*

man, what man thereby received was not a portion of God's essence, or a participation of the divine nature, but that measure of the divine virtue or influence, which was commensurate to the capabilities of the recipient. For it appears from Psal. civ. 29, 30, that he infused the breath of life into other living beings also thou takest away their breath, they die.... thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created ;' whence we learn that every living thing receives animation from one and the same source of life and breath; inasmuch as when God takes back to himself that spirit or breath of life, they cease to exist. Eccles. iii. 19. they have all one breath.' Nor has the word spirit any other meaning in the sacred writings, but that breath of life which we inspire, or the vital, or sensitive, or rational faculty, or some action or affection belonging to those faculties.

Man having been created after this manner, it is said, as a consequence, that man became a living soul;' whence it may be inferred (unless we had rather take the heathen writers for our teachers respecting the nature of the soul) that man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, not compound or separable, not, according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct

* Unde a quibusdam dicitur, particula auræ divinæ, Horat. II. Sat. ii. quod non reprehendo, modo bene intelligatur non quasi a Dei essentia, tanquam ejus pars, avulsa fuisset; sed quod ineffabili quodam modo profluere eam ex se fecerit.' Curcellæi Institutio, III. 7.

† . . . . . . He form'd thee, Adam, thee, O man,
Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breath'd
The breath of life; in his own image he
Created thee, in the image of God
Express, and thou becam'st a living soul.

Paradise Lost, VII. 523.

and different natures, as of soul and body,—but that、 the whole man is soul, and the soul man, that is to say, a body, or substance individual, animated, sensitive, and rational; and that the breath of life was neither a part of the divine essence, nor the soul itself, but as it were an inspiration of some divine virtue fitted for the exercise of life and reason, and infused into the organic body; for man himself, the whole man, when finally created, is called in express、 terms a living soul.' Hence the word used in Genesis to signify soul, is interpreted by the apostle, 1 Cor. xv. 45. 'animal.'* Again, all the attributes of the body are assigned in common to the soul: the touch, Lev. v. 2, &c. if a soul touch any unclean thing,'-the act of eating, vii. 18. the soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity;' v. 20. the soul that eateth of the flesh,' and in other places :-hunger, Prov. xiii. 25. xxvii. 7.-thirst, xxv. 25. as cold waters to a thirsty soul.' Isai. xxix. 8.-capture, 1 Sam. xxiv. 11. 'thou huntest my soul to take it.' Psal. vii. 5. let the enemy persecute my soul,

and take it.'

Where however we speak of the body as of a mere senseless stock, there the soul must be understood as

* See Beza's version in loc. Factus est prior homo Adamus animal vivens.'

Let th' earth bring forth soul living in her kind. VII. 450. in which passage the original reading, even in the copies corrected by Milton, was fowl instead of soul. Dr. Newton agrees with Bentley, Pearce, and Richardson in preferring soul, and gives the following reason: 'We observed before, that when Milton makes the Divine Person speak, he keeps closely to Scripture. Now what we render living crea · ture (Gen. i. 24.) is living soul in the Hebrew, which Milton usually follows rather than our translation.'

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 opin. ion 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.

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.

6

*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, cunctæ animæ, &c. Gen. xlvi. 25. Ergo non solum corpora, sed etiam animæ liberorum et nepotum Jacobi ab eo prognatæ sunt.' Curcell. Instit. III. 4.

t...... 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.