But most of them, euen to their dying howre,
Retaine a mind more liuely, quicke, and strong;
And better vse their vnderstanding power,
Then when their braines were warm, and lims were yong.
For, though the body wasted be and weake,
And though the leaden forme of earth it beares;
Yet when we heare that halfe-dead body speake,
We oft are rauisht to the heauenly spheares.
Objection II.
Yet say these men, If all her organs die,
Then hath the soule no power her powers to vse;
So, in a sort, her powers extinct doe lie,
When vnto act shee cannot them reduce.
And if her powers be dead, then what is shee?
For sith from euery thing some powers do spring,
And from those powers, some acts proceeding bee,
Then kill both power and act, and kill the thing.
Answere.
Doubtlesse the bodie's death when once it dies,
The instruments of sense and life doth kill;
So that she cannot vse those faculties,
Although their root rest in her substance still.
But (as the body liuing) Wit and Will
Can iudge and chuse, without the bodie's ayde;
Though on such obiects they are working still,
As through the bodie's organs are conuayde:
So, when the body serues her turne no more,
And all her Senses are extinct and gone,
She can discourse of what she learn'd before,
In heauenly contemplations, all alone.