is in or present to the Matter; Therefore the Essence of God is in or present to the Matter, and is there where the Matter is, and therefore somewhere. Can there be any deduction or illation more close and coherent with the Premises?
And yet that other most devoted follower of the Cartesian Philosophy, Ludovicus De la Forge, cannot abstain from the offering us the same advantage of arguing, or rather from the inferring the same conclusion with us in his Treatise De Mente Humana, Chap. 12. where occur these words: Lastly, when I say that God is present to all things by his Omnipotency, (and consequently to all the parts of the Matter) I do not deny but that also by his Essence or Substance he is present to them: For all those things in God are one and the same.
Dost thou hear, my Nullibist, what one of the chiefest of thy Condisciples and most religious Symmysts of that stupendious secret of Nullibism plainly professes, namely, that God, is present to all the parts of Matter by his Essence also, or Substance? And yet you in the mean while blush not to assert, that neither God, nor any created Spirit is any where; than which nothing more contradictious can be spoke or thought, or more abhorring from all reason. Wherefore when as the Nullibists come so near to the truth, it seems impossible they should, so all of a suddain, start from it, unless they were blinded with a superstitious admiration of Des Cartes his Metaphysicks, and were deluded, effascinated and befooled with his jocular Subtilty aud prestigious Abstractions there: For who in his right wits can acknowledge that a Spirit by its Essence may be present to Matter, and yet be no where, unless the Matter were nowhere also? And that a Spirit may penetrate, possess, and actuate some determinate Body, and yet not be in that Body? In which if it be, it is plainly necessary it be somewhere.
And yet the same Ludovicus De la Forge does manifestly assert, that the Body is thus possest and actuated by the Soul, in his Preface to his Treatise de Mente Humana, while he declares the Opinion of Marcilius Ficinus concerning the manner how the Soul actuates the Body in Marsilius his own words, and does of his own accord assent to his Opinion. What therefore do these Forms to the Body when they communicate to it their Esse? They throughly penetrate it with their Essence, they bequeath the Vertue of their Essence to it. But now whereas the Esse is deduced from the Essence, and the Operation flows from the Vertue, by conjoyning the Essence they impart the Esse, by bequeathing the Vertue they communicate the Operations; so that out of the congress of Soul and Body, there is made one Ani-mal
