An Antidote Against Atheism/Appendix/Chapter XIII
Chap. XIII.
1. That the Transformation of an humane body into another shape may be done without pain. 2. That there may be an actual separation of Soul and Body without Death properly so called. 3. That the Bodies of Spirits may be hot, or cold, or warm, and the manner how they become so. 4. In what sense we may acknowledge a First in an Infinite succession of generations. 5. That the story of Tree-Geese in Gerard is certainly true. 6. That God must be a Spirit properly so called. 7. That Spirits ordinarily so called are not Fire nor Aire, but Essences properly Spiritual, demonstrated from the solute Arenosity (as I may so speak) of Aire and Fire. 8. That this soluteness makes those Aereal Compages incapable of Personality, spontaneous Motion, and Sensation: 9. As also of transfiguring their vehicle into those complete shapes of Animals they appear in; 10. And of holding it together in winds and storms; 11. And lastly, of transporting Men and Cattel in the Aire. 12. That if Spirits or Dæmons be nothing but mere compilements of Aiery or Fiery Atoms, every Devil is many Millions of Devils. 13. The preeminence of Arguments fetched from the History of Spirits above those from the Operations of the Soul in the Body. for the proving of a Substance Immaterial.
1. The first Philosophical Objection is against the Transformation of an humane body into the shape suppose of a Wolf or any such like creature: For it is conceived that it cannot be done without a great deal of pain to the transformed, To which I answer, That though this Transformation be made in a very short time, yet it may be performed without any pain at all. For that part in the Head which is the seat of Common sense I conceive is very small (suppose it to be the Conarion, it is not very big:) wherefore the Devil getting into the Body of a man and possessing that part with the rest, can intercept or keep off all the transmissions of motion from other parts of the Body, that, let him doe what he will with them, the Party shall feel no pain at all; so that he may soften all the parts of the Body besides into what consistency he please, and work it into any form he can his own Vehicle of Aire, and the Party not be sensible thereof all the time. And there is the same reason of reducing the Body into its own shape again, which is as painless to the Party that suffers it. Nor is there any fear that the Body once loosned thus will ever after be in this loose melting condition; for it is acknowledged even by them that oppose Bodinus, whose cause I undertake, that a Spirit can as well stop and fix a Body as move it. Wherefore I say, when the Devil has fixed again the Body in its pristine shape, it will according to the undeniable laws of Nature remain in that state he left it, till something more powerful dissettle and change it: and every Body is overpowered at last, and we must all yield to death.
2. The second Objection is against our acknowledging an actual separation of Soul and Body without death, death being properly, as we define it, a disjunction of the Soul from the body by reason of the Bodies unfitness any longer to entertain the Soul, which may be caused by extremity of diseases, by outward violence or old age. Now, say they, What is violence, if this be not, for the Devil to take the Soul out of the Body? But the Answer is easie. That any separation by violence is not death, but such a violence in separation as makes the body unfit to entertain the Soul again; as it is in letting the bloud run out by wounding the body, and in hindring the course of the spirits by strangling it, or drowning it, or the like. For to revive such a Body as this would be a miracle indeed, in such cases as these, death having seised upon the Body in a true and proper sense; and then none but God himself can thus kill and make alive.
3. The third Objection is against the notable coldness of the bodies of Devils. For at the great trial of Witches at S. Edmonds-Bury Assises in August 1645. I heard some of them openly confess at the Bar, sayes the Objector, that when the Devil lay with them, he was warm. To which I might answer, if I had a mind rather to shuffle then precisely to satisfie the exceptions made against what we have wrote, that it may be some warm yong man had got into the place of the cold Devil: for who knows what juggles there might be in these things?
But to answer more home to the purpose, I confess that the Bodies of Devils may be not only warm, but sindgingly hot, as it was in him that took one of Melanchthon's relations by the hand, and so scorched her, that she bare the mark of it to her dying day. But the examples of cold are more frequent, as in that famous story of ** Antidote, Book 3. ch. 9. sect. 8. Cuntius, when he toucht the arm of a certain woman of Pentsch as she lay in her bed, he felt as cold as ice; and so did the Spirit's claw to ** Ch. 7. sect. 6. Anne Styles: and many other stories there are of that nature. But I will not deny but their bodies may be also warm, else it is not intelligible how those two execrable Magi should reap such unexpressible pleasure, the one from his Armellina, the other from his Florina, as they profess themselves to have done, in a certain Dialogue of Franciscus Picus his, which he has entituled Strix, or De Ludiscatione Dæmonum; and assures us in his Epistle before it, that it is a true history, and that he sets down but such things as he has either seen with his eyes, or else heard from the confession of Witches themselves.
