to sinne by his temptations There are many kinds of motions besides moving from place to place He himself confesseth in this Section that we are moved to prayer by outward objects In the next place supposing there were no other motions than local motions yet he erreth in attributing no motion to any thing but bodies The reasonable soul is moved accidentally according to the motion of the body The Angels are spirits or spiritual substances no bodies by his leave and yet move locally from place to place Jacob sees the Angels of God ascending and descending The Angels came and ministred unto Christ The Angels shall gather the elect from the one end of Heaven to the other The soul of Lazarus was born by the Angels into Abrahams bosom God sent his Angel to deliver Peter out of prison and every where useth his Angels as ministring spirits Thirdly he erreth in this also That nothing can move that is not moved it self If he mean that all power to move is from God he speaketh truly but impertinently But if he mean as he must mean if he mean sense that nothing moveth which is not moved of some second cause he speaketh untruly The Angels move themselves all living creatures do move themselves by animal motion The inanimate creatures do move themselves heavy bodies descending downwards light bodies ascending upwards according to their own natures And therefore nature is defined to be an internal cause or principle of motion and rest c. And even they who held that whatsoever is moved is moved by another did limit it to natural bodies and make the form to be the mover in natural motion and the soul in animal motion His last errour in this Animadversion and a dangerous one is That it is not truly said that acts or habits are infused by God for infusion is motion and nothing is moved but bodies I wish for his own quiet and other mens that he were as great an enemy to errours and innovations as he is to metaphors and distinctions Affectation of words is not good but contention about words is worse By such an argument a man might take away all Zones and Zodiack in Astronomy Modes and Figures in Logick Cones and Cylindres in Geometry for all these are borrowed termes as infusion is What Logician almost doth not distinguish between acquired habits and infused habits If all infusion be of bodies then he never infused any paradoxical principles into his Auditours When any difference doth arise about expressions the onely question is Whether there be any ground in nature for such an expression He himself telleth us That faith and repentance are the gifts of God To say they are the gifts of God and to say they are infused by God is the same thing saving that to say they are infused by God is a more distinct and a more significant expression I hope he will not controle the language of the Holy Ghost I will powre out my spirit upon all flesh No saith T. H. that cannot be nothing can be powred out but bodies Saint Peter telleth us otherwise This Iesus being exalted by the right hand of God hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear That was the gift of tongues an act or habit infused That which was shed forth or effused on Gods part was infused on their part So saith Saint Paul The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Again He saveth us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Iesus Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word is still the same signifying an effusion from God and an infusion into us All those graces freely given which were infused by the Holy Ghost and are recited by the Apostle to the Corinthians are either permanent Habits or transient Acts. In the remainder of this Section is contained nothing but relapses and repetitions of his former Paradoxical errours still confounding the intellectual will with the sensitive appetite Liberty with Spontaneity the Faculty of the will with the Act of willing the liberty of reasonable Creatures with the liberty of mad men and fools Before he told us That he that can do what he will hath no liberty at all Now he telleth us of the liberty of doing what we will in those things we are able to do Before he limitted the power by the will now he limitteth the will by the power I affirmed most truely That liberty is diminished by vitious habits which he saith cannot be unnderstood otherwise then that vitious habits make a man lesse free to do vitious actions There is little doubt but he would expound it so if he were my Interpreter But my sense and my scope is evident to the contrary that vitious habits make a man lesse free to do virtuous actions He will take notice of no difference between the liberty of a man and the bias of a bowl Yet in the midst of all these mistakes and Paradoxes he hath not forgotten his old Thrasonicall humour Where I say liberty is in more danger to be abused than to be lost he telleth me It is a meer shift to be thought not licenced I had not thought him such a dangerous Adversary metuent omnes jam te nec immerito well if it be a shift it is such a shift as all conscionable men do find by experience to be true And for his silencing of men impavidum ferient ruinae I do not fear silencing by him except his arguments have some occult quality more than he or I dream of If a fish could speak a fish would not be silenced by him in this cause Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 23. THere is a double question discussed in this Section First Supposing that the will doth alwayes follow the last judgement of the understanding whether this do