Since body and soule haue such diuersities,
Well might we muse, how first their match began;
But that we learne, that He that spread the skies,
And fixt the Earth, first form'd the soule in man.
This true Prometheus first made Man of earth,
And shed in him a beame of heauenly fire;
Now in their mother's wombs before their birth,
Doth in all sonnes of men their soules inspire.
And as Minerua is in fables said,
From Ioue, without a mother to proceed;
So our true Ioue, without a mother's ay'd,
Doth daily millions of Mineruas breed.
ERRONIOUS OPINIONS OF THE CREATION OF SOULES.
Then neither from eternitie before,
Nor from the time when Time's first point begun;
Made He all souls: which now He keepes in store,
Some in the moone, and others in the sunne:
Nor in a secret cloyster doth Hee keepe
These virgin-spirits, vntill their marriage-day;
Nor locks them vp in chambers, where they sleep,
Till they awake, within these beds of clay.
Nor did He first a certaine number make,
Infusing part in beasts, and part in men,
And, as vnwilling further paines to take,
Would make no more then those He framèd then.
So that the widow Soule her body dying,
Vnto the next-borne body married was;
And so by often changing and supplying,
Mens' soules to beasts, and beasts to men did passe.
(These thoughts are fond; for since the bodies borne
Be more in number farre then those that dye;
Thousands must be abortiue, and forlorne,
Ere others' deaths to them their soules supply.)
But as God's handmaid, Nature, doth create
Bodies in time distinct, and order due;
So God giues soules the like successiue date,
Which Himselfe makes, in bodies formèd new:
Which Him selfe makes, of no materiall thing;
For vnto angels He no power hath giuen,
Either to forme the shape, or stuffe to bring
From ayre or fire, or substance of the heauen.
Nor He in this doth Nature's seruice vse;
For though from bodies, she can bodies bring,
Yet could she neuer soules from Soules traduce,
As fire from fire, or light from light doth spring.
OBJECTION:—THAT THE SOULE IS EXTRADUCE.
Alas! that some, that were great lights of old,
And in their hands the lampe of God did beare;
Some reuerend Fathers did this error hold,
Hauing their eyes dim'd with religious feare!
For when (say they) by Rule of Faith we find,
That euery soule vnto her body knit,
Brings from the mother's wombe, the sinne of kind,
The roote of all the ill she doth commit.
How can we say that God the Soule doth make,
But we must make Him author of her sinne?
Then from man's soule she doth beginning take,
Since in man's soule corruption did begin.
For if God make her, first He makes her ill,
(Which God forbid our thoghts should yeeld vnto!)
Or makes the body her faire forme to spill,
Which, of it selfe it had no power to doe.
Not Adam's body but his soule did sinne
And so her selfe vnto corruption brought;
But the poore soule corrupted is within,
Ere shee had sinn'd, either in act, or thought:
And yet we see in her such powres diuine,
As we could gladly thinke, from God she came;
Faine would we make Him Author of the wine,
If for the dregs we could some other blame.