signifying either the spirit, or its secondary faculties, the vital or sensitive faculty for instance. Thus it is as often distinguished from the spirit, as from the body itself. Luke i. 46, 47. 1 Thess. v. 23. 'your whole spirit and soul and body.' Heb. iv. 12. to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.' But that the spirit of man should be separate from the body, so as to have a perfect and intelligent existence independently of it, is nowhere said in Scripture, and the doctrine is evidently at variance both with nature and reason, as will be shown more fully hereafter. For the word soul is also applied to every kind of living being; Gen. i. 30. to every beast of the earth,' &c. wherein there is life.' (anima vivens, Tremell.) vii. 22. all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died ;' yet it is never inferred from these expressions that the soul exists separate from the body in any of the brute creation. On the seventh day God ceased from his work, and ended the whole business of creation; Gen. ii. 2, 3. It would seem therefore, that the human soul is not created daily by the immediate act of God, but propagated from father to son in a natural order;* *The question which Milton now begins to discuss, is thus stated by Fiddes in his Body of Divinity, Book iii. Part I. Whether they were all created at once in order to be united to certain bodies which should be prepared afterwards in convenient time for their reception; or whether they are created at the instant when the bodies they are to inform are fit to receive them, are questions which have been much controverted ...... But the arguments which have been produced for the pre-existence of souls appear to be more specious, and in the opinion of some of the greatest men of antiquity, heathen and Christian, whom certain moderns of distinction in the learned world have followed, really conclusive.' which was considered as the more probable opinion by Tertullian and Apollinarius, as well as by Augustine, and the whole western church in the time of Jerome, as he himself testifies, Tom. II. Epist. 82. and Gregory of Nyssa in his treatise on the soul.* God would in fact have left his creation imperfect, and a vast, not to say a servile task, would yet remain to be performed, without even allowing time for rest on each successive sabbath, if he still continued to create as many souls daily as there are bodies multiplied throughout the whole world, at the bidding of what is not seldom the flagitious wantonness of man.† Nor is there any reason to suppose that the influence of the divine blessing is less efficacious in imparting to man the power of producing after his kind, than *Super animæ statu memini vestræ quæstiunculæ, immo maxime Ecclesiasticæ questionis; utrum lapsa de cœlo sit, ut Pythagoras philosophus, omnesque Platonici, et Origines putant; an a propria Dei substantia, ut Stoici, Manichæus, et Hispana Priscilliani hæresis suspicantur; an in thesauro habeantur Dei olim conditæ, ut quidam Ecclesiastici stulta persuasione confidunt; an quotidie a Deo fiant, et mittantur in corpora, secundum illud quod in evangelio scriptum est, Pater meus usque modo operatur et ego operor; an certe ex traduce, ut Tertullianus, Apollinarius, et maxima pars occidentalium autumant, ut quomodo corpus ex corpore, sic anima nascatur ex anima, et simili cum brutis animantibus conditione subsistat.' Hieronymi Epist. 82. (78 Edit. Benedict.) ad Marcellinum et Anapsychiam. Οὐκ ἄρα νῦν αἱ ψυχαὶ γίνονται· τὸ γὰρ, ὁ Πατήρ μου ἕως ἄρτι ἐργάζεται, οὐκ ἐπὶ τοῦ κτίζειν, ἀλλ ̓ ἐπὶ τοῦ προνοεῖν εἰρῆσθαι· καὶ αὐτῷ δοκεῖ ̓Απολλιναρίῳ τὰς ψυχὰς ἀπὸ τῶν ψυχῶν τίκτεσθαι ὥσπερ ἀπὸ τῶν σωμάτων, προϊέναι γὰρ τὴν ψυχὴν κατὰ διαδοχὴν τοῦ πρώτου ἀνθρώπου εἰς τοὺς ἐξ ἐκείνου τεχθέντας, καθάπερ τὴν σωματικὴν διαδοχήν. Greg. Nyssen. De Anima. 'Deus absoluta sex diebus creatione mundi dicitur quievisse ab omni opere suo, Gen. xi. 2. Non autem vere a creando quievisset, si nunc singulis momentis ipse multas animas immediate produceret. Ut nunc non dicam indignum prorsus Deo videri, ut sit minister generationum fœdarum et incestuosarum quas ipse abominatur, et severe in lege prohibuit; ita ut simul atque libeat hominibus impuris corpora sua miscere, oporteat illum adesse, qui fœtui, quantumvis illegitime concepto, animam infundat.' Curcell. Instit. III. 6. 6 to the other parts of animated nature; Gen. i. 22, 28.* Thus it was from one of the ribs of the man that God made the mother of all mankind, without the necessity of infusing the breath of life a second time, Gen. ii. 22. and Adam himself begat a son in his own likeness after his image, v. 3. Thus 1 Cor. xv. 49. as we have borne the image of the earthy :' and this not only in the body, but in the soul, as it was chiefly with respect to the soulf that Adam was made in the divine image. So Gen. xlvi. 26. all the souls which came with Jacob out of Egypt, which came out of his loins.' Heb. vii. 10. Levi was in the loins of Abraham:' whence in Scripture an offspring is called seed, and Christ is denominated 'the seed of the woman.' Gen. xvii. 7. I will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.' 