The force therefore of the Objection is levelled against what we do not assert, that the Bodies of Devils are found only cold: But what we would intimate is only this, that their Bodies being nothing but coagulated or constringed Aire, when they put them in such a posture as to constringe their vehicles in a greater measure by far then agitate the single particles of it, that it will then seem not only cold as congealed water does, but more piercingly and stingingly cold, by reason of the subtilty of the parts.
But when they not only strongly constringe their vehicle in the whole, but also fiercely agitate the single particles thereof, their Body will become sindgingly hot, and imitate in some measure heated brass or iron, wherein the particles keep close together, and yet every one is smartly moved in it self. As is plain to us if we spit upon those metalls so heated; for they will make the spittle hizze and bubble, the particles of the metalls communicating their motion to the spittle that lies upon them; and will turn all liquor into vapours, as we ordinarily see in the burning of Vinegar and Rose-water in a chamber to perfume the room. For what is this perfuming but the setting of the Aqueous separable parts of the liquor on motion so strongly, as to the mounting of them into the Aire and dispersing of them into fume, by the fierce and strong agitation of the inseparable parts of the heated fire-shovel?
But lastly, If a Spirit use his Agitative power moderately and his constrictive forcibly enough to feel solid or palpable to that man or woman he has to deal withall, he may not only feel warm, but more pleasantly and gratefully warm then any earthly or fleshly body that is; for the subtilty of the Matter will more punctually hit, and more powerfully reach the Organs of Sense, and more exquisitely and enravishingly move the Nerves, then any terrestrial body can possibly. But in the mean time the Spirit himself is neither hot, nor warm, nor cold, nor any thing else that belongs to a Body, but a Substance specifically distinct from all corporeal Matter whatsoever, as I have ** Antidote, Book 3. chap. 12. sect. 2, 3, 4. already intimated in the place we now defend.
4. The fourth Objection is against our asserting, That it is an incongruous and self-contradicting position to hold, ** See Antidote, Book 3. chap. 15. sect. 5. That there never was any man but was born of a woman, though we should admit the successions of mankind infinite. For, say they, the contradiction is onely if you can finde out a First: But in infinite succession there can be no First in any sense at all; for if a First, then a Second, and so on to our own times, and thus the Series would be numerable, and consequently finite; which is a contradiction, for then the succession would be both finite and infinite.
But I answer, First, that I can demonstrate, That there is a First in infinite succesion out of such principles as the Atheist does or is necessarily to grant, and that is, that Matter is ab Æterno, and that some part thereof at least moved ab Æterno. Now it is plain that this Matter that moved ab Æterno either moved of it self, or was moved by another. If the latter, then we have a First in an infinite succession of motions: for that which moved this Matter moved ab Æterno, is first in order of causality, as is undeniably plain to any one that understands sense.
But you'l say that this Matter that moved ab Æterno was moved of it self. Be it so, yet no part of it can move in this full Ocean of Matter that is excluded out of no space, but it must hit some other part of Matter so soon as it moves, and that another, and so on. And thus there might be a Succession of Motions ab Æterno or infinite, and yet a first in order of causality. For that primordial Motion of the Matter is plainly first and the cause of all the rest: And our Understanding can never be quiet till it has penetrated to some such first in the order of Causes.
And then Secondly, to that subtile Argumentation that would prove that this infinite succession would be both finite and infinite, I answer, That it is a mere Sophisme from the ambiguity of the term first, which signifies either Priority of Succession or Priority of Causality. In the first sense if we admit a first, the succession will be finite according to our own Faculties, for we cannot but run beyond, we finding the succession bounded in that first. But in the other sense, first sets no bounds to succession, but leaves it free and infinite.
Or we may answer thus, That beginning from this moment and going on to the first primordial Motion, and calling this present moment first, and the next before it the second, that it will amount to a number truly infinite, and that our Understanding can never goe through it: but, though God's Understanding can, that it does not follow that the number is therefore finite; for an infinite mind may well comprehend an infinite number. But for us whose capacities are finite, if we would venture to name a first in infinite succession, we should call it πρῶτον ἀπειροςὸν, the first infinitessimal, and acknowledge our selves unable to go through, our Understandings being finite.
