immediate reach of our Sense we may have such an evidence as in reason we ought as reasonable Men to acquiesce in though the evidence be still in its own nature but moral and not simply demonstrative or infallible And the variety of circumstances renders the credibility of such things more or less according to the various ingredients and contributions of credibility that are concentred in such an evidence It is impossible to demonstrate by evidence infallible or which is all one by evidence that is impossible to be false that there was such a Man as Julius Caesar or Augustus that there was such a Man as William the Conqueror or King Henry the Eighth or that such a Man was his Father or such a Woman his Mother or that there is such a City as Venice or Rome to me that never saw it for all these I have but by relation from others and it is not impossible but those Histories or informations or relations by which I am informed of these things may be false And they are such matters as have in them a less evidence than my own Sense of Sight for the evidence of my Sense is simple and immediate and therefore I have but a shorter cut thereby to the assent to the truth of the things so evidenced But in things that I have by relation from others my evidence is of greater distance for first I see them not by my own Eyes but it is others that must first see the thing they relate and secondly though I should think that whatsoever might be believed if obvious to the Sense of others might have as great a credibility as if obvious to my own yet I must have a second postulation that must have an ingredient to elicit my assent namely the veracity of him that reports and relates it And hence it is that that which is reported by many Eye-witnesses hath greater motives of credibility than that which is reported by few that which is reported by credible and authentick witnesses than that which is reported by light and inconsiderable witnesses that which is reported by persons disinteressed than that which is reported by persons whose interest it is to have the thing true or believed to be true that which hath the concurring testimony of real existing monuments than that which is without them and finally that which is reported by credible persons of their own view than that which they receive by hear-say from those that report upon their own view So that it is not with Evidences of Fact as it is with Logical or Mathematical Demonstrations which seem to consist in indivisibles for that which thus is demonstratively true is impossible to be false but Moral Evidence is gradual according to the variety of circumstances Yet such a man would be exploded as an irrational man that will not believe there was such a man as Julius Caesar because the Historians that write of him might possibly conspire to deceive the World with a Romance or that the Books may be supposititious or corrupted or will not believe that such a Man was his Father or such a Woman his Mother because he might be supposititious or will not believe there is such a City as Rome which he never saw because Travellers are wont to love to tell strange things and so may many as well as one So that as eternal Truths may have one kind of certainty by Logical Demonstration and as Mathematical Conclusions have an infallible certainty by Mathematical Demonstration and as matters objected immediately to our Sense have another kind of certainty by sensible evidence so matters simply of fact not objected immediately to our Sense have another kind of certainty though not altogether equal to the former nor simply infallible yet so highly credible that may justly elicit the assent of reasonable men and such as is proportionate to the nature of the thing and therefore more cannot be reasonably expected for the proof of the fact In the pursuance of this Argument namely Evidences of Fact touching the Origination of Mankind I must therefore say that the Evidences thereof are not of an infallible certainty and so much the rather because it relates to a matter that at the nearest that can be supposed is near six thousand years distant from us and some suppose more therefore the Evidences of Fact are as it were percolated through a vast Period of Ages and many very obscure to us And therefore all Proofs of this kind except that of Divine Revelation which though true and infallibly true we must not by the Laws of Argumentation bring in here because at one word it determins the Question will arise to no higher than Moral and therefore fallible in their own nature We rest upon what hath been before said for Evidences and Reasons that to me seem demonstrative But yet the Evidences of Fact which we shall produce must be considered also with these Advantages for their credibility 1. They are such as bear a great congruity and consonancy with and subservience to those former Arguments that ex natura rei and intrinsecè prove an impossibility of an eternal duration of Mankind à parte ante which though it doth not cannot evince that Mankind must have their Origination or Beginning in hac vel ista hora yet they do evince that Beginning it must have and the evidences of fact are as so many testes contestes or suffragiales that bear witness to that Truth that the former sort of Arguments do plainly evince 2. Though these Evidences of Fact taken singly and apart are not without their Objections that may seem to weaken them yet juncta juvant That evidence at Law which taken singly or apart makes but an imperfect proof semiplena probatio yet in conjunction with others grow to a full proof like Silurus his twigs that were easily broken apart but in conjunction or union were not to be broken Truths especially of Fact are not made Truths by Arguments or Evidence If there were once such a man as Caesar it is most certainly true that he was though no Historian ever mentioned him and therefore if there were ten thousand Authors that mention him kept sacredly and inviolably in certain Archives unto this day all this evidence doth not make him to be but only gives us a light and evidence of great probability that he was The Stars in the Milky-way and those Asseclae Jovis are not therefore in the Heavens or Aether because the Telescope hath discovered them for they were there before but the position of those Glasses present them to our perception and evidence their being which cannot be discovered without them And so it is with Evidences of Fact they do not make the thing to be but evidence them to be and because if to any one quaesitum of fact there be many but probable evidences which taken singly have not perchance any full evidence yet when many of those evidences concur and concenter in
whom Bochart upon very probable reasons supposeth to be Gedeon called Jerubbaal and having set up an Ephod in his City might be supposed a Priest and from the intercourse between them the Idol Baal-berith was brought from Berith the City of Sancuniathon into Judea Touching the Egyptians they pretended to the greatest antiquity both of Government and Learning the latter they principally derived from Hermes stiled by some Mercurius Trismegistus and by the Egyptians Thoth the Phenicians made claim to this man as theirs attributed to him the Invention of Letters of Navigation of the Virtues of Herbs Euseb lib. 1. Praeparat sect 10. de Phoenicum Theologia he is supposed more ancient than Moses but we have nothing authentick existing which he wrote The ancientest Historian of the Affairs of Egypt was Manethes the Egyptian Priest who lived about or as some think before the time of Alexander he carries up the Res Aegyptiacas to an excessive Antiquity and yet with great particularity and pretended certainty some account him fabulous because he carries up the Egyptian Dynasties before the Flood yea and long before the Creation others assert the probability of the Egyptian Dynasties to over-reach the universal Flood but salve that prodigious excess of their numerous Years by reducing them to Months or Anni Lunares which were anciently so accounted among the Egyptians The Egyptians have had other Writers of their Histories but of a later date as Ptolemeus Mendesius mentioned sometimes by Eusebius and those Arabick Historians mentioned by Kircher in that Book that delivers the History of the succession of their Dynasties Lastly I come to the Jewish History begun by Moses and continued down in a clear succession and series of times till their return from the Babylonish Captivity and this History hath a just prelation above all the Writings of other Historians in these ensuing respects 1. It hath the greatest and most particular certainty and far beyond any of the Historians before mentioned it contains the certain Periods of Times Names Men Places Actions and all Circumstances requirable in a History to inform it is not involved in Mystical expressions or Mythologies but is plain familiar and intelligible 2. It hath the greatest evidence of Truth that can be expected by a reasonable man namely Evidence from it self the particularity and circumstances of the things it relates Evidence from the ancientest Heathen Authors especially Sancuniathon Berosus and Abydenus before mentioned Evidence from the several parts thereof the Book of one Age bearing witness to another as the Books of Joshua to those of Moses the Books of Kings to those of Moses and Joshua though written in several Ages Evidentia rei or facti there cannot be greater Evidence than the Regiment of a People for so many Ages according to the Laws given and recorded by their first Historian Moses and the enjoyment of their Possessions according to the distribution of their next Historian Joshua 3. It is no broken Piece or Historical Fragment but it is carried down from the beginning of Time to all the ensuing Ages of the Jewish State without any chasma or interval 4. It hath the evidence of the highest credibility that any thing of that nature is capable of That the Books of Moses especially which are the Caput Historiae Judaicae were written by that Man Moses and that he lived in that Age wherein he is supposed to write 1. The constant uninterrupted Tradition of that Kingdom and Nation from it first coalition even to this day 2. The attestation of all the succeding Writers of that Historical Series of the Jewish Affairs 3. The inviolable Observation of those Laws given by Moses and recorded in that History as of the Laws given by him 4. The Suffrage of all Heathen Authors both modern and ancient that have occasion to mention the concerns of that People 5. It is a History that contains matters of far greater moment and antiquity than any other Writers but such as in probability made their Collections out of it namely of the Transactions from the first Creation of the World until the Universal Flood and from thence to the time of him that first wrote it namely Moses 6. It is a History that was really written by Moses who was far more ancient than all the Heathen Writers above mentioned excepting only Trismegistus of whose Writings we have nothing extant and more ancient than most of those Things or Notes recorded by those most ancient Heathen Writers which for the most part filled their Books He wrote 540 years before Homer 200 years before Sancuniathon according to Bochart's account 300 years before the Expedition of the Argonauts 350 years before the Trojan War and a considerable time before the Apotheoses or Inaugurations of many of the Heathenish Deities So that as the Matter of his History so the Time of his writing is far more ancient than the writing of the most ancient Heathen Historians that are at all extent Much of this I shall have occasion to resume and enlarge in the ensuing Chapters yet this was necessary in this place The Inference that is made from hence is That probably if the World of Mankind had been Eternal or if it had any such vast distance from its Beginning as some suppose we should have had Historical Monuments and Writings long before the Age of Moses But for all this I must needs say this Consideration singly I say singly taken and weighed maketh not much against an eternal or at least a vaster Epocha of the first Origination of Man than is ordinarily supposed I shall therefore set down those allays that make against the strength of the consequence drawn from this Topick 1. It is evident that the use of Letters and Writing were far more ancient than the time of Moses the Egyptians and Phenicians carry up the original of the invention thereof to Mercurius Trismegistus which is supposed long before Moses And although Cadmus is supposed to have brought the use of Letters out of Phoenicia into Greece some time after the Age of Moses according to Polydore Virgil lib. 1. cap. 6. out of Pliny Herodotus and others yet it appears by what is before mentioned that there were in Phoenicia very ancient written Volumes called Volumina Ammonaeorum long before the time of Sancuniathon And if we believe the Tradition of Josephus the Pillars of Seth were extant in his time and according to Tertullian some Fragments of the Writings of Enoch were traditionally extant in his time But howsoever Moses if he be the Author of the History of Job whom some think to be contemporary at least with Jacob mentions Books and Writings to have been common things in the time of Job Job 19.23 Josephus lib. 1. cap. 3. Tertull. de Habitu Mulierum 2. Surely if Writing were so ancient it is probable that many Histories might be before the time of Moses which were lost in succession of time as it must be agreed that most of