take away the liberty of the will Secondly Whether the will doth alwayes follow the last judgement of the understanding both which questions have formerly been discoursed of in this Treatise For clearing of the former question it ought to be considered That although men do ordinarily speak of the understanding and of the will as of two distinct Agents or individual substances subsisting by themselves whereof the one understandeth and the other willeth partly for the eminence of these two powers and partly for the clearer and more distinct conception and comprehension of them And although the practise of all former Divines and Philosophers do warrant us in so doing yet if we will speak properly and in rigour of speach the understanding and the will are but two powers flowing from the reasonable soul. And that the acts of willing and understanding are predicated most properly of the man whilest the soul and body are united Actiones sunt suppositorum and of the reasonable soul after its separation And because he suggesteth that this is done for
body is no part of the universe And because the universe is all that which is no part of it is nothing and consequently no where How by this doctrine he maketh not onely the Angels but God himself to be nothing Neither doth he salve it at all by supposing erroneously Angels to be corporeal spirits and by attributing the name of incorporeal spirit to God as being a name of more honour in whom we consider not what attribute best expresseth his nature which is incomprehensible but what best expresseth our desire to honour him Though we be not able to comprehend perfectly what God is yet we are able to comprehend perfectly what God is not that is he is not imperfect and therefore he is not finite and consequently he is not corporeal This were a trim way to honour God indeed to honour him with a lie If this that he say here be true That every part of the universe is a body and whatsoever is not a body is nothing Then by this doctrine if God be not a body God is nothing not an incorporeal spirit but one of the idols of the brain a meer nothing though they think they dance under a not and have the blind of Gods incomprehensibility between them and discovery To what purpose should a coelum empyreum serve in his judgement who denieth the immortality of the soul The doctrin is now and hath been a long time far otherwise namely that every man hath eternity of life by nature in as much as his soul is immortal Who supposeth that when a man dieth there remaineth nothing of him but his carkase Who maketh the word soul in holy Scripture to signifie alwayes either the life or the living creature And expoundeth the casting of body and soul into hell-fire to be the casting of body and life into hell-fire Who maketh this Orthodox truth That the soules of men are substances distinct from their bodies to be an errour contracted by the contagion of the demonology of the Greeks and a window that gives entrance to the dark doctrine of eternal torments Who expoundeth these words of Solomon Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God that gave it Thus God onely knows what becomes of a mans spirit when he expireth He will not acknowledge that there is a spirit or any substance distinct from the body I wonder what they think doth keep their bodies from stinking But they that in one case are grieved in another must be relieved If perchance T. H. hath given his disciples any discontent in his doctrine of Heaven and the holy Angels and the glorified souls of the Saints he will make them amends in his doctrine of hell and the devils and the damned spirits First of the devils He fancieth that all those devils which our Saviour did cast out were phrensies and all daemoniacks or persons possessed no other than mad-men And to justifie our Saviours speaking to a disease as to a person produceth the example of inchanters But he declareth himself most clearly upon this subject in his Animadversions upon my reply to his defence of fatal destiny There are in the Scripture two sorts of things which are in English translated devils One is that which is called Satan Diabolus Abaddon which signifieth in English an enemy an accuser and a destroyer of the Church of God in which sense the devils are but wicked men The other sort of devils are called in the Scripture daemonia which are the feigned gods of the heathen and are neither bodies nor spiritual substances but meer phansies and fictions of terrified hearts feigned by the Greeks and other heathen people which St. Paul calleth nothings So T. H. hath killed the great infernal devil and all his black Angels and lest no devils to be feared but devils incarnate that is wicked men And for hell he describeth the kingdom of Satan or the kingdom of darknesse to be a confederacy of deceivers He telleth us that the places which set forth the torments of hell in holy Scripture do designe metaphorically a grief and discontent of mind from the sight of that eternal felicity in others which they themselves through their own incredulity and disobedience have lost As if metaphorical descriptions did not bear sad truths in them as well as literal as if final desperations were no more than a little fit of grief or discontent and a guilty conscience were no more than a transitory passion as if it were a losse so easily to be borne to be deprived for evermore of the beatifical vision And lastly as if the damned besides that unspeakable losse did not likewise suffer actual torments proportionable in some measure