Pneumatologia: A Treatise of the Soul of Man

Gen. 2:7

And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Three things (says Athanasius) are unknown to men according to their essence, viz. God, angels, and the souls of men.” Of the nature of the divine and high-born soul, we may say, as the learned Whitaker doth of the way of its infection by original sin, “it is easier sought than understood, and better understood than explicated.” And for is original, the most sagacious and renowned for wisdom amongst the ancient philosophers understood nothing of it. It is said of Democritus, that “there is nothing in the whole workmanship of nature of which he did not write;” and in a more lofty and swelling hyperbole, they stile their eagle-eyed Aristotle, “the rule, yea, and miracle of nature; learning itself, the very son of knowledge:” yet both these are not only said, but proved by Lactantius to be learned idiots. How have the schools of Epicurus, and Aristotle, the Cartesians, and other sects of philosophers abused and troubled the world with a kind of philosophical enthusiasm, and a great many ridiculous fancies about the original of the soul of man! and when all is done three words of God, by the pen of the inspired Moses, enlightens us more than all the subtle notions of he accidential concretion of atoms, their materia subtilis, and anima mundi, and the rest of their unintelligible fancies could ever do.