those ancient Monuments that in the granted Period of the World were extant before Moses time are since lost and many millions of Books that have been written since Moses time have by the injury of Time and Men been lost much more those Books which were written antecedent to Moses time And the truth is the preservation of the Books of Moses entire unto this day when so many of a far later date are lost is to be attributed to the special Providence of Almighty God 2. Again they that assign the shortest time between the Origination of Mankind and the Writings of Moses allow it to be somewhat above 2460 years So that although Moses were admitted the first Historian that ever wrote it would very near as strongly conclude against the antiquity of 2460 years before his writing as against an eternal existence of Mankind if it should be an Argument against the latter it would be such also against the former 3. Considering the many mutations and casualties of Wars Transmigrations especially that of the General Flood there might probably be an obliteration of all those Monuments of Antiquity that immense Ages precedent at some time have yielded Cecrops was contemporary with Moses and Belus and Ninus were before him yet we have no Monuments extant of the Assyrians so ancient as Belus or of the Athenians so ancient as Cecrops but such as are Traditions and written long after their times So that although I have mentioned this concerning the known Periods of Historical Writers yet I think we are to be careful not to lay too great a stress singly on it and it is the least of all that follow in weight or evidence And yet this was fit to be mentioned because it is necessary for the more clear discovery and application of that which follows CAP. III. The second Evidences of Fact namely the apparent Evidences of the first Foundation of the greatest and ancient Kingdoms and Empires I Come to my Second Evidence of Fact which is the subject Matter of Histories and principally concerning the Evidence arising from them of the first Original of the most considerable Monarchies in the World Touching the great Monarchies of the World their Original is so well known and delivered down to us from Authors of unquestionable truth that there need little be said touching them for they have their confessed Epochae within certain and known Periods As the beginning of the Roman Monarchy under Romulus which gives the Epocha Urbis conditae in the 7 th Olympiad the beginning of the Grecian Monarchy which hath its Epocha in Alexander about the 111 th Olympiad the beginning of the Persian Monarchy which had its Epocha in Cyrus about the 55 th Olympiad though the same were not established in the beginning of Cyrus but completed in Cambyses his Son about the 62 d Olympiad And the like might be observed concerning several smaller Kingdoms whose originals are delivered over to us in Histories And although it is true that these Beginnings of these several Monarchies and Kingdoms do not so begin as if those Men that founded these Monarchies were the natural Fathers of all those Persons that did coalescere in Regnum vel Monarchiam or as if those Monarchies were derived from the Heads or Roots that gave them this denomination as all Men are derived from the common Parent of Mankind or as possibly some other of the ancient Monarchies which we shall have occasion hereafter to mention were derived For many times the beginning of Monarchies and Kingdoms was by the coalition of many Persons it may be of several Nations into an Army as they did under Cyrus or into a City as they did under Romulus or by transmigration of Persons from one Countrey to another as the Israelites did And therefore we are not to take it that these Originations of Monarchies were the Origination of all the People that were joyned in it for they had their existence oftentimes before and took their denomination from the Dux Exercitùs or the Rector Civitatis under which they were as it were listed in their Civil or Military coalition And therefore the Argument is not thus necessarily that the Roman Monarchy or the Grecian Monarchy had not its beginning before such a time therefore those Men that were the constituent parts thereof had no existence before that time but that the Civil Society under the Prince Rector or form of Government then began to be formally such in such a special Constitution But those Monarchies that pretend to the greatest Antiquity are principally 1. The Assyrian or Babylonian Monarchy 2. The Egyptians and their Dynasties 3. The Grecians 4. The Chineses These I shall examin in order 1. Touching the Assyrian or Babylonian Monarchy we do with the best authority both of Sacred and Prophane Writers suppose 1. That it had its beginning since the Universal Deluge from Ham the youngest Son of Noah 2. That the Reasons and Authorities against that Supposition are not of weight enough to evince the contrary Before I come to my Reasons for this Assertion something I shall premise touching the Assyrian Empire and how it stood in relation to that of the Babylonian It seems that Babylon was at first the Seat of the Assyrian Empire the building whereof some attribute to Belus some to Ninus his Son some to Semiramis his Wife and some to others but afterwards the Caput Imperti of the Assyrians was Ninive built upon the River Tigris It also seems that in process of time the Assyrians either new built or repaired Babylon that had lain long neglected and the same was peopled with those People on the South of Assyria called Caldeans That which gives me light of it and indeed of the whole History of the Babylonian Monarchy is Isaiah 23.13 Behold the land of the Caldeans this people was not till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness They set up the towers thereof they raised up the palaces thereof It seems therefore that Babylon formerly neglected by this favour of the King of Assyria prospered into a petty Kingdom and growing powerful did set up for themselves in the time of Ahaz the King of Judah who was contemporary with Tiglah Pileser 2 Kings 16.10 And possibly the first divided King of Babylon was that Nabonassar that gave the original of the Aera Nabonassaris that began about the beginning of King Ahaz in the beginning of the 8 th Olympiad about four years after the Building of Rome It seems that either the same Tiglah Pileser or his next Successor Salmanassar King of Assyria that carried away the People of Israel in the ninth year of Hoseah about four years after the death of Ahaz 2 Kings 17.6 did afterwards re-take Babylon for certainly he was possessed of it at or shortly after the deportation of Israel for he brought Men from Babylon from Cutha from Ava Hamath and Sepharvaim to put into Samaria 2 Kings 17.24 It seems that most
Siculus Thucidides Herodotus and others do give us some true and some fabulous Derivations of the Names of Places or Countries from the Men that seemed to be the Heads or Roots of those Denominations yet though they should be all admitted to have truly given those Denominations to those Countries it doth by no means follow that they were the Parents of the Inhabitants thereof but they were such as either by War or Power or Election of the People presided in those places and gave them thereupon their denomination Thus they tell us That Helen gave the denomination to that part of Greece which was called Helenica and those Grecians were called Helenistae Pelasgus was he that gave the denomination to the Pelasgi another part of Greece Latinus to Latium and the Latins Danaus to another Cept of the Grecians Tenes the Son of Cygnus to Tenedos Cretas to Creta and the Cretians Italus as some say to Italia and the Italians Romulus to Rome and the Romans And infinite more such Allusions of Denominations of Countries and People from the Name of him that presided either in the Army or Colony or Countrey unto which such Denominations were after given And yet Latinus nor Pelasgus nor Cretas nor Helen were any more the Natural Parents of all those persons that were called Pelasgi or Cretenses or Helenistae or Latini than Romulus was the Natural Parent of all those people that were the first Inhabitants of Rome or of those that were after Incorporated and Infranchised into that Name City or Government Indeed these were such persons as perchance were the Captains of those Armies or Colonies that were commanded by them or were such as were the Heads or Founders of the Monarchies or Kingdoms that they thus founded or such as did sustinere nomen personam totius communitatis and thereby had the Power and Priviledge to give a Denomination to those Countries or People they governed calling them after their own Names But they were not the Natural Roots or common Natural Parents of all them that bore their Denomination though it may be very likely they had some Children of their own which might participate in that common Denomination This therefore singly considered namely the Denomination of People from some one Person is not sufficient to assure us that all those Persons that bore that Denomination were derived by Natural Propagation from him whose Name they so bear but though it may be true that such a Denomination may be communicated to such only as descended by Natural Propagation from him as I shall hereafter instance yet it may be otherwise Therefore I have no reason to conclude That wheresoever I find a Society of Men bearing the Denomination of one Man that that Man was the Natural Parent of those that bear that Denomination unless I have some better Evidence than Allusion of Names since it is apparent in these Histories that it is otherwise Upon this Reason it seems plain that it will not be possible from any Prophane History to find the Original Parents of any one Kingdom much less of Mankind It is very evident indeed that by help of a continuation of Prophane Histories or other common Monuments well kept together the Genealogies and Ramifications of some single Families even to a vast and numerous extension may be preserved But that will not do the business that I intend For it is rare and beyond Example in any Author that I know that the entire and complete Pedigree of the whole Descendents of any particular Family is deduced down through the space of a thousand Years last past whereas such Instances as must serve my turn must be such as are at least five thousand Years old or otherwise I shall fail in the application of this Topick now in hand to the Matter in question It remains therefore that for Instances of such Antiquity useful to my purpose I must resort to the ancientest History namely the History of Moses which as it is a History of the ancientest Times and Occurrences in the World so it is a History that was written at the greatest distance from this Time and nearest to the Times and Things whereof he writes no History in the World being so ancient as this by near eight hundred Years for so long lived Moses the Author of this Book before Homer the first Prophane Historian that is extant And if any Man shall object against the competency of this Instance 1. Because the same Moses whom I use in this Topick is the person that asserts the thing de quo ambigitur namely the first Production of Mankind and therefore that he is incompetent in this Case 2. Because all that urge the Testimony of Moses urge him as infallible divinely inspired and so whatsoever he saith must not be contradicted and upon such a Supposition there were a compendious way of evincing the Question in hand of the Inception of Mankind by telling us that Moses who wrote by an infallible Spirit and Inspiration tells us that Mankind was Created by GOD about 6669 Years since according to the Seventy and so there needs no farther Reason nor can be any farther Controversie touching it To this I shall say these things That although it is certain that Moses was Inspired by an Infallible Spirit in what he wrote and that he doth in plain terms tell us that Man was at first Created by Almighty God and therefore to me or any else that is satisfied of the Infallible Authority of the Holy Scripture this is sufficient to satisfie that the truth is as Moses hath informed us and there needs no other Argument to support my Faith of the truth hereof yet because I am writing of those Natural and Moral Evidences of this Truth that may be of strength enough to evince the truth of this Assertion upon the apparent Moral Evidences of the credibility of the Writings of Moses I shall here urge the Authority of Moses for the Proof of the Matters of Fact in question as I would urge Herodotus or Livy to prove a Matter of Fact alleged by them and at this time and in this Dispute shall only use his Testimony as a Moral Evidence of the Truth he asserts as an Evidence of Credibility And as I shall not exact a Subscription to the Truths he delivers upon the account of his Infallibility so it is not reason to deny that Credibility of what he relates which would be allowed to a Prophane Author especially when it carries with it singly without the contribution of the Supposition of a Divine Authority as great an evidence of truth as any History in World besides And as to that which is said That the Supposition of the truth of what Moses asserts is to suppose the thing controverted because Moses asserts the Creation of Mankind I say 1. That I shall not at all instance in that Assertion as to determin the Question but only so far forth as it is a Moral Evidence of the
appearances as one of the compound Engins of Archimedes or as a Watch that besides the hour of the day gives the day of the month the age of the Moon the place of the Sun in the Zodiack and other curious Motions wrought by multiplication of Wheels Now touching the Sensitive Natures there have been two extreme opinions both of them extremely contrary one to another and yet both of them as they are delivered by their Authors untrue 1. That Opinion that depresseth the natures of sensible Creatures below their just value and estimate rendring them no more but barely Mechanisms or Artificial Engins such as were Archytas his Dove Regiomontanus his wooden Eagle or Walchius his iron Spider that they have no vital Principle of all their various Motions but the meer modifications of Matter or at least the elementary Fire mingled with their other Matter that they have no other form or internal principle of Life Motion or Sense but that which is relative and results from the disposition texture organization and composition of their several Limbs Members or Organs This fancy began by Des Cartes in his Fundamenta Physica and hath been followed and improved by some of his admirers and particularly much favoured by Honoratus Faber in his Book De Generatione Animalium and herein they think they have given a fair solution to all the Phaenomena of the Sensitive Nature and given a fair prelation to the Soul of Man which they agree to be a substantial Principle of humane actions But in both these they have been disappointed for this supposition as it gives not at all a tolerable explication of the Phaenomena of sense and animal motions so if it did it would easily administer to a little more confidence and boldness a temptation to resolve all the Motions of the reasonable Soul into the like supposition only by advancing the Engin or Automaton humanum into a more curious and complicated constitution For he that can once suppose that the various modifications of Matter and Motion and the due organization of the Bodies of Brutes can produce the admirable operations of Sense Phantasie Memory Appetite and all those instincts which we find in Brutes is in a fair way of resolving the operation of the Reasonable Nature into the like supposition only by supposing the organization of the latter somewhat more curiously and exactly disposed and ordered as much above that of Brutes as theirs is above that of Vegetables It is true the organization of the humane and animal