saith he, if her soul were living. This is both false and also absurd, for it was not the living of her soul which made her live, but the being of it living within her body, and the informing of it with the same: as then this presence and union of a living soul made her live, so on the contrary side, the taking away of this presence and dissolving this union must make her die; to which effect the living of her soul afterward, or the dying of it, was a business impertinent; for whether it after lived or died, it being once separated, she was dead and remained no woman any longer; for the soul of a man or woman, is not a man or woman, though indeed the Platonics, together with Cicero, Macrobius, and Hierocles, not knowing any thing of the Resurrection and of glorified bodies, yet being sure that man was to remain and be rewarded after death, they knew not how to defend this truth without their holding an error, viz. that the soul only was the man, and the body but as a prison of it: but Aristotle he was wiser than to think so, for he defined man, not Anima rationalis, but Animal rationale; and this Doctrine is truly Christian and Philosophical, taught expressly by Marcus Varro apud Augustinum lib. 19 de Civit. dei cap. 3. His choice of the three opinions is, saith S. Augustine of Varro, that man is neither soul alone, nor body alone, but body and soul together; and therefore that the supreme good of man, which is to make him happy, consists in the goods of both, that is to say of soul and body; and by Saint Athanasius in his Creed, Anima rationalis & caro unus est homo, 
Aquinas 1. p.q. 75. c. 4.  A reasonable soul and flesh is one man; and by Saint Methodius Bishop of Olympus in Lycia, and afterwards of Tyrus, in excerptis apud Photium Cod. 224. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. A man according to nature is most truly said to be, neither a soul without a body, nor yet a body without a soul, but a compound of them both joined together in one form and beauty. Thus he; with whom consenteth the Prince of Roman Historians Crispus Salustius l. de Bello Jugurth. Nam uti genus hominum compositum ex corpore et anima est, etc. For as the race of man is compounded of body and soul, etc. All these according with Aristotle, who would not feign false principles for the avoiding of true difficulties, which he could not solve, though now they dissolve of themselves, the Article of the Resurrection and of glorified bodies having been revealed to us, which before was Mysterium à seculis absconditum, A mystery hidden from the beginning of the world.  
But after all this light, some men's eyes, it seems, were dazzeled with it, and by name John Wicliffes, who, as we may see in Waldensis tom. 1. l. 1. ar. 2. c. 33. & 34. adhered still to the false opinion of Plato concerning the souls being the whole man, and also stood stiffly in the defence thereof; his reasons for it are examined, and effectually impugned by the same Waldensis in the places cited. Dicaearchus, an ancient Peripatetic, ran into another extreme, holding that man was nothing else but body, and that he had no soul at all, neither mortal nor immortal; which gross error of his needed no confutation, but was hissed out of the schools as an open and manifest falsehood. Besides, if it had not been manifestly false, yet needed it no other confutation than those arguments by which the immortality thereof is proved to be a truth, because according to the received old Maxim, Rectum est index sui et obliqui.  
The rest of the Authors evasions of this nature are forestalled and prevented by this that hath been answered already, and so without any more ado about them, may be dismissed.  
Fear not them, saith Christ, who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Therefore when the body is killed, the soul is not, neither can man kill it; and why, I pray you, but because it is immortal? This objection can never be solved, neither will all his trifling about the signification of the word Hell, serve his turn; for let Hell be what it will, and where it will, yet still it runs, that the soul cannot be killed. But, what the true and formal signification of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is, we way find expressly declared by Eustathius in 1. Iliad. and Anastasius Sinaita, quaest. 90. contrary to the dreams of this man: and in particular, that formally it does not signify the Grave; and if it did, yet it could be no place for souls that remained unkilled and quick, for it were a very cruel course to bury souls alive, or to cast them quick into the grave. Moreover, that there is no Hell before the Resurrection, is more than he hath proved, or any other for him or else that none shall see God till then, even in the mean time; abstracting from the controversy that is agitated betwixt the Schismatic Greeks on the one side, and the Orthodox Greeks and Latins on the other; for the most schismatical Greeks did not deny Hell or Heaven before the day of judgement, but only that till then neither all men nor devils were made happy in the one, or tormented in the other: for the Schismatics themselves acknowledge that the Martyrs have the prerogative of the first Resurrection, that is to say, that they are happy before the Resurrection of their bodies, and before the rest of the just; or, which in substance is all one, they are admitted into Heaven, and to the clear vision of God; or again, whether or no they will allow the vision of God to be the happiness of the blessed, yet felicity is Heaven wheresoever it is, or in whatsoever good thing it consists; and again, eternal torments appointed for the reprobate be truly a Hell, whether it be in the centre of the earth, or else in some other region.  
This day saith Christ unto the Thief, thou shalt be with me in Paradise; but not in body, therefore in soul alone, and therefore also his soul still lived after his bodies dying. He answers, that Christ himself was not in Paradise that day. But this is a foppery, for though Christ's humanity was three nights and days in the lower parts of the earth, yet his Divinity was that day every where; and besides his soul was happy still, and carried its Paradise along with it; so that the good Thief might be with Christ that day, and be in Paradise also, as the sacred text doth assure us he was.  
Christ said, Luke 22. Father into thy hands I commend my spirit. And Steven Acts 7. said, Lord Jesus receive my spirit. But if the spirit died, there was nothing to be received.  
He answers, that his spirit was his life. This shift was frivolous, for his life was to be lost and destroyed, and so was not commended into the hands of any.  
Apoc. 6.10, 11. I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, etc. and they cried with a loud voice, etc. Therefore they were then extant and alive, or else they could not have been seen, nor cry. But it is certain that one impiety cannot be defended without more, and therefore as formerly, he depraves the Scripture, saying, not with the Scripture, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, The souls of the slain, or of the men slain: but with such miscreants as himself, The slain souls; and that they cried, but like the blood of Abel. But if it were meant no otherwise then thus, the bodies might then have cried also as well as the souls. The Text saith, it was the souls of the slain, and if the souls also had been slain, the Text would not have uttered it in that manner as now it doth; for it were an impertinent manner of speaking to talk of the souls of the slain, if the souls had been slain and dead, as well as the bodies.  
The other places, as that of Ecclesiastes, I have urged, as also the other of the Apostle, who desired to be dissolved that he might be with Christ: and this later I have enforced so fare, as I suppose it convinces and is unanswerable, as the rest also are. Behold here by example of this poor silly man, how bold and saucy ignorance is grown since the time that darkness fell upon the face of the earth; for, is not this, with Simon Magus, Acts 13.10. of set purpose to pervert the right ways of our Lord, and to thrust men headlong into perdition? But setting complaints aside, which even when they are necessary be not grateful, let us examine the later remnants of this Authors follies, and so leave him, if it may be, to repentance for them, yet first take into consideration some other verityes which concern this argument.   

