Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soul, Chapter 33
CHAP. XXXIII. Of the Image of God in the Reasonable soule, in regard of its simplicity, and spirituality.
COncerning the dignity of the soule in its nature and essence, Reason hath adventured thus farre, to confesse thatMacrob de s…mno Scip. p 1. c. 14 divine particula foreign, Philo. the soule of man, is in some sort a spark and beame of divine brightnesse. And a greater and more infallible Oracle hath warranted that it was breathed into him by God himselfe, and was made after his Image and likenesse, not substantially, as if thereaVid. contra … impietatem d…cretum con…il, …racar. cap. 5. foreign. Da…se. de orth. fid. lib 2. cap. 12. were a Real Emanation and Traduction of the Soule out of God; which were blasphemous and impious to conceive: but only by way of Resemblance, and imitation of God properties in mans originall created nature which is more notable in him, than in the othe… parts of the world; there is indeed in all God… est ollis vigor &c…lestis Origo. works some kind of image, and lineaments, an… footsteps of his glory.
Deum nam que ire per omnes Terras que Tractus que maris Coelum que profundum, &c.
For all the tracts of Earth, of Sea, and Sky,
Are filled with divine immensity.
The whole world is a great *foreign. Orig. apud Euseb. de praepar. Evang. lib. 6. c. 11. F…nxit i… essigie… mod…tum c…ncta Deorum. Ovid. Met. 1. In alii… creatur … est simili…udo dei tantùm per m… dum Vest…i; in Sola Rationali Creatura per modum imaginis. Vid. Aquin. part. 1. qu. 93. art. 6. foreign. Philo. apud Euseb. de praepar. Eva…g. lib. …. cap. 18. foreign. Gieg. Nyssen. Serm … in verb… illa s…amus …, &c. foreign. Arist. Ethic lib. …0 c 7. Deorum cognatione …enetur. …. de Divin. lib. 1. & lib. de A…icit. Porphyr. apud Euseb. de pr…p. Ev…g lib. 11. cap. 28 lib. 1. Clem. Alex. in s… lib. 4 Strom…. Ipse etiam C…c. in somnio Scipio.book, wherein we read the praise, glory, power, and infinitenesse of him that made it, but man is after a more peculiar manner called foreign and foreign the image and glory of God; the greater world is only Gods workmanship, wherein is represented the wisdom and power of God, as in a building the Art and cunning of the workman; but man (in the originall purity of nature) is besides that, as wax, wherein was more notably impressed by that divine spirit (whose work it is to seale) a spirituall resemblance of his owne goodnesse and sanctity. Againe, the greater world was never other than an Orator to set forth the power and praises of God; but he made the soule of man, in the beginning as it were his Oracle, wherein he fastned a perfect knowledge of his law and will, from the very glimpses and corrupted Reliques of which Knowledge of his Law, some have beene bold to call men foreign ▪ the kindred of God, And Senec. Liber Animus & Diis cognatus; which is the same with that of Aratus cited by S. Paul foreign, for wee are his off-spring, yea Euripides (as Tully in his * Tusculans observes,) was bold to call the soule of man, by the name of God; and Seneca will venture so farre too. Quid aliud vocas animum quàm deum in humano corpore S…cc. cp. 31. & 41.hospitantem. But to forbeare such boldnesse, as (it may be) one of the Originals of heathen Idolatry: Certaine it is, that there are (as Tully many times divinely observes) sundry similitudes betweene God and the minde of man. There are indeed some Attributes of God, not only incommunicable, but absolutely inimitable, and unshadowable by any excellency in mans soule, as immensity, infinitenesse, omnipotency, omniscience, immutability, impassibility, and the like; but whatsoever spirituall, and Rationall perfections the power & bounty of God, conferr'd upon the soule in its first Creation, are all of them so many shadowes and representationsVid. Aug. de Gen. ad li…. lib. 6. c. 12. of the like, but most infinite perfections in him.
The Properties then and Attributes of God,A…bros. Hexam. lib. 6. c. 8. Tertull. lib. …. contra Marci…. cap, q. 9. 16. Clem. Alex. in Protreptic p. 30. Basil. Hexam. Hom…. 10. wherein this Image chiefely consists, are first these three. Spirituality with the two immediate consequents thereof, Simplicity and Immortality, in which the soule hath partaked without any after corruption or depravation. Concerning the former, it were vast, and needlesse, to confute those *Vid. Theodored. Serm. 5. de Natura Hom & Nemes. cap. …. S…u, Nyssen. lib. de Ani…i. Platarch de placitis Philosoph. l. 4. c. 2. Tertul. de Anim. Senec. Nat. qu. l. 7. c. …4sundry opinions of ancient Philosophers, concerning the substance of the soule; many where of Tully in the first of his Tusculans hath reported; And Aristotle confuted in his first de Anima. Some conceived it to be blood, others the braine, some fire, others ayre; some that it consists in Harmony and Number; and the Philosopher Dicaearchus, that it was nothing at all but the body disposed and fitted for the works of life. But to let these passe as unworthy of refutation, and to proceed to the truth of the first property.