Body with accommodation to their several functions and offices is certainly fitted with the most curious and exact Mechanism imaginable as appears by the structure of the Heart the Lungs the Brain the Tongue the Hand the Nerves the Muscles and all other parts and the several orders and methods of their motions and adaptations to their several offices and the exercise by them of those Faculties to whose service they are consigned This must needs be acknowledged by every man that observes them or that takes the pains to read the Tracts of those that have written of them and especially Galen his divine Book De Usu Partium Des Cartes and Fabritius concerning the structure of the Eye the same Fabritius and Steno De motu Musculorum and divers others But that the Principle that sets on work these Organs and worketh by them is nothing else but the modification of Matter or the natural motion thereof thus or thus posited or disposed or the bare conformation of the Organs or the inclusion and expansion of any natural inanimate particles of elementary Fire is most apparently false even to the view of any that observes or considers impartially It is impossible to resolve Perception Phantasie Memory the sagacities and instincts of Brutes the spontaneousness of many of their animal motions into those Principles nor are they explicable without supposing some active determinate power force or virtue connexed to and inherent in their Spirits or more subtil parts of a higher extraction than the bare natural modification or texture of Matter or disposition of Organs or as they are often pleased to stile them their plexus partium Again it is visible to the Eye that that power or virtue or principle whatever it is that in the generative process first immediately formeth and organizeth the parts of the Body is that which guides orders and governs all the animal motions of it after That power which first forms the Brain the Heart the Liver the Eye is that which afterward increaseth augmenteth exerciseth and employeth them after And no man living can force himself to imagin that that Principle which forms organizeth disposeth and modifieth the parts is any thing that results from the organization or modification of those parts which are not yet moulded or framed but must have its modification from that Principle which is antecedent to any manner of organization or texture of parts into an animal composition No man therefore that hath not abjured his Reason and sworn allegiance to a preconceived fantastical Hypothesis can undertake the defence of such a supposition if he have but the patience impartially to consider and look about him 2. The other extreme Opinion seems to advance the Animal Nature too high at least without a due allay of their general expression namely those who attribute Reason and a reasoning faculty or power to Animals as well as to Men though not altogether in the same degree of perfection so that they will not have Reason to be the specifical or constitutive difference of the Humane Nature but common to them and Brutes This Opinion seems generally to be favoured by the Pythagoreans that held Transmigration of Souls by Plutarch in Grillo and his second Oration De Esu Carnium by Sextus Empiricus Contra Mathematicos by Porphyry Lib. 3. de Abstinentia ab Esu Animalium which he endeavours to prove and illustrate by divers reasons and instances and among the latter by Patricius in his fifth Book de Animis irrationalibus but above all by the ingenious and learned De Chambre in his Book of the Knowledge of Beasts wherein he asserts not only the simple apprehension of Beasts by phantasms or images wrought by the Phantasie but the conjunction of images with affirmations and negations which make up Propositions and the conjunction of Propositions one to another and illation of Conclusions upon them which is Ratiocination or Discourse And that in farther evidence thereof there is a certain kind of Language whereby Beasts or Birds especially of the same Species communicate their conceptions one to another only this discursive Ratiocination of Brutes he calls Ratio imaginativa and differenceth it from Ratio intellectualis which belongs properly to Men principally in this That the imaginative or brutal Ratiocination keeps still in particulars and within the verge of particular propositions and conclusions but intellectual Reason hath to do with universals and for the most part grounds and directs its
eternal but must be done gradually and successively and from one degree of bigness to another and since that augmentation could never be of an infinite procedure but being successive we must come to the beginning of that increase within the measure of such a portion of time as we now find sufficient for such a production or increase it may be two or three hundred years which being but a finite duration can never be eternal And this necessary Supposition of a successive alteration or increase utterly destroys the possibility of an eternal duration in any thing capable of such alterations 1. Because it necessarily supposeth somewhat precedent to that state wherein it is namely a precedent alteration of it whereby it is now become what it now is and what before it was not so that it had somewhat before its present state which stateth it to be what it now is namely that alteration or augmentation which so preceded its present state and consequently that present state wherein it is could not be eternal for it had somewhat before it 2. Because that very alteration that anteceded that state which it hath cannot possibly be eternal but must be perfected within a certain portion of time destined to it and consequently must have beginning within the compass of a determinate time and cannot be eternally moving to its accomplishment And as this Instance gives the impossibility of an eternal Existence in any thing essentially alterable or corruptible so it would be possibly more conspicuous in the Contemplation of the Humane Nature If we should suppose a Man to have been eternal Was that Man ever an Embryo a Child a Youth a ripe Aged Man Did he grow from a smaller stature to a greater had he vicissitudes of temperaments and distempers did he eat digest c. If he did not then those eternal Men were not of the same Make with the Men that are now but quite another thing which we know not what it was or where to find it But if he had all those changes he could not be eternal he should be eternally a Child and eternally a Man eternally young and eternally old yea eternally living and yet eternally dead for all these must fall within the compass of Eternity 2. But let us now consider how the Case falls out in relation to alterations and corruptions occasioned ab extrinseco and we shall find 1. That as the World is framed and as those that suppose it eternal must suppose it to have been always so framed there must necessarily be incessant mutations alterations generations and corruptions by the invasion and juxta-position of contrary Natures Agents Patients Qualities Motions the Earth naturally dry is moistned by the vicinity of the Water and again dryed by the heat of the Sun the Earth obstructs the fluidity of the Water by mingling its grosser parts with it all things as it were in continual motion and agitation and mutual preying as it were one upon another which as necessarily occasioneth mutations alterations generations and corruptions as the very intrinsecal dissolubility of the natures of mixt Bodies 2. And as we find this now so we must suppose that this hath been always so since the World had a being unless we shall suppose as I have often said another kind of World than what we see And although we are not acquainted with the state of things out of or beyond this sublunary World in which we see this vicissitude of alterations yet whether there may not be some such mutations in the Ethereal World we know not but there may be such though we cannot certainly know them 3. And yet it is most certain that it is impossible that any thing that is capable of these mutations and changes can be eternally under them but must of necessity if it were eternal consist in such a state of fixedness and permanency that were not obnoxious to these changes 4. And since it is not possible for the inferior World at least to be de facto one moment of time without these changes and variations alterations generations and corruptions which as before are not at all consistent with an eternal duration à parte ante of that that is so subject to changes we have just reason to deny and disesteem this imaginary Eternity can belong at least to the sublunary World The late Author of a Book De Aetate Mundi hath given us an Instance herein that if it would hold we need not go farther namely That the great Rocks in the Sea are yet many of them eminently visible to this day and yet daily experience shews us that those Rocks are gradually diminished by the beating of the Sea against them which had they been so dealt with from Eternity though they lost but one grain in a million of millions of years they would not have been but would have been consumed an indefinite time long since elapsed But the Supposition fails because it may be that these Rocks have at least vicissitudes of increase and diminution by the very alluvion of the Sea or which seems far more easily supposed that the Earth and Seas might notwithstanding have been eternal but yet the Sea might not have kept the same Channel where these Rocks now are from eternity but gained it in time the Ancients telling us that the great Atlantick Sea was for the most part of it anciently a Continent or at least a great Island as big as Europe and Asia and after swallowed up and corroded into that vast Sea called the Atlantick Ocean leaving behind it only those reliques now called the Canary Islands I will therefore take my Instance in some other things 1. It is evident that divers Minerals are bred in the Earth from an earthy consistence by the heat of the Sun and other concurrent causes successively as may appear to any man's observation touching Coals Rocks especially of Stone which from a sandy kind of Earth gradually concoct into Free-stone when they were before Earth as may be seen in many Quarries by those pieces of unconcocted Earth not yet perfectly digested into Stone If the Body of the Earth were eternal either these concretions were also as eternal as the Earth gradually and successively digested into these concretions or else the Earth must have had an eternal permanency in that state of simple natural Earth without any such concretions or alterations in it If we shall say the latter we make the Earth another thing than what in truth it now is which by the aid of the Sun hath these concretions and alterations even by a kind of necessity of Nature wrought in it And besides if in that portion of eternal duration wherein the Earth and Sun were in that very same natural state wherein they now are the one active piercing and digestive by its heat the other passive receptive and stored with materials for such a production What should hinder but that there should be such production gradually and successively
answer that imaginary Obligation or Necessity of his nature to do good ad ultimum posse for still it might have been made before any hora signata 3. Consequently the time of the Creation of the World if it were on this side an eternal period could neither be determined by his want of Power nor by his necessitated Benignity agere ad ultimum posse for in that indefinite time within the limits of Eternity no time can be assigned before which he could not have made the World though it be admitted it could not be eternal 4. Consequently there could be nothing that could determin the time or period wherein the World was to have been made but the absolute Divinum beneplacitum there could be nothing without him to determin it for nothing was till he made it nor any thing but his own Will within him that could determin it for his power and goodness were undetermined to do it sooner or later since no time could be assigned for the doing of it but it might be done sooner And when all is done his Beneficence nor the good which the created Beings might receive from that Beneficence had had no imaginable advance or enlargement if the World had been created millions of millions of years before it was and that upon these plain evident Reasons 1. Because though the World had indeed been at this hour ancienter and lasted longer if it had been created a million of years sooner yet the future Eternity or Sempiternity of the World being of all hands admitted though the Eternity à parte ante be denied there will be a future infinity for the emanation of the Divine Goodness and Beneficence to his Creatures 2. Considering the nature of the Beings themselves that partake of the Divine Beneficence there is no advance at all to them by receiving it sooner or later If Plato had been a million of years before he in truth was and had lived his proportion of eighty years he had tasted no more of the Divine Beneficence than if he had lived as he did about two thousand years since 3. Neither is there any difference in respect of the ever-glorious God for he received no access of happiness by the Creation of the World nor stood at all in need of it And if he might be imagined to have received any contentment in it yet he had an eternal prospect of all things as if they had been really made eternally And besides if the World had been myriads of millions of years sooner than it was yet it was still infinitely short of an eternal duration Almighty God had been an infinite duration before without that World which had it been made millions of years before it was yet had not held any proportion to that infinite duration that preceded And whatsoever hath been formerly said against the Eternity of this World doth equally conclude against an eternal being of any World antecedent to this much more against an eternal succession of infinite Worlds either of which can have no certainty nor have any evidence or probability so that as there cannot be attributed an eternal duration à parte ante to any one such supposed pre-existing World so much less to a succession of Worlds The very same Arguments that conclude against the possibility of eternal Motion or the eternal successions of Generation and Corruption or of successive Individuals of Mankind do as effectually conclude against an eternal succession of infinite Worlds and therefore I shall spare the repetition of them The Arguments which I have before used are such as though at the first view they seem intricate yet they have strength of evidence in them and such as are accommodate to the nature of the thing which