CHAP. VI The rational Soul of man ingenerable and incorruptible.  
WE have seen already that, by the consent of the wisest of all times and nations, the rational soul is not subject to corruption, and that it hath not a period of time assigned it beyond which it must not pass; nor that it may simply leave to be, and be annihilated as it were by the principles of nature itself, they not requiring any longer conservation from the beneficence of the first cause; but contrariwise to be deserted by it, as a late Author vainly, and without any probability at all, imagined; much according to the old fantasy of the Stoics, who, as Cicero l. 1. Tusc. not without indignation and signs of derision, rehearseth, Vsuram nobis largiuntur, tanquam cornicibus; diù mansuros aiunt animos, semper negant: They allow us a date, as they do to Crows; they grant our souls shall continue long, but that for ever they deny it: dealing in like manner with Souls, as some did with Oracles, whose silence they ascribe to no other cause than impotency of speaking any longer, the spirit that fed them exspiring of itself, as being wasted and consumed with age. One would judge, saith Cicero, these men spoke not of Oracles, but of falsedges, which by long keeping would grow unsavoury and stolen. Certainly, these that judge thus of Souls and spiritual substances make an estimate of them, as they would do of trees, whose timber is of several solidity and duration: as if some of them were like Cedar wood, or Oak, which would last long; others as Chesnut, or Elm, which be not of so long continuance; others again like Ash, or Maple, which rot within a while. This is light Philosophy, worthy of derision more than confutation, and is a device not acknowledged by our Authors before alleged, who give no limitation to the life of souls, but determine absolutely a perpetuity. For my part, before such time as I can assent to their Philosophy in this point, I desire to be satisfied by them what reason they can show, why the first cause should at a certain date of years withdraw his preservative, or conservative influence, and why the same influence is not still as formerly to be continued, or what exigence of nature there is, or may be, which shall make the difference. I grant them that in compounded bodies a Philosophical reason may be given of such an alteration, because it may fall out that the natural impugnation of them by the a gency of second causes for their corruption, or dissolution, may require such a revolution of influx. Also the same may be allowed for the set time of desition of accidents permanent, then whensoever they come to be deserted by the subjects which gave them their support; which thing may happen to them, either by the dissipation of those substances, or else by the violence of some external agent that shall dislodge them. In accidents that be fluent, and by nature successive, a reason also may be rendered why they should continually cease to be, and besides, at a certain term or period, exspire for altogether. But yet, why substances incompounded & by nature permanent, such as naturally cannot be corrupted, nor perish by dissolution, of which sort all Intelligences be & all other substances intellectual, as, namely, the rational souls, why they, I say, should have a fatal hour assigned them, & then require to be annihilated and forsaken by the sovereign first cause, these new Philosophers have not yet told us, much less, why it should be so without any requiring on their part, or any natural exigence for it. Wherefore, leaving these light fancies to the Authors of them, we say with the Poet, 
His ego nec metas rerum, nec temporapono:  
Imperium sine fine dedi, etc.  
To these no limits I intent,  
But grant an Empire without end.  Of which point see more in our learned Carleton, alias, Compton.  
Without doubt that soul which hath withstood and survived the violent assaults of Death then when it was rend from the body and forced to surrender that beloved Fort, there can be no suspicion that it should fail afterwards, grow old with time, decay and come to nothing, and all this without any other force. Besides, if the soul be of a simple uncompounded nature, as intellectual substances be, then can it not dissolve, or, which is all one, perish by corruption. Wherefore if the principles of nature, whereby the soul is constituted, admit of no desition nor ending by corruption, there can be no reason given why these by exigence of nature should not require to be continually sustained in their being by conservation from the first cause, and much less, why at such or such a point of time or age, they should require to be forsaken, and by the withdrawing of the first causes benevolence, to return unto their first nothing. Wherefore I account these conceits of mortality and airy possibilities of desition, to be unworthy of any further examination, but rather to be rejected, as inventions of contentious and sophistick brains, that love to entangle all right threads of discourse, and to obscure those lights which lead men unto truth.  
Having seen all this in favour of an immortality of the soul, let us now behold as uniform and favourable a consent of the ancient Sages for the divine original of the same, and not humane by procreation, as our impious Author labours to maintain. Salluste, the Greek Philosopher, in the place before alleged out of him, speaks plainly, and tells us it cannot be produced by generation. Manilius derives its pedigree from heaven, as we have heard out of him already, which he elsewhere confirmeth, saying, 
Stetit unus in arcem  
Erectus capitis, victorque ad sidera mitt it  
Sidereos oculos, propiusque adspect at Olympum,  
Inquiritque Jovem; nec sola fronte Deorum  
Contentus manet, & coelum scrutatur in alto,  
Cognatumque sequens corpus se quaerit in astris.   
Cicero in Som. Scip. determineth, saying, His animus datus est ex sempiternis illis ignibꝰ quae sydera & stellas vocatis quae rotundae & globosae divinis animatae mentibus etc. Marcus Antoninus seems to draw men's particular souls from the great and common soul of the world; and the Gentiles in general do acknowledge them to have a celestial original by the received fable of Prometheus. who composing the bodies of men of clay or earthly substance, is feigned to have stolen fire from heaven wherewith to animate and inform those bodies; signifying thereby that the fires of earthly furnaces were not sufficient for so excellent a work.  
The Philosophers of later times are for the major part of them against the production of souls by procreation; amongst the rest, Laevinus Lemnius. l. 1. de Occultis nature Miraculis, c. 11. speaks much after the manner of some Heathens before alleged, calling the soul scintillam divinae mentis; which is a high expression, yet not meaning (as literally it seems) that it is any particle of the Deïty, or any substance increated, but denoting only the sublimity of it, and that the original is not from the earth. With him agreeth the great speculatour, Jeannes Argenterius med. ad. 1. Aphor. Hippoc. The famous Fernelius l. 1. de Abditis rerum causis, c. 5, & 7. declaring that the cause of all forms in general is from heaven. Andrew Laurentius, l. 1. Anat. c. 1. teacheth in express terms that the reasonable soul is not generated, but created. The same doctrine is confirmed by Zacutus Lusitanus, one of the most famous & able Physicians of this time, who tom. 1. oper. l. 5. Medic. Princ. Histor. hist. 3. q. 3. doth in this behalf open himself very fully, and giveth reasons also why the soul can be no other but a substance indeficient, or immortal. I omit the rehearsal of more votes, and come to inquire after the cause why it cannot be generated like other forms.  
In the head of this search I propound the doctrine of Cicero, who l. 1. Tuscul. hath laid the foundation of the truth; Animorum, inquit, in terris nulla origio inveniri potest, etc. No origine, saith he, of souls can be found on earth; for in the mind there is nothing that is mixed, nothing concreate or bred from out the earth, nothing which is humid, or aerial, or fiery: for in these natures there is nothing which hath the power of memory, of mind, or cogitation, which may retain things past, or provide for the future, and comprehend the present, which alone be things divine, neither is it ever to be found out how they might betid to man but from God only; Wherefore the nature and power of the mind is singular and different from these usual and known natures. For which cause whatsoever that is which apprehendeth, which is wise and willeth, and is vigorous, that same is heavenly and divine, and is of necessity eternal. So discoursed Cicero, and rightly also, if I be not mistaken.  
The pressing home of this argument will consist of three points or heads; First, from the nature of the soul itself, which seems to be an Entity not capable of being produced by generation; Secondly, from the nature of the things out of which it is to be educed; Thirdly, by the inability of those actions which are exercised in generation for the production of any spiritual substance, or intellective faculty, although the soul in itself were a thing producible, and that the elements might afford sufficient materials for the composing of it.  
For the first I argue thus; No entity which is simple and unmixed can be produced by generation: but such is the intellective part of man: therefore that part is not to be produced by generation; and if ingenerable, then is it incorruptible also. That it is simple and unmixed, needs no probation, because it is a thing wholly improbable that an intellective power or substance should be a temperature or mixture, as our Adversary conceived it to be; for though a temperature and mixture may remotely, or a fare off, concern understanding, in as much as they belong unto the Organs, yet is not an intellective Entity therefore a compound or a bodily temperature, as by and by we are further to declare.  
That no simple Entity is producible by generation is evident, because the effect or terminus of that action is the composition or compound, which thing it performeth not by producing the Entity of the parts, but by making a substantial union between them, and by the making those several entities to be parts, which although they were before, yet were they not parts of that compounded body which by this newer generation did accrue. Besides, this is the clear and express doctrine of Aristotle in sundry places of his works.  
For the second head of probation, I affirm that no lumpish matter, or earthly concretion, can yield materials for the building up of an understanding or mind. Chemists by their curious arts of dissolving bodies, have found out salts, sulphur's, oils, spirits, quintessences, elixirs; they again can draw tinctures and magisteries, and out of metals, a vitriol which shall contain in it the essence of them, and have the virtue of transmutation of other metals into their own nature: but yet never any knew how to extract out of them any one dram of understanding, or to fill the least vial with it; nor could they ever find metal or oar which contained wit and understanding in it. Arnoldus de villa nova, as Mariana recounteth in his Spanish story of Spain, attempted by mixtures and furnaces, to make a man; but his art failed him, and he was confounded; all his ingredients could not afford him an intellective spirit wherewith he might be animated and informed. You will say, Sense cannot be extracted any more than reason. True, but sense arising from things divisible may come by a resultancy from things united, as being material, which our reason, being immaterial, cannot, especially in the principal acts thereof, which be wholly inorganical, as by name the acts of judgement be touching objects immaterial, and à fortiori, all such of them as transcend the sphere of Nature. Cicero toucheth chiefly upon this point, and his argumentation seemeth to be very solid and irresistible, if pressed to the uttermost.  
The third head of argumentation is from the improportion and imbecility of the actions of humane generation. For first, the actions of vegetation and sense are of an inferior nature, and so unable to produce any thing higher and perfecter than themselves; and for this cause each entity is to be produced by actions that be of its own class and order; namely, per actiones congeneres & cognatas: therefore the soul if it were to be generated, could not be so otherwise than by actions of understanding, or of the intellective; but it is certain, that generation is not performed by acts of wit, or understanding, but contrariwise by acts of vegetation and sense, which actions be of an inferior degree; and a man generates with his body, and not with his mind; so that the generation of man is no more any act elicite of reason, than his eating or walking is, which actions be no acts of the understanding, though prescribed and directed by it. Now though the act of the divine understanding be subsistent, yet the acts of created understandings be only accidents; for such and no better is the verbum mentis in all created understandings, humane or Angelical, and therefore humane understandings beget no understandings, nor any children like themselves. It followeth then, that the soul neither generates a soul, nor again is generated by any, and for this cause must be incorruptible, and, by the principles of nature, immortal. By this it appeareth that the non-generation or traduction of the soul is a verity so evident, that by it the immortality may be proved, and it stands not in need to be itself proved by immortality. Besides all this, it is plain that every substance incorporal, being void of composition physical, hath no passive principles of corruption in it, and therefore is not susceptible of any physical generation, or corruption, nor is resolvable into parts: and this argument is urged by Scaliger excercit. 307. n. 20. Again, the soul hath no contrariety of qualities within it, nor is there any thing abroad which is contrary thereunto. I know well that many things may cease to be, and yet not by corruption, as for example, sundry sorts of accidents, and the souls of Beasts: but yet these are consequents of corruption; for therefore the soul, for example, of a Beast perishes, because the organical body which it inhabited was destroyed or corrupted; and again, therefore an accident ceased to be, because, by a corruptive action of a contrary agent, it was thrust out of doors, and had nothing left it whereupon to rest, no basis to sustain it any longer. And by this the argument of Petrus Molinaeus l. 9 Phys. c. 12. is answered, by which he laboured to infringe the ancient doctrine, namely, That every immaterial substance and incorporeal was incorruptible and immortal, and that, consequently, the soul of man being such a substance, could not be corrupted, or otherwise naturally cease to be: of which point see Merat. tom. 1. tract. de Ang. disp. 9 sect. 2. and Bagotius tom. 2. Instit. l. 1. disp. 4. c. 8. To tell us here, as some new masters do, that a spirit may be compounded of a certain spiritual matter and of a form thereunto correspondent, and that therefore every spiritual substance may not be simple, but, contrariwise, resolvable into parts essential, according as corporeal substances be, is to tell dreams and fancies of the night, instead of probabilities: and therefore, desiring them to dream again, and to enjoy their own imaginations, I leave them to their rest. But howsoever this new device of theirs might have some truth in Angels, which are complete substances, and abstracted from corporeal materiality, yet in the soul of man it could not, because the soul itself is a form & a substance incomplete, and therefore a prodigious thing it must needs be to make this form to consist of both form and matter, and so to compound man of one form and two matters, one spiritual and the other corporeal; yea and indeed, by admitting materiality in Angels, to make them less pure and simple than the souls of mortal men, which to do might seem to be a device, in reality, very simple. True it is that matter taken in a large sense, that is to say, for potentiality, and as contradistinguished to a pure actuality, may be admitted in spiritual substances; but yet this makes nothing for the dissolution of them into parts, or for corruptibility: of which kind of materiality or composition the learned school-Doctour Thomas de Argentina hath said enough to satisfy, 2. sent. d. 3. q. 1. Moreover, admit that, properly speaking, a spiritual matter were possible, because some few Doctors be of that opinion, and amongst the rest our countryman Mr. Thomas Carleton, alias Compton, in his Philosophy lately published, disp. 9 this opinion of theirs does not take away the force of the argument; first, because we are not to consider what opinion this or that man does hold, but, contrariwise, what he hath reason to hold; secondly, because if I hold this spiritual matter to be a thing implicatory and a fiction, or that my reader do also think the same, then, according to our judgements at the least, the argument is good and efficacious. Neither is it requisite that no argument should be produced, or be thought efficacious, save only such as in every Doctors judgement should be accounted such, and to be concluding; because then, perhaps, we should bring none, neither for this same verity of immortality, nor yet for any other: wherefore, although peradventure Scotus & his sub-Philosopher Pontius, or Arriaga or Carleton should not like of this or that argument, we are not therefore to reject it as not concluding, or as a proof that is not probable, or conducing to the decision of the point in hand. But of the impossibility and improbability of this composition of matter and form in spiritual substances, see more in Lud. Moeratius tom. 1. tract. de Angelis, disp. 3. For the neglecting therefore of shifting answers to the arguments usually brought in the behalf of immortality, the advice of Mr. Carleton is very prudent, who disp. 10. de Anima admonisheth, saying, In my judgement they do not discreetly, who go about to weaken arguments used to be brought by Philosophers and Divines for the soul's immortality; and might more fruitfully for the Christian Commonwealth have employed themselves in seeking to establish this doctrine, which is the foundation of virtue, then in picking quarrels at the arguments; for no reason is so strong, which by some shift may not be obscured.  
For, indeed, out of that which hath been delivered touching the non-traduction of the soul by any seminal way or principles of propagation, the deduction of the soul's incorruptibility will be a business very plain and easy, and this by virtue of a twofold consequence; the former of which is drawn from the soul's not generating, or active generation; the later from the not being generated, or passive generation.  
Touching the former it is clear, that whatsoever substance doth not generate, that same is immortal, even by Nature's universal provision and ordination; for as much as in all her works she affects one kind of perennity or other, that is to say, either a perpetuity of the individual, by an indeficient stability of the natural principles, or else at least in the species, by the intervention of generation and corruption: so that wheresoever there is no propagation or acts of generation assigned for the maintaining a secondary immortality in the species, there must of necessity be granted a primary and better immortality in the individuum. Hence it followeth, that because a man doth not generate with his mind, but with his body, therefore his body is corruptible in itself, and perpetual only in the species; and again, that his mind or soul is immortal in itself and subjected no way to corruption, not standing in need of any help or supplies from generation.  
Touching the later, it is manifest that every entity which is not produced by generation is not generable, and therefore not corruptible. That it is not generable we gather hence, because whatsoever entity is by nature generable, every such entity requires, as by a connatural way, to be produced by generation; as in like manner, every entity that is simple requireth, whensoever it is produced, to be produced by no other way but creation. By this it follows, that whatsoever is produced, and not by generation, is by Nature's laws ingenerable, and so by consequence incorruptible and immortal: But the mind or soul of man is produced, and not by generation: therefore it is an entity incorruptible. That it is not generated, hath been proved before, as also that it doth not generate: for a mind or rational Soul cannot generate nor be generated by any other agent than a rational Soul, nor by any other actions than acts of reason & understanding; by which acts since it procreates nothing which is like itself, nor intends to do it, the soul is neither generated, nor doth it generate, & therefore, according to the principles of being, and the laws of Nature, must be immortal & unsubject to death or desition, & not be in any possibility to be corrupted by the virtue of agents natural.  
The learned Sennertus, being moved by certain difficulties which he could not overcome, was very inclinable to think the Soul is generated, and that the seed itself from the beginning is animated with a humane Soul: 
Sennertus in Hypom. 4. c. 10.  but he together with Justus Lipsius reflecting upon the consent of Divines unto the contrary, doth with him religiously submit, and subscribe Pareamus, Let us obey. As for the said difficulties, I do not find them very urgent, but that they may conveniently be avoided, as we intent to show in the next Chapter.  
As for the reasons themselves which prove the immortality immediately without any dependency upon traduction from parents, or not traduction, they are often & plentifully exhibited, both by Philosophers & Divines; as namely, by Javel. l. de indificentia An. written by him at the earnest request of Pomponat. who was sorry for his former error & retracted it; by Scaliger Exer. 307. n. 20. by the Conimbricenses, Tract. de Anima separata; also briefly and pithily by Eustachius, Assellius à S. Paulo in summa Philosophiae. Renatus de Cartes in his Metaph. & his Principia Philosophica, and sundry others; and amongst Divines, by Albert. magnus 2. sent. d. 19 Antoninus in sum. by Aquinas in both his Sums, Raymund Sebunde in his Naturalis Theoloria. Barthol. Sibylla in Quaest. Peregg. Dec. 1. Lud. Vives l. de veritate fidei, Christ. Postellus in Concordia Orbis, Savonarola in Triumpho Crucis. Vellosillus Advertentiis in S. Aug. Greg. de Val. Tom. 1. Lessius l. de immort. Jo. Mariana, l. de morte & immort. Ferrariens. Philippus Faber, Collegium Complut. & others, especially Albertinus Tom. 1. Corol. & Alexander Valignanus apud Possevinum Tom. 1. Biblioth. Select. Thomas Carmelita l. 11. c. 12. the conversione Gentium, Bagotius tom. 2. Instit. d. 4. Menasseh Ben Israel, de Resurr. Mortuorum à c. 8. Zanchy de oper. Create. l. 2. c. 8. Fromundus l. 4. de Anima, Carleton in Philosophia tract. de Anima, q. 10. Morisanus in Philosophia tract. de Anima Quaest. 5. Petrus Gassendus tom. 1. de Philosophia Epicuri, where he musters up all the objections made by Lucretius, and confutes them: all which men of Learning did not only hold the reasonable Soul to be an immortal substance, but also that thus much might be proved of it by natural reason, Thom. Campanella in his Metaph. very copiously.  
This high preeminence in the Soul, of immortality, we trace out chief by the operations of it▪ as by so many steps which lead unto the knowledge thereof, because, according to the rule in Philosophy, sicut se habet res ad esse, sic ad operari, & sicut ad operari, sic ad esse. By the nature of any thing we may search out the operations, and again, by the operations, the nature. One of the chief operations of the soul is the act of understanding, by the indication of which we learn it to be immaterial, and again by the being so, not to be corruptible or dissolvable by any natural agent, or, which is all one, to be immortal. These acts or operations intellectual do by three ways prove the immortality. First, because they simply are intellectual. Secondly, because they terminate upon objects spiritual, and are apprehensive of them. Thirdly, because they fall even upon material objects after a manner immaterial.  
First, according to Aquin. 1. p. q. 14. a. 1. Valentia, ibid. Raynaud. Nat. Theol. d. 2. q. 2. a. 3. & Aquin. l. 10. con. Gent. c. 44. and others, no power or substance that is not devoid of matter can be intellectual, nor again, any object directly and immediately intelligible, which is not also immaterial; the reason is, because corporeity or matter darkens the power, and confines it to singularities. The words of Petrus de Aquila, called Scotellus 1. Sent. didst 35. q. 1. are very pertinent and these; By how much, saith he, any thing is freed from matter, by so much is it both objectively and also actively intelligible, because, according to Avicenna and Aristotle, Immateriality is the cause of Intellection. But God is the most remote from matter and therefore is the most of all intellective. Wherefore, since matter and corporeity are over-grosse to admit of intellection, and that the soul of man is intellective, it can be neither material, nor corporeal, but, contrariwise, of nature elevated above matter, that is to say, spiritual and incorruptible.  
Secondly, The soul doth not only understand mean objects, but the highest and the purest of all, that is to say, all objects spiritual, and God himself. I grant to Aureolus that the object and the power need not be alike in nature, and therefore it is no formal consequence, that because the object is spiritual, therefore the power must be so: but yet nevertheless, the material consequence is very good, because it is wholly necessary that the power intellective should be free from all those impediments of understanding, whether like or unlike, which are situate within the sphere of the object, or without it; and that moreover, as Pet. Aureolus 2. Sent. didst 19 himself confesses, there ought to be some resemblance or proportion between the object and the power, at least, quoad rationem cognoscentis & cognoscibilis: but between a material power and a spiritual object there is none; First, because the power is too low and gross: Secondly, because a spiritual entity is situate without the sphere or compass of the object; as for example, an Angel is quite without the compass of any eye corporeal, because he is such an object as is not visible, but intelligible only, that is to say, perceptible only by a power that is higher than any sense, and properly intellective, which the eye is not because material; and a spirit is therefore imperceptible to our sight, and beyond the lines of the object, because the object of the sight is colour, figure, magnitude, etc. none of which are in a spirit. And though, as Arriaga teacheth, in some kind a corporeal agent may act upon a spirit; for a body united to a soul, as it is in man, according as it is severally disposed, may transmit something upon the soul, cause alterations in it, contristate, or rejoice it; yet nevertheless can it not do any thing by way of vision, because the soul hath nothing in it wherewith to terminate the sight, in which case it must be wholly invisible, even although it were no spirit, but some other kind of entity, as namely a sound is, which though it partake of materiality, yet is it invisible, and therefore imperceptible by the eye, though not by another sense. For this cause it seems improbable that any corporeal eye can be enabled to see the Deity by means of any elevation or sublevation whatsoever, contrary to the opinion of a late learned Grecian, Leo Allatius l. de consen, Eccl. Occid. & Orient. As than one reason why an eye corporeal cannot see a spirit is because the organ of vision is corporeal, so on the other side, one reason why a soul may be sensible of a spirit is because the soul is spiritual, and thereby prepared to receive an impression from it, and also is, conformably to the object, a power intellective, as the same object is intelligible. I said before, that a sound cannot be seen; but I add now, that it may be seen easier than any spirit can, because a sound is material, and therefore one degree nearer to visibility then a spirit, and for this cause needing no intellective faculty to apprehend it, as every spirit doth: so that against the eyes seeing of a spirit there be two impediments, whereas against the seeing of a sound there is but one. Out of all this I deduce, that if the Object be spiritual, the Faculty perceiving must be no less.  
Thirdly, the soul doth not entertain material objects after a material manner, but contrariwise, after a manner immaterial, for it abstracts them from the dross of matter & the grossness of singularity. Now it is a certainty that Vnumquodque recipitur secundum modum recipientis, Every thing is received according to the form of the recipient, & not according to the own; wherefore, seeing the manner of being is correspondent to the manner of operation, & seeing again that the manner of the souls operation, even upon things material, is immaterial, therefore the manner of being of it must be also immaterial. The impression declares the figure of the seal. If then the souls impression upon material objects be spiritual, the soul itself is also spiritual. The understanding of a spirit spiritually might peradventure be ascribed to the virtue or aptitude of the object, but the understanding after a spiritual & refined manner those objects that be gross and material, cannot be referred to any other thing then to the virtue of the faculty itself.  
By this than it appears, that in an eye corporeal there is a twofold repugnancy against the seeing of a spirit, viz. one, because the power is material, and therefore not intellective of any object at all, spiritual, or corporeal: the other, because every spiritual Entity is without the precincts of the visive faculty. Wherefore on the contrary side, the eye of the mind, by the being in a state able to receive some notions of a spirit, and to judge it to be an Entity devoid of matter, may, upon a twofold evidence, be determined to be spiritual.  
Thus, by these several ways, the action of understanding in the Soul proves the incorruptibility thereof. The first is, by the being precisely intellective. The second, because intellective of spiritual entities. The third, because it understands material objects immaterially, which act is done by abstracting; of which act, whether it be confused or distinct, we are forthwith to consider more at large.  
The second operation of the understanding is the knowing of spiritual things by abstraction from singularities, and material objects after a manner immaterial, and by penetrating into the quiddities or essences of things; for of these concealed and hidden entities, unto which our senses can have no access, the soul of man gets some intelligence, and attaineth of them notices, though not perfect, intuitive or comprehensive, yet not contemptible or untrue: neither are these essences temperatures, as Basson and some others fond and without probability do imagine, as is elsewhere to be showed.  
A third is a reflection upon itself, which acts are above the nature of matter, as Albertinus, Campanella in Phys. and others do suppose for certain.  
Against abstraction some object, that it is no perfection, but rather an imperfection, that manner of knowledge being confused. But this objection is inefficacious; for, supposing the infirmity of humane understanding, the force of our understanding things abstractedly is most perfect and distinct, and of all other hath the least confusion in it; though in such understandings as be above humane, and are able with one view to comprehend, abstraction is needless and no perfection. As for humane understandings, we find by experience that the meaner and grosser they are the less they can abstract: and indeed abstraction in the understanding is a subtle act, and like to extraction in Chemistry, which takes the purer parts from the feculent, and resolves bodies into their several native parts, which before did lie confused in one heap and mingled together.  
For the preventing of objections, we add, that there is a great and manifest difference betwixt a knowledge confused and an abstracted, because the former of these two is done by making a commixture of the superior differences with the inferior, that is to say, of the generical perfections with the specifical and individual; but the later is done by an intentional, or intellectual separation of one from the other, namely, by the considering but one, yet knowing more than one, that is to say, both the superior and inferior: for we do notabstract from what we know not, but from what we know; so that, according to the humane way of understanding, this abstraction is not a confused way of knowledge, but a distinct, not an imperfect, but an exquisite; because by this the understanding doth, as it were, anatomize the object, either pitching upon several formalityes, as they use to call them, or else upon several connotations to different effects, as the Nominals speak, according to the different virtues contained in the same object. An abstractive knowledge makes Genus and Species, by the drawing off from matter and singularity; a confused does not so, but fastens upon the inferior degrees indistinctly and in gross. As for example, a confused view, if it perceive a figure, or a tree, does not distinguish the particulars, as not whether it be round, or triangular, an Elm, or an Oak; but an abstractive knowledge supposes a particular sense of all, for otherwise there could be no abstraction of one from the other. Campanella in his Metaphysics, and some other also related by Carleton, alias Compton, disp. 25. would have it that the eye abstracts, though but a power material, then, namely, when it sees confusedly, as when it perceives, for example, a man, but discerns not whether he be Socrates or Plato. This objection is prevented already, because the sense cannot abstract from what it sees not in particular, nor yet draw off from individuals, complete or incomplete. Again, the notknowing of a perfection is not an abstraction from it, and therefore the eye seeing colour and not sweetness, doth not abstract from that sweetness, as Campanella did imagine it to do.  
A fourth is the eminency of the acts of understanding, which argue a principle nobler and higher than any mortal entity. This argument is largely prosecuted by Lessius, Mariana, and Campanella, and before these by Cicero.  
A confirmation hereof is, that some acts of humane understanding be inorganical. But Molinaeus, in his Sum of Philosophy lately published, will not agree to this, objecting, that it is contrary unto experience, because, saith he, even at that time when the understanding doth abstract most, and contemplates objects that be spiritual, it makes them, as it were, material, ascribing extension both to God and Angels, circumscribing them in places, and assigning lines and limits to them. Again, there is nothing, saith he, in the understanding which hath not been formerly in the sense. Thus objecteth he.  
Our answer is to this Maxim of Philosophy, that, according to the learned Thom. de Argentina q. 3. Prologi are 4. it is to be understood with limitation, namely, that whatsoever is in the understanding hath been formerly in the sense some way, at least, or other, that is to say, either immediately, or mediately, in itself, or in the cause, effect or sign. It's true, accidents may enter by themselves into the sense, & so forward into the understanding; but substances, whether material or immaterial do not so, nor yet things absent in time or place, whether they be substances or not. Actions and events of ages past, also of people absent, of verityes supernatural, we know by testimonies, as by signs, and not by our senses immediately: we know a future Eclipse by the cause, the soul of man by the effects; and so also do we know God, namely, by his word and by his works, one, as by a sign, the other, as by an effect; neither hath God ever been known unto our senses.  
Secondly, we answer, that the soul, being in the middle region betwixt pure bodies without spirit, and pure spirits without body, as on the one side it  pure spirits with some corporeal vestures, so on the other it doth divest material objects of their materiality, namely, by conceiving them conformably unto itself, that is to say, after a manner abstracted and immaterial, declaring thereby the spirituality of its being; for it is as great a sign of a spiritual. Being to understand a matter immaterially, as it is to understand a spirit that hath no matter.  
Thirdly, I answer, that although our power apprehensive does attire spiritual substances in forms corporeal by reason of the imaginative faculty upon which it borders, yet the judging and discursive faculties do not so, for these two cast of all figures and resemblances corporeal, determining Angels, for example, to be spirits purely, and devoid of all figure and corporeity; as also, in like sort, that privations, though apprehended as positive entities, yet are not so: in so much as the soul, by means of judgement and discourse, goes further than the fantasy, and finds out truths which the fantasy could not tell it, & by thus surmounting forms corporeal, shows her independency upon the body, and that some of her acts be inorganical. By this, then, it appears that the apprehension of spiritual objects under lineaments corporeal is but the first entertainment of them, which though it do argue some imperfection in the soul concerning her manner of being, yet not in the being itself. Wherefore, as on the one side this imperfect way of apprehension argues the soul to be in a degree inferior unto Angels, or pure Intelligences; so on the other side the acts of judgement and of discourse, which it doth exercise afterward, do sufficiently evict that it is in a degree superior to corporeal entities. I exemplify, for declaration sake. God, when he first arrives in our understanding by the out-portalls of simple apprehensions, appears unto us in the habit of a body, an Angel in the likeness of a man, Time dressed up in wings, & in his hands a  and hourglass, Death like a raw-boned sire armed with a dart, etc. but forthwith Judgement and Discourse do wait upon them, dismissing Apprehension, and being thus stepped in, divest this Time, for example, pull of his strange disguise, bid him lay down his , clip his wings and break his hourglass, and to appear in no other likeness but his own, that is to say, without colours, or lineaments corporeal; and thus having disrobed him of his borrowed attire, the soul judges of him as he is, and gathers new verities of him by discurring. And as the understanding proceeds in this one example, so it does in others of the same nature: & thus the difficulty which Melinaeus made hath found out a solution.  
A fifth head of probation is from the appetite of man that can be satiated with nothing but eternity, the desire of which is universal and infinite. This desire being general must needs be from Nature, and therefore right, and not a vicious rapacity or greediness, as Pliny seems to make it, and so being right cannot be frustrate.  
This argument is urged earnestly by Alex. Valignanus l. contra Japonios apud Possevinum, parte 1. Biblioth. l. 10. c. 4. Thomas Carmelita l. 11. the salute omnium Gentium procur. c. 12. and by sundry other learned men: and it seems to be very efficacious, because this same appetite of perpetuity is very vehement, restless and incessant, and besides, universal, yea, Pliny himself acknowledgeth as much. Wherefore, as from the general and pressing appetite of meat, we do infer rightly a convenient provision of sustenance ordered by nature; so in like sort, from this engrafted longing after a perpetuity, we may infer no less rightly a provision of immortality ordained for us. One Pontius, a late Scotist, in his Philosophia universa secundum mentem Scoti, excepteth against this argument and divers others also, with whom not being willing to wrangle, we return him no other answer but this, viz. that he who is more in love with the determinations of any one Master, be he never so eminent, than he is with truth, especially in doctrines of concernment, is not an Eagle of the right breed, nor deserves the name of a Philosopher. It may be here objected, that if an appetite were a good argument to prove a satisfaction, it would prove we should never die, because against death man hath a great and natural aversion. I grant it proves that either we shall not die, or else, at least, should not have died, if we had remained in that state of innocency in which Adam was created, for death entered into the world only by sin; but this punishment of death is not of the soul, but of man, and again, the death of man is no more but a separation of soul and body, out of which the death of the soul does not follow, but that of the body only; for although a body cannot live without a soul, yet no reason can be given why a soul cannot live without a body: nay, on the contrary side, though we may easily understand how a soul may be annihilated, yet it is a thing hardly intelligible how it should die. The soul is a form assistant as well as an informant, and therefore may well subsist without an actual informing.  
It appears that this appetite is natural, First, because it is universal, and follows the whole species; Secondly, because it cannot be suppressed from breaking out into actual and vehement long after immortality; out of which it follows, first, that immortality is a thing possible, because nature does not incline us to impossibilities; secondly, that the appetite is right and rational, and cannot be erroneous, as Scotus did object it might, for, at least in the generalities, the works of nature be the works of a high intelligence; thirdly, that this immortality is not only possible to be obtained, but also shall be atteined. Neither if this argument from natural appetite be a good one, would it follow thence, as Abulensis in c. 22. Matth. q. 224. conceiveth it would, namely, that the Resurrection would be a natural effect, and might be proved by reason; this, I say, doth not follow, because, as Aquinas teacheth, 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 1. & lib. de veritate q. 24. a. 10. ad. 1. & in supplement. q. 75. a. 3. & Ferrariensis l. 4. con. Gen. c. 79. the inclination of nature and her power be both of one latitude, and therefore, because no natural efficient is able to reunite a body once separated, nature does not incline unto it, and so not unto the resurrection. Wherefore that unto which nature does incline us is only to a continuance of the soul with the body, and not to a restitution of it after it is once separated from it, in so much that, if any longing do remain still in man to have a body by way of resurrection, it is but as hot embers, the remnants of an ancient fire. It is then in this case, as it is in the desiring of having all our limbs perpetually entire; for, if by chance any be cut off, as it is not then in the power of nature to restore it, so is it not in the appetite of nature to have a restitution of it; so that, whatsoever appetite for it there is left behind, is a false and erroneous appetite, and not truly natural: and of such an appetite as this we may truly say with Scotus, Aquilanus and others of that side, that it can be no argument to prove a satisfaction for it. But, since the appetite which we allege is none of that sort, but, contrariwise, truly natural, this grant taketh off nothing from the force of our argument drawn from that true appetite. In fine, although wheresoever there appears a natural impossibility for the performance of any thing, we may rightly from thence infer that the appetite to it is not natural; yet it is not necessary, as Tostatus would have it, that before such time as we can allow any appetite to be natural, we ought to know the object of that appetite to be possible, for it sufficeth if we do not know it to be impossible, because this obstacle being removed, or else not put, the appetite may be discerned to be natural by other ways, viz. by the greatness and universality of it; and again, by this same naturality of it we may discover it to be also rational, and consequently the object of it not to be impossible: of which points see Valentia tom. 1.  
As for creatures irrational, I mean brute beasts, and other of that degree of life, they do not aim properly at any perpetuity, neither do they love or hate death, or have any apprehension of it. 'Tis true, they love not to be killed, but why is this? not because they shun death, but because they hate and fly pain which is a companion of death, then when it comes by killing and violence: but we do abhor death under the proper likeness, and do aim directly at a formal perpetuity, and that perpetuity, not of any dull or senseless being, but of a vigorous life and intellectual. I say distinctly, of such a life, for, which of us would not be as willing to be quite annihilated, as to be turned into a brute, or into a stone, and again, no less unwilling to be a stone, then to be totally destroyed and blotted out of the book of Nature? in regard that creatures which are not intellectual do not possess or enjoy themselves, and so receive no benefit by their being made, nor by their being destroyed any loss: for those that had nothing given them, can have nothing taken away. In consideration of this, it is not the book of Nature in which we desire to be registered, but in the Book of such a Life, perpetuity without it being not esteemed by us, nor yet such a life without perpetuity.  
Besides, it is no question but that Nature by her giving life & understanding to man intended it for his benefit. Now a knowing or intelligent life that must have an end by a perpetual death, is no benefit at all, but rather an infelicity; and therefore man by dying pays a large tribute, for the life was lent him, and returns to Nature more than he received from her, and the interest he pays amounts in that case to more than the principal; because in one death (come when it will) there is more acerbity included and greater bitterness, than there could be jucundity or content betwixt the largest terms of living, or in the most fortunate successes that ever were; so we may indeed justly and properly be said when we die to pay, and to pay also with advantage our debt to Nature: wherefore when man dies, if he then be extinguished, he should not die in Nature's debt, but contrariwise Nature should remain in his, yea and own him also a  sum to recompense him for being put to live upon those hard conditions of being afterwards to die, that is, to be thrown down and destroyed by her that built him: for what could this be else, but to be lifted up on high that his fall might be the greater and more afflictive? Better, surely, to lie still, though never so low, then to rise up to fall.  
For what thing more discontenting than fuisse aliquande & non esse, vixisse & non vivere, to have been sometimes and not to be any longer, to have had a life or living spirit and now not to have any, but to be thrown for ever amongst the dead, and to be cast down as low as lumps of earth or heaps of stones? It is commonly received as a truth, that there is nothing so afflictive, as once to have been happy and not to be so any longer. And indeed if the case were so with man, that death should devour him wholly and put an end to all, extinguishing both him and his desires together, the complaint of Pliny against Nature's harshness might seem not to have been made without just cause, namely, that she is illiberal to man, Cujus causâ videtur cuncta alia genuisse, magna & saeva mercede, contra tanta sua munera; ut non satis sit aestimare parens melior homini an tristior noverca fuerit, that is, upon such hard conditions, that it were not easy to determine whether she had showed herself towards him like an indulgent mother, or a cruel stepdame. So he, l. 7. in Proem. and rightly, supposing, as he falsely did, the soul of man to be mortal, forasmuch as out of that erroneous conceit this absurdity or rather impiety must follow, Turpiùs ejicitur quàm non admittitur hospes.  
For what is the benefit of an ending life? Is it not to taste of light and living that you might feel the grief of losing it, which otherwise you would not have done; and to be showed & made infinitely enamoured of a felicity which you are never to enjoy, but to be barred of for ever?  
Again, if man by death should be utterly destroyed, what did it avail him to have lived? were his eyes, think we, given him, that with them he might have a sight of death, how ill he likes him, or how grimly and unpleasantly he looks? shall all his education and labours taken in the world serve for nothing but, at the end, to marry him to rottenness, and for worms to be his sisters everlastingly? A fair preferment at the close of all, and a worshipful kindred! We cannot dive into the counsels of the Almighty, but yet, by his other mercies and perfections, we may gather that he is too good, too bountiful to set down so hard an order for us, or to have been so sparing of his gifts. What? shall any man think that we all were sent into the world upon a frivolous errand, that is to say, to come in hither only to go out again, and so to be as very nothings at the last end as we were at the first entrance?  
That death should make us neither less nor more,  
But merely nothing, as we were before?  
Or were we sent hither by a power superior, only to make sport for the lookers on, such bitter sport as the Cat makes with the Mouse, much to her sorrow while it lasts, & when it ends, then to no less than her destruction? Such bits as these, unworthy of God, unworthy of man, must they swallow down who will maintain the soul's mortality. The whole desire of man's heart, as it is either to be happy, or else not to be at all, so is it either to have this happiness perpevally, or else to have it never given him. Tully in the end of his Dialogue entitled Hortensius, although he takes exceeding great comfort from the consideration of the soul's immortality, yet nevertheless, to the end he might make all sure in case it should not be so, he addeth, saying, But if that wherewith we are sensible and do understand, be mortal and ruinous, this extinguishment and setting of it cannot but be pleasant to him who hath discharged aright the offices of humane life; and may, without being molestfull at all, be embraced by him as a repose or quiet of his life. Thus pleadeth Cicero, with whose resolution S. Augustine remaineth much unsatisfied, wondering justly how a man of so great with as he, and who places humane felicity in the contemplation of the truth, could promise a pleasant good-night or set of that intellectual substance, whereupon all this felicity of his is founded; as if, saith S. Augustine, that thing did die which we did not love, or rather, which we so deadly hated, as in the destruction of it we should rejoice. Thus strongly argueth S. Augustine l. 14. de Trinit. c. 19 Surely, if we love our own soul and our felicity, we cannot rejoice or take any contentment in the extinction and destruction of either, but rather on the contrary side be incredibly afflicted with it, and the sole remembrance of it cannot but be unpleasant, and cause a most vehement contristation in the heart of man, and finally, let Epicurus say what he will, strike such a damp into his pleasures, as would be of power sufficient to extinguish them.  
I know well that God may do with his creatures what he pleases; his jurisdiction over them is illimited by any other thing then by his own justice and mercy. Job in his affliction confessed this, when he taught us, c. 9 v. 12. Who is it can say, why dost thou so? and by and by after, v. 17. In a whirlwind he will crush me, and multiply my wounds, even without a cause. What he can do we do not inquire, but what he will do, or hath done, we may give a guess by his other mercies towards us. If things should thus go with man, we might resemble his state to a Guest that should be entertained for one night with all the dainties, the welcome and delight that might be, and the very next morrow be sent to the gallows, there to make a conclusion of his joys and welcome. In fine, whatsoever is not perpetual is nothing, and man's heart cannot receive true content from any thing which he is to lose, and whose possession is without date immortal. Non est mortale quod opto, Our hearts aspire not after any thing which is mortal; neither when we have considered well do we say within ourselves, Aut Caesar, aut nihil; but, Aut aeternum, aut nihil: Not to be Caesar, or nothing; but to be eternal, or not at all. For as Marcus Antoninus in l. de vita sua rightly ponders, & like a man of wisdom after death is once come quid habet ille qui vixit tribus seculis plus illo qui vixit triduó? what hath that man who lived three ages left him more than any other that lived but three single days.  
This argument though it prove another life after this, yet doth it not directly evict there shall be no interruption of living in the soul until the resurrection; nevertheless it persuades it strongly, because the fairest way of perpetuity is by continuing it in the soul, and by the leaving there a pledge for a total accomplishment to follow after, and the more, because this dying of the soul is an improbable invention, & such as in Philosophy or Divinity hath no foundation, but rather indeed is a great step to infidelity; for if men have much ado to persuade themselves that after the body is dead and rotten it shall have the ashes gathered together and rise again, they would find much more difficulty if they should think that the soul itself was mortal and to be extinguished, and so in the whole man nothing left of life.  
A sixth probation is from the absoluteness and independency of humane will, which matter is well followed by Aureolus in 2. sent. didst 19  
A seventh is drawn from the benignity and justice of God in favouring the good, and giving recompense for all their labours and sorrows in this life; which recompense since it is not given in this life, it must be in another, and so there must be another life. I confess also that this argument, though it prove a second life, yet doth it not exclude an interruption of living in the soul more than it doth in the body; for at the resurrection a complete recompense may be made both to soul and body, notwithstanding they both had been extinguished for a time: but yet because this fancy of the souls being extinguished is not proved by any one argument which is considerable, therefore that same medium which proves a second life after the departure from the body, proves also a continuance of the second with the first; for no Philosopher or Divine of note hath hitherto been found so devord of sense, as to dream of any interruption of living in the soul, but that if it was to live after death, it was to do it continually, or if it died, than it was to live no more for all eternity. So that this man's reviving of souls is an error as absurd and improbable, as his resurrection of beasts, which is the express doctrine not of Christ the great and true Prophet, but of the grand Impostor and false Prophet Mahomet, both in his Alcoran and the books of Sonna, as Guadionolus reciteth out of him in his Book against Achmet Ben Zin a Persian Mahometan.  
Some labour to evade this argument by saying that no such recompense is necessary in another life, because a full amends is made in this. If you ask them how, they tell you that Virtus divitiis animosa suis, nec indiga laudis est praemium sibi; Virtue is rich, and is a reward unto herself.  
This saying is nothing but a Stoïcall tumour or swelling which hath no solidity in it; for first, say it were a reward, yet not rightly distributed or dilated; for how small a portion of mortal men are sensible of this aiëry reward? Secondly, man's reward is his felicity, and therefore must be both great and perpetual: but this same reward is a very slender one & besides the slenderness it is of small duration; out of which it follows that this contentment received from virtue is no sufficient recompense, nor reduceth things unto equality, nor lastly, commends or justifies the providence of God. Thirdly, this contentment received in the soul from virtue cannot keep the virtuous from being miserable, because this solace is received only in the mind or soul, notwithstanding which content, he may be in poverty, captivity, sickness, in Perillus his Bull, or upon the rack; in which cases, as the body suffering for a good cause receives contentment from the soul, so in like sort the sorrows be reciprocal, for the soul is made partaker of the miseries of the body, and is afflicted by means of it; so that in fine here is no full and clear contentment, but a mixture of joy and sorrow, and consequently here is no desired reward or felicity, neither of soul nor body, and much less of the whole man, who consists essentially of both, and is totally to be rewarded, and not the one half of him alone, whether soul or body. Num, saith Anastasius Sinaïta, quaest. 73. quando oportebat certare, corpus plus sudoris expressit, quando autem est tempus coronarum, sola coronatur anima? Shall the body endure the greatest trouble in the conflict, and the soul alone receive the crown or comfort? this were no justice or equity. Certainly a man in this state would stand in need of patience, which virtue I think was never necessary for the happy man, but for the afflicted, nor for the enjoying of felicity, but the enduring of misery. In sum, it were a fury to think that while these two parts of man, body and soul, are linked together, that one half of him can be happy while the other is miserable, or that the reward of the soul alone is the reward of the whole man, and able to give him satisfaction: But that, contrariwise, as the soul of man is but one half of him, though indeed much the better half, so likewise the felicity of the soul alone is but one half of man's felicity; and so again, the affliction of his body one half of his infelicity, though by much the lesser. See of this point Abulensis in c. 4. Deut. q. 7. Thomas de Argentina in 4 dist. 49. art. 4. Vincentius Beluacensis l. de Consolat. ad Regem Ludou. c. 11. also our countryman Jo. Bacon the famous Carmelite, in 4. dist. 50. q. ult. and principally Marsilius in 4. d. ult. The Stoics invented for man this harsh and miserable felicity, for supplying the defect of their doctrine touching providence and humane felicity, which they could not patch up otherwise then with such rotten stuff as this, which will not hold the examination, nor indeed can be without the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. So that albeit reason alone without revelation cannot prove the resurrection to be, because this effect exceeds the virtue of natural causes, there being allowed in nature no regress à privatione ad habitum; yet reason proves that article to be very convenient & credible for an accomplishment of all, & without which there is no way remaining, either for the justifying of providence, or the rewarding & beautifying of man, or lastly, for the giving any life and encouragement to virtue.  
Now if a reward over and above the inward contentment of the mind be due to virtue, and this reward is to be of the whole man, and also to be paid him after this life, then must this reward be such as will fully satisfy and content him, for satisfied he is to be, and also satisfied by that which is a reward consequent to his actions, wherefore his contentment must be eternal; for nothing else can please him, as elsewhere we have endeavoured to evict, and as, I suppose, every man's own heart will tell him without book: wherefore the soul, which is to enjoy this, must also be eternal, or, which in our sense is all one, immortal. Pontius the Scotist struggles against this argument also for the defence of his Master Scotus, but the zeal of defending truth and of delivering healthful doctrine, I value above that other of defending the say of any one particular Master whatsoever, if he be but a man, as Scotus was no more.  
Eighthly, the doctrine of the soul's immortality is the foundation of virtue, without which she must needs fall unto the ground: this is clearly showed by Lessius, and long before him by the Platonic and Heathen Philosopher Hierocles; Unless, saith he, something should subsist in us after death fit to be adorned with verity and virtue, which subsistent thing without doubt is no other than the reasonable soul, we should have no pure desire of honesty or virtue. For the suspicion of an abolishment would choke the desites of these, and divert us to corporeal pleasures, of what sort soever, or whensoever they might be gotten by us. And according to that doctrine, how could it seem the part of a prudent or moderate man not to be so indulgent to his body as to grant it all things, seeing the soul in that case was preserved for the body's sake, and of itself had no existence, but accrued unto man from the conformation of his body? Or why under the name of virtue should we molest our body, if the soul so perish with it, as virtue herself can have no subsistence left, for whose sake we endure death? Thus fare Hierocles, and that very cordially and truly.  
If then the doctrine of the soul's immortality be the foundation of virtue, doubtless it is a truth assured, because virtue and a rational manner of conversation, taken in the generality, cannot be founded upon any falsehood or uncertainty, as Ludovicus Vives hath notably declared.  
I might add here the arguments of Scaliger, Exercit. 308. n. 20. of Aureolus Renatus des Cartes, and divers others, but these alone well explicated and considered are sufficient.  
These are the chief seats of arguments, from whence Authors do usually fetch them, which how much more or less valid or perspicuous they may seem, yet have they been held for good by the wisest Philosophers both Heathen and Christian, and to be concluding. But howsoever that be, the verity itself hath been counted certain and evident, insomuch as Aureolus himself, although he found difficulty in sundry of the arguments, yet did he not doubt to say, speaking of the soul's immortality, in 2 Sent. didst 19 This doctrine of faith is to be held undoubtedly, and it is the common conception of the mind, and a verity evident of itself, though to give a reason for it, it is not so easy. So Aureolus, with whom consenteth Cicero, when as he said, as hath been before alleged out of him, that it is the consent of all nations. Now, saith he, if the consent of all be the voice and verdict of Nature, then are we to think the same. Besides, how could so many Heathen Philosophers have acknowledged unanimously this doctrine of immortality, otherwise then by the light of nature and common reason? out of which it is plain, that natural reason doth teach us this verity. It followeth then, that by Cicero's judgement, whatsoever the arguments be, the doctrine itself is not only true, but also certain and evident; which thing may very well be, for there be many truths which are not proved easily or evidently, and yet nevertheless be very certain, yea peradventure are not to be proved at all, but be things most evident and indemonstrable; nature and the understanding acknowledging and embracing them as legitimate, without any further argument than her own light: and again, many things be knownly false which nature rejecteth as spurious and false, although she be not able to demonstrate that they involve any repugnancy or contradiction; so that indivers verities we are to rely lastly upon Tertullian's Testimonium animae, without exacting from them any clearer evidence.   