to their own sins and Gods justice Lastly for the damned spirits he declareth himself every where that their sufferings are not eternal The fire shall be unquenchable and the torments everlasting but it cannot be thence inferred that he who shall be cast into that fire or be tormented with those torments shall endure and resist them so as to be eternally burnt and tortured and yet never be destroyed nor dye And though there be many places that affirm everlasting fire into which men may be cast successively one after another for ever yet I find none that affirm that there shall be an everlasting life therein of any individual person If he had said and said only that the pains of the damned may be lessened as to the degree of them or that they endure not for ever but that after they are purged by long torments from their drosse and corruptions as gold in the fire both the damned spirits and the Devils themselves should be restored to a better condition he might have found some Ancients who are therefore called the merciful Doctours to have joyned with him though still he should have wanted the suffrage of the Catholick Church But his shooting is not at rovers but altogether at randome without either president or partner All that eternal fire all those torments which he acknowledgeth is but this That after the resurrection the reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam and his posterity were in after the sinne committed saving that God promised a Redeemer to Adam and not to them adding that they shall live as they did formerly marry and give in marriage and consequently engender children perpetually after the resurrection as they did before which he calleth an immortality of the kind but not of the persons of men It is to be presumed that in those their second lifes knowing certainly from T. H. that there is no hope of redemption for them from corporal death upon their well doing nor fear of any torments after death for their ill doing they will passe their times here as pleasantly as they can This is all the damnation which T. H. fancieth In summe I leave it to the free judgement of the understanding
signifie the same thing in this place Onely to permit is opposed to acting to permit barely is opposed to disposing There are many things which God doth not act there is nothing which God doth not dispose He acteth good permitteth evil disposeth all things both good and evill He that cutteth the banks of a River is the active cause that the water floweth out of the Channel He that hindreth not the stream to break the banks when he could is the permissive cause And if he make no other use of the breaking out it is nuda permissio bare permission but if he disposeth and draweth the water that floweth out by furrowes to water the Medows then though he permit it yet he doth not barely permit it but disposeth of it to a further good So God onely permitteth evil that is he doth it not but he doth not barely permit it because he disposeth it to good Here he would gladly be nibling at the questions Whether universals be nothing but onely words Nothing in the World saith he is general but the significations of words and other signes Hereby affirming unawares that a man is but a word and by consequence that he himself is but a titular and not a real man But this question is alltogether impertinent in this place We do not by a general influence understand some universal substance or thing but an influence of indeterminate power which may be applyed either to good or evill The influence is a singular act but the power communicated is a general that is an indeterminate power which may be applied to acts of several kinds If he deny all general power in this sense he denieth both his own reason and his common sense Still he is for his old errour That eternity is a successive everlasting duration But he produceth nothing for it nor answereth to any thing which I urged against it That the eternity of God is God himself that if eternity were an everlasting duration then there should be succession in God then there should be former and later past and to come and a part without a part in God then all things should not be present to God then God should lose something namely that which is past and acquire something newly namely that which is to come and so God who is without all shadow of change should be mutable and change every day To this he is silent and silence argueth consent He saith Those many other wayes which are proposed by Divines for reconciling eternal prescience with liberty and contingency are proposed in vain if they mean the same liberty and contingency that I do for truth and errour can never be reconciled I do not wonder at his shew of confidence The declining sun maketh longer shadows and when a Merchant is nearest breaking he maketh the fairest shew to preserve his reputation as long as may be He saith he knoweth the loadstone hath no such attractive power I fear shortly he will not permit us to say that a plaister or a plantine leaf draweth What doth the loadstone then if it doth not draw He knoweth that the iron cometh to it or it to the iron Can he not tell whether This is worse than drawing to make iron come or go By potentiality he understandeth power or might Others understand possibility or indetermination Is not he likelely to confute the Schoolmen to good purpose Whereas I said that God is not just but justice it self not eternall but eternity it self He telleth me That they are unseemly words to be said of God he will not say