requires Arguments of such a nature and those Arguments that are more experimental and obvious to sense though they are more easie to be apprehended yet are more easie to be evaded by the Assertors of the Eternity of the World In the before-mentioned Book De Aetate Mundi two experimental Arguments are brought against the Eternity of the World upon which the Author lays some weight 1. That if the World were eternal by the continual fall and wearing of Waters all the protuberances of the Earth would infinite Ages since have been levelled and the Superficies of the Earth rendred plain no Mountains no Vallies no inequalities would be therein but the Superficies thereof would have been as level as the Superficies of the Water 2. That if this World had been eternal there would have been no Rocks appearing in the Seas above the Water whereof there are very many visible for the motion and agitation of the Water doth wear and eat off gradually the roots and other parts thereof as is visible to our observation some whereof have their roots so corroded by the Water that they are ready to fall and others have apparently by that means been either wasted or decayed that now they are not extant which in some mens memory have been standing and if the bredth of a Barley-corn had been consumed in a million of years there had been nothing of them left That these things are true in fact and that the reason why many of these effects are apparent to us to be as they are is because that these Rocks and these Protuberances have not been eternal may bp well attributed to that novitas essendi that finite period wherein they have continued is very probable and evident to him that is satisfied otherwise that the World had a beginning I easily grant But he that asserts the Eternity of the World will find out easie evasions of these sensible Arguments They will tell us and with truth enough that in a great tract even of a finite duration the Earth must have and hath had great mutations That by the eruption of Bituminous and Sulphureous Vapours and the firing thereof these protuberances of Mountains and Hills may be made and have been made in many parts That as Warts or Wenns growing in our Hands are thrust up by the humors ministred by the extremity of the orifice of some Capillary Vein and increase so in the great Body of the Earth such protuberances may be thrust out and gradually increased though not so easily perceptible in one Age and by this means there may be a continued supply of what is successively abraded from them by decursion of Waters That Matter is never lost or annihilated That what is decayed by that decursion of Waters is in some measure supplied by the terrene faeces which that Water brings with it That by continued vicissitudes the Earth is repaired by the insensible descent of Atoms of Matter raised in others places the Atmosphere being evermore filled with little particles and concretes of Matter which are uncessantly discharged upon the Earth and as uncessantly again supplied in the Air by the more gross and terrestrial parts of those Vapours that are raised principally from the Sea and watrish
Integrals of the World yet it will appear upon a due examination to be such an Admission as must in a great measure be contradicted in the debate of what is propounded to be proved and the particular Reasons against the Eternity of the Humane Animal or compounded Bodies will necessarily infer an impossibility or intollerable absurdity in the thing admitted For instance To suppose an eternal existence of the Heavenly Bodies and of the Elementary Bodies in the site and position in which they are and to suppose them in an eternal rest and unactivity and without motion action passion or perfection of the less noble by the more noble were to suppose them eternally kept in a useless needless imperfect state for an immense eternal duration till the first moment of their being put into Motion Again to suppose the Heavenly Bodies and their Motions and Influence the Fiery Nature dispersed through all the Sublunary World with its activity and motion and the Passive Nature of the more passive Elements to have been eternally in the World and in all that eternal duration not to have produced mixed and compound Bodies in that eternal duration until such a determinate point of it were a thing strangely repugnant in Nature unless Almighty God were pleased to uphold their being and yet suspend their activity for an immense eternal period And yet to suppose that the composition of Bodies out of the Elements by virtue of the activity and influx of Motion out of Matter that must by that influx be prepared for composition should be as ancient as those Heavens or that Motion that Fiery active Principle that must compound them out of those simpler Bodies out of which they must be compounded as all this must be if they are eternal is as impossible as any thing that can be thought of Again if we should resolve the Eternity of the World into the Divine Will which being necessitated by his goodness to do all the good he can even ad ultimum posse and upon that account made the World eternal it were a strange Supposition to imagin that this God should give the great Integrals of the World an eternal being in eternal rest without Motion which is their perfection or if together with Beings he gave or indeed could give an eternal Motion it were a strange Supposition that he should suspend the efficacy of that Motion or Activity of the active Principles upon the passive which both existed for an infinite space and then after took off that suspension And yet farther Suppose Almighty God did or could give an eternal being to those Active or Passive Natures and an eternal production of all mixed Bodies for an eternal duration but only Mankind that is the noblest of all sublunary Natures and apparently the glory of the sublunary World and the very end of much of what is produced I say it is strange that the inferior World should be moved agitated and mingled into various mixed Bodies and thus continue during the immensity of an eternal duration without Mankind in the World if Almighty God were necessitated by the Benignity of his nature to do the uttermost good he could and if he could produce Man eternally there was an equal necessity for him to do it as to produce a Tree or a Stone eternally All this tends but to this That if in the debate of this matter we can find that Man either could not be or was not eternally produced we have the same reason to believe that no compound Nature was produced eternally that no local Motion or corporeal Action was or could be from Eternity and consequently that the Heavenly or Elementary Bodies were not from Eternity The very single clearing of this one thing that Man was not eternal breaks the whole Hypothesis of the Eternity of the World cuts asunder all the connexion of evidence that is for it renders the most considerable perfection of the World its Motion Action and Operation impossible to be eternal and the existence of the Bulk Position and Fabrick thereof unuseful imperfect and deficient without its Motion Activity and Operations improbable to be eternal So that the Position which I endeavour to prove namely the Non-eternity of Mankind doth in truth destroy the Supposition of the Eternity at least of the inferior World But this I only subjoyn by the way Concerning the Origination of Mankind Censorinus in his golden Book de Die Natali cap. 4. gives us the short state of the Question and the several Authors that hold either way viz. Alii semper homines fuisse nec unquam nisi ex hominibus natos atque eorum generi caput exordiumque nullum extitisse alii fuisse tempus cum homines non essent his ortum aliquando principiúmque natura tributum Of the former Opinion he reckons Pythagoras Samius Ocellus Lucanus Archytas Tarentinus Aristotle Theophrastus Plato Xenocrates Dicaearchus and others But for the more clear stating of the Inquiry I shall resume somewhat which hath been before said touching the Question before-going of the Eternity of the World and some other things I shall add thereunto First it is to be observed that the Question is not here Whether the successive Individuals of Mankind may or shall be eternal à parte post perpetuated to everlasting by successive generation For although whether that shall be or no depends upon the Divine Beneplacitum yet there is no intrinsecal repugnance ex parte rei but that as the World and the Generations of Men in it have been thus long continued by the communication of the Divine Influence and Providence so both the one and the other by the same Influence and Providence may be continued without end And the reason is because such a duration and such a successive multiplication of Individuals imports only a potential infinitude and such as never shall nor can be completed into an actual infinitude of duration or number So that as Number is potentially infinite by addition of new parts to it which yet never shall nor can arise to a number actually infinite because after every period thereof there still may be a farther accession of a farther period yet it never will nor can be actually infinite because still there will or may be farther additional periods of duration to that which went before The Question therefore rests only as to that part of the imaginary Line of the duration of successive Individuals that anteceded any given moment or Whether Mankind had any beginning of being or were eternal or without beginning And touching this there have been some that have affirmed Mankind to be without beginning or eternal others that have affirmed that Mankind had a beginning Touching the latter of these and the various Conjectures touching the manner of it I shall write hereafter at present I shall consider and examin the former Again of those that have affirmed Mankind to be without beginning and that maintain not only the Eternity of the rest
upon a very light and uncertain tradition yet there are many things that are true or very credible especially since the Monuments of ancient times give us an account of the most remote Ages of Men Rudes primùm incuria silvestri non multùm à ferarum asperitate dissimiles Macrob. in somnio Scipionis l. 2. cap. 10. see the elegant description of the elder Inhabitants of the World Lucret. l. 5. Nec commune bonum peterant spectare neque ullis Moribus inter se scibant neque legibus uti With which description of the elder World agrees Plato in his Politicks Nudi enim sine stragulis magnam partem foris sub dio vitam colebant and the same Plato in his third Book de Legibus supposeth that those relicks of Men that escaped the ancient Deluges by flight into the Mountains became perfectly ignorant in process of time of those Arts and conveniences of humane Life which possibly their Progenitors might have been better acquainted with But we need not go so far for a full conviction of that admirable Discovery and Improvement of Arts and other things especially such as are necessary for humane Life In matters Astronomical we have a far greater light than what was two thousand years since for we find the old Hypothesis of the Heavenly System called since in question by Copernicus Galilaeus and Kepler the solidity of the Orbs detected to be untrue by the plain discovery of Tycho Brahe and others the new discoveries of Stars and Asterisms and their figures by the help of the Telescope demonstratively and to the sense In matters Philosophical many new Discoveries have been made by Experiences whereunto the Ancients never attained And although the Bodies of Men Animals and Insects have been these many thousands of years exposed to the view and search of diligent Physicians and Anatomists yet it is a wonder to see what new Discoveries have been made in Anatomical Dissections and Observations which seem wholly hidden to the Ancients as those of the Circulation of the Blood by Doctor Harvey the Venae lacteae by Asellius the Repositorium Chyli of Pecquet with the method of its deduction into the Vena cava the process of Generation and of the Formative actions the curious Discoveries of the Parts and Faculties of small Insects by the help of the Microscope rendred by Malpighius and others Again the great Discoveries that have been made by the means of Pyrotechny and Chymistry which in late Ages have attained to a greater height than formerly Again in matters Mechanical although it be true that this latter Age hath not arrived to that incredible skill of Archimedes yet Mechanical powers have been strangely improved as we see in the late improvement of the late discovery of the Motion of the Pendulum whereby the portions of Time are not only measured with an incredible exactness but the use thereof translated unto Watches Clocks and other Engins so we have high advancement of Dialling Clocks Pumps Fountains and other Motions beyond the acquests of former Ages And although the Art of Navigation hath been very ancient and the use of the Mariner's Needle which some carry up to Amalpes an Arabian in the year of Christ 1360 others to the Chineses and by them discovered to Paulus Venetus others carry it up to King David yet the Art of Navigation hath been since greatly improved and many excellent Discoveries in relation to the Inclination and Variation of the Magnetick Needle To these we may add the use of Guns Gunpowder and Printing which though by some asserted to be of long use in China yet in this Western part of the World the original of the Invention hath its known Epocha By these and many more Instances of the like kind it may appear That many Inventions and Discoveries of things not only of curiosity but of use and convenience to Mankind have had their known and certain Epochae or a sufficient evidence of times when they were not used or known in the World 2. The consequence of this Supposition seems to be this That in as much as these had their discoveries within known Periods it is not supposable that the successions of Mankind could have been without a Beginning but rather that they had a Beginning within a reasonable time for it is not conceptible that in an infinite or indeed in a very long period of Revolutions of Mankind those or any things of this kind discoverable would have been of so late and puisne a discovery This is the Argument of Lucretius who though an Asserter of the Eternity of Matter and Motion yet together with his Master Epicurus asserts a Beginning of this World which we now behold Lib. 5. Quare etiam quaedam nunc artes expoliuntur Nunc etiam augescunt nunc addita navigiis sunt Multa modo organici melicos peperere sonores Denique natura haec rerum ratióque reperta Nuper And upon the same account Macrobius l. 2. cap. 10. in Somnium Scipionis Si enim ab initio imò ante initium fuit mundus ut Philosophi volunt Cur per innumerabilem seriem seculorum non fuerat Cultus quo nunc utimur inventus Non Literarum usus quo solo memoriae fulcitur Eternitas Cur denique multarum rerum experientia ad aliquas gentes recenti aetate pervenit ut ecce Galli vitem vel cultum oleae Roma jam adolescente didicerunt aliae verò gentes adhuc multa nesciunt quae nobis inventa placuerunt Haec omnia videntur aeternitati rerum repugnare dum opinari nos faciunt certo mundi principio paulatim singula quaeque coepisse But although this Argument at the first view may seem to have much of evidence in it of the Origination of Mankind yet it seems too weak to lay any great weight at least singly upon it as will appear by what follows though in consort with other Instances it hath its use and weight The Discovery or Invention of things may seem to be upon these or some of these Methods 2. It seems to me that some things have been discovered unto Mankind by a more immediate interposition of the Divine Providence or the ministration of Angels as for instance the Medicinal Virtue of some Herbs Vegetables or Minerals that lye not in the ordinary road of Experience or analogical collection from Circumstances Signatures or Observation 2. Some things were discovered experimentally though perchance not intentionally or by design in the first discovery And thus probably the Virtues of ordinary Simples came to be discovered for the Food of Mankind being anciently Herbs and Fruits or at least of such of Mankind who either through choice custom or necessity were driven to that abstemious Diet there did doubtless occurr the experience of various temperaments and operations of those Herbs some purgative some emetick some sudorifick some astringent which gave Men opportunity of digesting them into several ranks and uses 3. Some things were