CHAP. VII. A List of some other Topics, or heads of probation.  
A Ninth head of argumentation is taken from the general sense of Religion which is in the soul of man, and in no other of creatures inferior, by reason of which sense he is easily induced to make an humble acknowledgement of an invisible and supreme Power, unto which all things are subjected, & all intelligent natures do owe a duty: upon which affection Seneca making a reflection pronounceth, saying, Hoc habuit argumentum divinitatis suae, quod illum divina delectant; This argument hath he of his own divineness, that he is delighted with things divine. Thus he, and not without good reason for it, in regard that creatures endued with sense have their delights suitable unto their beings, or natures: wherefore as the natures be, so are the delights; if terrestrial and fading, such are the natures; if contrariwise celestial and sempiternal, the natures are thereafter.  
From this feeling of Religion came it to pass that, throughout the whole civilised world, so many Temples were erected, so many Altars, religious houses, solemnities and festivals, whether in particular holy or superstitious, sacred or profane, right or wrong, according to the different passions and apprehensions of men, yet all of them conspiring in this one, that the Deity was with all humble recognizance and submission to be worshipped.  
A tenth Topick may be the eminent desire of chastity and single life, a quality transcending the condition of any nature wholly subject to corruption. For the better conceiving of which verity, we are to note that Nature in all her completed works aspires unto a perpetuity, and therefore doth not only furnish them with means for the effecting of it, but also imposes a necessity upon them for the performance, such as they are not able to resist. I say, a perpetuity, either in the Individuum, or else in the Species at the least. Incorruptible things are neither produced by generation, nor yet do generate, neither have they any appetite thereunto. As for example, Angels and the Orbs celestial. Those other who are allowed no better an immortality then specifical, or by succession from one of the same kind unto another, Nature hath not only made apt to generation and able, but also so prone unto it as it cannot be resisted by them. The condition of man is neither exempted from generation, as Angels be, and from the appetite thereof, nor yet subjected to it by any natural enforcement, as brute beasts, but is of a middle temper, partaking of both extremes: he can generate, and hath an appetite to it, neither of which two qualities belong to Angels; again, he hath an appetite also to live chaste, and can refrain, neither of which two properties belong to Beasts. So that, as with the creatures below him he hath an inclination to propagate; so also with incorporeal substances which are above him, he can control and bridle that same appetite, and also make it wholly subject to the other, he aspiring unto a fairer and better way of continuance and perpetuity then specifical. By this, then, it appears that in man there is something which is mortal, and again, that there is also something which is immortal, and stands in no need to be repaired by generation; and what can this be but his soul? The practice of the world confirms that which we have said, because the virtue of chastity hath still been held in no small reputation and esteem, as for example, amongst the Jews, in the Esseni, of whose institute of life, large and honourable memories are exstant in Josephus, Pliny, and Solinus; amongst the Romans, in the Vestal Virgins; amongst the Indians, in the Gymnosophists; amongst the Greeks, in the great Apollonius Tyaneus, of whose acts Philostratus and others do make ample mention.  
An eleventh argument may be drawn from our solicitous inquiries touching our soul's perpetuity, as of a matter of high concernment and by no means to be neglected, Nature herself thereby teaching us that we had claim unto it. This argument is in the first place produced by a late rabbin of Amsterdam, Menasseh Ben Israel, de Resurrect. c. 9  
A twelfth way of probation is from the consent of Nations, who all of them do, either expressly a vow this opinion of immortality, or else teach it implicitly in some practice or other in which it is involved, and to be supposed as a truth. Of the Nations in particular I need not render an account, both because the matter is well known, and also because the same rabbin Ben Israel l. de Resurr. c. 9 Eugubinus l. de Perenni Philosophia, Gassendus tom. 1. de Philosophia Epicuri, have done it exactly.  
This consent being general, and no erratic or straggling imagination, cannot but have a foundation that is solid. That act, saith Thom. de Argentina l. 1. d. 1. q. 2. con. 1. which doth follow the whole species is simply & absolutely natural; and again, that is necessary which amongst all is one & the same.  
Our thirteenth and last way of probation is from the many and undeniable apparitions of souls departed; the truth of which we have attested and delivered unto us by depositions, as creditable and authentical as we are wont to require for the confirmation and assurance of other things which are to come unto our knowledge by relation; wherefore the argument drawn from hence cannot but be solid and good, and therefore if we give credit unto those other relations, we cannot in any reason deny it unto these. To tell us here of Legends were a vanity, for all Legends are not lying, though some be, no more than all other Histories are lying, though divers of them be. It were a bold act to give thely to the Annals of Baronius and of his learned continuatour Odoricus Raynaldus, to the Annalis of the Minorites composed exactly by Lucas Wadding, or to the noble History of Ferdinandus à Castello, to the Florilegium of Ribadeneyra, to Matthew Paris, Guilelmus Nubrigensis, Bartholomaeus Sibylla, Alph. Tostatus, Eustratius apud Photiums, Beda, Nauclerus, Caesarius, Cantipratensis, Guil. Tyrius, and infinite others, who all agree in this point, and whose authority is so great, as it will retort the  upon the reprehender with greater force than it can be cast upon them by him or any man  
Now although it be a thing not evident, that the spirits seeming to appear are really the souls of such or such deceased persons, yet have we no reason to think otherwise: but if that they are their good or evil Angels, which, by divine appointment, do act in their behalf and likeness, yet even by that it will appear that those souls are still alive; for God himself did often appear by such deputies, and manifest himself to Moses and Abraham by the apparition of his Angels. But yet it is a thing no less reasonable to judge that they are humane spirits that make an apparition in themselves, or at the least in their deputies, then to judge that they are spirits. Wherefore whoso questions whether these appearing spirits be souls or no, but rather deluding Devils putting on their likeness, may as well doubt whether, on the contrary side, those same Devils be really Devils, and not the souls of men; or again, whether those living men whom our eyes daily do behold, be really men, or rather, not some delusive apparitions. I would fain learn why men, contrary to the doctrine of Aristotle & Epicurus, should distrust their senses in judging every thing to be the same it seems, unless they see some urgent reason to the contrary. Surely, in behalf of such apparitions there may be just reasons given; because it is not unlikely that souls which had so much dealing in the world during the time of their habitation in the body, and contracted so many obligations of justice, might after death have something remaining here for them to rectify, and to give notice of unto the living whom it doth concern. Besides, say that they who appeared were Devils, and not souls, yet this alone would argue immortality, for, to Dogs and Horses or such like, who have no relation to a future life, neither Devils nor souls do appear, neither were it to any purpose that they should.  
I add, that if no returns of souls were to be admitted, but that being once gone from hence, they were never to be heard of more, many men would be afraid that indeed our souls were nothing but a breath, or a slender exhalation, which after it was once dissipated was never again to be drawn together, and consequently that all the reasons brought for immortality were but sophistical, and found out to flatter us in that opinion; for so indeed it fell out with Epicurean and wicked men, who pleased themselves with Non est agnitus qui sit reversus ab inferis, There was never any known to have returned from the Dead; which is as much as to say, There were never any Ghosts, or souls of men, that did appear unto the living after death.  
In the first Edition of this small Tract, this argument of Apparitions brought up the rear; but it pleased the Censurer of it in Oxford to dash it quite out, though for what reason I do not know. If it were because he counted all the narrations of apparitions to be fabulous, he must give us leave to prefer before him so many faithful witnesses who have avowed them. Again, although he esteemed them fabulous, yet, seeing all men of judgement did not so, he might have left the argument to go as fare as it might, and every reader to censure of it as he should see cause, and not thus to impose laws upon other men's understandings, and presume to put down his judgement as a rule to others. But contrariwise, if he scraped out this argument for fear such stories of apparitions might lead the way to some doctrines which he himself was not willing to admit, this his way of proceeding (I must tell him) seems to me to relish more of craft than ingenuity, and also to be so fare from reasonable, as he who uses it may justly be compared to him who, after a preposterous manner, would deny the Premises, therefore only because he did not like the Conclusion; or to an evil Astronomer, who will not frame his Hypotheses according to his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or celestial apparences, but contrariwise, correct his apparences according to his Hypotheses. Wherefore our Censurer, by this course of his, seemed desirous to maintain what he did hold already to be true or false, rather than to correct his errors, and to take right information for beating out the truth. We do acknowledge that the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel well understood are sufficient to instruct us; and again, that for our ordinary intelligence and concernments, we are not to expect messengers from the dead: yet this will not enforce us to discredit all the testimonies of apparitions which time hath left us, or to say that in all occasions they are fruitless; for, as Tostatus reasoneth, although they would do no good upon the kindred of Dives, which, as it seems, was hardhearted, yet they might upon others; and again, although they did not confer to any living man's conversion and salvation, yet they might rectify some injustices and errors committed by the dead; and this, for the most part, is the errand for which they pretend to come, as Tyraeus and other writers teach us: and of this Tostatus q. 89. in c. 16. Matth. and q. 54. in c. 17. recites an example happening in his own time, and also teaches, that at the transfiguration the soul of Moses appeared upon mount Tabor.   