5. The fifth and last Objection is against that Story out of Gerard of the Tree-geese in the Island of the Pile of Foulders. For it is objected by one that inquired of some that lived near the place, that it was not confirmed to him, but that they told him only that at the time of the year it was a notable place for birds nests, and that one can scarce walk in the Island but he will tread on a nest of Eggs. But to this may be answered either that those parties that were consulted were men that looked not after such curiosities as these; or that the rotten pieces of ships or trunks of trees that were washed up thither by the Sea, have been a long time agoe washed away again, and so the examples of this rarity being not freshly renewed, that the memory of it may be lost with many of those Parts: For it is nigh threescore years since Gerard wrote, but while he was living, he offered to make his narration good by sufficient witnesses; and he professes he declares but what his eyes had seen and his hands had touched.
And he also adds a Story of another sort of Tree-geese which he gathered in their shells from an old rotten tree upon the shore of our English Coast betwixt Dover and Rumney: He brought a many of them with him to London, and opening the shells, which were something like Muscles, he found these Birds in several degrees of maturation; in some shapeless lumps only, in others the form of Birds, but bare, in others the same form and shape, and with down also upon them, their shells gaping, and they ready to fall out.
I might adde a third kind described to me by a Gentleman out of Ireland, which he has often observed upon those Coasts; but it is not material to insist upon the description thereof. All that I aim at is this, That this truth of Birds being bred of putrefaction is very certain, of which I am so well assured by this Gentleman's information as well as that narration of Gerard, that I must confess for my own part I cannot doubt of it at all. And it might countenance my credulity, if I could be here justly suspected of that fault, that the Objector himself upon further enquiry is at length fully satisfied concerning the same truth.
6. We have now answered all the Objecttions, as well Philososhical as Historical, made against those particular passages in my Third Book. There remains only one of a more universal nature, and indeed of such importance, that if I do not satisfie it, it does utterly subvert the main design of our whole Third Book against Atheism, wherein we would fetch off men to an easier belief of a God, from the History of Spirits. For admitting all those Stories to be true, yet, say they, it does not at all follow that there are Spirits in that sense that I define Spirits, and in such a notion as is understood in my explication of the Idea of God, viz. That there should he an Immaterial or Incorporeal Substance that can penetrate and actuate the Matter; for they themselves are but a thinner kind of Body, such as Aire or Fire, or some such like subtile Element, and not pure Spirit according to our Definition thereof.
If this were true, I must confess that our last Book against Atheism is of no efficacy at all, and can doe nothing towards the end it was intended for. For if there be a God, of necestity he must be a Spirit properly so called; otherwise he cannot be Infinite. Nor can he be this Universal Matter in the world, though we suppose it boundless; because he could not then be perfect. But he must be an Essence of which this Matter depends, and in which he is, penetrating and possessing all things. Which any one will easily believe, if he were assured that there are particular Spirits that penetrate and actuate this or that part of the Matter, which I contend that those Stories which I have related do evidently evince.
7. For I appeal to any one that knows what Fire and Aire is, whether they be not as truly a mere aggregation of loosned particles of the Matter as an heap of sand; only they are so little, that they are invisible and insensible in their distinct particularities, but as truly disjoyned Atomes (if I may so call what is still divisible) as the grains of sand we speak of.
8. Now this being supposed, which nothing but Ignorance can deny, we shall plainly discover that such things are done by Spirits, as we usually call them, as are altogether incompetible to any compages of these small grains or Atomes of Matter of which Aire and Fire do consist. For first, Either all these Grains or Atomes have Sense, Imagination and Understanding in them, or but some few, or but one only. If all or some few, it is plain that they are so many distinct intelligent Beings, and a distinct intelligent Being is a Person; so that this one person is many persons; which is plainly contradictious, at least foolishly ridiculous. But if the residence of Sense, Imagination and Understanding be plac'd in one, how is it possible that that one Atome should be able spontaneously to move all the rest? And the same reason would be if we should seat Sense and Reason in some few inward Atomes. For how could they bring away those behinde them, or carry on those on the side of them, or drive them before them, so as that they would not divide and be left behinde? And yet it is a shrewd presumption that the Seat of Sense is confined to some small compass in the Vehicle of a Spirit, it being so in the Body of a Man. For if it were not, but that every part of the Vehicle had Sense in it self, the external Object would seem in God knows how many places at once, and the Images of things would be either utterly confounded, or the Atomes, when they pat themselves upon their march, would mistake their mark, and following directly their sense, would of necessity break one from another and destroy the whole.