Race and Progeny of Gods which swelled into great Numbers Pedigrees and Genealogies of Gods and Heroes Theogonia which filled the superiour World as Men filled the inferiour World by successive Generations And those Authors that have given us an account of the Apotheoses the Inauguration of the Heathenish Deities and their successions are many especially Diodorus Siculus in his first six Books Eusebius in his first and second Book De Praeparatione Evangelii out of the Ancient Monuments of the Phenicians Egyptians and Grecians and Clemens Alexandrinus in lib. 1. Stromat who gives us an account of the Apotheoses of Bacchus Hercules Aesculapius Isis Ceres Serapis Apis and others many of them if not all having their being and translation into Deities after the time of Moses and from the various Denominations of those Heathenish Deities some had one Name among the Egyptians another among the Phenicians another among the Syrians another among the Grecians though possibly the Persons themselves were for the most part the same Secondly By carrying up the Original of most of the Ancient Deities of the Heathens and resolving them into Noah and his Sons and Descendents deducing by very probable Arguments that Noah was Saturn Chronos c. that Japhet was Neptune Ham Jupiter Shem Pluto Canaan Mercury Nimrod Bacchus Magog Prometheus vid. Bochart in Phaleg l. 1. Vossius de Idololatriae origine progressu l. 1. and others that have followed those Learned and Ingenious Authors But this Inference of the Recentness of Mankind from the Recentness of these Apotheoses and Origination of Gentile Deities seems also too weak to bear up this Supposition of the Novitas humani generis 1. Because although possibly some of their Heathenish Deities might have been of a late Edition yet there might be many more that might be ancienter who either were antiquated and forgotten or they were translated to other Names and Successors it faring with Idol Gods as it doth with Words or Languages Cecidere cadéntque Quae jam sunt in honore vocabula The lust of Mens Fancies in Propagation of Deities was endless and unsatiable We are told out of Varro that there were no less than thirty thousand Heathenish Gods and Deities of all sorts which were known in his time and how many more there might be whose Names and Worship were long before that time antiquated we cannot easily conjecture only in all probability they were far more than those that survived And therefore possibly there might be a Race and Succession of Apotheoses long antecedent to those whose Originals we have given us in Ancient Histories We see how easily the Roman Calendar swells with new Consecrations of Saints and to what a multitude they have grown within less than the compass of one thousand Years and possibly had the World continued many thousand years before it is supposed to have began there might have been an interminate succession of imaginary Deities though many or most of their Names are now unknown or the times of their Consecrations forgotten 2. But yet farther if we should suppose that this course of Idolatry began even shortly after the time of Noah and his three Sons yet it is granted of all hands that the World had stood above 1600 Years before the invention of this kind of Idolatry So that ex confesso this was not the first Religion in the World neither did this Religion tread upon the Heels of the Origination of Mankind if Mankind was and was 1600 Years before those Deities were found out and so this Religion cannot pretend to be coeval with Mankind nor give us any sufficient Indication of the Recentness of Mankind 3. But yet farther it is very apparent that this Veneration of Men Consecrated into Deities was not the ancientest Idolatry much less the ancientest Religion of the World The Worshipping of the Host of Heaven the Sun Moon and Stars was an Idolatry that way far more ancient than this of the Heathen Gods made of Men and this is an Evidence of the antecedency of that Idolatry of the Stars and Heavenly Bodies in as much as when these new consecrated Deities were made they did as it were incorporate and affix them to that more ancient Idolatry transferring the Names of most of their Gods to the Heavenly Bodies or Asterisms as Saturn to the Star of Saturn Mars Venus Mercury Jupiter to the several Planetary Bodies and to the Sun and Moon a prodigious number of Deities as to the Sun Phoebus Apollo Osyris Horus and many more to the Moon Diana Hecate Venus Astarte and many others So that although we should allow the first Origination of those Heathenish Deities to have been when Historians give us an account and not before yet the Idolatry performed to the Heavenly or Elementary Bodies the Sun Moon Stars Fire Aether c. might have had a long practice among Men before the Invention of these later Deities 4. But yet farther in as much as Truth is certainly more ancient than Errour we have reason to think that even before the ancientest Form of Idolatrous Worship in the World even that of the Heavenly and Elementary Bodies there was a True Worship of the True GOD which might continue many Ages before any sort of Idolatry prevailed in the World So that it would be too rash to conclude That because many of the Heathenish Deities had their known Original that therefore no other Religion anteceded it or that that Religion soon followed the Origination of Mankind 5. Besides all this there seems in the World or at least it is very possible to suppose certain vicissitudes or relations not only in Arts and Sciences as is before observed but even in the Religions professed which may obtain successively both in Places and Ages according to several vicissitudes We see that in the Country of Palestine shortly after the Flood Idolatry obtained among the Canaanites and the descendents of Ham after that the Knowledge and Worship of the True GOD among the Israelites for many Ages and after that a degeneration of the greatest part thereof to Idolatry again in the Country of the Ten Tribes and in a great part among the other Two Tribes after that a Reformation and Restitution of the true Worship of God in the return from the Captivity until Christ came then the most sound and perfect Religion namely Christianity obtained for some time then the return of Paganism under persecuting Roman Emperours then the prevalence again of the Christian Religion under Constantine and some that succeeded him then Popish Superstition after that Turcism and Mahumetanism especially in the parts of Greece Palestine Egypt and other parts of Asia and Africa Thus various Professions of Religion have had various Vicissitudes Revolutions and successive Alterations in Places and Ages Albertus Magnus as I remember with somewhat too much curiosity and somewhat transported with too much fancifulness towards the Influences of the Heavenly Motions and Astrological Calculations supposeth that Religion hath
things done in Egypt and the Wilderness as are recorded by Moses The Moral Evidence that ariseth from this Consideration is this That since in these things that are capable of an incomparable Evidence of Credibility in respect of the time wherein they were done though very ancient and exceeding the Age of any other Author we find such indisputable Evidence of Truth we have reason to give credit to the same Author relating the Derivation and Beginning of Nations from the Sons of Noah though in respect of the greater Antiquity thereof we have not any other concurrent Testimony but that of Moses And the rather though we have not those other Evidences thereof yet Moses might have as unquestionable Evidences of the things transacted between his time and the Flood which at the greatest Account was not above 1600 Years but by the Jewish Account about 800 Years before his time as we now have of those things which were transacted in the time of Moses which is above twice 1600 Years distant from our time 3. Besides the Relation of the Traduction of the several Nations of the World from the Sons of Noah delivered by Moses in that short Pedigree or Extract Gen. 10. we have very many probable Evidences of the consent of all succeeding Ages to that Genealogy of the World as 1. The common Tradition of those Ages that succeeded shortly after Moses which commonly esteemed them so descended 2. The Analogy of their several Names of the Countries wherein Moses supposed the first Fathers fixed as Canaan Misraim or Egypt Chittim Assur or Assyria and infinite more of this kind which are not needful here to be remembred since Bochart and those that have transcribed out of him give us abundant Instances Neither is it reasonable to object against this that which is before observed in relation to other Allusions of this kind namely That those Denominations of Places might not be so much from the Roots of those Nations or Families or from the Captains or Governors that gave Names to those Countries they conquered because the Historian Moses gives us in express terms the reason of the Denomination to be from the very Parental Roots of those People or Families and 2. Because those Heads of Countries or Nations who were nearer to Moses time gave the Denomination to the Countries which in effect they peopled as Edomites to the Posterity of Edom Moabites and Ammonites to the Posterity of the two Sons of Lot Madian to the Posterity of Abraham by Keturah and many more And we have as great reason to suppose that these grew and increased into great Nations in the time of Moses since the People of Israel who descended from a later Stock than any of these within the space of little more than 200 Years increased into so great a People that in their going out of Egypt their Males of above 20 Years old amounted to 600000 whereof use will be made hereafter The late Discovery of the vast Continent of America and Islands adjacent which appears to be as populous with Men and as well stored with Cattel almost as any part of Europe Asia or Africa hath occasioned some difficulty and dispute touching the Traduction of all Mankind from the two common Parents supposed of all Mankind namely Adam and Eve but principally concerning the storing of the World with Men and Cattel from those that the Sacred History tells us were preserved in the Ark. And the Objection runs thus It seems apparent by all Geographical Descriptions of this lower World that the whole Continent of America and the adjacent Isles thereof are no way contiguous to any parts of Asia Europe or Africa but disjoyned from the same by huge and vast Oceans divided from the Western Coasts of Europe and Africa by the vast Atlantick Ocean from the North parts of Europe by the great Frozen Seas lying between it and Greenland which seems to be the Northern Coast of America from the North-east part of Asia Tartary and Cathay by the Fretum Anian from the East parts of China and the Philippine Islands by the Oceanus Pacificus of above 2000 Leagues breadth and is divided from the great lately discovered Island del Fogo by the Straits of Magellan and that Island again divided from the uttermost Southern Continent if any be by a great Sea which though not formerly known to the Europeans and Asiaticks being divided from Asia and Africa by the great Indian Ocean yet hath been lately discovered by Le Maire It is also evident that this vast Continent and the greatest part of the Islands near adjacent to it are well stored with Men and Beasts of all sorts Laetius in his Disquisition touching the Original of the Americans in his 8 th Observation gives us an account of above thirty Millions of Americans destroyed by the Spaniards in those Parts of America that they have usurped to their own Dominion which is not the hundredth part of that great Continent The Inhabitants of this Continent as they greatly differ among themselves so they extremely differ from the Asiaticks Europeans and Africans in their Language and Customs they recognize no Original from these Parts it is true they have some resemblance of the Scythians or Tartars in some of their barbarous Customs and some Words they have which seem to carry a congruity with Words of other Nations But these are but slender Evidences to prove their Traduction from Asia Africa or Europe especially since no Monument is extant that gives an account of their Traduction or Migration thither and the rather because it was a World wholly unknown to the Europeans Africans and Asiaticks till the Discovery thereof made by Americus Vesputius and Christopher Columbus which is but of late time Again Acosta tells us in his 4 th Book Cap. 36. there are divers perfect Animals of divers kinds in America which have none of the same kind in Europe Asia or Africa as their Pacos Guanacos and Indian Sheep and on the other side many species of Birds and Beasts in these Countries which are not found in America And upon these Premisses they thus argue That since by all Circumstances it is apparent that America hath been very long inhabited and possibly as long as any other Continent in the World and since it is of all hands agreed that the supposed common Parents of the rest of Mankind Adam Noah and his three Sons had their Habitations in some Parts of Asia and since we have no probable Evidence that any of their Descendents traduced the first Colonies of the American Plantations into America being so divided from the rest of the World the access thither so difficult and Navigation the only means of such a Migration being of a far later perfection than what could answer such a Population of so great a Continent That consequently the Americans derive not their Original either from Adam or at least not from Noah but either had an Eternal Succession or if they had a
