decerptus ex mente divina, cum alio nullo nisi cum ipso Deo comparari potest *.-He will not dispute whether Stobæus and Stanley, or I, be in the right. He does well. But then he says, We may still FAIRLY CONCLUDE, that if even the third person in the trinity was not the same as God, but had a peculiar nature of his own, much less was the soul of man the same; but that it had a distinct nature likewise.—Such a concluder would have made Aristotle forswear syllogism. In the first volume of the Divine Legation† he saw these words: "Again, "the maintainers of the immateriality of the Divine "Substance were likewise divided into two parties; the "first of which held but one person in the Godhead; the "other two or three. So THAT AS THE FORMER BE૦૮

LIEVED THE SOUL TO BE PART OF THE SUPREME

"GOD; THE LATTER BELIEVED IT TO BE PART ONLY 66 OF THE SECOND OR THIRD HYPOSTASIS." What is to be done with this prevaricator? Will he plead guilty, to have the benefit of his clergy? Or will he own he could not read, and so stand upon his defence?“ You may complain (I hear him say) but whose fault is it? "You had put this passage amongst your nice distinc"tions, divisions, and subdivisions: and those I was not obliged to take notice of, after having so fairly given you warning that I passed over all such, as needless "curiosities.

But I begin to be quite weary of my Advocate; I am drawing towards a conclusion with him, and will dispatch him with all possible expedition. What follows won't stay us long. As to the passage which he quotes from M. Antoninus, it is nothing more than an exhortation to consider what will become of the soul when it is disunited or separated from the body: and though Mr. W. makes him to speak of its being resolved into the anima mundi; yet he owns at the same time, that neither Gataker in his notes, or Casaubon, had any notion that the doctrine of refusion was here alluded to. p. 68.-Gataker and Casaubon did not understand it in my sense. Does he pretend to say I understand it wrong? He pretends to know nothing of the matter: so I leave it to those who do. For I should have a strange love for answering, if * Div. Leg. Book III. § 4.

† Ibid.

I gave

I gave this any other reply than Antoninus's own words: "[To die] is not only according to the course of Nature, "but of great use to it. [We should consider] how "closely Man is united to the Godhead, and in what part of him that union resides; and what will be the "condition of that part or portion of it when it is "resolved [into the anima mundi]*."

66

66

The next authority (says he) I shall produce, is from PLOTINUS, who tells us that the soul is from God; and therefore necessarily loves him, yet it is a different existence from him.-Here again he plays his old trick upon us. Plotinus, a philosopher deep in the times of Christianity. I have tried in vain to make him understand. I will try now if I can make him blush; while he forces me to repeat, for the second time, the following words of the Divine Legation. "Such was the general "doctrine on this point" [namely, that the soul was God, or part of God] before the coming of Christianity; "but then those philosophers, who held out against its "truth, after some time new-modelled both their philo'sophy and religion; making their philosophy more religious, and their religion more philosophical.-So, amongst the many improvements of Paganism, THE 66 SOFTENING THIS DOCTRINE WAS ONE. The modern "Platonists confining the notion of the soul's being part of the divine substance, to that of brutes.--And it is "remarkable that then, and not till then, the philoso"phers began really to believe the doctrine of a future statet." How true this is, we may see by this very quotation from Plotinus. And one of common apprehension would have seen, by his words, yet it is a different existence from him, that this was an innovation in philosophy. For were it not the common opinion, that the soul was of the same existence with God, or part of him, this caution and explanation had been impertinent. However, he goes on unmercifully to shew the orthodoxy of Plotinus, and of his commentator Ficinus, in this point: Where speaking I don't know what, nor why, of the vegetative soul, he takes an opportunity to criticise a passage I brought from Plutarch. Of this soul [namely the vegetative] it is of which Plutarch manifestly speaks, Div. Leg. Book III. § 4. + Ibid,

where

where he says, "that Pythagoras and Plato held the soul "to be immortal; for that launching out into the soul of "the universe, it returned to its parent and original.” THAT THIS MUST BE INTENDED OF THE VEGETATIVE

SOUL IS PLAIN, from his mentioning two other souls from the same authorities, immediately after, in a quite different light. "Pythagoras and Plato, says he, hold "that the rational soul is immortal; for that this soul is "not God, but the workmanship of the Eternal God; " and it is the irrational soul which is mortal and corruptible." So that unless we can suppose Plutarch intended to make Pythagoras and Plato contradict themselves, we must conclude their opinions in this passage to be, that the vegetative soul was diffused into the life of the universe; that the sensitive or irrational soul was mortal and corruptible; and that the rational soul was a distinct existence made by God. But this last part is not at all taken notice of by Mr. Warburton, though in the very same paragraph with the first which he quotes. pp. 70, 71.

1. Unless we can suppose (says he) Plutarch intended to make Pythagoras and Plato contradict themselves. Suppose, Quotha! Did he never hear that this Plutarch wrote an express treatise on the Contradictions of the Stoics? A sect of as good a house as either Pythagoras or Plato. Will he never see, that if the philosophers had a double doctrine, which he has laboured to prove, they must perpetually contradict themselves? But our Advocate is so captivated a lover (Pref. p. v) so enamoured of his dear philosophers, that the very air of a contradiction shocks him.

