A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAX. 497
Jrom the body, and to be present with the Lord : That we, a term of personality is there given to the soul, exclusively of the body, for the body cannot be absent from itself: But we, that is, the souls of believers, may be both absent from it, and present with Christ.
To this we may add, 2 Cor. iv. 16. where the soul is called the man, and the inner man too, the body being but the external face, or shadow of the man. And to this philosophers agree. The best philosophers are so far from thinking that the body is the substantial part of man, and the soul a thing dependent on it, that contrarily they affirm, that the body depends upon the soul *, and that it is the soul that conserves and sustains it ; and that the body s in the soul, rather than the soul in the body, and that which is seen not the man, but that is the man which is invisible, that the body might be killed and the man not hurt ; meaning the soul, which only deserves the name of man. Now if it be the chief part of man, and that which is only worthy the name of man, and from which therefore the whole is and ought to be denominated a man ; if it be so far from depending on the body, or being contained within the body, that the body rather depends upon it, and is in it, then surely the soul must be, what we describe it to be, a sub- stantial being.
(4.) It is past all controversy, that the soul is a substance, because it is the subject of properties, affections and habits ; which is the very strict and formal notion of a substance. All the affections and passions of hope, desire, love, delight, fear, sorrow, and the rest, are all rooted in it, and springing out of it ; and for habits, arts and sciences *f*, it is the soul in which they are lodged and seated. Having once gotten a promptitude to act, either by some strong, or by some frequently repeated acting, they abide in the soul, even when the acts are intromitted, as in sleep, a navigator, scribe, or musician, are really artists, when they are neither sail- ing, or writing, or playing ; because the habits still remain in their minds, as is evident in this, that when thev awake, thev can.
* The soul preserves an J sustains the animated body, but when it leaves the body, the nature of an animated body subsists no more: the soul exists not in the body, as in a place, seeing it cannot be circumscribed by place. The whole soul pervades the whole body ; nor is there any part of it, in which it is not present : lor it is not contained in the body, but rather itself contains the body; neither is it in the hod\ , as in a vessel or bottle, but rather the body is in it. N</s. on the sotd, 6.2. c. 11. SX i&V Av6gUK0$ ro ogupzvov, i. e. That which is seen is not the man, but every man't soul is himself.
f The soul is the subject and seat of all the virtues and vices, arts and sciences. Uuchcvi. lac. com. p. 8&
498 A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAX.
perform their several works, without learning the rules of their art anew.
II. The soul is a vital substance, i. e.
A substance which hath an essential principle of life in itself; a living, active being. A living soul, saith Moses in the text ; and hereby it is distinguished from, and opposed to matter or body. The soul moves itself and the body too ; it hath a self-moving virtue or power in itself; whereas the matter, or body is wholly passive, and is moved and acted, not by itself, but by this vital spirit, James ii. 26. " The body without the spirit is dead.'" It acts not at all, but as it. is acted by this invisible spirit. This is so plain, that it admits of sensible proof and demonstration. Take mere matter, and compound or divide it, alter it, and change it how you will, you can never make it see, feel, hear, or act vitally without a quickening and actuating soul. Yet we must still re- member, that this active principle, the soul, though it hath this vital power in itself, it hath it not from itself, but in a constant receptive dependence upon God, the first cause, both of its being and power.
III. It is a spiritual substance.
All substances are not gross, material, visible and palpable sub- stances ; but there are spiritual and immaterial, as well as corpo- real substances, discernable by sight or touch. To deny this were to turn a downright Sadducee, and to deny the existence of angels and spirits, Acts xxiii. 8. The word substance, as it is applied to the soul of man, puzzles and confounds the dark understandings of some, that know not what to make of an immaterial substance, wrhereas in this place it is no more than subsiare accidentibus *, i. e. to be a subject in which properties, affections, and habits are seat- ed and subjected. This is a spiritual substance, and is frequently in scripture called a spirit ; " Into thy hands I commit my spirit,"' Luke xxiii. 46. " Lord Jesus receive my spirit,1'' Acts vii. 59. and so frequently all over the scriptures. And the spirituality of its nature appears, (1.) By its descent, in a peculiar way, from the Father of spirits. (2.) In that it rejoiceth in the essential properties of a spirit. (3.) That at death it returns to that great Spirit who was its efficient and former.
(1.) It descends, in a peculiar way, from the Father of spirits, as hath been shewn in the opening of this text. God stiles himself its Father, Ileb. xii. 9. its former, Zech. xii. 1. It is true, he
* A substance in this use of the word, is that which depends not, in respect of its being, upon any fellow- creature as accidents and qualities do, whose being is by having their in-being in another fellow-creature as their subject ; but this being, the soul, ex- ists in itself.
A TREATISE OF THE SOtTL OF MAV 4$D
giveth to all living things fyw [xou xnvjv, life and breath, Acts xvii 85. Other souls are from him, as well as the rational soul ; but in a far different way and manner. They flow not immediately from him by creation, as this doth. It is said, Gen. i. 24<, 27. " Let " the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind ;* but " God " created man in his own image." Which seems plainly to make a specified difference betwixt the reasonable, and all other souls.