106 BANTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. imagine,) though the species and modes of sensation cease, which are denominated from the various organs. 5. Yea, no man can prove that the departing soul doth not carry with it its igneous spirits, which, in the body, it did immediately. actuate.' If it were ever so certain that those Greek fathers were mistaken (as well as hypocrites)' who, togk the soul itself to be a sublime, intellectual fire. And as to the objection some hold that the soul preëxisted be- fore it was in the body ; others, and mt7st, that it then received its first being: if the first were true, it would be true that the soul had its intellectual activity before, though the soul itself, incorpo- rate, remember it not, becauseit operateth but ut forma hominis, (and its oblivion they,take to be part of its penalty,) and they that think it a radius of the, anima mundi ref sÿstematis, must think that then it did intellectually animate hunc mundum, ref mundi partem: and to do so again, is the worst theycan conjecture of it. As the rays of the sun, which heat a burning-glass, and by it set a candle on fire, are the same rays still diffused in the air, and,illuminating; heating, and moving it, and terminatedon some other body, and not annihilated, or debilitated, when their contracted operation ceaseth by breaking the glass, or putting out the candle ; and as the spirit of a tree still animateth the tree, when it retires from the leaves, and lets them fall. But this, being an unproved imagina- tion of men's own brains, we have nó further use of it, than to con- fute themselves. But if the soul existed not till its incorporation, what wonder if it operate but ut forma, when it is united to the body for that use? What wonder if its initial operations, like a spark of fire intinder, or the first lighting of a candle, be weak, and scarce by us perceptible? What wonder if it operate but to the uses that the creation did appoint it; and first, as vegetative, fab- ricate its own body, as the maker's instrument, and then feel, and then understand ? Andwhat wonder if it operate no further than objects are admitted? And, therefore, what wonder if, in apo- plexies, &c:, such operations Ire intercepted ? But the departing soul is, (1.) In its maturity. (2.) No more united tothis body, and so not confined to sense and imagination in its operations, and the admissionof its objects. ' (3.) And it is sub ratione meriti, and as a governed subject, is ordinate to its reward ; which it was not capable of receiving in the womb; or in an apoplexy. And, as we have the reasons before alledged'to hold,, (1.) That it shall not be annihilated. (2.) Nor dissolved. (3.) Nor lose its essential faculties or powers. (4.) Nor those essential powers be continued useless by the wise and merciful Creator, though, by natural reve- lation, we know not in what manner they shall act, whether on am' other body, and by what conjunction, and how far; soby su-
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