9. Again, It is manifest that that which has the power of Sensation in a Spirit has also the power of Memory, else they could not remember the Objects of Sense, if it were not one and the same thing in them that had both Sense and Memory: and that which remembers does also imagine, and that which imagines by the power of imagination transforms the Vehicle into various shapes and figures, and holds it there in that shape so long as it thinks good.
Now I demand, how can this possibly be done by either one or a few Particles or Atomes residing in any part of the Vehicle? How can they either hold together the other, or lay hold upon them, to restrain them and constringe them into this or that form, suppose of a Dog, Colt, or Man? But to say that Imagination is in every part of the Vehicle, and to admit those particles to imagine that have not so much as Sense (as the farr greater part seem not to have from what even now was intimated) is altogether unreasonable.
10. Thirdly, That which Lucretius alledges against the Immortality of the Soul, supposing it such a congeries of little Atomes as here Spirits are supposed, is as strong an Argument against the Existence of such kinde of Spirits. For they would be blown out like a candle, or torn in pieces with the windes, and be dissipated like smoke or clouds.
11. Fourthly and lastly, The transportation of Cattel, and of Witches themselves to their Nocturnal Conventicles through the Aire, if Spirits or Devils be but a mere congestion of subtile Atomes Aiery or Fiery, without an inward Immaterial Principle that has a power to hold fast the particles together, is a thing altogether impossible. For it is evident that the weight of a Man or a Beast will sink through the Aire, and never rest till they reach the Earth; and so they would do through the Vehicle of a Spirit, that is as subtile, fluid and yielding as the Aire it self is, were there not an Internal essence and principle that was able to constringe and hold together this fluid body or Vehicle of the Spirit, and so make it to sustain the weight. For all Bodies hard or fluid are equally impenetrable; and therefore if any power should hold the Aire together so as to restrain it near within one compass or space, and yet not change the usual consistency of it, it would be as winde in a bladder; and a man might lie upon it as safely as upon a soft bed, and never fear sinking through.
But in this loose composure of Atoms which they say is all that is in a Spirit (though we should admit of that ridiculous supposition, that every Atome can imagine and apply it self to one joynt design of holding all close together) yet it is hard to conceive, that this actual division of the whole into so many subtile, exile, invisible particles does not so enfeeble the spontaneous offers towards the sustaining and carrying away of the burden, that their endeavours would ever prove frustraneous.
12. But I need not insist upon that which, it may be, may seem a point something more lubricous, whenas we have what is more palpably incongruous presenting it self to our view. For this compilement of Aiery or Fiery particles being the only substance acknowledged in a Spirit, every Atome having Imagination and Reason in it to apply it self to one joynt design, they must be, as I have intimated heretofore, as properly so many distinct persons as the grains of sand are so many distinct individuals of Matter, and therefore every one Devil is indeed 5000 millions of Devils and more; a thing that a man would little dream of, or admit to be any more then a dream, if he thinks of it waking. But if such things as these will not be acknowledged as absurd, but shamelessly admitted and swallowed down for true; I must confess that there is no Demonstration against impudence and pertinacity, and that I am not able to prove to such that either Brutes have life, or that the moats that play in the beams of the Sun are devoid of Sense and Reason.
13. The substance of these Arguments, as the Reader may remember, I have made use of elswhere for the proving of an Incorporeal Principle residing and acting in the Body of man; but the frame and management of them in this place is not a little different, and their force far more conspicuous and apparent, the fixt consistency and Mechanical fabrick of an humane Body being able to perform many things that the fluid and unorganized Vehicle of Fire and Aire cannot possibly doe, unless we admit an immaterial essence to be in it, and so throughly to possess it all over, as to have the power to constringe it and transform it into those various shapes it does appear in. And therefore though our Argumentations for an Immaterial Soul in the Body of man be solid and irrefutable, yet because the truth is more palpably and undeniably demonstrable in the Fiery or Aiery Vehicles of what we ordinarily call Spirits, I conceive that our Third Book against Atheism is very convenient, if not necessary, not at all needless nor unprofitable.