Nosce Teipsum: 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.