If, lastly, this quick power a Body were, Were it as swift, as is the wind or fire, (Whose atomies do, th' one down sideways bear, And make the other, in pyramids aspire); Her nimble body, yet in _time_ must move, And not in instants through all places slide: But She is nigh! and far! beneath! above! In point of time which thought can not divide. She's sent as soon to China, as to Spain, And thence returns, as soon as She is sent, She measures with one time and with one pain, An ell of silk, and heaven's wide-spreading tent. As then, the Soul a Substance hath alone Besides the Body, in which She is confined; So hath She _not_ a body of her own, But is a Spirit and immaterial Mind. [Sidenote: That the Soul is created immediately by God.--_Zach_, xii. x.] Since Body and Soul have such diversities; Well, might we muse, how first their match began, But that we learn, that He, that spread the skies And fixed the earth, first formed the Soul in Man. This true PROMETHEUS, first, made man of earth, And shed in him a beam of heavenly fire: Now, in their mother's womb, before their birth, Doth in all sons of men, their souls inspire. And as MINERVA is, in fables, said, From JOVE, without a mother, to proceed; So our true JOVE, without a mother's aid, Doth, daily, millions of MINERVAS breed. [Sidenote: Erroneous opinions of the creation of souls.] Then neither, from Eternity before, Nor from the time, when time's first point began; Made He all souls! which now He keeps in store, Some in the moon, and others in the sun: Nor in the secret cloister doth He keep, These virgin spirits until their marriage day, Nor locks them up in chambers, where they sleep, Till they awake within these beds of clay. Nor did He first a certain number make, Infusing part in beasts, and part in men, And as unwilling farther pains to take, Would make no more, than those He framèd then. So that the widow Soul, her Body dying, Unto the next born Body married was; And so by often changing and supplying, Men's souls to beasts, and beasts' to men did pass. (These thoughts are fond! for since the bodies born Be more in number far than those that die; Thousands must be abortive, and forlorn, Ere others' deaths, to them their souls supply.) But as GOD's handmaid, Nature, doth create Bodies, in time distinct and order due; So GOD gives souls the like successive date, Which Himself makes in bodies formèd new. Which Himself makes, of no material things, For unto angels, He no power hath given, Either to form the shape, or stuff to bring, From air, or Fire, or substance of the heaven.