2. Well then, not to disgust the delicacy of a lover, I will humour him. It shall be no contradiction; nor will I suppose Plutarch such a brutal as to insinuate any thing so gross. But now, if, like a true inamorato, he will not suffer them to be defended by any hand but his own, then we shall begin to differ. He tells us that when Plutarch says Pythagoras and Plato held the soul to be immortal, IT IS PLAIN THIS MUST BE INTENDED OF THE VEGETATIVE SOUL.-An immortal vegetative soul! "Tis a prodigy that deserves an expiation. But to know whether Plutarch or our Advocate be the real father of

this monster, it will be necessary to transcribe the whole chapter: "Pythagoras and Plato held the soul to be immortal; for that lanching out into the soul of the universe, it returns to its parent and original. The "Stoics say, that on its leaving the body, the more infirm (that is, the soul of the ignorant) suffers the lot of the 'body: But the more vigorous (that is, the soul of the wise) endures to the conflagration. Democritus and Epicurus say the soul is mortal, and perishes with the body: Pythagoras and Plato, that the reasonable soul "is uncorrupt (for it is to be observed, the soul is not "God, but the workmanship of the Eternal Ged) and “ the irrational mortal.” Πυθαγόρας, Πλάτων, ἄφθαρτον εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν ἐξιὅσαν γὰρ εἰς τὸ τὰ παντὸς ψυχήν ἀναχωρεῖν πρὸς τὸ ὁμογενές. Οἱ Στωϊκοὶ, ἐξιᾶσαν τῶν σωμάτων ὑποφέρεσθαι, τὴν μὲν ἀσθενεσέραν ἅμα τοῖς συγκρίμασι γενέσθαι. (ταύτην δὲ εἶναι τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων) τὴν δὲ ἰσχυροτέραν, οἵα ἐςὶ περὶ τὲς σοφές, καὶ μέχρι τῆς ἐκπυρώσεως. Δημόκρης, ΕπίκερΘ, φθαρτην, τῷ σώματι συνδιαφθειρομένην. Πυθαγόρας και Πλάτων, τὸ μὲν λογικὸν, ἄφθαρτον (ΚΑΙ ΓΑΡ τὴν ψυχήν, ἐ θεὸν, ἀλλ' ἔργον το αιδία θεῖ ὑπάρχειν) τὸ δὲ ἄλογον, φθαρτόν. Περὶ τῶν Apeo. Tois pia. BIGA. . K. C. Here we see, the soul first mentioned, and said to be immortal, and to lanch out into the soul of the universe, was the same which the Stoics held to endure, when it had been in-their wise man, till the conflagration; was the saine which Democritus and Epicurus held to be mortal. And was this the VEGETATIVE soul? How hard has the world dealt with Democritus and Epicurus for twenty round ages, only for holding that the vegetative soul was mortal! A very reasonable. opinion, had there been any vegetative soul at all. But what then must we say to the contradiction, which I have promised to remove, and which seems now quite fixed, since we have evaporated this spirit of vegetatice immortality, from the passage? The plain solution of the difficulty is this: When Plutarch had mentioned the impious notion of the soul's mortality, first started by Democritus and Epicurus, he opposes it by that of Pythagoras and Plato. He had told us before, that these held the soul to be immortal: But now, using their authority to con fute the other two, he, like a judicious writer, explains it with more exactness. He tells us, that Pythagoras VOL. XI.

and

and Plato held the reasonable soul to be immortal, the irrational mortal. When, in the beginning of the chapter, he had said, they held the soul to be immortal, he added their reason, for that lanching out, &c. FAP is TÒ TH walds, &c. Now here, in the conclusion, mentioning again the same dogma, he adds his own, For it is to be observed the soul is net God, &c. KAI FAP Tuxñv, &c. For Plutarch had, with the rest of the philosophers of the Christian times, retined his notions on this matter: They said, the soul was immortal, because it was related to the soul of the universe: He said, it was immortal, because it was the work of God. Henry Stephens, who, it seems probable, saw this was Plutarch's, and not Pythagoras's or Plato's philosophy, makes the words καὶ γὰρ τὴν ψυχὴν ἐ θεὸν ἀλλὰ τὰ αἰδία δεν υπάρχειν) a pa renthesis, as he does ταύτην δὲ εἶναι τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων) and as he should have done oix isì wegì tàs copes; both which are the explanatory remarks of Plutarch. And now it is to be hoped our Advocate sees why this last part was not at all taken notice of by Mr. Warburton though in the very same paragraph with the first which he quoted. But what does he now see of his contradiction?

The very

We have said, what it was that induced Plutarch to interfere with his own opinion in this matter. same concern for the orthodoxy of old Pagan philosophy (then to be opposed to Christianity) that now seems to distress our Advocate. The very same that made Plotinus cry out, as above, The soul necessarily loves God, yet is. a different existence from him. And this will account for Plutarch's labouring so much as he does, in the place quoted by our Advocate, at his 75th page, to free Plato from the charge of making the soul eternal and uncreated, For a charge, it seems, it was, and a heavy one too, upon him. Now where Plutarch performs the faithful: office of an historian, in delivering us the placits of the. old philosophers, there, we see, he owns both Pytha-, goras and Plato held this opinion; but here, where he acts the Advocate, I mean of old Pagan philosophy, he endeavours to distinguish away the accusation. Thus at length we see the contradiction lies at Plutarch's door; which will require more than a vegetative immortality to remove: Legulio dignus vindice nodus.

These