Truth tried: or, animadversions on a treatise published by the Right Honorable Robert Lord Brook, entituled, The Nature of Truth, its vnion and vnity with the soule. Which (saith he) is one in its essence, faculties, acts; one with truth. By I. W.

CHAP. III. The same Argument further prosecuted and examined, in this and the ensuing Chapters.

IN the next Chapter he shewes, That if we make the Ʋnderstanding and Truth to be One, (which I suppose will be easily granted; there being but few or none which make the Soule, the Understanding, and Reason (that is, Truth) to be Three distinct things:) then will it be easie to find these three Requisites: For thus Light or Truth is Dispensed; By the Father of Light; and hath for its Recipient, the whole Reasonable crea∣ture, consisting of Body and Soule. All which I admit, (as likewise will those that be his greatest adversaries:) onely with this Proviso, That he make the entire Reasonable creature to be subjectum Denominationis, and not subjectum Inhaesionis, to Reason or Truth.

Next, he spends some time to clear this, How the whole Reasonable Creature can be said to be the Recipient; which labour, in my judge∣ment, might have been spared: For I cannot see any reason to fear, but that it will as easily be granted, that the Reasonable Creature may be the Subject of Reason; as that the Ayr illuminate is the subject of Light: without any fear of Identity in the Thing Received with the Re∣cipient.

But it seems his Lordship speaks of another kind of Recipiency beside the Recipiency of a Subject: Such a kind of Recipiency as where the Recipiens and Receptum be the same. No Being (saith he) but it is the thing Receiving and Received: For consider any Individuall Being you please, Vegetative or Rationall, or what you will; Who is it that entertain∣eth this Being, but the Being it selfe which is entertained? Who is it that receiveth from the Womb of Eternity that reasonable creature, but the creature received?

You may distinguish them thus, The Recipiency of a Being, and the Recipiency of a Form: And so, the Fountain or Efficient, dat Esse, and dat Habere. In the first kind of Giving and Receiving, the Recipient and the thing Received must of necessity be the same; Thus the Efficient or Producer of Light, dat Lucido ESSE Lucidum, dat Luci Esse Lucem, not dat Lucido esse Lucem. But in the second it is otherwise, not dat Lu∣cido HABERE Lucidum, nor Luci HABERE Lucem, but Lucido Ha∣bere Lucem. Thus the Efficient or Fountain of Reason, dat Rational•• Esse Rationalem, Habere Rationem.

(But how his Marginall note stands good, viz. That in all things the Agent and the Patient must be One, because The thing Receiving and Received are One, I cannot conceive; For thus he makes God and the Reasonable creature to be One: For, if I mistake no••, the Fountain or Efficient is the Agent, and the Recipient the Patient.)

And indeed he must of necessity admit this distinction of Recipiency: For otherwise his Fundamentall Axiom would have failed. For if we allow no Recipiency, but the Recipiency of a Subject, whereby it re∣ceives or entertains a▪ Form▪ It will not be Universall•• true, That to the constitution of every Being, there must be the three Requisites for∣merly mentioned. For Substantiae non sunt in subjecte; Compleat Sub∣stances are not communicated or imparted To a Subject Receiving (a••d so would want a Recipient,) but are onely made to Be, and to be the Subject Receiving other things.

But •• desire his Lordship to consider, Whether, admitting such a Reception, wherein every thing is its own Recipient; he do not lay o∣pen so wide a gap, that his adversaries may make an Escape; and Him∣selfe break that Net wherein his Adversary should have been taken? Whether, in answering an Objection, he doe not overthrow his prin∣cipall Argument? For how easie is it to say, That Truth, though it be neither Soule, Intellect, nor Reason; Yet it is a Faculty (or what you will) Proceeding from God, and its own Recipient. And so, though they imagine an hundred Faculties in the Soule, one dependent upon ano∣ther; yet they shall never be put to a straight to find either a Fountain or a Recipient: For God, of necessity, must be the Fountain of all Be∣ing whatsoever (either mediatè or immediatè;) And that Being what∣soever it is, shall be its own Recipient. Therfore the Soule (in this sense) hath not the Body for its Recipient; neither did God communicate or bestow a living Soule upon Adam's earthly Body, when he breathed into it the breath of Life: But he gave To the Soule, to Be a Soul. Nei∣ther is the Soule a Recipient to the Understanding, Nor It to Reason, no•• any of these to Truth, (if they be distinct things:) But each of these their own Recipient. Neither (lastly) is the entire Reasonable Creature a Recipient of Truth or Reason (as he would have it) But Truth is its own Recipient. And then must he hold his hand from Con∣cluding as he doth in the Close of this Chapter, That the totum existens consisting of Matter and Form: the Reasonable creature, is the Recipient of this Truth: Except he will say, Veritas est Animal rationale, & A∣nimal rationale est Veritas▪

But how, the Ignorance of this Point should give the ground to that Question, whether the Soule or the Body be Contentum; (which he admonisheth us of) I cannot see. For though it be granted, that Eve∣ry thing be its own Contentum; yet this difficulty remaineth as firm as before. For, Is not Water its own Contentum: Is not the Vessell also its own Contentum? Yet he will not deny, but that (in another sense) the Water is contained in the Vessell; nor can he say, That the Vessell is contained in the Water: So though the Soule and Body be either of them their own Contentum and Recipient (quia datur Animae▪ ut sit Ani∣••a; datur Corpori, ut sit Corpus:) Yet that the one may not be Locu••▪ and the other Locatum; one the Subject, and the other an Ad∣junct (which is the meaning of that Question) will not from hence appear.