CHAP. VIII. The Catabaptists error about the sleeping of Souls related and refuted.  
HAving examined our Adversaries chief arguments brought by him for proving the soul's dying and mortality, it remains that we take into consideration another error, one of no small affinity with this, yea, and in effect all one with it, namely, the sleeping of souls, and their being in a state insensible, from the first instant of their separation from their bodies, until the general resurrection. Such as maintain this error, not daring, as Zanchius l. 2. the oper. create. c. 8. notech, openly to deny the immortality of men's souls, because it seemed over plainly contradictory to the holy Scripture, and to the judgements also of the gravest and wifest Philosophers and Divines, do therefore deprive them of all sense, knowledge, or any other vital operation, and lay them to sleep until the judgement day in which they are to be reunited to their bodies, which time is to be the first of their awaking. But, indeed, if this tenet of theirs be viewed diligently, we shall find that this pretended sleep is nothing else but a direct death, and only different in the name: and the reason is, because for a spirit to be destitute of all vital and intellectual operation, is nothing else but to be dead, seeing that life is nothing else in the soul besides the perpetual motion or action of it. Wherefore in consideration and acknowledgement of this incessant activity, Cicero and others delivered that the souls of men were made of fire celestial and unextinguible, borrowed from the stars, and the Poets, in relation also to this, did feign that Prometheus stole fire from heaven, wherewith he gave life to his men of clay, which he had made. Now fire, as we know, is an element always in action, yea, even then when it is raked up in ashes, for even then it works both upon the food that maintains it, and also on the adjoining bodies. Wherefore no charm, no medicine soporiferous can cast the spirit of man into such a dull and deadly heaviness, as it shall not so much as have a feeling of itself, nor be awaked by any other voice than that of the last trumpet, which shall with a dreadful found call all to judgement, and which noise shall be heard even by bodies, than which there is nothing more dead, or more corrupted, nothing farther off from life, as having the atoms of which they were composed, now all disordered and scattered with the wind; and therefore that soul which can be roused up by a voice no lower, must needs be more than a sleep, or laid down to rest.  
Sleep is a thing different from Death, though nearly allied unto it, as Seneca doth signify in the Prosopopeia following; 
Et tu somne, domitor laborum,  
Pars humanae melier vitae, etc.  
Sharp sorrows tamer, steep, that art  
Of life humane the choicer part,  
Astrea's offspring here beneath.  
Faint brother unto pallid Death.  Consanguineus Lethi Sopor, saith another, Sleep is Death's kinsman, but how near, we will not examine, and yet so near we are sure, as to a spiritual or intellectual substance they are both one, and one of them as destructive of life in it as the other: because, though they in themselves be things distinct, yet sleep is as deadly to the soul as death itself is to the body, and can agree as little with it; because, though sense can rest from action, yet reason cannot, in regard there is a greater and a more eminent kind of vivacity in the one then in the other.  
If the Authors of this fantasy would be understood, let them declare, first, what kind of Entity they take a spirit to be; secondly, seeing a spirit hath no body to rest, nor senses to shut up, nor vital or animal spirits to repair, what this sleep of a spirit is, I mean, how they will define it. If they cannot do this, then are they bunglers, and speak they know not what, and therefore not regardable. If they say, it is a cessation from action, and from possibility immediate of action, then hath a spirit no life left in it more than a stone or a dead body, and so in this case to sleep and to die signify the same thing, though in terms that are different.  
Yet say that they indeed could tell us what kind of thing this sleep should be, that same is not enough, unless besides they do prove it strongly, for such extravagancies as this is, are not to be admitted without convincing arguments to make them good. Let us hear then what their arguments be, and let us consider also of what weight.   

CHAP. IX. Volkelius his Arguments for this Error examined and refuted.  
VOlkelius, a known man, and a most principal Socinian, is the stoutest Champion in this attempt; therefore let us hear him what he saith.  
Holy men, saith he, after their change of this present life with death are said in the Scripture not to be any longer, 
Psal. 39.14.37.10. Jerem. 21.15. Matth. 2.18. Thren. 5.6.  and being dead, do neither live actually, nor understand, etc. And though the spirits of men return to him that gave them, as shall be demonstrated elsewhere; yet that those same spirits be persons which do any thing, or be sensible, or do now enjoy pleasures everlasting, is a thing so fare off from being taught us by the holy Scripture, as on the contrary side, it is easily showed to be repugnant to them, and that also by reasons very evident. For Paul affirmeth that if the resurrection of the dead were not to be hoped for, a vain thing it were to think of piety, or for the Truth's sake to undergo so manifold calamities, and that of all men the Christians would be the most miserable. Which assertion of his could not be true, of the souls of men without the resurrection were settled in such pleasures and authority, as that they did not only enjoy a good eternal, but were also in a state to give assistance unto others: because that same felicity of theirs would be so great, as scarcely no accession might be made unto it by the resurrection. Thus reasoneth Volkelius.  
My answer to the first part is, by denying it to be said in Scripture simply and absolutely, that souls departed, or men departed have no Being at all, but only, that they have no being upon the earth; in regard that by dying they cease, not only to be men any longer of this world, but even to be men, as before death they had been: and this must needs be the true meaning of the places quoted by the Adversary, in the Margin, and not that other which he pretendeth; because it is a thing most evident, both in reason and in holy Scripture also, that the parts of which men are composed be not annihilated by death, without any remnant of Being left them but, that they cease only to be united, or to be men; in respect of which deficiency alone it might be truly affirmed of men, as it is in Scripture, that after death they are not in being.  
To the second part I say, that although the soul after separation from the body, be not a person humane, or an entity complete, yet still hath it a stable subsistence, and leaveth not to be a substance intellectual or a spirit. Wherefore it doth not follow, that because the soul is not a person, or a complete entity, after separation, that therefore it can have no action, but must either sleep or die. The soul, be it separated or united, is a spirit, a spirit is intellective, an intellective substance can neither die, nor wholly cease from action, as before hath been proved, and therefore is not capable either of sleep or slumber, or in any danger of being benumbed, and, much less, of death.  
To the third I answer, that the Apostle speaketh there, not of Christian souls being miserable, but of Christian men's being so; and therefore let the souls be never so happy after death, yet, if there should be no resurrection, the men could be never otherwise then miserable, yea fare more miserable than any other men; because in this life they should be afflicted in a higher degree than others, and in the next they should not be at all. You will say, What matter is it if the men be miserable in this world, and never happy in any world, so the souls in the next world be made happy? In opposition to this, I say, Yes, it is a matter, and a very great matter also, if we will weigh things rightly; for to be miserable in the whole, and afterward to be happy only by the halves, is a great and capital inconvenience. Let the soul be where it will, and as happy as can be, yet if the body do not rise again, but lie trampled under foot, & be triumphed over by death everlastingly, the condition of man, as man, would be very miserable, & that of a Christian more than of an ordinary man. Besides, as the soul finds pain and contentment by the body in this life, so ought it afterwards, or else it would want somewhat of the former perfection.  
To the fourth part I answer, that notwithstanding the soul be happy before the resurrection, yet great will the advantage be that both the soul and also the whole man shall get at that great day. For then at that time man recovers himself, & is put into a new possession of what he lost by death: now what, I beseech you, can be dearer and more welcome unto man than he himself is? neither can his victory over death be completed till then; neither again is his crown of glory finished before that recovery be made. Besides this, the soul also gains not a little portion of felicity by this recovery, for so think many grave Doctors, both ancient and modern; but what is the certainty or the particulars, that is a mystery which we know not, yet some may guess that, as at the resurrection there is an accession of one essential half of man added to the soul which is the other half essential, so also there is one half, greater or less, of felicity that doth then accrue; and is not one half of felicity a notable accession and a great advantage? It may well be, for aught Volkelius knows to the contrary, that the soul, during the state of separation, shall have allotted to it, by the verdict of the first Judgement, which is a judgement of souls, such a portion only or proportion of felicity as belongs unto it under the title of being a form assistant, in which capacity it might act divers things by itself, without assistance or cooperation of the body; but at the resurrection the same soul shall have, by a verdict of the second Judgement, which is a judgement of men, another portion of felicity allotted to it, so much, namely, as might correspond unto the soul as it is a form informing, and makes up together with the body organical one complete agent, which complete agent is the Author and Actor of the greater part of all the actions of this life. 
See Estius in a. sent. dist. 45. § 7. ad. 4.  So that the former portion of felicity hath a correspondence to the soul alone; the later portion, both to soul and body, not as they are several, but as united and knit up into one. All this, whether it be true or no I know not, but yet thus much I know, that it may be true for aught that Volkelius hath said, and therefore is it sufficient to break the force of his argument, and wholly to evacuate it, till he have proved the contrary.  
My conclusion is, that as in death there is a sorrowful departing, and the farewell between soul and body is a very sad one: so in like sort, at the resurrection, when they meet never after to be divorced, there needs must be a joyful interview between them, and those second nuptials be a most solemn festival, a day of light and exultation, in which the mutual congratulations will be unexpressible. And therefore, let Volkelius imagine what he pleases, the soul by the last day, and by the resurrection, will be a mighty gainer, and receive new joys, new treasures of felicity.  
To the alleged place of the Apostle to the Corinthians, I answer, that it makes nothing at all for Volkelius his purpose, because it is not said there, that without the resurrection there is no felicity, but only, that our faith was void unless Christ had risen; and if our faith were void, then would all promises of comfort and felicity be void also, and so, by consequence, neither our souls nor our bodies should attain to happiness. Out of which defect it would also follow, that Christians of all other men should be the most miserable, because they in this life should have more afflictions & fewer comforts then other men, & in the next life have none at all, nor any thing wherewith to recompense them for their labours, abstinences and sufferings here. But say that the souls might be completely happy, although there should be no resurrection; yet, nevertheless, even in this case the condition of a Christian would be more sad and more unhappy than that of other men, so fare forth as concerns his body, at the least, which is one half of man, and one essential part, and also is that of which the Apostle doth in this place principally entreat: and so the Adversaries argument can conclude no way.  
You may further object, that in sundry places of holy Scripture dying men are said to sleep, for example, with their fathers: and this manner of speaking is very frequent. But the answer is manifest, because this word sleep is meant of the body only, which being dead, lies in the sepulchre quietly as in a bed, and is at the great day to be called up again, as one that wakened out of a sleep, a very dead one. Besides, this word sleep, when meant of the soul, is only a symbolical expression.  
My Conclusion is with S. Hierome ad Pammach. Incorporalem & aternam animam in modum glirium, immobilem torpentemque sentire non possumus. We cannot be persuaded that the incorporeal and everlasting soul is, like to a Dormouse,  and benumbed; or to Swallows that sleep all winter. So thought this ancient Doctor: and for our own part, we can be as soon persuaded that the soul may dream, as that it should sleep: and, if we will believe Albertus magnus in 4. dist. 44. ar. 41. to hold that separated souls should dream, were a thing ridiculous, and therefore no less to think that they can sleep or slumber.  
Again, as Carolus Bovillus noteth, it is a thing contrary to nature, reason and Philosophy, to put any substance destitute of connatural operation: wherefore either grant the operation, or else take away the substance; and so let the souls of men either be active and awake, or else let them not be at all; for to say they are, and yet are not operative, is a gross non sequitur, and not to be admitted by men of reason. Wherefore, if we grant the soul to be a substance intellectual, then to go consequently to this, we must also grant it to be immortal; and again, if both intellectual and immortal, that then also it can never cease from the exercise of connatural operations, and so, lastly, can never be a sleep. I end this chapter with the magistral doctrine of the learned B. 
Tostatus l. de statu Animae Concl. pr. 1.  of Avila: The souls, saith he, if they remain immortal after death, it is necessary that properly they always understand. Forasmuch as the understanding is not a power that is subject to weariness then when it is separated from the body, therefore it shall never be tired, as having no coherence with the conditions of an organ corporeal. Thus defineth he.   