blasphemous and Atheistical that God is not just that he is not eternal I do not fear that any one Scholler or any one understanding Christian in the World should be of his mind in this If I should spend much time in proving of such known truths approved and established by the Christian World I should shew my self almost as weak as he doth shew himself to talk of such things as he understandeth not in the least to the overthrowing of the nature of God and to make him no God If his God have accidents ours hath none If his God admit of composition and division ours is a simple essence When we say God is not just but justice not wise but wisdom doth he think that we speak of moral virtues or that we derogate or detract from God No we ascribe unto him a transcendental justice and wisdom that is not comprehended under our categories nor to be conceived perfectly by humane reason But why doth he not attempt to answer the reasons which I brought That that which is infinitely perfect cannot be further perfected by accidents That God is a simple essence and can admit no kind of composition That the infinite essence of God can act sufficiently without faculties That it consisteth not with divine perfection to have any passive or receptive powers I find nothing in answer to these but deep silence Attributes are names and justice and wisdom are moral virtues but the justice and wisdom and power and eternity and goodnesse and truth of God are neither names nor moral virtues but altogether do make one eternal essence wherein all perfections do meet in an infinite degree It is well if those words of our Saviour do escape him in his next Animadversions I am the truth Or St. Paul for making Deum and Deitatem God and the Godheads or Deity to be all one Or Solomon for personating God under the name of Wisdom in the abstract To prove eternity to be no successive duration but one indivisible moment I argued thus The divine substance is indivisible but eternity is the divine substance In answer to this in the first place he denyeth the Major That the divine substance is indivisible If he had not been a professed Christian but a plain Stoick I should not have wondred so much at this answer for they held that God was corporall If the divine substance be not indivisible then it is materiate then it is corporall then it is corruptible then the Anthropomorphites had reason to attribute humane members to God But the Scriptures teach us better and all the World consenteth to it That God is a Spirit that he is immortall and invisible that he dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto whom no man hath seen nor can see It is inconsistent with the nature of God to be finite It is inconsistent with the nature of a body to be infinite The speculations of Philosophors who had onely the light of reason were not so grosse who made God to be a most simple essence or simplicity it self All matter which is the originall of divisibility was created by God and therefore God himself cannot be material nor divisible Secondly he denyeth the minor That the eternity of God is the divine substance I proved it from that generally received rule Whatsoever is in God is God His answer is That
him out of his Castle that is the deep though not with a fish-hook yet with their harping-irons and by giving him line and space enough to bounce and tumble up and down and tire himself right out and trie all his arts as spouting up a sea of water out of his mouth to drown them and striking at their Shallops with his taile to overwhelm them at last to draw this formidable creature to the shore or to their ship and slice him in pieces and boile him in a Cauldron and tun him up in oil I have provided three good harping-irons for my self to dart at this monster and am resolved to try my skill and fortune whether I can be as successeful against this phantastick Leviathan as they are against the true Leviathan My first dart is aimed at his heart or Theological part of his discourse to shew that his principles are not consistent either with Christianity or any other Religion The second dart is aimed at the chine whereby this vast body is united and fitted for animal motion that is the political part of his discourse to shew that his principles are per nicious to all formes of Government and all Societies and destroy all relations between man and man The third dart is aimed at his head or rational part of his discourse to shew that his principles are inconsistent with themselves and contradict one another Let him take heed if these three darts do pierce his Leviathan home it is not all the Dittany which groweth in Creet that can make them drop easily out of his body without the utter overthrow of his cause haerebit lateri lethalis arundo CHAP. 1. That the Hobbian Principles are destructive to Cristianity and all Religion THe Image of God is not altogether defaced by the fall of man but that there will remaine some practical notions of God and goodnesse which when the mind is free from vagrant desires and violent passions do shine as clearly in the heart as other speculative notions do in the head Hence it is That there never was any Nation so barbarous or savage throughout the whole World which had not their God They who did never wear cloaths upon their backs who did never know Magistrate but their father yet have their God and their religious rites and devotions to him Hence it is That the greatest Atheists in any sudain danger do unwittingly cast their eyes up to Heaven as craving aide from thence and in