of that very Scripture which this Man in Complement at least seems to venerate might have remembred That the Tradition of the Universal Flood hath obtained in all places even among the Americans themselves and that the Race of Mankind was thereby destroyed except some few that were preserved That the most severe and observing Sect of the Philosophers namely the Stoicks have constantly held vicissitudes of Destructions of Mankind by successive Deluges and Conflagrations and a new Peopling of the World successively by the Power of God That Aristotle himself insinuates those great Vicissitudes especially of Deluges in those Periodical great Winters which he supposeth to have hapned and for the future to happen in this lower World But of this hereafter And although this Author in his 8 th Chapter of his 4 th Book gives us a computation of a declivity of 600 Perches from the Fountain of Danubius until its fall into the Pontus Euxinus and supposeth the highest Mountains of Armenia whereof Ararat where the Ark rested was the highest doth not exceed the perpendicular height of one Mile above the plain of the Earth and therefore that an excess of 15 Cubits above Ararat would not reach the Head of Danubius or at least the upper Plains of the Upper Asia yet he might have remembred That though it were admitted that usually the heights of most Mountains do not exceed a Mile in perpendicular height above their Basis yet many Mountains are situate in the more elevated parts of the Earth and have the advantage thereby of the height of their Basis and possibly it will be found that the Basis of the Mountains of Armenia is situate in higher ground than the Fountain of Danubius or Euphrates So that an excess of 15 Cubits above their height must in all probability cover the Plain of the Upper Asia Again he might have remembred that Egypt that from the Authority of the Fable of the Egyptian Priest is favoured by him with an immunity from Inundation lyes much lower than the Plains of Palestine yea than the Superficies of the Red Sea it self And therefore the Water that naturally keeps its level neither without a Miracle can lose it which overflowed the whole Continent of Palestine even to 15 Cubits above its highest Mountains must of necessity overflow Egypt which Aristotle by impregnable Evidences concludes to be one of the lowest Countries in the World and the very Production and Accretion of the Slime of Nilus so that if the Flood covered Palestine nothing but a Miracle could protect Egypt from it The Author of the Dissertation De Aetate Mundi cap. 12. though he reprehend the Praeadamitae and confutes the extravagancy of their Opinion yet he seems to mince the Universality of the Flood Nullum itaque relinquitur dubium quin unum tantum fuerit diluvium idque universale cujus apud omnes penè gentes extat memoria Verùm hîc minime probo eorum sententiam qui totum terrae globum it a aquis tectum fuisse existimant ut nulla prorsus extaret ejus portio ad hoc efficiendum multa debuissent concurrere miracula Cum enim universae orbis aquae non sufficiant ad obruendam tam altè terram etiamsi omnia maria siccentur debuissent vel plures aquae creari vel dicendum cum aliquibus istam aquarum molem ex aliis coeli orbibus decidisse demum finito diluvio ad sedes suas revolasse Verùm hoc est piè nugari Deus non facit miracula sine causa Quid opus erat mergere terras ubi nec olim fuere homines ac ne nunc quidem sunt Stultum est putare ante diluvium adeò multiplicatum fuisse genius hominum ut omnes terrae angulos pervaserit c. Ut verò diluvii inundationem ultra orbis habitati termines producamus nulla jubet ratio imo prorsus absurdum est dicere ubi nulla hominum sedes illic etiam viguisse effectus poenae solis hominibus inflictae This indeed salves the necessity of drowning America and the greatest part of the New habitable World when it extends the Flood no farther than there were Mankind inhabiting and confines those Habitations possibly within the Circle of Syria and Mesopotamia And so all the Brutes that possibly in their first Creation were produced sparsim through all the parts of the habitable World as well in America as Asia or Europe were safe and untouched and all those Birds and Fowl that were within 40 or 50 Miles of the Circulus diluvii might easily preserve themselves by flight out of the extent of it yea and the Brutes and Birds which were out of that supposed narrow extent of Syria and Mesopotamia where the Flood prevailed might easily refurnish the same Continent after the subsiding of the Flood without the wonderful and difficult including of their kinds within the Ark for their preservation which if this Supposition hold seems a needless Institution and Miracle by the wise God Gen. 7.1 Therefore I confess I am no way satisfied with this Gratification of that Author to the Prae-Adamitae For first although I take this Flood to be somewhat more than Natural and a thing instituted by the Will of God yet do I not esteem it a thing purely Supernatural or Miraculous neither do I suppose those Waters created de novo nor sent out of the Orbs of Heaven to drown the Earth I do not think the Face of the Earth and Waters were altogether the same before the Universal Deluge and after but possibly the Face of the Earth was more even than now it is the Seas possibly more dilate and extended and not so deep as now the Waters possibly more than now and in those respects more capable of diffusion over the dry Land For though there be many great variations in process of time in the Sea and Land yet it seems that ad plurimum the Seas grow deeper and eat lower into the Earth and consequently more dry Land is daily acquired and the Seas grow narrower and deeper Now to deliver this Supposition of an Universal Deluge from those difficulties and that necessity of multiplication of Miracles which that Author hath substituted we are to consider 1. That we are not to make our estimate of the quantity of Waters meerly by the Superficies of the Sea but by its vast depth which in some places is unfathomable and by those vast subterraneous Receptacles of Water which pour themselves out in several great Ebullitions and Marine Springs Neither is it altogether improbable that the Waters of the Sea naturally tending downward and being of a fluid searching consistency might in process of time have worked themselves even almost to the Center of the Earth and there residing in great and vast quantities and possibly have in a manner undermined much of the appearing Continent of the Earth so that that which the Prophet speaketh may be true literally Psal 24.2 He hath founded it upon
Antiquity of the Peopling of China which if we believe M r Webb was the first peopled after the Universal Deluge that the Ark there first rested upon that tract of Mountains that environ a great part of China that Sem the Son of Noah first setled there that it is the most Ancient and Primitive Language that by means of the Antiquity and Setledness of this Monarchy having continued in its entireness ever since the Universal Deluge it is most probable that the Western Continent was peopled from thence 2. Because they were the greatest Masters of Shipping and best skilled in Navigation of any part of the World that the Pixis Nautica was there known and used long before the knowledge thereof in Europe 3. The many Islands on the South-east and South part of China as Borneo Java Gilolo Celebes and others near the Equator are dis-joyned but by very narrow Seas not much broader than those between England and France from the Neck of Land called Terra des Papos or Nova Guinea and Nova Hollandia which is now discovered to be at least in some parts disjoyned from the more Southern Continent by a great Sea but thought to have been anciently part of the Southern Continent and possibly so it may continue in some parts thereof Upon these and the like probabilities it may seem reasonable to conclude 1. That the Americans had their Original from the Inhabitants of Europe Asia and Africa that transmigrated into that Continent either intentionally or casually or both 2. That those Migrations were not of any one single Nation or People but from many or divers Nations 3. That these Migrations were not altogether or at one time but successively in several Ages some earlier some later 4. That therefore it is impossible to determin the Time or first Epocha of such Migrations but only that they were all since the Universal Deluge which is now above 4000 Years since Some Migrations might be within two three or four hundred Years after the Flood some later according to various Accidents but it is no way probable that the earliest Migration thither was less distant than 1000 Years from this time 5. That if we should admit that the first Migration thither were above 2000 Years since of an hundred Pairs they might easily propagate a number competent enough to people all that vast Continent 6. That it seems that since the last of these ancient Migrations suppose that of Madoc and his Britons until our late Migrations by the Spaniards French English Dutch and Scotcâ— there probably interceded an interval of at least four or five hundred Years in all which interval the Commerce and Communication between Europe or Asia and America hath as it were slept and been forgotten both by them and us 7. That in that interval of 500 Years or thereabouts in all Parts but in some Parts far greater there must in all probability happen a great forgetfulness of their Original a great degeneration from the Primitive Civility Religion and Customs of those places from whence they were first derived a ferine and necessitous kind of Life a conversation with those that having been long there were faln into a more barbarous habit of Life and Manners would easily assimilate at least the next Generation to Barbarism and Ferineness It is true where a Colony comes and keeps it self in a Body as the Roman Colonies anciently and our Plantations in Virginia and New England do and the new Accessions incorporate and joyn themselves unto that Body Customs both Religious and Civil and the Original Language are long kept entire But where the Accessions are but thin and sparing and scattered among the Natives of the Country where they come and are driven to conform themselves unto their Customs for their very subsistence safety and entertainment it falls out that the very first Planters do soon degenerate in their Habits Customs and Religion as a little Wine poured into a great vessel of Water loseth it self But if they escape a total Assimulation to the Country where they thus are mingled yet the next Generation in such a mixture is quickly assimulated to the corrupt Manners and Customs of the People among whom they are thus planted So that it is no wonder if in such kind of small Accessions successively from one and the same or several Countries the third Generation forget their Ancestors and the Customs Religion and Languages of those People from whom they were first derived and assume various temperaments in their Language and Customs according as the places of their Habitation and the Company among whom they live obtain And if any man consider but the strange contemperation and production of our English Language out of the combinations and mixtures of the Danish Saxon British French Dutch and other Countries he may easily perswade himself that out of the Mixtures of People there may arise as great diversities of Language Rites and Customs as there may Temperaments of Qualities by the various combinations and mixtures of the prime Qualities or varieties of Words by the various appositions of the 24 Letters in the Alphabet and even these Customs and Languages subject to infinite successive alterations and variations according to the variety of Forein Mixtures Commerce Victories Wars Credit and Opinion of Factions or Parties And thus far touching the Peopling of America with Mankind I shall subjoyn something touching the storing of it with Brutes and Birds It seems in the original Creation of things that Vegetables and Insects especially those that by their nature may sponte oriri or by equivocal Generation had as large and universal production as the habitable parts of the Earth or dry Land as Fishes for the most part had their first created production as universal and sparsim in the whole extent of the Seas or Waters But whether the primitive production of the more perfect Animals both Brutes and Birds that have ever since had their production by univocal Generation were diffusively created over the habitable or dry Ground as Vegetables were or whether there were only certain Capita specierum perfectarum utriusque sexus created in a certain determinate districtus near to the place of the first Origination of Mankind viz. in or near the Garden of Eden and that the whole Progeny of such Brutes and Birds were propagated after successively through the whole World from these Capita specierum seems an Inquiry of more difficulty to determin Some Observations seem to favour the former Conjecture especially considering that many Species of Brutes and Birds are as it were appropriate to their several Countries as Elephants Camels Lions and divers other Brutes Parrots Ostriches and other Fowls which are not found in other Countries But especially the same Opinion is inferred from the Beasts and Birds which are found in America which have not the like in the other parts of the World Acosta in his 36 th Chap. of his 4 th Book saith that besides the Beasts called