CHAP. X. An estimate of the reasons for the souls immortality.  
THere have not wanted, both in this time, and also in former ages, some Icarian wits, who, I know not why, have laboured to extenuate and to diminish the force of the arguments usually brought in favour of the souls indeficiency, not doubting to give it out, that they be not demonstrative. But this exception of theirs fails more of being demonstrative, than the reasons do against which they except: for, admit they be not properly demonstrative, yet nevertheless may they be proofs very sufficient, and able to persuade any man that is unpartial, and governed by reason, and also much stronger than any which hitherto have been brought against it, and so are to carry the cause on their side.  
I will not deny but that those same reasons may not be so clear and perspicuous, as some are which we have for sundry other verities, the cause whereof may seem to be the souls immuring within corporeal organs, as in a dark house or prison, in which it being shut up, although it may behold out at the windows of the body objects abroad illustrated with light, yet at home, by reason of the domestic obscurity, it cannot do the like. This same difficulty, moreover, is increased, because the soul of man is an entity placed in the confines betwixt the two regions of substances spiritual and corporeal, and so of nature more ambiguous and hard to be discerned, by reason that in this posture, it may sometimes seem to be belonging to one side, and sometimes again unto the others and so much also the easier, because the soul, while it is in the body, discharges a twosold duty, viz. one of a form informing, as Philosophers use to call it, such, namely, as is performed by the souls inferior, conformably to the doctrine of Aristotle; the other of a form assistant, agreeable to the School of Plato, unto which Campanella doth subscribe. Such a form as this is God unto the world, and is therefore styled Anima mundi by very many, the Soul of the Universe; of which sort Intelligences be, according to the Peripatetics, in respect of their several Orbs, and a Pilot in a ship, as also other movers and directors of that nature. And this double office the soul performeth, because even as it is rational it doth not only animate the body, and is itself also a formal ingredient, and constitutes man in his specifical degree of being, and thereby distinguishes him essentially from all other creatures, which functions belong unto the soul as it is a form informing: but besides all this, acts the part of a form assistant, residing in the body as a high dictator, controlling it, commanding and countermanding, prescribing laws, inflicting punishments, exercising acts of jurisdiction and absolute sovereignty, thereby resembling a Judge upon the bench, or Prince upon his throne, more than a form merely informing: whereas, contrariwise, the soul of a Beast lives in subjection to the body, being therein compelled to follow the prescription of every sensual appetite after a servile or slavish manner, without any power to make resistance. Wherefore not without good cause did Fl. Josephus style the power of reason a Sovereignty, or Empire. In consideration also of this 'twould office of the soul, seemed it to have two names given it, one relating to it as it is a form informing, namely, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or Anima, the other to it as a form assistant, viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Animus, or men's. In the former sense it is a Soul, in the later a Mind: which preeminence of being a Mind, over and above that other of a Soul, Juvenal expresseth saying, Sat. 15.  

venerabile soli  
Sortiti ingenium, divinorumque capaces,  
Atque exercendis capiendisque artibus apti,  
Sensum è coelesti demissum traximus arce;  
Cujus egent prona & terram spectantia, mundi  
Principio indulsit Communis conditor illis  
Tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, etc.   

For arts, a wit to man was lent,  
Afar from heavenly towers sent:  
Which shining light prone creatures want;  
Nature, it seems, to them was scant,  
A soul on each, to us more kind,  
Besides a soul bestowed a mind.   
How inconsiderate an act it is in men of learning to seek evasions from the usual arguments brought in favour of immortality, we have noted before out of our learned countryman Mr. Carleton; and again, with what ill success men do impugn both those arguments and other received doctrines in Philosophy, the experience of this last age hath taught us, in which we have seen the fall of many soaring spirits that have adventured upon them. Telesius, Patritius. Ramus, Basson, Gassendus, though, in a manner, but newly sprung, yet are grown already into neglect: and the like destiny may Des Cartes, Henricus Regius, & Campanella expect; the last of which three, though he have many strange conceptions and novelties, as for example, touching the sense of things insensible, and also his three Primalities, as he calls them, which he will hardly persuade unto the world, and again, many trifling objections against Aristotle, yet, by his largeness of contemplating, starts many notable Truths which other great Wits, who have gone on in a straight line, have not espied; in regard of which verities, his labours may continue longer them other of that sort are like to do. We see Aristotle yet lives, and lives also in esteem, and his adversaries lie buried in contempt. It is an old saying, 
Qui vult infestare fortem,  
Perit atque quaerit mortem.  
Those who with the strong contend,  
Must expect untimely end.   
Those who will be ever quarrelling with Aristotle and his School about those doctrines which have passed the Test, after so many examinations by the most able Wits for no small number of ages, may, peradventure, be overmatched, and return out of the fray with broken heads. To impugn this or that single doctrine, this or that one argument, may pass for currant, and peradventure also prove successful: but he that will undertake to raise a whole new frame of Philosophy, and encounter with Aristotle at every turn, stands in need to have the wit of Aristotle, which, as it appears, few of these new undertakers have had, yea, such bold attempts do show the adventurers capacities not to have been very great.  
Let the quarrellers go on and try their fortune, and by experience they may find that the arguments for immortality had deeper roots than they imagined. Surely, that doctrine to which the most intelligent persons of the very Heathens gave their assent, either wanted not good arguments to prove it, or else bad arguments had very strange and incredible success. It could not be but those proofs were very forcible, which were able to enforce an opinion of life, even after the ruins made upon man by death, at which time no power in nature was able to make a restauration; and then also when few or no messengers came to them from the dead; but, contrariwise, man after his departure was heard of no more, nor any news was sent them from the other life. It is true that Epicurus stood astonished at the sight of death, and of the many disorders and disturbances in this world, and therefore wickedly denied both providence divine, and also immortality, which was a consequent thereof. But other Philosophers were wiser and more considerate than so, and would not forsake the Truths of providence and of immortality, because of an encountering difficulty which they could not overcome: and therefore, touching the other world, Aristotle held it the wisest way to be silent, Plato had recourse to fictions of his own, touching circulations and Palingenesiae after every of his great years to be accomplished, Pythagoras fled for succour to his transmigrations or Metempsychoses, the Stoics to open falsehoods and improbabilities, telling us, contrary to the express determinations of Aristotle and Theophrastus, that men might be happy by virtue alone, and that no corporeal miseries were evils. In fine, here Ethnic Philosophy was deficient, not being able to satisfy, or come home unto us, nor to resolve us in our greatest doubts: but these great vacancies of Philosophy were to be supplied by Christian religion alone, just as the doubts about the Antipodes were to be cleared by the discoveries of adventurous navigatours; for it is Christian religion alone which doth solve this Gordian knot, Et caeteri tanquam umbrae vagantur, and all the rest, like shadows, do wander up and down. It was Christ, the Lamb of God, who opened the books of providence, which formerly had been sealed up, and the contents hidden from the eyes of any mortal man. Against the Antipodes: and the habitation of the burning Zone great difficulties were urged, yet, notwithstanding them, the reasons on the contrary side were so considerable, as they carried many of the wisest with them, as, by name, Polybius the historian, Clemens Romanus, as we may see in his Epistle to the Corinthians, & Virgilius B. of Saltzburg; which Virgil. being miss-understood by his unskilful auditors that made a false report of what he taught, he had like to have incurred a heavy censure for it: Aventin. l. 3. hist. The two cases, viz. of the torrid zone and of immortality, be not much unlike; for, as the Antipodes were denied by many, because they were beyond the torrid zone, which for the extremity of heat, was esteemed unpassable; so the beatitude of man, unto which immortality is addressed, was held in doubt by many, by reason of the frozen zone of death, which lies between our present life and that; which icy climate, by reason of the extremity of cold, could not, as it was thought, be passed over by any mortal man. All which difficulty was increased by the seeming deficiency of providence over the affairs of man; the consideration of which did move even the ablest and the best men, as namely, Job, David, Solomon, Jeremy, and amongst later men, Seneca and Boetius; although it prevailed not with them, as it had done with Epicurus, who, if he had pleased, might have perceived easily that the want of some order and equalities in this life did plainly argue another to come after it; and again, the admirable contrivement of the world for the natural part, does evict as careful a provision also for the moral. What, shall we think that the great Author of things was a better natural Philosopher then a moral, or that he was more powerful than he was good? no greater an absurdity than this could be swallowed down by any: and so Epicurus, while he sought to fly a seeming inconvenience, sell into a real; and for the avoiding of a lesser dissiculty, fell into a greater. This world is the Stage, men the Actors, our life the Play. An action must not be judged by one Scene, but by all together, and chief by the last, and before that be showed no condemnation can pass, nor Plaudue be given. God then being so great an Artist in composing, and also in continual ordering of this Theatre and of the various lights that hang about it, may be presumed not to have been less provident in the Action which is to be represented on it, than he was about the Theatre itself; unless we would admit that the Stage should be more artificial than the Play, and that the Architect was better and more skilful than the Poet. By the actions, then, of God in his works of Nature, he hath given us a most sufficient security for his works of Morality, and neither Epicurus nor any other had cause sufficient to call it into question. Wherefore the other lise must be the last scene, and that one must bring all to order, and make amends for all the defects and disturbances in the former; and so, consequently, for the finishing of all, a succeeding life and a continuated immortality must be allowed us. This inference seems so clear and evident, that, if no ship of nature could pass the line of death, but after a tempestuous voyage and a perilous poor laboursome mortality it must be thrown over board into the deeps, and there perish everlastingly, then, if humane understanding might presume to give a judgement, the spectators of this tragedy would not doubt to say, this play was neither worth the acting, nor the making, yea and besides, that so curious and well-built a stage was ill-bestowed upon so mean a history. If all that is of man must end in death and come unto a total dissolution, we can scarce withhold from setting upon it this censure, namely, That in the Architecture there wanted much symmetry or proportion, because the gate was made bigger than the city, and besides, that mighty were the preparations, but the feast was hungry and penurious.  
It was not, then, the false and flattering desire in man of living ever, and of surviving his short and transitory pleasures of this world, which did persuade him immortality, according as Pliny vainly did surmise; but Nature herself it was which did rise up in us for vindicating of her own right, of which the unadvised school of Epicurus did labour to dispossess her. And doubtless those arguments in favour of immortality could not be otherwise then very powerful and weighty, that, in the midst of Ehtnicism, were of ability to prevail, and by their force to stem the violent tides of so many advancing difficulties as daily did arise, and also to charm the Furies, which, out of the dark retreats of humane ignorance and imbecility, did incessantly molest them. For, in very deed, it was the unknown and then undiscovered hemisphere of the other life which caused many, but the Epicurcans especially, utterly to despair, and to conclude our little light and joys within the circles of humane mortality; just as the ignorant vulgar did conceive that the Sun, when it goes down to us, did lie concealed and bathed itself in Tethis salt waves, until the following morn began to call upon it. Can, I say, these reasons of persuasion be counted weak, that were able, from age to age, to carry on the doctrine of immortality against the violent streams of death and dissolution? which seemed to be diseases irrecoverable, and by them a man brought into a state that is desperate and never to be altered; and therefore it was an usual saying, Mors ultima linea rerum, Death is the utmost line of things, beyond which there is no going, and as it were the pillars of Hercules with the Nil ultra graven on them. Neither were those same reasons able, after corruption and ashes, to rear up a single frame of life for perpetuity only in the soul of man, but also to attempt it for the body, yea and to come very near the absolute proving of it, and the evicting of a Resurrection, as a thing due unto the principles of nature, and as a sequel also of the attribute of Justice divine: in consideration of which two reasons, it appears, that albeit the Resurrection cannot be natural, yet it is a very near borderer upon nature, and, that we may so speak, not distant from it three fingers breadths, the interval or distance between them being no more than the want of a natural agent that might be able to reunite the soul and body after separation. Whereupon I conclude, that the Resurrection of the body is none of the hardest articles of our faith, but contrariwise such a one as may be persuaded easily.  
In confirmation of this truth, I cannot pass over in silence a memorable conference between Almaricus king of Jerusalem and William B. of Tyrus, recorded by Tyrius himself libro 19 capite 3. de bello sacre. The question propounded to by the king was this, viz. Whether, setting aside the doctrine of our Saviour and of the Saints that followed him, the Resurrection could be proved by any evident and convincing arguments? To which, being moved with the newness of the word, I answered, That the doctrine of our Saviour and Redeemer was sufficient, who, in many places of the Gospel, doth teach us most manifestly that the Resurrection is to be, and that he is to come as Judge, to judge both the living and the dead, & the world by fire; as also, that he will give unto the elect a kingdom prepared for them from the constitution of the world, & to the wicked fire everlasting, prepared for the Devil and his angels: Besides, the pious assertion of the Apostles and Fathers of the old Testament may be sufficient. To which he made answer, All this I firmly hold, but yet do desire a reason wherewith I might prove it to one who should deny this, and did not receive the doctrine of Christ, namely, that the Resurrection is to come, and after death another life. To whom my answer was, Take upon you then, said I, the person of one so affected, and let us try whether or no we can find out any thing. Content, said he. Then I, You do confess that God is just? Then he, I hold nothing to be more true. Then I replied, Is it justice to return to the just good things for their good deeds, and to the wicked evil things for their wickedness? Then he, It is very right. Then I, But in our present life this is not done: because in this world, good men find nothing but afflictions and adversities, but the wicked enjoy a continued prosperity, as daily examples do teach us. Then he, It is a certainty. Then I proceeded; Therefore this is to be done in another life, because God cannot be otherwise then a just rewarder: therefore there is to be another life, and a resurrection of this body of ours in which we deserved good or evil, and therefore aught to receive a reward accordingly. Then he, This pleases me exceedingly, and by it all my doubting is taken off. Thus fare are the words of the grave and faithful historian Guil. Tyrius.  
Besides this, the soul being a form of a body organical, is not in a full perfect state, nor in a full contentment without the body, as Argentina in 4. d. 49. Tostat. c. 4. Deut. q. 7. etc. 25. Matth. q. 63. Aquin. in supplem. q. 75. ad. 4. & 1, 2. q. 4. a. 5. & 4. con. Gentes c. 79. & Ferrarien. ibid. Albertus, l. 7. Comp. c. 16. do evict: for indeed all forms informing do receive perfection from the matter informed by them, as well as communicate perfection to it: and again, in things created every total entity is more perfect than a part, as S. Bonaventure clearly showeth in 4. d. 43. q. 1.   

