28 BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. sensitively or not, by organs or without; how far they are one, and how far still individuate ;, in what place they shall remain, and where is their paradise or heaven ; how shall they be again united to the body, whether by their os'n emission, as the sunbeams touch their objects- here, and whether 'the body shall be restored, as the con- sumed flesh of restored sick- men, aliunde, or only front the old materials. A' hundred of these ,quéstions are better left to the knowledge of Christ, lest we do but foolishly make snares for our- selves. Had all these been needful to us, they had been revealed. In respect to all such curiosities, and needless knowledge, it is a believer's wisdom implicitly to trust his soul to Christ, and to be satisfied that he knoweth what we know not, and to fear that vain, vexatious knowledge, or inquisitiveness 'into good and evil, which is selfish, and savoreth of a distrust of God, and is that sin, and fruit of sin, which the learned world too little feareth. III. That God is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and that holy souls shall be in blessedness with Christ, these following evidences, conjoined, do evince, on which my soul doth raise its hopes. I. The soul, which is an immortal spirit, must be immortally in a good or bad condition : but man's soul is an immortal spirit, and the good are not in a bad condition. Its immortality is proved thus : A spiritual, or most pure, invisible substance, naturally en- dowed with the power, virtue, or faculty of vital action, intel- lection andvolition, which is not annihilated nor destroyed by sep- aration of parts, nor ceaseth, or loseth either its power, species, individuation, or action, is an immortal spirit. But such is the soul of man, as shall be manifested by parts. 1. The soul is a substance; for that which is nothing can do nothing: but it doth move, understand, and will. No man will deny that this is done by something in us, and by some_ substance, and that substance is it which we call the soul. It is not nothing, and it is within us. As to them that say, it is the temperament of several parts con- junct, I have elsewhere fully confuted them, and proved, (1.) That it is some one part that is the agent on the rest, which all they confess that think it to be the material spirits, or fiery part.' It is not bones and flesh that understand, but a purer substance, as all acknowledge. (2.) What part soever it be, it can do no more than it is able to do, and a conjunction of many parts, of which no one hath the power of vitality, intellection or volition, formally or eminently;can never, by contemperation; dothose acts; for there can be nomore in the effect than is in the cause, otherwise it were no effect. The vanity of their objections that tell us, a lute, a watch, a
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