a thunder creep into some hole to hide themselves And they who are conscious to themselves of any secret crimes though they be secure enough from the justice of men do yet feel the blind blows of a guilty conscience and fear divine vengeance This is acknowledged by T. H. himself in his lucid intervalles That we may know what worship of God natural reason doth assigne let us begin with his attributes where it is manifest in the first place That existency is to be attributed to him To which he addeth infinitenesse incomprehensibility unity ubiquity Thus for attributes next for actions Concerning external actions wherewith God is to be worshipped the most general precept of reason is that they be signes of honour under which are contained Prayers Thanksgivings Oblations and Sacrifices Yet to let us see how inconsistent and irreconciliable he is with himself elsewhere reckoning up all the laws of nature at large even twenty in number he hath not one word that concerneth religion or that hath the least relation in the World to God As if a man were like the Colt of a wilde Asse in the wildernesse without any owner or obligation Thus in describing the laws of nature this great Clerk forgetteth the God of nature and the main and principal laws of nature which contain a mans duty to his God and the principal end of his creation Perhaps he will say that he handleth the laws of nature there onely so far as may serve to the constitution or settlement of a Commonwealth In good time let it be so He hath devised us a trimne Common-wealth which is neither founded upon religion towards God nor justice towards man ' but meerly upon self interest and self preservation Those raies of heavenly light those natural seeds of religion which God himself hath imprinted in the heart of man are more efficacious towards the preservation of a Society whether we regard the nature of the thing or the blessing of God then all his pacts and surrenders and translations of power He who unteacheth men their duty to God may make them eye-servants so long as their interest doth oblige them to obey but is no fit master to teach men conscience and fidelity Without religion Societies are but like soapy bubbles quickly dissolved It was the judgement of as wise a man as T. H. himself though perhaps he will hardly be perswaded to it that Rome ought more of its grandeur to religion than either to strength or stratagems We have not exceeded the Spaniards in number nor the Galles in strength nor the Carthaginians in craft nor the Grecians in art c. but we have overcome all nations by our piety and religion Among his laws he inserteth gratitude to man as the third precept of the law of nature but of the gratitude of mankind to their Creatour there is a deep silence If men had sprung up from the earth in a night like mushromes or excrescences without all sense of honour justice conscience or gratitude he could not have vilified the human natur more than he doth From this shameful omission or pretetition of the main duty of mankind a man might easily take the height of T. H. his religion But he himself putteth it past all conjectures His principles are brim full of prodigious impiety In these four things opinions of ghosts ignorance of second causes devotion to what men fear and taking of things casuall for prognosticks consisteth the natural seed of religion the culture and improvement whereof he refereth only to Policy Humane and divine politicks are but politicks And again Mankind hath this from the conscience of their own weaknesse and the admiration of natural events that the most part of men believe that there is an invisible God the maker of all visible things And a little after he telleth us That superstition proceedeth from fear without right reason and Atheisme from an opinion of reason without fear making Atheism to be more reasonable than superstition What is now become of that divine worship which natural reason did assigne unto God the honour of existence infinitenesse incomprehensibility unity ubiquity What is now become of that dictate or precept of reason concerning prayers thanksgivings oblations sacrifices if uncertain opinions ignorance fear mistakes the conscience of our own weaknesse and the admiration of natural events be the onely seeds of religion He proceedeth further That Atheisme it self though it be an erroneous opinion and therefore a
Soveraign Neither is he more orthodox concerning the Holy Scriptures Hitherto that is for the books of Moses the power of making the Scripture canonical was in the civil Soveraign The like he saith of the Old Testament made canonical by Esdras And of the New Testament That it was not the Apostles which made their own writings canonical but every convert made them so to himself Yet with this restriction That until the Soveraign ruler had prescribed them they were but counsel and advise which whether good or bad he that was counselled might without injustice refuse to observe and being contrary to the Laws established could not without injustice observe He maketh the Primitive Christians to have been in a pretty condition Certainly the Gospel was contrary to the Laws then established But most plainly The word of the Interpreter of the Scripture is the word of God And the same is the Interpreter of the Scripture and the Soveraign Iudge of all Doctrines that is the Soveraign Magistrate to whose authority we must stand no lesse than to Theirs who at first did commend the Scripture to us for the canon of faith Thus if Christian Soveraigns of