But to what purpose,may some man say,is such subtlety in a work of this nature,where I pretend to nothing but what is necessary to the doctrine of government and obedience?It is to this purpose,that men may no longer suffer themselves to be abused by them that by this doctrine of "separated essences,"built on the vain philosophy of Aristotle,would fright them from obeying the laws of their country,with empty names;as men fright birds from the corn with an empty doublet,a hat,and a crooked stick.For it is upon this ground that,when a man is dead and buried,they say his soul,that is his life,can walk separated from his body,and is seen by night amongst the graves.Upon the same ground,they say that the figure,and colour,and taste of a piece of bread has a being,there,where they say there is no bread:and upon the same ground they say that faith,and wisdom,and other virtues are sometimes poured into a man,sometimes blown into him,from heaven;if the virtuous and their virtues could be asunder;and a great many other things that serve to lessen the dependence of subjects on the sovereign power of their country.For who will endeavour to obey the laws,if he expect obedience to be poured or blown into him?Or who will not obey a priest,that can make God,rather than his sovereign;nay,than God Himself?Or who that is in fear of ghosts will not bear great respect to those that can make the holy water that drives them from him?And this shall suffice for an example of the errors which are brought into the Church from the entities and essences of Aristotle:which it may be he knew to be false philosophy,but wrote it as a thing consonant to,and corroborative of,their religion;and fearing the fate of Socrates.
Being once fallen into this error of "separated essences,"they are thereby necessarily involved in many other absurdities that follow it.For seeing they will have these forms to be real,they are obliged to assign them some place.But because they hold them incorporeal,without all dimension of quantity,and all men know that place is dimension,and not to be filled but by that which is corporeal,they are driven to uphold their credit with a distinction,that they are not indeed anywhere circumive,but definitive:which terms being mere words,and in this occasion insignificant,pass only in Latin,that the vanity of them may be concealed.For the circumion of a thing is nothing else but the determination or defining of its place;and so both the terms of the distinction are the same.And in particular,of the essence of a man,which,they say,is his soul,they affirm it to be all of it in his little finger,and all of it in every other part,how small soever,of his body;and yet no more soul in the whole body than in any one of those parts.Can any man think that God is served with such absurdities?And yet all this is necessary to believe,to those that will believe the existence of an incorporeal soul,separated from the body.
And when they come to give account how an incorporeal substance can be capable of pain,and be tormented in the fire of hell or purgatory,they have nothing at all to answer,but that it cannot be known how fire can burn souls.
Again,whereas motion is change of place,and incorporeal substances are not capable of place,they are troubled to make it seem possible how a soul can go hence,without the body,to heaven,hell,or purgatory;and how the ghosts of men (and I may add,of their clothes which they appear in)can walk by night in churches,churchyards,and other places of sepulture.To which I know not what they can answer,unless they will say,they walk definitive,not circumive,or spiritually,not temporally:for such egregious distinctions are equally applicable to any difficulty whatsoever.
For the meaning of eternity,they will not have it to be an endless succession of time;for then they should not be able to render a reason how God's will and pre-ordaining of things to come should not be before His prescience of the same,as the efficient cause before the effect,or agent before the action;nor of many other their bold opinions concerning the incomprehensible nature of God.But they will teach us that eternity is the standing still of the present time,a nunc-stans,as the Schools call it;which neither they nor any else understand,no more than they would a hic-stans for an infinite greatness of place.
And whereas men divide a body in their thought,by numbering parts of it,and in numbering those parts,number also the parts of the place it filled;it cannot be but in making many parts,we make also many places of those parts;whereby there cannot be conceived in the mind of any man more or fewer parts than there are places for:yet they will have us believe that by the Almighty power of God,one body may be at one and the same time in many places;and many bodies at one and the same time in one place;as if it were an acknowledgement of the Divine Power to say,that which is,is not;or that which has been,has not been.And these are but a small part of the incongruities they are forced to,from their disputing philosophically,instead of admiring and adoring of the divine and incomprehensible Nature;whose attributes cannot signify what He is,but ought to signify our desire to honour Him with the best appellations we can think on.But they that venture to reason of His nature,from these attributes of honour,losing their understanding in the very first attempt,fall from one inconvenience into another,without end and without number;in the same manner as when a man ignorant of the ceremonies of court,coming into the presence of a greater person than he is used to speak to,and stumbling at his entrance,to save himself from falling,lets slip his cloak;to recover his cloak,lets fall his hat;and,with one disorder after another,discovers his astonishment and rusticity.
