Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/231

Rh 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 Rh