1 Cor. *Deus, Adamo et Eva creatis, ipsis benedictionem suam impertitus est ad humani generis propagationem, dicens, Crescite, &c. Gen. i. 28. et ix. 1. Ergo dedit eis facultatem alios homines sibi similes, qui corpore et anima constarent, producendi; quemadmodum et cæteris animantibus, quibus benedixit, talem communicavit. . . . Nec vero dixisset Moses Adamum genuisse, &c. Gen. v. 3. nempe ut ipse ad imaginem Dei factus erat. Ista enim Dei imago præcipue in anima consistit .. Et rursus dicit Moses, cuncta animæ, &c. Gen. xlvi. 25. Ergo non solum corpora, sed etiam animæ liberorum et nepotum Jacobi ab eo prognatæ sunt.' Curcell. Instit. Ill. 4. ...... God on thee Abundantly his gifts hath also pour'd Inward and outward both, his image fair. Paradise Lost, VIII. 219. .... On which passage, in answer to Warburton's insinuation, that one would think by this outward that Milton was of the sect of Anthropomorphites, as well as Materialists, Mr. Todd has well observed that the poet only meant to allude to the complete nature of man, the animal and intellectual parts united, which the learned Hale, treating of the words in the image of God made he man, minutely and admirably illustrates. See also above, page 22, and the note there. xv. 44. it is sown a natural body.' v. 46. that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural.' But besides the testimony of revelation, some arguments from reason may be alleged in confirmation of this doctrine. Whoever is born, or shapen and conceived in sin,* (as we all are, not David only, Psal. li. 5.) if he receive his soul immediately from God, cannot but receive it from him shapen in sin; for to be generated and conceived, means nothing else than to receive a soul in conjunction with the body. If we receive the soul immediately from God, it must be pure, for who in such case will venture to call it impure ?+ But if it be pure, how are we conceived in sin in consequence of receiving a pure soul, which would rather have the effect of cleansing the impurities of the body; or with what justice is the pure soul charged with the sin of the body? But, it is contended, God does not create souls impure, but only impaired in their nature, and destitute of original righteousness, I answer, that to create pure souls destitute of original righteousness,-to send them into contaminated and corrupt bodies,to deliver them up in their innocence and helplessness to the prison house of the body, as to an enemy, with understanding blinded and with will enslaved,—in other words, wholly deprived of sufficient strength for resisting the vicious propensities of the body-to create souls thus circumstanced, would argue as much injustice, as to have created them impure would have *Proclivitas ad malum, cum qua infantes nascuntur, huic etiam opinioni favet. Nam ea a Deo non est, ut omnes fatentur, neque etiam a corpore, quod non est vitii moralis capax.' Curcell. Instit. III. 8. Yet evil whence? in thee can harbour none, argued impurity; it would have argued as much injustice, as to have created the first man Adam himself impaired in his nature, and destitute of original righteousness. Again, if sin be communicated by generation, and transmitted from father to son, it follows that what is the πρῶτον δεκτικὸν,* or original subject of sin, namely, the rational soul, must be propagated in the same manner; for that it is from the soul that all sin in the first instance proceeds, will not be denied. Lastly, on what principle of justice can sin be imputed through Adam to that soul, which was never either in Adam, or derived from Adam? In confirmation of which Aristotle's argument may be added, the truth of which in my opinion is indisputable.† If the soul be equally diffused throughout any given whole, and throughout every part of that whole, how can the human seed, the noblest and most intimate part of all the body, be imagined destitute and devoid of the soul of the parents, or at least of the father, *Subjectum distingui potest in recipiens, quod Græce dirixò appellant, et occupans, quod objectum dici solet, quia in eo adjuncta occupantur... Sic anima est subjectum scientiæ, ignorantiæ, virtutis, vitii, quia hæc animæ adjunguntur, id est, præter essentiam accedunt.' Artis Logica plenior Institutio. Prose Works, VI. 220. + See Aristot. wegì Yuxñs, I. 9.—' Per omnes ejus particulas tota simul adest, nec minor in minoribus, et in majoribus major, sed alicubi intensius, alicubi remissius, et in omnibus tota, et in singulis tota est.' Augustinus De Origine animæ hominis ad Hieron. Ep. 166. Edit. Benedict. . Spirits that live throughout Vital in every part, not as frail man In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins. All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear, if it be true That light is in the soul, Paradise Lost, VI. 344. She all in every part-. Samson Agonistes, 91. |