different communions do clash one with another in their interpretations or misinterpretation of Scripture as they do daily then the word of God is contradictory to it self or that is the word of God in one Common-wealth which is the word of the the devil in another Common-wealth and the same thing may be true and not true at the same time which is the peculiar priviledge of T. H. to make contradictories to be true together All the power virtue use and efficacy which he ascribeth to the holy Sacraments is to be signes or commemorations As for any sealing or confirming or conferring of grace he acknowledgeth nothing The same he saith particularly of Baptisme upon which grounds a Cardinals red hat or a Serjeant at arms his mace may be called Sacraments as well as Baptisme or the holy Eucharist if they be only signes or commemorations of a benefit If he except that Baptisme and the Eucharist are of divine institution but a Cardinals red hat or a Serjeant at arms his mace are not he saith truely but nothing to his advantage or purpose seeing he deriveth all the authority of the Word and Sacraments in respect of Subjects and all our obligation to them from the authority of the Soveraign Magistrate without which these words repent and be baptized in the Name of Iesus are but counsel no command And so a Serjeant at arms his mace and baptisme proceed both from the same authority And this he saith upon this silly ground That nothing is a command the performance whereof tendeth to our own benefit He might as well deny the Ten Commandements to be commands because they have an advantagious promise annexed to them Do this and thou shalt live And cursed is every one that continueth not in all the words of this Law to doe them Sometimes he is for holy orders and giveth to the Pastors of the Church the right of ordination and absolution and infallibility too much for a particular Pastor or the Pastours of one particular Church It is manifest that the consecration of the chiefest Doctours in every Church and imposition of hands doth pertein to the Doctours of the same Church And it cannot be doubted of but the power of binding and loosing was given by Christ to the future Pastours after the same manner as to his present Apostles And our Saviour hath promised this infallibility in those things which are necessary to salvation to his Apostles until the day of judgement that is to say to the Apostles and Pastours to be consecrated by the Apostles successively by the imposition of hands But at other times he casteth all this meale down with his foot Christian Soveraignes are the supreme Pastors and the only persons whom Christians now hear speak from God except such as God speaketh to in these daies supernaturally What is now become of the promised infallibility And it is from the civil Soveraign that all other Pastours derive their right of teaching preaching and all other functions pertaining to that office and they are but his Ministers in the same manner as the Magistrates of Towns or Iudges in Courts of Justice and Commanders of Armies What is now become of their Ordination Magistrates Judges and Generals need no precedent qualifications He maketh the Pastoral authority of Soveraigns to be jure divino of all other Pastors jure civill He addeth neither is there any Iudge of Heresie among Subjects but their own civil Soveraign Lastly The Church excommunicateth no man but whom she excommunicateth by the authorty of the Prince And the effect of excommunication hath nothing in it neither of dammage in this World nor terrour upon an Apostate if the civil power did persecute or not assist the Church And in the World to come leaves them in no worse estate than those who never believed The damage rather redoundeth to the Church Neither is the excommunication of a Christian Subject that obeyeth the laws of his own Soveraign of any effect Where is now their power of binding and loosing It may be some of T. H. his disciples desire to know what hopes of heavenly joies they have upon their masters principles They may hear them without any great contentment There is no mention in Scripture nor ground in reason of the coelum empyreum that is the Heaven of the blessed where the Saints shall live eternally with God And again I have not found any text that can probably be drawn to prove any ascension of the Saints into Heaven that is to say into any coelum empyreum But he concludeth positively that salvation shall be upon earth when God shall reign at the coming of Christ in Ierusalem And again In short the Kingdom of God is a civil Kingdom c. called also the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Glory All the Hobbians can hope for is to be restored to the same condition which Adam was in before his fall So saith T. H. himself From whence may be inferred that the Elect after the resurrection shall be restored to the estate wherein Adam was before he had sinned As for the beatifical vision he defineth to be a word unintelligible But considering his other principles I do not marvel much at his extravagance in this point To what purpose should a coelum empyreum or Heaven of the blessed serve in his judgement who maketh the blessed Angels that are the inhabitants of that happy mansion to be either idols of the brain that is in plain English nothing or thin subtile fluid bodies destroying the Angelical nature The unvierse being the aggregate of all bodies there is no real part thereof that is not also body And elsewhere Every part of the universe is body and that which is not