BAXTÉI,'s DYING THOUGHTS . 1 07 pernatural revelation we are assured, that there is a reward for the righteous, and that holy souls are still members of Christ, and live because he liveth, and that, in the day of their departure, they shall be with him in Paradise, and being absent from the body, shall be present with the Lord; and that Christ, therefore, died, rose,, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of theliving; that is, of those that, being dead, hence do live with him, and of .those that yet live in the body ; for he that said, " God is not the God of the dead, but of the living ;" that is, stands not re- lated to them as his people, as a king to his subjects, is not him- self the Lord of the absolute dead, but of the living. Therefore, (as Contarenus against Pomponatius de Immortal. Anivm, saith,) the immortality of the soul is provable by the light of nature ; but the manner of its future operation must be known by faith. And blessed he the Father of spirits, and our Redeemer, who bath sent and set up this excellent light, by which we see further than purblind infidels can do ! But I deny not but even the Scripture itself doth tell us but little of the manner of our intellection when we are out of the body; and it is not improbable that there is more imperfection in this mode of notional, organical, abstractive knowledge which the soul exerciseth in the body, than most consider of. And that, as the eye bath the visive faculty in sleep, and when we wink, andan internal action of the visive spirits, (no doubt) and yet seeth not any without till the eyelids are opened, (and was not made to see its own sight,) so the soul in the body is as a winking eye to all things that are not, by the sense and imagination, intromitted, or brought within its reach. And whether (sicut non video vienes, nequefacultatem neque substantiamvidentem, videndo tarnen certo percipio me videre, so it may be said, Non intelligo immediate ipsam intellectionem, neque facultatem, aut substantiam intelligen- tem. Iatelligendo tarnen certo' percipio me intelligere! quia actos intellectus.in spiritus sensitivos.operans sentitur; or whether we must further say, with Ackarn, that Intellectus turn intuitivè turn abstractivè se intelligit, I leave to wiser men to judge, but I am very suspicious that the body is more a lantern to the soul than some will admit; and that this Lusus notionum secundarum, or ab- stractive knnòwledge of things by organical images, names and no- tions, is occasioned by the union of the soul with the body ut for- ma, and is that childish knowledge which the apostle saith shall be done away. And how much of man's fall might consist in such a knowing of good and evil, I cannot tell, or in the overvaluing such a knowledge. And I think that when vain philosophy at Athens had called the thoughts and desires of mankind from great realities to the logical and philological game at words and notions, it was
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