30 B.TFlì':, UY-1Nü PnOUGHTS. another? Is it not certain that some men are in torment of body and mind ? And will it be a comfort to a man in such torment to tell him that he is God, or that he is part of an universal soul? Would not a man on the rack, or in the stone,or other misery, say, Call me by what name you please, that easeth not my pain. If I be a part of God, or an universal soul, I am sure I am a torment- ed, miserable part. And if you could make rue believe that God bath some parts which are not serpents, toads, devils, or wicked or tormented men, you must give me other senses, and perceptive powers, before it will comfort me to bear that I amnot such a part. And if God had wicked and tormented parts on earth, why may he not have such, and 1 be one of them, hereafter? And if I be, a holy and happy part of God, or of an universal soul on earth, why may not 1 hope to be such hereafter ?' We deny not but that God is the continued, first cause of all being whatsoever; and that the branches and fruit depend not, as effects, so much on the causality of the stock and roots,. as the creature dothon Gad; and that it is an impious conceit to think that the world, or any part of it, is a being independent, and sepa- rated totally from, God, or subsisting without his continued causa- tion. But cannot God cause, as a creator, by making that which is not. himself? This yieldeth the self-deceiver no other honor nor happiness but what equally betongeth to a devil, to a fly, or worm, to a dunghill, or to the worst and most miserable man ? 2. As man's soul is a substance, so is it a substance differenced formally front all inferior substances, by an innate (indeed essen- tial), power, virtue,or faculty, of vital action, intellection, and free- will; for we find all these acts performed by it, as motion, light, and heat are by the fire or sun. And if any should think that these actions are, like those of a musician, compounded of the agent's (principal and organical several) parts, could he prove it, no more would follow, but that the lower powers (the sensitive, or spirits) are to thehigher as a passive organ, receiving. its operations ; and that the intellectual,soul bath the power of causing intellection and volition by its action on the inferior parts, as a man can cause such motions of his lute, as shall be melody (not to it, but) to himself; and, consequently, that as music is but a lower operation of man, (whose proper acts of intellection and volition are above it,) so intellection and volition in the body are not the noblest acts ofthe soul ; but it performed them by an eminent power, which can do greater things. And if this could be proved, what would it tend to the unbeliever's ends, or to the disadvantage of our hopes and comforts? 3. That man's soul, at death, is not annihilated, even the atom-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=