(2.) It rejoiceth in the essential properties of a spirit : For it is an incorporeal substance, as spirits are. It hath not partes extra partes* extension of parts ; nor is it divisible, as the body is. It hath no dimensions and figures as matter hath ; but is a most pure, invisible, and (as the acute Dr. Moore expresseth it) indis- cernable substance. It hath the principle of life and motion in it- self, or rather, it is such a principle itself, and is not moved as dull and sluggish matter is, peraUud, by another. Its efficacy is great, though it be unseen, and not liable to the test of our touch, as no spiritual substances are. " A spirit (saith Christ) hath not " flesh and bones," Luke xxiv. 39. We both grant and feel, that the soul hath a love and inclination to the body, (which indeed is no more than it is necessary it should have) yet can we no more infer its corporiety from that love to the body, than we can infer the corporiety of angels from their affection and benevolent love to men. It is a spirit of a nature vastly different from the body in which it is immersed. There is (saith a learned author *) no greater mystery in nature, than the union betwixt soul and body ; That a mind and spirit should be so tied and linked to a clod of day, that while that remains in a due temper, it cannot by any art or power free itself I — What so much a-kin are a mind and a piece of earth, a clod and a thought, that they shall be thus affixed to one another ?
Certainly, the heavenly pure bodies do not differ so much from a dunghill, as the soul and body differ. They differ but as more pure and less pure matter ; but these, as material, and im- material. If we consider wherein consists the being of a body, and wherein that of a soul, and then compare them, the matter will be clear.
We cannot come to an apprehension of their beings, but by con- sidering their primary passions and properties, whereby they make discovery of themselves. The first and primary affection of a body-f* (as is rightly observed) is that extension of parts whereof it is compounded, and a capacity of division, upon which, as upon the
* Mr. How's Fun. Semi. p. 9, 10. f Philosophical Essay, p. 2. § 2. p. 39.
500 A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAN.
fundamental mode, the particular dimensions (that is, the figures) and the local motion do depend.
Again, for the being of our souls, if we reflect upon ourselves, we shall find that all our knowledge of them resolves into this, that we are beings conscious to ourselves of several kinds of cogita- tions ; that by our outward senses we apprehend bodily things present ; and by our imagination we apprehend things absent ; and that we oft recover into our apprehension things past and gone, and, upon our perception of things, we find ourselves variously affected.
Let these two properties of a soul and body be compared, and upon the first view of a considering mind it will appear, that divi- sibility is not apprehension, or judgment, or desire, or discourse : That to cut a body into several parts, or put it into several shapes, or bring it to several motions, or mix it after several ways, will never bring it to apprehend, or desire. No man can think the combining of fire, and air, and water, and earth, should make the lump of it to know and comprehend, what is done to it, or by it. We see manifestly, that upon the division of the body, the soul remains entire and undivided. It is not the loss of a leg or arm, or eye, that can maim the understanding, or the will, or cut off the affections.
Nay, it pervades the body it dwells in, and is whole in the whole*, and in every part, which it could never do if it were material. Yea, it comprehends, in its understanding, the body or matter in which it is lodged ; and more than that, it can, and doth form conceptions of pure spiritual and immaterial beings, which have no dimensions or figures ; all which shew it to be no corporeal, but a spiritual and immaterial substance.
(3.) As it derives its being from the Father of spirits, in a pecu- liar way, and rejoiceth, in its spiritual properties : So at death it re- turns to that great Spirit from whence it came. It is not annihila- ted, or resolved into soft air, or sucked up again by the element of fire, or catched back again into the soul of the world, as some have dreamed ; but it returns to God who gave it, to give an account of itself to him, and receive its judgment from him. "Then shall " the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return " to God who gave it," Eccl. xii. 7. Each part of man to its like, dust to dust, and spirit to spirit. Not that the soul is resolved into God, as the body is into earth : but as God created it a ra- tional spirit, conscious to itself of moral good and evil, so when it
* Understand it negatively, that the soul is not in the parts of the body per pertes, part in one part, and part in another, seeing it is indivisible, and hath no parts.
A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAN. 501
hath finished its time in the body, it must appear before the God of the spirits of all flesh, its Arbiter mid final Judge.
By all whieh we see, that as it is elevated too high on the one hand, when it is made & particle of God himself; not only the crea- ture, but a part of God, as * Plutarch and Philo Judeus f, and others have termed it ; (spirit it is, but of another and inferior kind :) So it is degraded too low, when it is affirmed to be mat- ter, though the purest, finest, and most subtle in nature ; which approacheth nearest to the nature of spirit. A spirit it is, as much as an angel is a spirit, though it be a spirit of another species. This is the name it is known by throughout the scriptures. In a word, it is void of mixture and composition ; there are no jarring qualities, compound elements, or divisible parts in the soul, as there are in bodies ; but it is a pure, simple, invisible, and indivisible sub- stance, which proves its spirituality, and brings us to the fourth particular, viz.
IV. It is an immortal substance.