BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 35 intellection, with other such puzzling doubts ; it satisfieth me, that God will not continue its nobler powers in vain ; and how they shall be exercised, is, hid' known to i; and that God's word tells us And than nature. withal, life, intuition, and love, (or voli- tion,) are acts so natural to the soul, (as motion, light, and heat, quoad actum to fite,) that I cannot conceive how its separation should hinder them, but rather that its incorporation hindereth the two latter, by hiding objects, whatever be said of abstractive knowledgeand memory. 7. But the greatest difficulty to natural knowledge is, whether souls will continue their individuation, or rather fall into one com- mon soul, or return so to God that gave them, as to be no more divers (or many) individuals, as now ; as extinguished candles are united to the illuminated air, or to the sunbeams but of this I have elsewhere said much for others ; and for myself, I find I need but this : 1. That, as I said before, either souls are partible substances, or not ; ifnot partible, how are they unible? Ifmany may be made one, by conjunction of substances, then that one may (by God) be made many again, by partition. Either all (Or many) souls are now but one, (igdividuate only by matter, as many gulfs in,the Sea, or many candles lightéd by. the sun`,) of not; if they are not one now in several bodies, what reason have weto think that they will be one hereafter, any more than now ? Augustine (de Anim.) was put on the question, 1. Whether souls are one, and not many. And that he utterly denied. 2. Whether they are many, and not one. And that,it seemeth, he could not digest. 3. Whether they were at once both one and many. Which he thought would seem to some ridiculous, but he seemeth most to incline to. And as God is the God of nature, sonature (even of the devils themselves) dependeth on him, as I said, more than the leaves or fruit do on the tree.; and We are all his ófl,Epring, and live, and move, and are in him; Acts xvii. But we are certain, for all this, 1. That we are not God. 2. That we are .yet many individuals, and not all one soul or man. If otir union should be as near as the leaves and fruit on the same tree, yet those leaves and fruit are numerous, and individual leaves and fruits, though parts of the tree. And were this proved of our present or future state, it would not alter our hopes or fears; for, as now, though we all live, move, and be in God, (and, as some dream, are parts of a common soul,) yet it is certain, that some are better and happier than ,others; some wise and good ; and some foolish and evil ; some, in pain and misery, and some at ease, and in pleasure ; and (as I said) it is now no ease to the miserable, to be told that, radically, all souls are one; no more will it be hereafter, nor can men reasonably hope for, or fear such an union, as shall make their state the same. We see
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