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A28982
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A free enquiry into the vulgarly receiv'd notion of nature made in an essay address'd to a friend / by R.B., Fellow of the Royal Society.
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Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.
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1686
(1686)
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Wing B3979; ESTC R11778
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140,528
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442
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particular occasions the Welfare of inferior or private Portions of It should be only so far provided for as their Welfare is consistent with the general Laws setled by God in the Vniverse and with Such of those Ends that he propos'd to himself in framing It as are more Considerable than the Welfare of those particular Creatures Upon these Grounds if we set aside the Consideration of Miracles as Things supernatural and of those Instances wherein the Providence of the great Rector of the Universe and Human Affairs is pleas'd peculiarly to interpose it may be rationally said That God having an Infinite Understanding to which all Things are at once in a manner Present did by vertue of it clearly discern what would happen in consequence of the Laws by Him establish'd in all the possible Combinations of Them and in all the Junctures of Circumstances wherein the Creatures concern'd in Them may be found And that having when all these things were in His Prospect setled among His Corporeal Works general and standing Laws of Motion suited to His most Wise Ends it seems very congruous to His Wisdom to prefer unless in the newly excepted Cases Catholick Laws and higher Ends before subordinate Ones and Uniformity in His Conduct before making changes in It according to every sort of particular Emergencies And consequently not to recede from the general Laws He at first most Wisely establish'd to comply with the Appetites or the Needs of particular Creatures or to prevent some seeming Irregularities such as Earth-quakes Floods Famins c. incommodious to Them which are no other than such as He fore saw would happen as the Eclipses of the Sun and Moon from time to time the falling of Showers upon the Sea and Sandy Desarts and the like must do by vertue of the Original Disposition of Things and thought fit to ordain or to permit as not unsuitable to some or other of those Wise Ends which He may have in His All-pervading View who either as the Maker and Upholder of the Universe or as the Sovereign Rector of His Rational Creatures may have Ends whether Physical Moral or Political if I may be allowed so to distinguish and name Them divers of which for ought we can tell or should presume are known only to Himself whence we may argue that several Phaenomena which seem to us Anomalous may be very Congruous or Conducive to those secret Ends and therefore are unfit to be censur'd by us dim-sighted Mortals And indeed the admirable Wisdom and Skill that in some conspicuous Instances the Divine Opificer has display'd in the fitting of Things for such Ends and Uses for which among other purposes He may rationally be suppos'd to have design'd Them may justly persuade us that His Skill would not appear Infeferiour in reference to the rest also of His Corporeal Works if we could as well in These as in Those discern their particular final Causes As if we suppose an excellent Letter about several Subjects and to different Purposes whereof some Parts were written in plain Characters others in Cyphers besides a third sort of Clauses wherein both Kinds of Writing were variously mix'd to be heedfully perus'd by a very intelligent Person if he finds that those Passages that he can understand are excellently suited to the scopes that appear to be intended in them it is Rational as well as Equitable in Him to conclude that the Passages or Clauses of the third sort if any of them seem to be insignificant or even to make an Incongruous Sense do it but because of the illegible Words and that both these Passages and Those written altogether in Cyphers would be found no less worthy of the excellent †See the Discourse of Final Causes Writer than the plainest Parts of the Epistle if the particular purposes they were design'd for were as clearly discernable by the Reader And perhaps you will allow me to add that by this way of ordering Things so that in some of God's Works the Ends or Uses may be manifest and the exquisite fitness of the Means may be conspicuous as the Eye is manifestly made for seeing and the Parts it consists of admirably fitted to make it an excellent Organ of Vision and in others the ends design'd seem to be beyond our reach By this way I say of managing Things the most Wise Author of them does both gratifie our Understandings and make us sensible of the Imperfection of Them If the Representation now made of Providence serve as I hope it may to resolve some scruples about it I know you will not think it useless to Religion And though I should miss of my aim in it yet since I do not dogmatize in what I propose about it but freely submit my thoughts to better Judgments I hope my well meant Endeavours will be as well as the unsuccessful ones of abler Pens have been excus'd by the scarce superable difficulty of the Subject However what I have propos'd about Providence being written rather to do a service to Theology than as necessary to justifie a dissatisfaction with the Receiv'd Notion of Nature that was grounded mainly upon Philosophical Objections I hope our Free Enquiry may though this Second Use of it should be quite laid aside be thought not unserviceable to Religion since the First Use of it above deliver'd does not depend on my Notions about Providence no more than the Third which my Prolixity about the former makes it fit I should in few words dispatch III. The last then but not the least service I hope our Doctrine may do Religion is that it may induce Men to pay their Admiration their Praises and their Thanks directly to God Himself who is the True and Only Creator of the Sun Moon Earth and those other Creatures that Men are wont to call the Works of Nature And in this way of expressing their Veneration of the True God who in the Holy Scripture styles Himself a Iealous God Exod. xx 5. and their gratitude to Him they are warranted by the Examples of the ancient People of God the Israelites and not only by the Inspir'd Persons of the Old Testament but by the Promulgators of the New Testament and even by the Coelestial Spirits who in the last Book of It are introduc'd Rev. iv 2. Praising and Thanking God himself for His Mundane Works without taking any notice of His pretended Vice-gerent Nature THE CONCLUSION AND now dear Eleutherius you have the whole Bundle of those Papers that I found and tack'd together for they are not all that I have written touching my Free Enquiry into the Receiv'd Notion of Nature At the Close of which Essay I must crave leave to represent two or three things about It. 1. Since this Treatise pretends to be but an Enquiry I hope that any Discourses or Expressions that you may have found Dogmatically deliver'd about Questions of great moment or difficulty will be interpretated with congruity to the Title and avow'd Scope