CHAP. XI. Man's being by Procreation no argument of his Soul's mortality.  
THat man's soul must have the being by generation because the man himself hath his being by it, is no good consequence; and the reason why some have been deceived in judging it a good one, or that of due his soul ought to be generated as well as the souls of Beasts, hath been partly a false apprehension what the true nature and essence of generation was, & partly also what was the perfection & essence of man.  
As for the first misprision, it was, that generation was not only to make the compositum or whole to be, but also the parts, by the conferring unto them not only the being parts, but also the simple Being, or the being ●●●ties, that is to say, not only the formality of them, but even the naturality; which conceit of theirs is a false conception, and against all reason and principles of Philosophy: for by them we are clearly taught that it is Man which is procreated, or made by generation, and not his soul, his body is made or framed by it, and not the matter of which it is composed. For it is a received maxim and most true, touching the power of natural causes at least, though no farther, Quòd ex nihilo nihil fit; Of nothing there is nothing to be made: out of which it follows, that before generation, both matter and forms of all corporeal things must have beforehand a being in rerum natura, at least an incomplete one, and cannot possibly have it from generation. Wherefore by the work of generation they are not made, or receive any new absolute entity, but only are collected, ordered, and at last substantially linked and united one with another; which union is not by a sole approximation, contiguity, or juxta-position, that I may so speak, of one of them with another, as it falls out in artificial compounds, where colours, for example, though they be not pictures, yet being thus or thus chosen, form and united, make up such or such a picture; but it is by a continuity, or an inward and substantial knot, which is in our power better to conceive then explicate, and yet not to conceive fully neither, for these principles of generation are Nature's arcana, her darkest and most secret mysteries, which, like the springs of Nilus, she hath hidden from our eyes, as if our seeing of them were a profanation, thereby to let us know that she is our mother, and we but ignorant children, and such who must not be made much acquainted with our original.  
Again, if the parts also must be generated, I ask, whether these parts be simple or compound entities. If simple, they cannot be generated, but must have their being by creation; if compound, then if they must be generated, the parts also of which those parts are made must in like sort be generated; and so either in infinitum, or else at least, till we come to some parts which a simple and ingenerable: by which discourse it follows that no parts at all, neither corporeal nor spiritual, neither in man nor beasts, do receive their being by generation.  
As for Accidents, they cannot be properly said either to be generated or corrupted, but do follow the fortunes of the substances in which they are to inhere; and besides, are the formal effects of Alteration, and not of Generation.  
Touching the second misprision, or original of error and mistaking, note, that although it belong to the perfection of an Animal to generate another like itself, yet is it a perfection only to Animals and Vegetables; and to them also not simply, but only quatenus corruptibilia, so fare forth as they are corruptible, generation being instituted only for reparation of decays, and to re-edify the ruins of corruption; so that wheresoever there be more ruins, in that place more re-edification is needful. In creatures therefore irrational, where there is a corruption more large then in the rational, a fuller manner of generation is necessary, because there is a greater decay in the form in the one then in the other; forasmuch as the forms of irrational creatures be by corruption disformalized and dissipated into their atoms, which dissipation, if the forms were spiritual, needed not; and again, if indivisible, were a thing impossible. Therefore generation is to perform more in one than the other, and yet sufficiently in both, according to their several exigences. Seeing then generation is nothing but Productio viventis à vivente in similitudinem naturae, A production of one living thing by another in a similitude of nature; according to the definition thereof, whatsoever agent shall do this, that same is truly and univocally said to generate, how much more or less soever it do besides this. A man therefore producing another man by the only composing and uniting his two essential parts, body and soul, maketh that to be a man which before was none, and doth truly generate a man, although he no more produce his soul, than he does the matter of which his body is form and made; for there can be no more necessity for the production of the one then of the other. And this one instance of matter will evidently destroy our Adversaries argument taken from procreation.  
Neither is it, as Argenterius well declareth, any imperfection in man not to generate so fully as other Animals do, but rather a great perfection in him: for as it is a perfection in beasts to generate totally as much as generation can do, because they are totally corruptible as much as in nature it is possible; and as in Angels it were an imperfection to genelate, because they by their nature are totally incorruptible; so in man it is a perfection to generate as Angels do not do, and also not to generate so totally and fully as brute beasts do generate, because he is, as the Philosophers rightly and aptly term him, Horizon mundi, & nexus naturae utriusque; as it were, the Horizon of the world, and that which knits corporeal and spiritual natures together, by his participating with them both, and not fully agreeing with either; not being so corruptible as beasts, nor so incorruptible as Angels or pure Intelligences. By which it follows, that his manner of generation is in something to agree with the non-generation of Angels; and again, in something with the total generation of creatures irrational: that same generation of his being truly and univocally a generation, because he is univocally and truly an Animal, and yet not totally so, because in his immortal soul he resembles the incorruptibility of Angels or Intelligences. For Modus generandi sequitur modum essendi: & ideo quod partim est immortal & partim non, partim etiam generare debet & partim non. That which is not wholly mortal doth not wholly generate: and therefore neither man nor beast doth generate wholly, yet a beast more wholly than a man; and the reason is, because a beast is a creature which is more imperfect. Where note by the way, that the more imperfect any entity is, the more imperfect is the manner of production; and contrariwise, that which is most perfect hath no production or original at all. Therefore God, who is the most perfect entity, is not caused any way, nor producible, either by generation or creation. Angels or Intelligences, who are next in perfection of being to him, come to be by the work of a Creator, and not of a Parent or Generatour, as being entities, according to the principles of their nature, immaterial, simple and ingenerable. Man, who is next in degree to Angels, and of a twofold nature, was therefore partly to be produced by creation, so fare as he communicates with Angels, or abstracted forms; and partly again by generation, so fare forth as he communicates with inferior entities, which are concretee substances and wholly immersed in matter: wherefore to be generated totally, as Beasts are for as much as concerns their forms, is no perfection, but an imperfection, nor agreeable to man's nature and perfection, but adverse and derogating from it. And consequently hereunto, who so thinks that Man, a rational creature, should either generate totally another like himself, or else totally be generated, thinks grossly and unworthily of him, and not as his principles of nature do require. Wherefore Tostatus, c. 1. Gen. q. 27. said very rightly and Philosophically; An Ass doth generate an Ass more properly, than a Man doth generate a Man. For whatsoever is wholly generated, is also wholly corruptible; and so also on the contrary side; for as Boethius tells us, 
Constat aterna positumque lege est,  
 constet genitum nihil.  
Eternal laws do so ordain,  
That nothing gotten shall remain.   
Wherefore if some of him after corruption do remain there can be no necessity that all of man should be made by generation; nay, seeing something more of him, namely the form after corruption doth remain incorrupted, more, I say then there doth of beasts, for of beasts the matter only remains, therefore something less of him is to be produced by generation then there is of them, though all of neither. Who soever therefore shall affirm that a creature intelligent like man should generate another of his own kind as totally and adequately as one beast does generate another, doth not speak like a Philosopher, and besides doth unjustly disparage and disgrace his own lineage, and violates the rights of 〈◊〉 creation.   

CHAP. XII. A solution of the Adversaries objections, together with some others of Doctor Daniel Sennertus.  
THese former notandums having been premised, we need not dwell long upon answering of objections, for by them the way is opened already, and that which before hath been delivered will not need any more than application.  
Object. 1. Whole man is generated by man, therefore all his parts, both soul and body: and if both be generated, than both are mortal.  
Answ. Whole man is generated by man, I grant it. Therefore both soul and body are generated: I distinguish; That both soul and body are made parts of man by generation, and a creature produced like in nature to him that generates; I also grant and do affirm, that by doing of this only the complete act of generation or procreation is performed, according to the received definition of generation before exhibited in the Chapter precedent. But that both soul and body must be therefore made, and have their entities or beings given them by procreation; that consequence I deny as false and absurd, yea so absurd as it suffers a thousand instances to the contrary. For example, a whole horse is generated both matter and form, and yet his matter did not receive any being by generation; and so it falls out in other creatures. If then it be not necessary that the matter receive the being by procreation, though the whole Animal consisting of matter and form be truly generated, what reason can there be why to the generation of the whole Animal, a new being of the form, by virtue of procreation should be necessary? or why can one be necessary to generation, when as we see evidently the other is not? or why again should we exact the new production of either of them by generation, 
See Argenter. come. in Aphor. 1. Hippocr. & Zacutus Lusitanus tom. 2. l. 3. Hist. ad praxin, c. 7. § sed alia.  when without any such act the definition of generation is fulfilled, and agrees both unto the generation of beasts, whose matter is not generated, and to the generation of man, whose form is not generated any more than his matter is? By force of this solution all his imaginary absurdities, which he labours to fasten upon the non-procreation of the soul, do of themselves dissolve.  
If the soul, saith he, be infused, than Christ did not take whole Humanity from the seed of the woman.  
Answ. He received from the seed of the woman as much of the Humanity as was to be received thence, & that which he took did not come unto him by procreation, nor was it so to do. As for the fourteenth to the Hebrews which he citys for his purpose, our answer to it is, That it is not found in our books, neither Greek nor Latin, neither do the Editions of Raphelengius or Elzevir contain any more Chapters than thirteen.  
If, saith he, we consist of soul and body, and are not men without both, and receive not our souls from him, (he means the Generatour, as I suppose) than Adam is the father of no man, nor Christ the son of man, because his manhood's constitutive part, even that which should make him a man, could not be by the seed of the woman, and a man is as much a father of fleas and lice, which receive their matter from him, as of his children.  
Answ. Surely fleas and lice, whence soever they receive their matter, do not proceed from him in likeness of nature; as by the definition, they, if they were generated by man, aught to do. Moreover, they are not generated by man, but of him, neither is he the agent, but the patiented, and so is of these vermin no generatour at all, proper or improper. Secondly, men do receive their souls by force of generation, although they be not generated; and so, notwithstanding this non-generation of the soul, Adam might truly and univocally be the father of all men; and also the soul of Christ might come by the seed of the woman, although it were not made or procreated by it.  
If the soul (adds he) be infused after the conception, than there is growth before there is life, which is impossible, for the soul is made the vegetative as well as the motive, sensitive, or rational part.  
Answ. I grant that before the infusion of the soul there may be vegetation, and this by the sole virtue of the sperm; but I deny that therefore there be in man more souls than one, that is, than the rational: for this same force of vegetation which is in the seed, holdeth itself upon the part of the matter only, and doth not perform the office of a soul or form, the substance and operation thereof being no more then to fashion an organical body, and to make it fit for the reception of the soul and the union with it, after whose infusion, both the vital and animal spirits do but serve as instruments to it, and to accomplish the body in making it to be so perfectly organical as the eminency of a rational spirit above other forms doth require to have it.  
If the soul be not generated, but infused into a dead body, then, saith he, it is lawful to be Necromancer; for Necromancy is nothing but putting a spirit into a dead body, and so it is imitation of God, and God the only Necromancer, and all the men in the world but Nigromantick apparitions, whose spirits, when they have done the work for which they were put into the bodies, desert them as other conjured Ghosts do.  
Answ. See the shallowness of this man, who can neither speak right, nor reason with common sense and probability. He calls Necromancy constantly Necromancy, and he supposes that a soul in a dead body makes a living man, and can exercise vital actions in it, or actions of life, and so, according to his gross capacity, if the soul be infused God must be a Necromancer, and men but Necromantic apparitions: for this Ignoramus, it seems, knows no difference between a soul and body that are united, and those that are not united, but together only, nor between a body living by the virtue of the spirit, and by virtue thereof doing vital actions, and another which is only moved and inhabited by a spirit, without any union with it or participation of life. But supposing all were one, yet were it not lawful to be a Necromancer, because nothing at all, be it never so good, is to be done by superstitious actions, or by making any recourse unto the Devil, and acknowledgement of his power by any dependency on him whatsoever, more or less.  
It is granted, saith he, that the body considered merely sensitive cannot sin, and is but an instrument, or as the pen in the hand of the writer. Therefore if the soul be infused, then of necessity the immortal thing, and not our mortal flesh is the author of all sin, and so God's immediate hand the cause of all sin.  
That the body is only an instrument of the soul is false, 
See Soto of this in 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 2. Rat. 3.  for it is a living co-agent with it, and a partaker both in the good and evil actions, and is both rewardable and punishable with it; whether in the mean time it be created or generated, for this variation makes no difference in this matter of merit or demerit. Neither doth the creation of the soul make God the author of sin more than the generation of it, that is to say, not at all, for still the soul and body are authors of their own actions, and the deformity ariseth from their misdemeanour, and not from God's creation or concurrence.  
Doctor Sennertus, although he admit not of any mortality in the soul, yet he holds it probable that it comes by procreation, and that from the first instance of conception, the seed is ammated with the rational soul: which Doctrine of his, by his leave, infers mortality: for whatsoever is generated, is corruptible, and is to go out, according to the ordinary laws of Nature, at the same gate of corruption at which it entered in. Neither is it true, or likely, or lastly, any way Philosophical, to say as he doth Hypom. 4. c. 10. as also in his Paralipomena c. 7. n. 3. ad Hypomn. 5. that nothing created is immortal by the principle of Nature, but only by the free will or gift of God; because as it is amongst bodies, some are very durable, as Marble and Cedar, some by and by corrupted, as Flowers & Fruits, even out of the several natures of their composition which God hath appointed for them, and not our of the free will of God immediately, without any farther relation; so in like sort, some substances are perpetual out of the nature of their being, as spiritual substances, and bodies that are simple and unmixed, other some out of their own natures corruptible, as those that are mixed and made up of Elements, which as by some natural agents they were knit up together, so by the operation of other some they are dissolvable. Souls then if generated are compounds, and if so, may be uncompounded by the agency and operation of causes natural: wherefore to seek an immortality only from a decree extrinsecall, without any foundation in their natural beings, seems neither to be Philosophical, nor true: wherefore the immortality of Souls and Angels is not to be reared upon this weak foundation, according to which a Fly may be as much immortal as an Angel, one by nature, according to Sennertus, having no preeminence over the other, the free determination of God for their perpetual conservation being equally applicable to either of them.  
Conformably to this position of his, 
Sennertus Hypomn. 4. ca 10. & lib. de consens. Chymic. cum Arist. & Galeno c. 9  he will needs have the sperm always animated with a reasonable soul; but then consider how many more souls are cast away without any bodies organical and humane, then are actuated and preserved by bodies. I ask what must become of these innumerable souls? must they perish, or have bodies made them at the Resurrection? neither of these two can be admitted without great temerity and absurdities.  
Besides this, we know God did not inspire Adam with a living spirit while he was a lump of clay, but when he had a face and a body that was organical, and not before. Again, why does the soul depart from the body, but only because it leaves to be organical? why then, or with what probability can we imagine the soul is in the inorganical sperm? certainly, with none at all.  
The wind that did drive Sennertus upon this inhospitall shore, was the necessity of assigning a vis formatrix, or a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, that is to say, an able architect or former of humane body, which though most acknowledge to be the seed, yet Sennertus sees not how this can be, unless it should be animated with the soul; his reason is, because the soul only is to build an house fit for itself to inhabit. But this reason of his is not urgent; nay more, it is not likely; for eggs and young birds do not build their own nests, but the old ones for them; so that it must, by this account, be the parent's office to erect this new building, and not the child's. But how, says he, can the father do this? Easily and well, by sending his sperm as his deputy and officer to perform that duty, 
Argent. come. in 1. Aphoris. Hippocr.  as Argenterius also teacheth; which entity hath derived to it from the generatour so much natural strength and cunning, as to make a sufficient architect for the effecting of this work, and all this may be done with the only form of seed, without any animation of it with a soul. Thus it is likely that the Acorn for example, without any more form than of an Acorn, collects sit particles out of the elements and materials about it, and by a virtue derived from the tree on which it grew, forms out and fashions the body of an Oak: and for the effecting of this work the seed participates much of the nature of the tree or plant, and hath ordinarily much of the same virtue. Wherefore in this abstruse question or quaere that we may say something which is likely, and hath for the truth thereof probable examples and instances in nature, we do conceive that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or forming virtue, is the seed's own form excited and assisted by the breeding, cherishing, and connatural warmth of the maternal body, which doth environ it; as in the procreation of birds it seems to be, where the semen of the Cock being cherished and stirred up by the ambient and incumbent warmth of the Hen, is that which changes the egg, and forms it into the shape of the bird from whence it came: neither is it probable, that in so small a coagulum or seed which came from the Cock the soul or essence of a Cock is resident.  
Now whereas he tells us, that by the blessing granted to all Creatures by the Creator of them in these words, Increase and multiply, force was given to every soul to multiply another: we confess it to be true; yet this not to be done by creating of the younger by the elder souls, or by the giving of them new entities; but rather by doing some other act out of which these forms should connaturally follow, as material forms they do by a resultancy, and immaterial by creation from a higher cause, which creation is to follow, and is due by a regular ordination and exigence of Nature; and so they may truly be said to be given and communicated, though not made, by the force of generation. And this is the true vis prolifica, and not that other which Sennertus feigns unto himself, by which he will have one humane soul to beget another, and on the instant to become with child of it, no body knows how; neither by what particular operation, nor from what Mine it should be digged. For this manner of speaking makes show rather of some empty Magic, than of sound Philosophy, and seems altogether as hard and impossible as the eduction of them out of the potentiality of the materia prima, when understood in that sense in which he himself impugns it.  
If the Parents (objecteth Sennertus) do not give the soul, which is the form of man, they do not generate the man: but for certain they do generate the man: therefore they give the soul also: unless they communicate the soul, like should not generate his like. So he Hypomn. 4. cap. 11. In brief, I answer, that the Parents do give and communicate both form and matter, but that work they may well do without the making or the producing either of them. It is certain they give the matter, and it is as certain they do not produce it; wherefore the same may be said of the form, without prejudice to the essence of generation, or which is all one, of one like or simile producing of another. And that there is true generation without producing either part, appeareth plainly; for Death, which is the opposite to generation, and destroys what the other made, will show us what generation is: but Death is only a dissolution of parts united, and not a destruction of them; it is destructive, not of the matter or form, but of the man: for do but divide a man's soul and body, and he is destroyed, and remains not a man any longer, but loseth what he had got by generation, that is to say, by generation he got to be a man, and by dying he loses it. In fine, as Argenterius rightly answereth, Generation is not of the parts, but of the compositum: and so also answereth Zacutus in the place before cited.  
He adds, 
See him in 1. Aph. Hip.  If the sperm from the first instant be not animated, and the generatour die in the interim before the animation, it might be said that a dead man did generate. I deny the consequence, because that Parent while he was living did that act, by virtue of which all the rest (as their turns came) did follow, and that one and first act was generation, and not the subsequent. As for example, he is said to make a fire who first puts the fire to these well and kindles it, though all do not burn till a great while after, because all the rest did follow in virtue of the first act.  
Thus we see that the arguments of Sennertus were not so urgent and weighty, as to be able to hinder such a wise Christian Philosopher as he was, from relinquishing this tenet of his, and from piously subscribing his Pareamus: by which act he left behind him an example worthy of great praise, and of all true students to be imitated, I have added to the Author's objections, whom I undertook to impugn, these out of Sennertus, who is a Writer of great worth and substance, to the end that by occasion of his difficulties, the matter in hand might be explicated with more satisfaction, and for mine own satisfaction also, who was weary with fight with a shadow.  
But, say you, if that the soul be not produced by virtue of the sperm, how then can Original Sin be transmitted from the loins of Adam down to his posterity? I answer, that it may very well, because that sin of Adam is not transfused into his descendants by any physical influence or deduction, but contrariwise by a legal devolution, or by a way juridical, which way of conveiancy is founded upon an ordination or covenant, annexed to the act of generation; as also the rights of inheritances use to be that are so devolved from father to son and so downward throughout all the line or pedigree: and to me there seem no more difficulty in one descent then in the other, both of them being moral, and both also supposing some natural action for the foundation of them. But I leave this question to Divines.   

