them from Notions of Logick or Mathematicks; whenas in creatures inanimate that can think of nothing, we may read the footsteps of Reason and Geometry in their Motions and Figurations, as in the drops of Rain that fall downwards in the form of Hailstones, and in the beauty and symmetry of the leaves and flowers of Herbs and Plants: Which Objects while we contemplate, we apply to them the Innate modes of our own Mind, which the uses in the speculation even of those things that themselves are dead and thoughtless.
Chap. III.
1. That considering the lapse of Mans Soul into Matter, it is no wonder she is so much puzzled in speculating things Immaterial. 2. That all Extension does not imply Physical Divisibility or Separability of Parts. 3. That the Emanation of the Secondary substance from the Centrall in a Spirit is not properly Creation. 4. How it comes to pass that the Soul cannot Withdraw her self from pain by her Self-contracting faculty. 5. That the Soul's extension dues not imply as many Wills and Understandings as imaginable Parts, by reason of the special Unity and Indivisibility of her substance. 6. Several Instances of the puzzledness of Phansy in the firm conclusions of Sense, and of Reafon. 7. The unconceivableness of the manner of that strong union some parts of the Matter have one with another. 8. What is meant by Hylopathy, and how a Spirit though not impenetrable, may be the Impellent of Matter. 9. That the unexplicableness of a Spirit's moving Matter is no greater argument against the truth thereof, then the inconceivableness of that line that is produced by the Motion of a Globe on a Plane is an argument against the Mobility thereof. 10. That the strength of this last Answer consists in the Assurance that there are such Phænomena in the world as utterly exceed the Powers of mere Matter; of which several Examples are hinted out of the foregoing Treatise.
1. That the Souls of Men, the lowest dregs of all the intellectual Orders, Should be plung'd and puzzled in the more close and accurate Speculation of things Spiritual and Intellectual, is but reasonable; especially considering that even Matter it self, in which they tumble and wallow, which they feel with their hands and usurp with all their Senses, if they once offer to contemplate it in an Intellectual and Rational manner, their Phansies are so clouded in this dark state of incarceration in these earthly Bodies, that the Notion thereof seems unimaginable and contradictious, ** Antidote, Book 1. ch. 4. sect. 2. as I have largely enough already insisted upon.
But that the Notion of a Spirit, which seems so to obscure the clearness of the Idea of God, is no such inconsistent and unconceiveable Notion as some would have it, I hope I shall sufficiently evince by answering the shrewdest Objections that I think can be made against it.