There are sundry naturall reasons to prove the *Vid. Nem…s. de Anim. cap. 2. Cl…udi …n. Mamercum de statu An…me. lib 2. Plotin, a…d …u. sib. de praeparat. Evang. l. 25 c 21 Damisc de Orthod. fi. le. l. 2. c 12 Plutarch. lib. de placitis Philosoph. lib. …. c. 2. 3. Aug. lib. de quan…itate Anime.Spirituality of the soule; as first, the manner of its working, which is immateriall by conceiving objects, as universall, or otherwise purified from all grosnesse of matter, by the Abstraction of the Active understanding, whereby they are made in some sort proportionall to the nature of the Intellect Passive, into which the species are impressed.
Secondly, its in dependance on the body, in that manner of working; for though the operations of the soule require the concurrence of the commonsense and imagination, yet that is by way only of conveyance from the object, not by way of assistance to the elicite and immediate act. They only present the species, they doe not qualifie the perception. Phantasmata are only objecta operation is; the objects they are, not instrumenta operandi, the instruments of the soules working. The Act of understanding is immediatly from the soule, without any the least concurrences of the body there▪ unto, although the things whereon that act is fixed and conversant, require, in this estate, bodily organs to represent them unto the soule; as light doth not at all concurre to the act of seeing, which solely and totally floweth from the visive faculty, but only serves as an extrinsecall assistance for qualification of the Medium and object that must be seene. And this reason Aristotle lib. 3. de Ani…a. cap. 5.hath used to prove, that the understanding, which is principally true of the whole soule, is not mixt with any body, but hath a nature altogether divers there-from, because it hath no bodily organ, as all bodily powers have, by which it is enabled to the proper acts that belong unto it. And hereon is grounded another reason of his, to prove the Soule immateriall, because it depends not on the body in its operations, but educeth them immediately from within it selfe, as is more manifest in the Reflexion of the soule, upon its owne nature, being an operation (as hee expreslyIbid. cap. 6. speaketh) seperable there-from, the soule being not only actus informans, a forme informing, for the actuating of a body, and constitution of a compound substance, but actus subsistens too, a forme subsisting; And that per se, without any necessary dependance upon matter. It is an act, which worketh as well in the body, as whereby the body worketh.
Another reason of Aristotle in the same place, is the difference betweene Materiall and Immateriall powers. For (saith he) all bodily cognoscitive faculties doe suffer offence and dammage from the too great excellency of their objects, as the eye from the brightnesse of the Sunne, the eare from the violence of a sound, the touch from extremity of heat or cold, and the lik…. But the understanding on the contrary side is perfected by the worthiest contemplations, and the better enabled for lower enquiries. And therefore Aristotle in his Ethicks, placeth the most compleat happinesse of man, in those heavenly intuitions of the minde, which are fastned on the divinest and most remote objects; which in Religion is nothing else, but a fruition of that beatificall vision (which, as farre as Nature goes, is call'd the contemplation of the first cause) and an eternall satiating the soule with beholding the Nature, Essence, and glory of God.
Another reason may be drawn from the condition of the Vnderstandings Objects, which have so much the greater conformity to the soule, by how much the more they are divine and abstracted. Hoc habet animus argumentum suae divinitatis, (saith Seneca) quòd illum divina delectam. This argument of its divinenesse hath the minde of man, that it is delighted with divine things; for if the soule were corporeal, it could not possibly reach to the knowledge of any, but materiall substances, and those that were of its owne Nature; otherwise we might as well see Angels with our eyes, as understand any thing of them in our minds. And the ground of this reason is, that axiome in Philosophy, that all reception is ad modum recipientis, according to the proportion and capacity of the receiver. And that the objects which are spirituall and divine, have greatest proportion to the soule of man, is evident in his Understanding and his will, both which are in regard of truth or good unsatisfiable, by any materiall or worldly objects, the one never resting in enquiry, till it attaine the perfect knowledge, the other never replenished in desire till it be admitted unto the perfect possession of the most divine and spirituall good: to wit, of him who is the first of Causes, and the last of Ends.
From this Attribute of Spirituality flowes immediatly that next of Simplicity, Vnity, or Actuality; Aris…t. d… Ani…a lib 3. cap. 6.for Matter is the root of all perfect composition, every Compound consisting of two Essentiall parts, matter and forme. I exclude not from the Soule all manner of composition; for it is proper to God only to be absolutely and perfectly simple: But I exclude all Essentiall composition, in respect whereof the Soule is meerely Actuall; And so I understand that of Tully, Nihil est Animus admixtum, Tuscul. q l. 1. & lib. de Senectut.nihil concretum, nihil copulatum, nihil coagmentatum, nihil duplex.