account as they think of Religion against the care I take to decline the frequent use of that Word Nature in the Vulgar Notion of it Reserving to another and fitter place some other things that may relate to the Theological scruples if any occur to me that our Free Inquiry may occasion The Philosophical Reason that inclines me to forbear as much as conveniently I can the frequent use of the Word Nature and the Forms of Speech that are deriv'd from it is That 't is a Term of great Ambiguity On which score I have observ'd that being frequently and unwarily imploy'd it has occasion'd much darkness and confusion in many Mens Writings and Discourses And I little doubt but that others would make the like Observations if early Prejudices and universal Custom did not keep them from taking notice of it Nor do I think my self oblig'd by the just Veneration I owe and pay Religion to make use of a Term so inconvenient to Philosophy For I do not find that for many Ages the Israelites that then were the only People and Church of God made use of the Word Nature in the Vulgar Notion of it Moses in the whole History of the Creation where it had been so proper to bring in this first of second Causes has not a word of Nature And whereas Philosophers presume that she by her Plastick Power and Skill forms Plants and Animals out of the Universal Matter the Divine Historian ascribes the Formation of them to Gods immediate Fiat Gen. i. 11. And God said let the Earth bring forth Grass and the Herb yielding Seed and the Fruit tree yielding Fruit after his kind c. And again Vers. 24 God said Let the Earth bring forth the living Creature after its kind c. Vers. 25 And God without any mention of Nature made the Beast of the Earth after his kind And I do not remember that in the Old Testament I have met with any one Hebrew word that properly signifies Nature in the sense we take it in And it seems that our English Translators of the Bible were not more fortunate in that than I for having purposely consulted a late Concordance I found not that Word Nature in any Text of the Old Testament So likewise though Iob David and Solomon and other Israelitish Writers do on divers occasions many times mention the Corporeal Works of God yet they do not take notice of Nature which our Philosophers would have his great Vicegerent in what relates to them To which perhaps it may not be impertinent to add that though the late famous Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel has purposely written a Book of numerous Problems touching the Creation yet I do not remember that he imploys the Word Nature in the receiv'd Notion of it to give an account of any of Gods Mundane Creatures And when St. Paul himself who was no stranger to the Heathen Learning writing to the Corinthians who were Greeks speaks of the Production of Corn out of Seed sown he does not attribute the produc'd Body to Nature but when he had spoken of a grain of Wheat or some other seed put into the ground he adds that God gives it such a Body as he pleaseth and to every seed it s own Body i. e. the Body belonging to its kind And a greater than St. Paul speaking of the gaudiness of the Lillies or as some will have it Tulips uses this Expression If God so cloath the grass of the Field c. Matt. vi 28 29 30. The Celebrations that David Iob and other Holy Hebrews mention'd in the Old Testament make an occasion of the admirable Works they contemplated in the Universe are address'd directly to God himself without taking notice of Nature Of this I could multiply Instances but shall here for brevity's sake be contented to name a few taken from the Book of Psalms alone In the hundredth of those Hymns the Penman of it makes this That God has made us the ground of an Exhortation To enter into his Gates with Thanksgiving and into his Courts with Praise Psal. lxxix 34. And in another Let the Heaven and Earth praise God that is give Men ground and occasion to Praise Him congruously to what David elsewhere says to the Great Creator of the Universe All thy work 's shall praise thee O Lord and thy Saints shall bless thee Psal. cxlv 10. And in another of the Sacred Hymns the same Royal Poet says to his Maker Thou hast cover'd me in my Mothers womb I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made marvellous are thy works and that my soul knoweth right well Psal. cxxxix 13 14. I have sometimes doubted whether one may not on this occasion add that if Men will need takes in a Being subordinate to God for the management of the World it seems more consonant to the Holy Scripture to depute Angels to that charge than Nature For I consider that as to the Coelestial Part of the Universe in comparison of which the Sublunary is not perhaps the ten-thousandth part both the Heathen Aristotelian's and the School Philosophers among the Christians teach the Coelestial Orbs to be moved or guided by Intelligences or Angels And as to the lower or sublunary World besides that the Holy Writings teach us that Angels have been often imploy'd by God for the Government of Kingdoms as is evident out of the Book of Daniel and the Welfare and Punishment of particular Persons one of those Glorious Spirits is in the Apocalypse expresly styl'd the Angel of the Waters Which Title divers Learned Interpreters think to be given him because of his Charge or Office to oversee and preserve the Waters And I remember that in the same Book there is mention made of an Angel that had Power Authority or Iurisdiction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 over the Fire And though the Excellent Grotius gives another conjecture of the Title given the Angel of the Waters yet in his Notes upon the next Verse save one he teaches That there was an Angel appointed to preserve the Souls that were kept under the Altar there-mention'd And if we take the Angel of the Waters to be the Guardian or Conserver of them perhaps as the Romans in whose Empire St. Iohn wrote had special Officers to look to their Aqueducts and other Waters it may not be amiss to observe upon the by that he is introduc'd Praising his and his fellow-Spirits Great Creator Which is an Act of Religion that for ought I know none of the Naturists whether Pagan or even Christians ever mention'd their Nature to have perform'd I know it may on this occasion be alledg'd that subordinata non pugnant and Nature being God's Vicegerent her Works are indeed his But that he has such a Vicegerent it is one of the main businesses of this Discourse to call in Question and till the Affirmative be solidly prov'd nay and tho' it were so I hope I shall be excus'd if with