CHAP. XIII. The Adversaries resurrection of Beasts exploded, together with a Conclusion of the Work.  
IT is usually said, that one folly brings on another, and ordinarily one worse than itself: and so it falls out with this wretched man against whom we deal at this present, who after his gross error of man's total mortality, falls into one which is much grosser, yea, so absurd, as it is to be numbered amongst the most ridiculous that ever were maintained even by Mahomet the father of absurdities, and who was better at that work than any man that went before him. But at the length what may this error be? I will give it in his own words, and it is this:  
All other Creatures (saith he) shall be raised and delivered from Death at the Resurrection, my reasons & ground for it, be these. First, that otherwise the curse in Adam would-extend further than the blessing in Christ, contrary to the Scriptures, For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive, 1 Cor. 15.22. Thus he, abusing Scripture, as we see, for the upholding of this his prodigious folly. Surely the man when he resolved upon these things was given over into reprobate sense, and permitted (for his greater confusion) in sight both of God and the world, to fall into such an Abyssus of absurdity, as that no man might take harm or be seduced by him, but such only who had a mind to be deceived.  
It seems then by this bestial Doctrine, that at the Resurrection all the Gnats and Fleas that ever were shall be revived, all the Toads and Frogs and poisonous Serpents and other vermin. Certainly those who are to live amongst all these are likely to have gallant time of it. His places of Scripture which he profanes in alleging to prove this, need no expositor nor answer to them, for I think no Reader is so simple as cannot do it by himself. Doubtless both according to the common principles of Christianity, and also those particulars of this Author, Christ is the cause of our Resurrection; and none are to rise but those only for whom he died, and therefore since he died not for beasts, they are not to have any Resurrection.  
As for the Assertion, it is grosser and more inexcusable in this Author, than it was in Mahomet, because this Mahomet made a Paradise and felicity agreeing most of all to beasts and men of beshall dispositions; for as it is well known out of the Alfurcan or Koran, and as Theophanes an ancient and faithful Historian relateth, His Paradise was place of corporal eating and drinking, 
Theophan. apud Porphyr. c. 17. & Jacob. de Vitriaco l. Hist. Orient. c. 6.  of wantonness with women, where there was a River flowing with wine and honey and milk, together with an incomparable beholding of women, not these we have now, but of others: also long lasting pleasures of obscenity, and other such things full of luxury and folly. So writeth Theophanes. But this man, who will seem a Christian, might have learned out of the Gospel a felicity of an higher strain, one purely refined from all dregs of baseness and carnality, and that the blessed shall neither marry nor be married, but live like the Angels in Heaven, not enjoying the felicity of a swine, but a celestial. Wherefore leaving Mahomet and other beasts with him to enjoy such a felicity as they deserve and feign unto themselves; I pass unto our Author's last folly, which is his calling it a Riddle, that the soul immortal is all of it in all, and again, all in every part, wondering how this should be, and holding it a mere fiction and thing impossible. But I for my part do not wonder that a man of so gross a wit and narrow a capacity, as he in this book hath showed himself, should not understand this Doctrine or saying, especially if he will judge of the nature of indivisible presences by those that are divisible, as it seems he does. Yet I have cause to wonder why so stupid and so sorry a fellow as this is, should dare to hold it to be a Riddle, or impossible, only because he with his small with is not able to understand it; as if, forsooth, nothing were possible to Nature, or to God the Author of Nature, saving that alone which he understands how it can be done. I am now quite weary of this man, and sick with raking so long in such a heap of dirt, and therefore at this instant I leave him to bethink himself about making a timely recantation.  
Now, turning with delight unto my Reader, to solace and refresh myself after all this travail, I desire him to look into Hierocles Commentary upon the Golden Verses ascribed to Pythagoras, in which he seemeth to have discovered the original of this pernicious error, touching the souls mortality. What avails it, saith he, with perjuries and murders and other wicked ways to gather wealth and to seem rich unto the world, and to want those good things which are conducible unto the mind? But besides, to be stupid and insensible of them, and thereby to augment the evil, or if they have any remorse of conscience for their offences, to be tormented in their souls, and afraid of the punishments of Hell, comforting themselves with this alone, that there is no way of escaping them, and from hence are ready to cure one evil with another, & by a persuasion that the soul is mortal, to soothe up themselves in wickedness, judging they are not worthy to have any thing of theirs remaining after death, that so they might avoid those punishments, which by judgement should be inflicted on them? for a wicked man is loath to think his soul to be immortal, for fear of the revenges that are to follow his misdeeds. Wherefore preventing the Judge who is below, he pronounceth the sentence of death against himself, as holding it fit that such a wicked soul should have no longer a being nor subsistence. Behold here the fountainhead of this error opened and purged by Hierocles.  
In fine, from whatsoever puddle this error sprung, let us remember what Socrates (being to die) delivered touching the various condition of souls after this life. He said, as Cicero relateth, l. 1. Tuscul. there were two different paths or voyages of souls at their departure from the bodies: for all such as with humano vices had contaminated themselves, and were delivered wholly up to lust, with which as with domestic vices being blinded, they had by lewd actions defiled themselves, or had attempted against the Commonwealth any crime, or fraud inexpiable, that these had a wand'ring way assigned for them, sequestered from the assemblies of the Gods; but such again as had preserved themselves entire and chaste, contracting little or no contagion from the body, having always retired and withdrawn themselves from it, and had in humane bodies imitated the conversation of the Gods, these found opened for them an easy way of return to them from whom they proceeded at the first.  
This is the Doctrine both of Cicero and of Socrates. What then remains to do, but to hearken attentively to the wise counsel of the Prince of Philosophers, Aristotle, and to suffer it to have a powerful influence into all the passages of our life? His words l. 10. Ethic. c. 9 according to the division of Andronicus Rhodius, be as follow. If then, saith he, our understanding, in respect of man, be a thing divine, so that life which is led according unto the understanding, if compared with life humane, is divine also: neither, as some persuade, is it lawful for a man to relish and follow only that which is humane, and being mortal, those things only which are mortal; but as much as in him lieth, he ought to vindicate himself from all mortality, and to take special care that he live according to that part which is most excellent within him. Now that which is best within us is our mind, which though it be small in bulk and weight, yet in power and excellency doth furpasse the rest. And with this wise counsel of the Philosopher I conclude this whole Question, which though the day of every man's departure will decide, and give a sinal resolution to it, yet in the mean season are not disputes of this nature fruitless or superfluous, because if they be well performed, they are like burning torches, which in the dark gallery of this life teach us how to direct our steps, and before that black day come, to help us for the making our preparations beforehand, that so with better hopes of safety we may meet out deadly enemies in the gate. Without all doubting, for the repressing of brutish, bestial and unworthy affections, and again, for our encouragement to noble and generous designments, the best preparatives against death, there is no no consideration so powerful and efficacious as that one of the high perfection of man's soul, and the immortal nature and condition of it: for, as Cicero observeth l. 1. de legibus, Qui seipsum nôrit primùm aliquid sentiet se habere divinum, ingeninmque in se suum sicut simulacrum aliquod dedicatum putabit, tantóque munere Deorum semper aliquid dignum faciet & sentiet. He that doth know himself, will forthwith find within him something that is divine, and will hold his understanding as a statue dedicated, and be always thinking or doing something answerable to so great munificence of the Gods. That is to say, he will be mindful that as in upright shape of body and the perfection of his spirit he excelleth beasts and all creatures irrational; so he will endeavour to do in the condition of his living, by disdaining to stoop to any thing which is base, or to defile the house in which his foul inhabits with any unworthy or ignoble actions.  
Without all doubting there is no man who, as a Poet speaketh, hath any thing within him that leaps under his left breast, but that if he be well persuaded of his souls immortality, and so, by a plain sequel thereupon, sees that he hath a longer part to act after his Exit from off this earthly Theatre, than he hath here, he will never live unmindful of that second state, and therefore will be sure to stop his ears against the Sirens bewitching songs, and not drink of the enchanting cups of Circe, whose fordid pleasures are feigned to have turned Ulysses his unwary companions into swine; nor lastly, Esau-like, for a small pittance of temporal contentments, or for a few voluptuous hours consumed in vice or vanity, neglect the safety of his immortal spirit, and sell his birthright of Eternity.  
I will seal and sign this whole dispute with the determination and censure of the book of Wisdom: which book whether it be received into the Canon or no, yet is it confessedly very ancient, and therefore by consent of all may claim a just precedence of authority before any Heathen Philosopher whatsoever: the words are these, Justorum animae in manu Deisunt, & non tanget illas tormentum mortis: visi sunt oculis insipientium mori, illi autem sunt in pace. The souls of the just be in the hands of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them: to the eyes of the foolish they seemed to die but they remain in peace, Chap. 3. Behold here in the judgement of this venerable Author, what kind of people they are who hold the souls mortality, namely, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, such as be destitute of true judgement and understanding. This is not my censure, neither is this character of my making; for who am I that I should presume so far? but it is the judgement of the ancient Author of the book of Wisdom, whose years and credit may deserve regard, even amongst those spirits that be most confident of their own conceptions, and be the greatest admirers and idolaters of themselves. In fine, this ancient Sage brands all deniers of our souls immortality with the selfsame note of ignominy, that David the kingly prophet did mark that wretched mortal who closely & in his heart had said, There is no God. Psa. 13. Yet there is this odds between them two, and worthy to be observed, for though both of them be impious and absurd, yet one of them had some shame in him, and said it only in his heart; but this Adversary of ours goes further, and had the face to publish his impiety in Print, or at least the heart to do it so as he himself might lie concealed, & his name unknown. Which covert way of his, though it appear not altogether so bold and bad, as if he had put his name unto his work, yet was it an act too bold for any Christian man or true Philosopher to exercise, or to be an Author of in Print: for alas after so many great Divines and deep Philosophers, whose uniform suffrages we have for the dignity of man, that is to say, for the soul's immortal nature and incorruptibility how could the cogitations unto the contrary of this poor worm be a matter any way considerable with men of understanding and ability?   

