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CHAP. XLV. The Distinction of the mind from the Sensitive Soul. (Book 45)

1. The Treatise of the Entrance of death into Humane nature, is commended as necessary for obtaining a knowledge of the mind. 2. The Reader is also sent back unto the Treatise Touching the Birth of Forms. 3. The Immortality of the Mind is proved from the Gospel. 4. It prepares a Weapon against the Atheism at this day. 5. Leonard Lessius describing or Coppying out, hath re-delivered only out of Augustine concerning the Immortality of the Soul.

FIrst of all, in the book of long Life, I have demonstrated at large, that the entrance [unspec 1] of Death into humane nature, had its own causes in nature, by means for bidden, & without the intent of the thrice Glorious Creatour: & that death being once crept in and admitted, although that was not from the Creators intention, yet that it was afterwards continued, and un-intreatable, from a necessity of nature: and there∣upon, not only to have been permitted and consented to by the Creatour, but also that the style of Nature being changed, it was admitted, yea and also as it were com∣manded, under a better state being introduced, in regenerating through the Divine Grace of Baptisme. In which Treatise, I have demonstated a necessity of the Sensi∣tive

Soul, which else under immortality, had been in vain: whence indeed a Law in the Members was introduced, contradicting the Laws of the immortal mind: And a Total and unexusable corruption of the whole central nature was received: Which new & unheard of Doctrine to former ages, I presuppose is therefore from thence to be fetched or required, if so be that the knowledge of our Mind be desired: For as it is now thus stranged from its own self & from its own Beginning, because it now seems to hearken unto the commands of the Sensitive Soul, which notwithstanding, in its own essence, Substance, and reality is unchangeable; so indeed unto those who make a begin∣ning, or do repent, as it addeth the knowledge of the means whereby it fell, and be∣came wholly degenerate; so also it presupposeth the same Doctrine, to be as it were the foundation of the knowing of it self.

In the next place, concerning the Birth of forms, I have likewise shewn, how far this fraile, sensitive, and mortal Soul in us, may differ from the immortal Mind: the [unspec 2] which surely that it is made to do, no less than after an infinite manner, is undoubted∣ly true, seeing the mind indeed is a Substance, not mortal, but the sensitive Soul is neither a Substance, as neither an accident; But a neither, Mortal Creature, and per∣ishing into nothing, and of the nature of Lights.

Which Doctrine is in part, that of the Gospel, which speaketh concerning the Eternal Life and Death of Souls, or that which reckoneth the Soul of man to be [unspec 3] the Image of God, and not hereafter to Die; for the distinguishing of it from the Soul of a Beast; which indeed together with the Life it self, is returned into nothing, no otherwise than as the light of a Candle. But as to the other part, the present Do∣ctrine is plainly Paradoxal in as much as the Sensitive Soul is banished out of the predi∣cament of a Substance, or an accident. For first of all, I have demonstrated, that the Sensitive and Beast-like Soul, as well in bruits, as that which is in us, is not infinite and immortal; yet it must needs be so, seeing none doubteth, but that every natural thing that is born, is also Subject unto Corruption by the Law of Nature. But we are obliged by Faith to believe, that the mind of man is immortal hereafter: And so that [unspec 4] the mind of man is an abiding substance, or a Spirit subsisting and Living in it self, after Seperation from the body, should not be to be pressed or demonstrated to a Christian, whose understanding is subdued into the obedience of Faith; but that a most preva∣lent Atheism had lately arose in the midst of us, and in Hypocrites of the Church, which by an every way renouncing of the Faith, doth shake it self off from the Princi∣ples whereby such insolent rashness might be appeased: And especially of them who deny all divine Power: otherwise, neither is it my part to Treate of the immortality of [unspec 5] the mind, it being written and demonstrated by Augustine, and piously copied out word for word by Lessius, and by him re-delivered, because they are those who have suf∣ficiently proved the same: But not yet against those which deny all Divine Power. Therefore I might desist, by treading the same under foot, to re-meditate of it, if it had been sufficiently demonstrated by them against the first sort of Atheists: and unless I had put a difference of the mind in nature, from every Soul of living Creatures, un∣less I say, the integrity or entireness of the same, should have repect unto the knowledge of nature, and that integrity should require a designed difference of man, from any other Created things whatsoever, and that ••ingly and Principally, only according to its cheif and lively part, without which, man is nothing but a stinking dead Carcase, more vile then a Flint, and sooner destroyed and broken than any Glass. Otherwise, Christianity standing, the immortality of the Mind standeth, and the Substance of that Substander o••••emainer; even as also likewise the Mortality of other Souls, or their reducement into nothing, which is annihilation of a Proper Name. And from thence is the true, and properly said difference of the same.