Guanaco's and Paco's there be a thousand different kinds of Birds and Beasts of Forest in America which have never been known neither in shape nor name in other parts of the World whereof no mention is made nor names given in Greek or Latin or other Eastern Language of the World And in his 34 th Chapter of that Book he tells us That though the Spaniards in their first Plantation found certain Beasts Birds and other things in America common to those of Europe Asia and Africa yet some Beasts and other things they brought thither which were unknown there and for which they had no Names but what the Spaniards brought along with them So that one of the best Indications which they had to know those Beasts which were originally brought with the Spaniards out of Europe in their first Plantation was in that the Indians had no other Names for such but Spanish Names And again since America as is generally supposed is divided on every side from Asia Africa and Europe by considerable Seas and no known passage by Land so that all the possibility there could be for traduction of the Brutes into America from the known World could only be by Shipping Though this might be and certainly was a method used for the traduction of useful Cattel from hence thither yet it is not credible that Bears Lions Tigers Wolves and Foxes should have so much care used for their transportation And upon the same account they seem to inferr That the Beasts and Birds preserved by Noah in the Ark could only be such as were appropriated to Asia but not those that were of the American kinds for how should they come from thence to the Ark Or if it be supposable that they could be brought thither why did none of the kinds which are found commonly in America leave some of their Kind or Race here On the other side it hath been the more received Opinion That the Capita specierum perfectarum of perfect Terrestrial Animals and Birds were created near unto the place of Adam's Creation and that from these and these only the Race of perfect Animals Birds and Brutes were propagated and traduced over the face of the whole Earth and that the American Brood was traduced from these and from those Couples of these that were preserved by Noah in the Ark And that upon these Instances whereof some are of Divine authority others are Physical 1. All the Beasts and Fowls were brought to Adam to give them their Names Gen. 2.19 20. which could not have been if the several kinds of them in their first Creation had not been within some reasonable and approachable distance 2. All the Beasts and Birds had their kinds preserved in the Ark and the rest were drowned by the Universal Deluge Gen. 7.23 3. Although the Continent of America was in the first Spanish Plantations thereof stored with wild Beasts as Lions Tigers Bears c. yet those Islands that were remote from the Land though large and fruitful had not any of these Beasts then in them as Cuba Hispaniola Jamaica Margarita this is verified by Acosta upon a strict examination Lib. 1. Cap. 21. alibi and the same hath been found true in other new discovered Islands by other Navigations Whereby it appears that the Brutes were not Aborigines for then they should have been found in those Islands as well as in the Continent as well as Insects and Vegetables and that therefore in the Continent it self the first storing thereof was not from it self but by some means of accession from other Parts for otherwise they might have been found as well there as in the Continent The two great Obstacles are 1. The difference of the Brutes and Birds of that Continent from those of Asia Europe and Africa 2. The difficulty of finding a commodious passage from Asia Africa or Europe for such Beasts and Birds from hence thither admit they were all of the same kind And touching both these I shall say something 1. Touching the diversity of Brutes and Birds of this and the Western World the difficulty from thence is but small for there are divers Accidents even in the Eastern World Europe Asia and Africa that afford us Instances of that kind though excepting some Islands it be one common Continent I shall instance only in some Accidents of this kind 1. This Variation may happen by Mixtures of several Species in Generation which gives an anomalous Production as we see ordinarily by the mixture of Pheasants and Hens Chickens are produced partaking of both in colour and figure which yet renders them different from both And it is observed by many that the Cause of that great variety of Brutes in Africa is by reason of the meeting together of Brutes of several Species at Waters which in those dry Countries are scarce and the promiscuous couplings of Males and Females of several Species whereby there arise a sort of Brutes that were not in the first Creation This was long since observed by Aristotle so that it grew a Proverb also Semper aliquid novi Africa affert De generat Animal lib. 2. cap. 5. and so continues to this day 2. The Percolation as I may call it of Vegetables by Prosemination will alter their Nature Colour and Shape as Tulips or Carnations rising from Seed will differ in Colour from what those were that yielded those Seeds 3. Culture will improve Wild Flowers in bigness and beauty and want of Culture will sometimes make Vegetables degenerate See for these Transmutations Sir Francis Bacon in the 6 th Century of his Natural History I have often observed that River-Fish as Trouts and Flounders and others will alter their figure some for the better and some for the worse being put into Ponds Again in Animals the Learned Doctor Harvey in the end of his last Book de Generatione Animalium delivers an Opinion which at the first view seems wonderful strange viz. That the Conformation of the Proles both in Men and Brutes to their several specifical Shapes and Configurations is by a certain specifical operative Idea in the Phantasie or Imagination of Animals fixed and radicated in them and conformable to their several Species and that monstrous or anomalous Productions are by some disturbance or discomposure of that specifical Idea by some other inordinate Idea And conformable hereunto seems the Opinion of Marcus Marci in his learned Book de Ideis formatricibus Whatever the truth of this Opinion be it is not here properly examinable yet it seems beyond question that as to some external Signatures as Colour Shape Figure c. the Phantasie or Imagination of the Females as well Animals as of Mankind especially in momento conceptus and for some time after hath a great Influence Some there are that think that Jacob's change of the colour of Sheep and Goats by peeled Rods Gen. 30.37 was partly at least upon a Physical account and he that reads Fienus de Viribus Imaginationis and Sir
Pamphlets which give a greater Demonstration of the Gradual Increase of Mankind upon the face of the Earth than a hundred notional Arguments can either evince or confute and therefore I think them worthy of being mentioned to this purpose Upon all which and much more that might be said it is evident That according to the ordinary course of Nature though those common and usual Accidents of common Sicknesses ordinary Casualties and common Events are incident to Humane Nature the number of Mankind doth and must necessarily increase in the World and the Natural Supplies of Mankind are greater and more numerous than the Decays thereof I now therefore come to the Second Consideration namely The Examination of the extraordinary or more universal Correctives of the Multiplication of Mankind which because it will be large I shall allow unto it a distinct Chapter CAP. IX Concerning those Correctives of the Excess of Mankind which may be thought to be sufficient to reduce it to a greater Equability I Come now to the Second premised Consideration and Inquiry viz. Whether there may not be found some extraordinary Occurrences and Correctives that may reduce that otherwise Natural and ordinary Increase of Mankind to an Equability And I call them Extraordinary not simply in respect of themselves but in opposition to those daily and ordinary Casualties which happen to Humane Nature and in respect of those great Distances and Periods whether certain or casual wherein they may be supposed to happen And I shall improve this Objection against the Increase de facto of Mankind with the greatest impartiality and advantage that may be It is certain that the Increase of Brutes and other Animals which are perfect and univocally generated is very great in the World Aristotle that inquisitive Searcher into Nature in his 4 th Book of the History of Animals hath given us an Account touching most Animals of the length of their Lives times of their Breeding intervals of their Birth wherein though possibly there may be variation in several Climates yet his Account may give a near estimate proportionable also to other places For Instance the Cow breeds in the second Year brings forth the tenth Month lives 15 or 20 Years the Mare breeds the third Year brings forth in the twelfth Month lives 25 30 and sometimes 40 Years the Sheep and Goat bear in the second Year bring forth in the beginning of the sixth Month sometimes two ordinarily but one lives 10 12 or 13 Years Sows breed in the second Year bring forth after four Months their Young numerous Bitches breed in the latter end of the first or beginning of the second Year bring forth after threescore Days or in the ninth Week their Young many 5 6 or sometimes 12 they live 10 or 12 sometimes 15 or 20 Years Wolves breed and bring forth as Dogs only their number fewer sometimes 2 sometimes 3 sometimes 4 the Doe brings forth after eight Months complete but one and sometimes two and live long the Fox breeds 4 the Cat 5 or 6 and lives 6 Years many times more the speedy and numerous increase of Mice is prodigious Aristotle mentions 120 produced of one Female in a very little time Pliny in his 11 th Book Cap. 63. hath in effect transcribed Aristotle herein By this it appears That the Natural Increase of these Animals is much greater than of Men yet their numbers have not arrived to that great excess because those that are for food have their reduction by their application for that purpose those that are domestical and not for food as Cats and Dogs are kept within compass by drowning or destroying their Young and those that are noxious as Wolves and Foxes are reduced by that common destruction that Men pursue them with Touching Birds their Increase seems to be much greater than of Men or Brutes but they have those reductions that bring them to a fair equability unless it be in those Islands and Rocks in the Sea unaccessible by Men where Sea-Fowls breed First their number is reduced by Man for food 2. For destruction as in Birds that are noxious 3. By the natural shortness of the Lives of many that are yet numerous breeders 4. By the mutual destruction of the weaker by Birds of prey whereof more particularly hereafter 5. By the Winter cold which starves very many either for want of heat or food and of this more hereafter Fishes are infinitely more numerous or increasing than Beasts or Birds as appears by the numerous Spawn of any one Fish though ordinarily they breed but once a Year and if all these should come ro maturity even the Ocean it self would have been long since over-stored with Fish Now the Correctives and Reductions of these are very many 1. Aristotle observes in his 6 th de Historia Animalium cap. 13. Those Eggs that are not sprinkled aspergine seminis genitalis maris prove unfruitful a great part are devoured by the Male and much more by other Fish some of their Eggs are buried in the slime and corrupted 2. Many are taken by Men and employed for food 3. As among Birds and Beasts they are Beasts and Birds of prey which are less numerous than others so especially among Fish And though the Wisdom of Providence hath given certain Expedients to Animals especially Fishes of the weaker nature to escape the voracious as swiftness to some smalness to others whereby they escape to Shallows and Shoars unaccessible to the greater and to those that are not able to move or at least not to move swiftly the protection of Shells as Oysters Escalops Crabs Lobsters and other Shell-fish yet a very great number are devoured by the voracious kind I do remember that a Friend of mine having stored a very great Pond of 3 or 4 Acres of ground with Carps Tench and divers other Pond-fish of a very great number and only put in two very little small Pikes at 7 Years end upon the draught of his Pond not one Fish was left but the two Pikes grown to an excessive bigness and all the rest together with their millions of Fry devoured by those pair of Tyrants 4. Birds also of prey as Storks Herons Cormorants and other Fowl of that kind destroy many both in the Sea Rivers Ponds and Lakes 5. Extreme Frost especially in Ponds and Lakes make a great destruction of Fish partly by freezing them partly by the exclusion of the ambient Air which insinuates it self into the Water and is necessary for the preservation of the Lives of those watry Inhabitants 6. By great Heats and Droughts not only drying up Lakes Ponds and Rivers but also tainting the Water with excessive heat and though these two do not so much concern Sea-fish who have more scope and room yet they have a great influx upon Rivers Ponds and Lakes Again to say something of Insects whether aiery terrestrial or watry they seem to be more numerous than the common sorts of univocal Animals who have