A Peripatetic Disquisition touching the Rational Soul's Immortality, whether it be natural to it, or no.  
THis intellectual substance, the Soul, which is our Intelligencer for all things abroad, being shut up here in an obscure prison of a corruptible body, doth not without great difficulty know itself, and learn out what kind of entity it is, corporeal or spiritual, corruptible or free from corruption. Hence arose so many varieties of opinions, and even amongst those who asserted immortality, so many degrees thereof. Dicaearchus, a Peripatetic Philosopher of Sicily, was of opinion that men had no souls at all; but notwithstanding this, the soul being ashamed to be so grossly ignorant, as to deny itself, this man was left alone and had no followers. Epicurus, Lucretius, and Pliny granted man a soul but denied the immortality of it, condemning it to a death perpetual: which impious assertion hath been refuted by all the best Philosophers, of Plato's, Pythagora's, Zeno's, and Aristotle's School also, excepting Alexander, and some very few of no note. Amongst those that admitted a perpetuity to the soul, some did it with an intermission, as namely, the Heretics called Arabici, who, as Georgius Syncellus in his Chronicle now newly published, 
Parisii● 1652. ex typographia Regia.  anno Christi 237, testifieth, did, impiously hold the soul in the hour of death to perish with the body, and again, both of them to be revived at the resurrection; concerning which point a famous Synod was assembled. The same error is largely showed of them by Abraham Ecchellensis in his Historiae Orientalis supplemento, where he describeth the customs and doctrines of the Arabians. Now it is manifest that during the interim between death and the resurrection, the soul is in being, is alive and also awake, by those reasons that do prove the immortality, simplicity and immateriality of it; as also by apparitions of them, of which the Christian Histories are full; and it is justified by Eustratius, a Priest of S. Sophia, in his Tract remembered by Photius in his Bibliothecae, wherein he affirms that souls do appear really, and not good or evil Angels in their places; and lastly, the same is confirmed even by Ethnic Histories, as for example, by that which Phlegon Trallianus, in his Book de mirabilibus & longaevis, relates, first, of Polycrates, & after of Philinion; by the appearing of Apollonius Tyanaeus after his death to his scholars, assuring them of the souls incorruptibility, about which they had been doubtful and disputing, if we may believe Philostratus, who writ his life; by the apparition of a Ghost to Athenodorus, recorded by Pliny in his Epistles; and last of all, by Plutarch, out of whom Georgius Monachus Syncellus relateth this notable following History, Chronogr. anno Christi 37. & Caligulae 3. Caius Caligula, saith he, also slew Julius Canus the Stoic Philosopher, of whom the Greeks relate a fiction beyond all credit, namely, that he being led to die, is reported to have foretold to one Antiochus, a Seleucian who followed him, with a mind undisturbed, that the night following he would be with him, and deal about a question worth the discussing, and moreover that Rectus, another of his fellows, should be slain by Caius within three days, all which the event proved to be true, he being slain within that space; Antiochus relating what he had seen by night, and that he had beheld Canus, who had disputed with him concerning the immortality of the soul, and the passage of it after death unto a purer light. Thus Syncellus: which relation I see no reason why he should hold to be a fiction. Averroës (as we use to call him) grants a soul that is spiritual and immortal, yet grants but one, and that one to be common unto all mankind. This fantasy of his is generally exploded as absurd, and convinced for such by Albertus Magnus in his Sum, and S. Thomas in his other Sum contra Gent. as also by divers others, and therefore needs not to be considered anew. The general Tenet of all classical Philosophers and the better sort of Christians is, that the soul is spiritual, immortal, and incorruptible, and that there be as many individuals thereof as there be men, yea and besides, that this incorruptibility thereof is not of mere grace, and bestowed on it after the creation, but contrariwise of nature, and involved within the principles of constitution. Sennertus in his Paralip. holds it to be a perfection added to the nature merely out of favour, and in favour of his opinion citys Damascen. l. 2. c. 3. but citys the greek text lamely; and Stapulensis is mistaken wholly in his translation; for Damascen doth not say there, as they impose upon him, that Angels be incorruptible, not by nature but by grace, but rather the quite contrary, namely, That they by grace or favour have a nature that is immortal, for so the Greek Text hath it. By which words he teacheth us, that they have their nature, not by right, or of themselves, but by grace, as all other creatures have, and their immortality from nature, as all other creatures have not: according to which account Angels are immortal by nature, that is to say, by a favour antecedent to their natural being, and not subsequent unto it. For the better clearing of which verity, let us consider what is properly meant or signified by this term incorruptible, or immortal.  
I note then that of this term there are three different acceptions; one proper, but not ordinary; a second both proper and ordinary; a third neither proper nor ordinary. Immortality in the first sense is supereminent, that is to say, such a one as hath so firm principles of constitution as be superior to any agency, and therefore whatsoever is thus immortal can neither be dissolved, nor annihilated. And this kind of superexcellent immortality is proper unto God alone, and no created entity can lay any claim unto it; and therefore 1 Tim. 6. he is called Solus immortalis etc. and of this we are not in this place to entreat. In the second sense an entity is called immortal, when as the principles, though they be not proof against the power that can annihilate, yet are not subject to dissolution or corruption, & therefore being once produced are to remain ever, there being no reason why the cause that preserves them should at any time withdraw his sovereign influence, nor any second can do them harm, and so they are safe on both sides, whatsoever Arriaga imagineth to the contrary. Immortality taken in this sense is properly so, and this is the usual signification of the word, and again in this sense it is to be understood, except some other term or some circumstance do show the contrary. The third & last acception is when it is ascribed to such things which, although according to the natural principles they lie exposed to destruction, either by annihilation or corruption, yet are continued by the favour of some external preservatour. This improper kind of immortality our bodies should have enjoyed before the fall of Adam, and shall after the resurrection; and it is rather a contingent perpetuity than any natural immunity from mortality and corruption, so that a body in that state is still corruptible, though not corrumpendum. This difference of acception of the term being noted, I observe that our business here is not to inquire in the first, or third sense about the souls incorruptibility, but in the second only, as namely, whether it be incorruptible according to the exigence and virtue of the natural principles of constitution, without recourse to external courtesy or favour. The question being stated on this sort, it appears thereby that we are not to dispute point-black the souls immortality, but, presupposing it to be immortal some way or other, whether that same immortality be an endowment that is natural.  
Pomponatius and Sennertus will not grant it to be natural; and now lately one Mr. Hobbes, in a prodigious volume of his, called by him as prodigiously Leviathan, is of opinion that no other immortality of the soul can be proved out of Scripture, if any at all can, besides that one of the lowest class, which is of grace and favour merely.  
For eviction of the contrary both out of reason and Scripture, I note first, that the soul of man is an entity or substance intellectual; and secondly, that every such entity is capable of a true felicity, and is unquiet until it do attain thereunto; and thirdly, that every such sublimer entity is made in a manner for itself, that is to say, as Adam Godham judgeth, 1. Sent. q. 2. some way or other to enjoy its own being, and to be settled in a full possession of itself, reserving always the subordination to the supremest entity, and a continual dependence thereupon. This appears plainly, because the whole species of man, that is to say, all mankind, doth earnestly desire felicity & the fruition of a good so great as may give it a full content & satisfaction, after a subordinate way, for the pleasing and rejoicing of itself. In this limited sense the doctrine of Eudoxus Gnidius and of Epicurus, subscribed lately and explained by Gassendus, seems to draw very near the truth, namely, that man's felicity did consist in some high and refined pleasure, not corporeal, but such as is intellectual and pure: from which opinion Aristotle and Albertus in their Ethics seem not to descent, and Aureolus is of the same mind with them. In relation to this same contenting of ourselves, Aristotle describes humane felicity in general terms, without including God in any other terms then those of the sublimest entity. And though in reality it be God that is our Summum bonum, and is that goodness only which can make us happy, and moreover, that we stand bound to love him above ourselves, to observe and please him, yea, even although we were to reap no benefit thereby; yet nevertheless, such a transcendent relation we have unto felicity and content, under that very title, as that abstracting from whether there were a God or no, we should as earnestly desire to be happy and to enjoy ourselves as we now do: and again, as we desire to please God in all we do and suffer and are, so also we do desire felicity for the pleasing of ourselves, yea even independently upon any other consideration, and so, although we were principally made for God, yet secondatily and subordinately we were made for ourselves, and therefore for ourselves, because we were made intellectual.  
I argue then from hence as followeth. Every entity framed for the enjoying of itself, and so for itself, is to be perpetual, according to the exigence of nature. But such is the reasonable soul, and every nature intellectual. Ergo, the rational soul and every nature intellectual are to be perpetual according to the exigence of nature. I say, according to the exigence of nature, and not according to any act of grace, because if we were not so, then had not the efficient wrought consequently to himself and to his own ends. Wherefore seeing the skilful architect of Nature knows how to work conformably to the rules of reason, and to proportion his work unto the end for which he made it, it follows hence, that every rational soul, or substance intellectual, is by the order of nature made up immortal and incorruptible.  
And this consequence is therefore good, because it is essential to felicity to be perpetual, and to be an endless state of everlasting joy, and therefore the subject in which this joy is to reside cannot be otherwise then naturally perpetual. Morcover, seeing it is our soul which is directly & per sc proportioned to felicity, and capable thereof, and our bodies only indirectly and as it were by accident, therefore immortality belongeth primarily to the soul, and to the body only by a sequel. And so we argue here in conformity to that we should in other cases not unlike to this; as for example, upon a supposal made that the sun was created to enlighten the earth perpetually, we should conclude from thence that is was framed of a nature and body incorruptible.  
Now further, that perpetuity is of the very essence of felicity, or, at the least, an inseparable companion thereof, Reason itself doth teach us, & our Divines do show it plainly, as by name, Aquinas, 1. p.q. 44. a. 3. and 1.2. q. 5. a. 4. & l. 3. cont. Gent. c. 62. Albertus, seu Aegidius, in compend. l. 2. Valentia tom. 2. d. 1. q. 5. p. 6. Lessins' l. 3. the sum. bono c. ult. Estius 4. d. 49. &, as I persuade myself, Paravicinus l. de Bono, and all the rest: forasmuch as, of a certain, true felicity ought to be devoid of care & sorrow, & then, seeing that which we possess with delight, we cannot relinquish without sorrow, & again, what we love we cannot enjoy contentedly without our being assured not to lose it, forasmuch as the only dread or suspicion of being deprived thereof causes sorrow, and is afflictive to the heart, even as well, though not as much, as the loss itself. And for this there is great reason, because we do not desire alone that good which is felicity, but besides to have it always, and to be assured of it, and therefore we are unsatisfied and in pain unless we be really happy, and withal assured so to continue. Of so large a capacity is the spirit of man, as that it resteth not in that alone which is present to it, but besides, with swift-winged thoughts and flying affections overtakes the future, and thereafter as that same is apprehended to be, good or bad, pleasing or unpleasant, draws from it either comfort or affliction.  
But why is it that a man cannot be happy for a season, as well as miserable for a season? Jo. Pontius, a late Philosopher and follower of Scotus, is of opinion that he may; for so he determineth q. 6. Ethic. con. 3. n. 28. to whom I can by no means assent, because as Cicero and Boetius do define, Felicity is such a state and such a good as fully satiates, and i● replenished with all that is justly desirable. It is, saith Cicero, l. 3. Tuscul. Secretis malis omnibus cumulata bonorum complexio: And Boetius, l. 3. consol. pros. 2. Status omnium bonorum aggregatione perfectus. Wherefore it must consist either in all several goods together, or else in some one that contains and countervails them all. Wherefore though a man who is miserable now may be happy afterwards, yet he who is happy now can never be miserable afterwards, because happiness that is in being now excludes misery both present and future; but, contrariwise, misery that is now in being, although it excludes a present happiness, yet not a happiness to come. The reason of which disparity is, because a true and perfect happiness includes essentially, as we shown before, all good things, of which number a secured perpetuity is one, as on the contrary side every state of misery does not of necessity include all evil things, or all the causes of infelicity, and therefore not any perpetuity of them; and for this reason it is that there is no repugnance why it may not have an end, forasmuch as S. Dionysius defineth, Bonum est ex integra causa, malum ex quocunque defectu; seeing that more is required to the constitution of felicity then to the destruction or abolition of it, more to an efficiency then to a deficiency: and so consequently, although felicity cannot subsist without a perpetuity, yet infelicity may, contrarily to that which Pontius imagined. And although felicity be the same for a day that it is for a year, or for ever, considering only the Physical entity thereof; yet considering the whole value and moral estimation thereof, it is not so, because an endless duration accrueing to the possession of any good thing doth raise the value of it and the just esteem; as contrariwise, the same duration accrueing to an evil doth make it infinitely worse and more afflictive: for which cause a good which is perpetual & known for such, may satiate, when being but for a time it cannot.  
As for brute beasts, whatsoever Mr. Hobbes conceives unto the contrary, they have neither sense nor capacity of a present happiness, nor knowledge of a future. And no other in former ages, that I have heard of, besides the false Prophet Mahomet, ever asserted any happiness to beasts; whereas, on the contrary part, according to good Philosophy, beasts neither have any happiness, nor do desire it. Ignoti nulla cupido. No Animal, saith Aristotle l. 10. Eth. c. 8. & apnd Andronicum, 10. devoid of reason can be partaker of felicity, because wholly destitute of the faculty contemplative. The life of God is happy altogether, and of man also, so fare forth as he resembles him and participates of his vigorousness. No other Animal is happy, because not communicating of the hability to contemplate. Such as be able to contemplate be capable of selicity, and the more able to contemplate, the more happy they may be; and felicity extends itself as fare as that and this, not by accident, but per se. Thus he. The true reason then why beasts can have no happiness is, because they cannot possess nor enjoy themselves, for want of an understanding spirit within them; and so properly speaking, though they can be or not be, yet can they not have any thing at all, nor, contrariwise, lose any thing, and so neither be rich nor poor, happy nor miserable.  
I argue again to the same intent. Such as the operations of the soul be, such is the nature of it; and therefore all the proofs for immortality drawn from the natural operations do prove the soul to be immortal naturally, if they prove any thing at all, as most wise Philosophers do conceive they do.  
I prove the same out of holy Scripture against the assertion of Leviathan. It is confessed the Scripture saith the soul of man is immortal & doth live after death, not adding any where that this same immortality is out of grace of favour; therefore, in effect, it says every where, when it speaks of that point, that it is immortal naturally. The Antecedent is certain by the survey of those several places cited by Valentia, the Conimbricenses & Nic. Baius. The consequence I prove to be a good one therefore, because words are ever to be understood in their usual and proper signification, except some adjoining words or circumstances of the speaker do imply the contrary. But in the Scripture, wheresoever it teaches the immortality of the soul, there is no such word or circumstance. Ergo, they are to be understood of such an incorruptibility as is natural, because that only is the usual meaning of such words as signify an immortality: as the term man uttered without limitation simply, is to be understood for a real and natural man, and not for a painted one or metaphorical.  
To this I add, that the verity of the soul's immortal nature is not attested singly and simply, but besides as a certainty and a verity not to be called into question, even abstracting from those Philosophical arguments commonly brought to prove it be demonstrative or no; certainly their form, at least, is demonstrative, because drawn ab effectis. Thus much is in substance asserted by Aureolus, 2. dist. 19 That the soul, saith he, is immortal, is a doctrine of saith to be held most firmly, and is also the common conception of our understanding, and a verity that is evident, although it be not so easy to find out a reason for it: divers of those which are brought be not concluding. Thus pronounceth he concerning the certainty of this doctrine, even in case the arguments for it should not be thought convincing. And that it may be so, stands with great reason, because we are very sure of many natural verities, for which, nevertheless, we are not able to render any such reason as is compelling or demonstrative; for we do not learn all we know by the force of formal arguments or syllogisms, but rather by virtual proofs, and a secret intelligence settled by nature betwixt our minds and truth. Yet this I do not say as if I did not judge the reasons for immortality to be efficacious, but only to prevent evasions, and in particular that one of Pontius, who in the place before cited ventures to affirm that the immortality of the soul is not known for a certainty by the force of natural reason, therefore because he holds that the arguments brought in favour of it do not convince: which assertion of his is not only a disparagement of so noble and fundamental a truth, but besides seems very false, and gives no small offence: because, admitting the arguments for it were as notconvincing as he himself pretends, yet nevertheless the truth itself may be very certain, even by natural reason, as Aureolus, a very great Master, before hath signified; and if it had not been so, how could all nations have conspired about it? And that they have done so, we may find both by the perusal of the Ethnic writers, as also by the collections of Eugubinus l. 9 de Perenni Philosophia, & Menasse Ben Israel l. de Resurrectione c. 8. Moreover, as infirm as Pontius judges the Arguments to be, yet was not he able to give them any good Solutions, although he endeavoured to do it, and besides, did not put them home, as may be perceived by any indifferent survey. The reasons however disparaged will be able to justify themselves, and the easier, because such as do undervalue and impugn them are driven into such streits, as they are enforced to call in question sundry fundamental Truths which are acknowledged generally for certain and evident; as for example, That there is one rector of mankind, who, according to justice, will reward and punish; secondly, That the general conceptions of humane understanding are true; thirdly, That the universal appetite of humane nature is rational, and also possible to be satisfied. These and such like, although they do not deny them to be true, yet they will not grant them to be evident. Against such dangerous rocks as these are they driven who will not yield that the reasons brought to prove the immortality be concluding; from which inconvenience the other side of classical Doctors are very safe and free. As for Holkot in Say. cap. 2. lect. 14. although he does not magnify those reasons which are usually urged for this immortality, affirming of them that they do not press more than those other do which are commonly produced against the possible eternity of the world; yet he himself confesses them to be good, though not demonstrative, adding three arguments of his own, and also acknowledging that this same immortality is a doctrine delivered by the chiefest of the Philosophets, maintained by the Catholic writers, and proved for a truth by miracles innumerable. Now, admitting these arguments to be no less efficacious than those other against the eternity, this cannot prejudice them much, because many men of great learning and judgement are of opinion that these against the eternity be not only good, but also demonstrations. Moreover, allowing these for immortality be not, in rigour, demonstrations, yet all particulars being cast up, we shall find that men generally do give a constant assent to sundry natural verities upon less evidence than these.  
Concerning Pomponatius, we are to understand that he was troubled in conscience for what he formerly had written in prejudice of immortality, and therefore, like a good Christian, did not only relinquish that error of his, but besides made suit by a letter to Javellus, a person of eminent learning, that he would be pleased to give the world which he had abused a satisfaction for him, which at his request was done accordingly, as appears by the said Javellus his learned work now exant, De indeficientia animae, in which tract remains inserted a copy of the letter which Pomponatius wrote unto him for that end.  
For the completing of this business in hand, I note, that the Philosophers who lived before Christ had much greater difficulty for their embracing this capital Truth of immortality, than those other who flourished after, by reason that they were destitute of all other light then what blind Gentilism had left them, and therefore might not easily perceive but that, as it was ordinarily voiced, Mors ultima linea rerum; which saying was erected like the pillars of Hercules, with this solemn inscription engraven upon them, Nil ultra, as if beyond those there was no region habitable: and besides, it was hard to believe, as Pliny speaketh l. 7. c. 55. Iterari vitam à morte, insomuch as they ought to have been arguments well steeled that should be of power sufficient to force theirway through the brazen wall of death, and to rear up a huge pile or fabric of another life after corruption and rottenness, of which life they could perceive few or no signs appearing in the world. Wherefore, although the arguments for immortality were very weighty, yet they having such a strong bar laid to cross their way, no marvel if sundry of those Ancients should be brought unto a stand, and the arguments, as forcible as they were, benumbed, and though not killed, yet cast into a slumber. For, indeed, because men than knew not how to dispose of souls after their separation from the body, therefore they might have licence granted them to speak doubtfully, not knowing what to determine, or to say nothing at all, either pro or contra. Some few we find did contradict, as by name Epicurus and Lucretius: yet notwithstanding this main obstacle, the general sense of the world was for the immortality, and much more than when the other hemisphere of life came creditably to be discovered by the Messiah, for at that time those old reasons for immortality awaked, and recovered their natural vigour and vivacity; and no wonder, because this truth of immortality and that other of a life to come are mutual inductives one unto the other, and conspire so friendly, as whosoever denies either of them, doth disparage and weaken the other; and again, they give so great aides to each other, as that the notice of another life made ready way for the entertainment of immortality, and contrariwise, the doctrine of immortality added reputation to the doctrine of the other life. Moreover, The incorruptible nature of the reasonable soul; The state of felicity or infelicity in a life to come; That God is the high rector of the Universe, extends his providence over all, and is a just and bountiful rewarder; be all of them symbolising verities and of a strict confederacy both offensive and defensive, and so can hardly be overthrown.  
I conclude this small labour as Pythagoras and Philolaus concluded their golden verses, wherein the ancient doctrine is declared plainly, 

〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉,  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.   

Sic ubi, deposito jam corpore, libera coeli  
Templa penetrâris, Deus immortalis, & omni  
Spretus ab illuvie terrarum, eris integer avi.   

And having once laid down our dust,  
Through spacious airy Lawns we must,  
And free in those large circles move,  
Immortal, like the Gods above.    
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, saith Hierocles the Commentatour, limiting and qualifying the higher expression of the verse, by admonishing his reader, that albeit Gods we must be, yet not simply and absolutely, as the words do sound, but only so fare forth as it is possible for a separated soul to be.  
FINIS.    

POSTSCRIPT.  
OVer and above those reasons brought by the Author of the precedent work, all which do prove an immortality naturally belonging to the soul, there want not divers others that do the same, as amongst the rest, for example, this one, viz. Such as the physic and food of the soul is for curing of the maladies thereof, and for the strengthening and cherishing of it, such is the nature of the soul itself: But the physic and food of the soul is wholly immaterial and intellectual; that is to say, Reasons and Truths eternal and incorruptible: Therefore the nature of the soul is such. I prove the minor proposition by experience: for when the mind is troubled and out of peace and order, by reason of some loss or misfortune, than all the Materia medica of Dioscorides, or of Horstius will not make a cure: if so the body be not diseased, or out of tune, no physicians skill will be able to prevail, we must not seek in such cases as these to Galen, or Celsus, or Paracelsus, or Avicenna, no druggist's shop, no physick-garden can furnish us with remedies against the raging sorrows or bewitching pleasures of the mind. Non est medicamen in hortis. Tollere nodosum nescit medicina dolorem. A sick body physicians can sometimes cure, but a sick mind never. If so the body be then in health, and that the infirmity do not proceed from thence, Philosophy in that case must do the deed, and not Medicina. Philosophy, saith Hierocles in Proem. ad aureos versus Pythagora, is the purger of humane life, and the perfection: the purger it is, because it delivers it from all corruption contrary to reason, and from the mortal body; the perfecter, because by the recovery of the true natural constitution, it reduceth it to a similitude with the divine: which two things being to be done by virtue and verity, by one of them it takes away the distempers of perturbations, and by the other induces a Godlike form into it. Thus he: conformably to whom determineth the wise Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus l. 2. de vita sua §. 15. when having numbered up a world of miseries and perplexities which haunt this life, he addeth, saying, What is it then that must conduct us through all these? Philosophia. Also the great Egyptian King Osmanduas, as we find it recorded by Diodorus Siculus l. 1. p. 2. raised a goodly structure which had graven on it this inscription, Medicatorium Animi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, that is to say, a store-house for curing of the mind; and this same was not an Apothecaries-shop, but a Library well furnished with books wherewith to charm men's cares, and cure both the vain delights and bitter anguishes of the mind, whose tranquillity is not procurable by medicines or receipts, but, contrariwise, by the good documents, for example, of Epictetus, of Seneca, or Marcus Antoninus; and where all Pagan doctrines and consolations be deficient, by the instructions and good counsels to be found for us in the Holy Bible, in Thomas de Kempis, Peraldus, Petrarch de remediis utrinsque fortunae, and other such like. The Recipes taken from hence will work, when all the material compounds, quintessences, extractions and Elixirs can do nothing, as not having virtue in them, nor yet subtlety to penetrate.  
Now albeit the Ethnic Moralists can do much for pacifying our disordered affections and introducing a content, yet do they not come home; for though they be able to persuade a generous contempt of all transitory delights and fading glories, and also how to draw on a kind of sad or disconsolate way of resolution for a constant suffering of all adversities, telling us that  
Quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est; and read us many such melancholy lectures: yet do not they assign us any solid reasons whereupon to build content, or whereby we might receive true satisfaction; but, contrariwise, endeavour to feed us with shadows, as namely, by their telling us that virtue is an ample reward unto itself, and again, that the miseries and affliction of this present life are not evils really, though we do think them so, and with such empty fantasies as these would make us give our own experience the lie. Moreover they sometimes speak faintly and fearfully of the life to come, and the rewards thereof, by means of which alone the inequalities and the great disorders of this can be made up and reconciled with providence. On this sort spoke Tacitus concerning the soul of his Father in law Julius Agricola then late deceased: Si quis piorum manibus locus sit, si, ut Sapientibus placet, non cum corporibus extinguuntur magnae animae, placidè quiescas, If, saith he, to the spirits of the pious there be any place remaining; if, as wise men are persuaded, great souls be not extinguished with their bodies, mayest thou sweetly rest. To strong and pressing sorrows such feeble remedies did many of the Ethnics bring; but this sovereign medicine was left for Christianity to compose and show unto the world, by the belief of which those cold sweats with which many before had been sore afflicted, were prevented wholly.  
Another natural tract whereby to trace out immortality, is the universal shamefastness of mankind of the own nakedness; which passion is not found to be in brute beasts; and the reason of the difference between them seems to be, because beasts are corruptible, and are so to be, but men, though now they also be corruptible, yet it seems they were not so to be, but only by a misadventure or mischance: for man's body, because composed of several disagreeing parcels, is dissolvable, and may be taken in sunder by the very same way that it was put together, and therefore by the own right cannot lay any just claim to a perpetuity more than other composed bodies can, yet it seems that by right of the being matched with a substance intellectual it might pretend unto it, and therefore holds it a disparagement and disgrace to be reputed mortal, which without such a title it could not do: and seeing nakedness betrays it to be a piece of corruption, a condition so abject and inferior, it is ashamed to be seen, forasmuch as sexes be the evident marks and tokens of mortality; for why are sexes, but to propagate? and what need of propagation, but only to provide a substitute? and none provides a successor or a substitute, who is not himself to be turned out and to be gone: of which mean and inferior condition, as not befitting, men are ashamed, and in relation to this grand imperfection, we find that men labour to conceal, even as much and as long as possible, their amorous affections, as springing out of a root of corruption. Thus we see that men once in high fortunes, and cast down and grown into necessity, are abashed at their poor and present state, whenas others that were poor and low always be not so. And this I conceive to be the principal reason why men do blush at businesses of corporeal love, and are ashamed of their nakedness, although hitherto I do not know any that in particular have taken notice of it.  
Now finally, how immortality is consistent with the principles of Aristotle, and also how it doth follow upon them, is not my intention to examine, as being a long and intricate piece of work, and performed by others, as namely by Javellus l. de indeficientia anima, and of late by Card. Augustinus Oregius in a work peculiarly intended for that purpose.