24148 Anno 1637 at Prague 30000 Anno 1652 at Cracovia 37000 Anno 1656 at Naples 30000 Anno 1657 at Genoa 70000 Anno 1619 at Grand Cairo in 10 Weeks 73500 And Leo in his History of Africa tells us that the Pestilence is so hot sometimes in that City that there dye 12000 almost every Day and Pliny in 7. Nat. Hist. cap. 50. saith that the Southern Plagues happen most in the Winter and move Westward according to the course of the Sun which some have observed also in the Northern that it sometimes held a gradual Motion and for the most part Westward as in 1652 at Cracovia 1653 at Dantzick 1654 at Copenhagen 1655 at Amsterdam and other Towns in the Netherlands 1656 at Naples and Rome 1657 at Genoa And I have somewhere read that in Alexandria in Egypt the Plague is Anniversary beginning with the Rising of Nilus which is about the 17 th of June and continueth rising 40 Days sometimes 12 sometimes 15 Cubits and in its greatest excess to 18 Cubits and as many Days decreaseth so that the Plague lasteth 80 Days and then perfectly ceaseth with the full Ebb of Nilus So that upon the account of Plagues and extraordinary Epidemical Diseases there seems to be a great Corrective of the Redundance and Increase of Mankind 2. Let us a little take notice of Famines which though they have not been of late times much observed partly because of the great Industry of Mankind improving and increasing the Fruits of the Earth partly by those Supplies that have come by Sea to those Countries that are in want but principally by the goodness of God in lending the Children of Men seasonable Weather and fruitful Seasons and prosperous Influences yet in former times they have been very grievous and destroyed multitudes of People Walsingham in the Life of E. 2. tells us of so severe a Famine in England that they were enforced to eat Dogs and Horses yea and stole Children and eat them viz. 9 E. 2. And divers other Instances our own Histories give us of other great Famines in this and other Countries Ordinarily a Famine and a Plague anciently went together or the former followed upon the heels of the Plague by reason of some of these means 1. Commonly the same distemperature of the Air that occasioned the Plague occasioned also the infertility or noxiousness of the Soil whereby the Fruits of the Earth became either very small or very unwholsom As it happened in that Famine under E. 2. above mentioned in so much that the Historian tells us that Medicinales herbae quae levamen languidis conferre solebant per Veris intemperiem Elementorum inaequalitatem contra naturam effectae degeneres virus pro virtute reddebant 2. Commonly the Plague among Men was accompanied or followed with a Rot or Murrain among Cattel whereby the flesh of Beasts was wanting or noxious to those that used it 3. Commonly by a great and general Mortality or Plague the Husbandmen and Labourers were so diminished that there wanted People to gather in the Harvest or Till the Ground whereby there necessarily ensued a Famine And oftentimes by a kind of necessity Famines were durable the Stock being exhausted one Year left little for the supply of Tillage Husbandry or Increase for the next And as Famine was anciently the Concomitant or Consequent of Plague so both Plague and Famine especially the latter were the usual Consequents of War which bring with it Devastation and Destruction and a general intermission of that Husbandry and Care that should supply it The terrible Effects of Famine and the great Consumption of Mankind that is occasioned was principally 1. Of the Poor who upon the bare increase of the Price of Victuals and wanting wherewith to buy must needs occasion their starving or a tumultuous gaining it by force where they could not get it which was but a short and temporary Relief and made more want after by the spoil and disorder occasioned thereby 2. Of numerous Armies who being brought into places of want or scarcity without due Conduct or Provision are oftentimes destroyed in a Week especially in close and long Sieges as it happened in Samaria when besieged by the Assyrians and Jerusalem when besieged by the Romans wherein more dyed by the Famine than by the Sword So that Famines as well as Plagues seem to give a great Reduction to the Numbers of Mankind 3. A few words may serve concerning Wars which are so frequent and bring so great a Desolation upon Mankind that it seems to equal that allay of the Excesses of Brutes Fishes Birds and Insects by the other Beasts Birds or Fishes of prey and the rather because many if not all the considerable Parts of the World are some Years at it though it may be some Ages free from Pestilences and Famines other than such as are consequences of War but in no Age nor Year of the World hath it been quiet from Wars and those calamitous consequences thereof at least in some considerable parts of the World It would be endless and indeed Morally impossible to give an Account of the Numbers of People and Armies that have been cut off by Wars especially on the side of the Conquered Some few Instances may give some kind of Estimate herein Diodorus Siculus in his third Book tells us that Ninus in his Preparation against the Bactrians gathered an Army of 1700000 Foot-men 200000 Horse-men 10600 Chariots that Zoroastres his Army consisted of 400000 who in the first Conflict prevailed and killed 40000 but were afterwards wholly destroyed so that probably in that War there fell no less than 400000 Men Darius Hystaspis in the Battel of Marathron whither he came with an Army of 600000 lost in one Battel 200000 his Successor Xerxes went into Greece with an Army according to some consisting in the whole number of it and its Appendices of five Millions those that spake most sparingly of above one Million all which within the space of five Years were in effect wholly lost Vide Lips de Constant. lib. 2. cap. 21 22 24. Alexander destroyed the Army of Darius consisting of a Million of Men the greatest part whereof fell by the Sword and Pliny in his 7 th Book of his Natural History Cap. 15. tells us that Julius Caesar and his Armies in the time of His Command killed 1192000 persons besides those that he slew in the Civil Wars And if by the Estimate of that one Man we might make a Calculation of those that were slain by the Assyrian Babylonian Persian and Grecian Monarchies by Cyrus Darius Astyages Alexander and his succeeding Captains by Marius Sylla Pompey Vespasian and the succeeding Roman Emperors by Tamberlane and the Scythians by the Goths Vandals Turks Tartars Muscovites Persians Moors and Christians by the Wars in this little Spot of England by the late Wars in France Spain Germany by the Spaniards in the West Indies the numbers of Internecions and Slaughters would exceed
all Arithmetical Calculation So that it should seem there needed no other Reductive of the Numbers of Men to an Equability than the Wars that have happened in the World And although Wars are in a great measure accidental or at least proceed in a great measure from the Wills of Men their Pride Ambition impatience of Injuries affectation of Dominion mutual Jealousies and Fears of the Potency of each other and oftentimes accidental Emergencies and Occurrences yet it seems that abstracting from all these Occasions Wars seem to be in a manner a Natural Consequence of the over-plenitude and redundancy of the Number of Men in the World And so by a kind of congruity and consequence morally necessary when the World grows too full of Inhabitants that there is not room one by another or that the common Supplies which the World should afford to Mankind begin to be too few too strait or too narrow for the Numbers of Men that natural propension of Self-love and natural principle of Self-preservation will necessarily break out into Wars and Internecions to make room for those that find themselves straitned or inconvenienced So that as when the Channel of a River is over-charged with Water more than it can deliver it necessarily breaks over the Banks to make it self room or when the very Brutes or Animals find themselves oppressed and straitned in their provisions and supplies by the redundance of their numbers one necessarily preys upon another or destroys another to preserve it self So Wars among Mankind are a kind of necessary Consequence of Redundance of Mankind and will by a kind of Natural necessity make it self room and give it self ease by the destruction of others if it can get power and opportunity to do it And consequently there seems to be no fear of the surcharge of the World with Mankind because there is this natural and necessary Remedy at hand the very Redundance it self of Mankind seeming by a natural consecution to yield and subminister this Remedy for its Reduction and Equation As in a redundance of Humors in the Body the most lively and active do naturally thrust out those that are weaker or noxious to make room for themselves or as Bees swarm to get new habitations when they are so increased that their Hives will not hold them 4. Concerning the Fourth and also inclusively the Fifth Corrective of the Excess of Mankind namely Inundations and Conflagrations Those that have been Observers of things in Nature and Histories of former times have given us Instances of two kinds of Mutations in this Terrestrial Globe of Earth and Waters some that are more ordinary and of less moment and of such various have been in the World such are those mentioned especially by Pliny in his Natural History lib. 2. cap. 85. seqq some places severed from the Continent by the interruption of the Sea thus he tells us that Sicily was divided from Italy Cyprus from Syria Euboea from Boeotia Atlantis and Macris from Euboea Bosticum from Bythinia and some have thought though perhaps upon very small evidence that England and France were sometimes one Continent and divided by the interruption of the Sea and Spain from Africa Again some Cities and Countries swallowed up by the Sea as Pirrha and Antissa Elis and Buta half the City of Tyndaris in Sicily and 30 Miles of the Island Cea with a great destruction of Men and Cattel some Countries wholly swallowed up and drowned in the Sea as Acarnania Achaia part of Europe and Asia in Propontis but above all that great Island of Atlantis supposed by Plato in his Timaeus to be greater than Lybia and Asia swallowed up in the Atlantick Ocean to which it gives its denomination but Plato is oftentimes so Poetical that we can hardly tell where he means in earnest But on the other side many times the Sea by a certain recompence makes new room for the Inhabitants of the World sometimes by producing notable Islands thus the same Pliny tells us that Delos Rhodes Anaphe Nea Thera and Teresia Hiera Automate Thia were produced Again the Sea hath deserted vast Tracts of Ground in divers places and left them dry Land as is related by Aristotle in the second of his Meteors Cap. 14. and by Pliny in a great measure out of him and Herodotus Thus considerable quantities of Land were left by the Sea at Ephesus at Ambracia and other Parts and that a very great part of Egypt namely that called Delta is but the accretion of Nilus and was sometime covered with Water and according to the conjecture of Herodotus the Sea possessed Memphis and a great part of Egypt to the Mountains of Ethiopia But these are but Conjectures of the Historian of what might be in some thousand Years before he was born Aristotle indeed supposeth that the City Thebes and the adjacent Parts were all that were habitable in Egypt in the time of Homer because he makes no mention of Memphis But these smaller Vicissitudes and mutual borrowings and payments between the Earth and Sea are not those Mutations which so much contribute to the Reduction of Mankind partly because they are gradual and give Men opportunity to escape and partly because they are not such Devastations as may be pares huic negotio unless we believe that wonderful swallowing up of the vast Island or rather Continent of Atlantis and partly because the Sea which commonly gives in one place what it takes in another and so makes room for the Inhabitants of the World in compensation of what it takes 2. Therefore I come to those greater supposed Correctives namely 1. Floods and Inundations 2. Incendia Burnings and again both or either of those are also varied according to the Opinions of some of the Ancients 1. They are either such as were all at one time and did wholly overwhelm and confound this lower World or 2. They are such as did not wholly dissolve the lower Word or put a period to all things living therein Again the former Opinion that held these Cataclysms and Empyroses universal was such as either held that it put a total Consummation unto things in this lower World especially that of Conflagration Or else such as though it quite for the present confounded the Face of things especially in this inferior World yet it was but preparative to a new Formation of things wherein all things would be put into better Order till in process of time they again degenerate and so were to receive another Purgation by Fire or Water according to the fatal Vicissitudes to which the World is subject And they suppose that these successive unmaking and making again of the World not unlike the Suppositions of Anaxagoras or Empedocles were Eternal and should eternally continue in this Vicissitude that the last Destruction of the World was by Water and that which is to succeed is by Fire And this was for the most part the Opinion of the Stoicks whereof Lipsius in his second Book
de Physiologia Stoicorum cap. 21 22 c. hath given us a large Account out of Seneca especially and others which are not necessary to be repeated and the rather because they do suppose that Mankind is neither Eternal nor Perpetual according to the course of Natural Generation For these mighty Concussions of Nature especially that of the Universal Conflagration puts an end to all the Race of Mankind and all living Bodies though in the Redintegration of the World after these Destructions there is also a Re-production of Mankind but not by the ordinary method of Propagation as now Again as to those others that held also certain Periodical Cataclysms and Conflagrations yet they held them not to be Universal nor any Universal Dissolution or Destruction of the inferior World thereby but they were such as were great and notable Devastations sometimes in one part of the Earth sometimes in another either by certain Rotations or at least in some places more than in other acocrding to the accommodation or disaccommodation of them to such Calamities As the Vallies and lower grounds were more subject to devastation by Floods so the more Mountainous parts were more subject to the desolations by Fire and Conflagrations Plato who seems very uncertain and unsetled in his Philosophy seems yet to agree with this partial kind of exhausting the numbers of Men and Brutes by such partial Floods and Conflagrations In his third Book of Dialogues de Legibus he gives us an Account of various Methods of the Declinations of Civil Societies and of those Laws and Customs Arts and Sciences in several parts of the World and again how and by what degrees they have been repaired and recovered the means whereof he assigns not only to be Wars and Epidemical Diseases but great Floods and Conflagrations which together with those of Aristotle relating thereunto I shall transcribe out of the Latin Translation because perchance more significant than the English though not so significant as the Language wherein they wrote And this I do intend to transcribe more largely because they seem to contain the full declaration of the Instances of this nature He tells us therefore in the beginning of his third Book de Legibus Multos hominun interitus ex diluviis morbis aliÃsque permultis olim accidisse ex quibus pauci homines superstites fuerunt Again Eos qui cladem tum evaserunt scilicet ex diluviis montanos quosdam pastores fuisse in montium cacuminibus pauca semina ad propagandum genus humanum conservata atqui necesse est eos aliarum artium fuisse expertes campestres autem maritimae urbes funditus illo tempore perierunt Instrumenta igitur omnia quaecunque artium sive ad disciplinam civilem sive ad facultatem aliam pertinentium extabant inventa concidisse illis temporibus And afterwards Ex ea itaque devastatione magnam terribilémque humanis in rebus desolationem tunc accidisse arbitramur fertilium agrorum magnitudinem desertam caeterÃsque animalibus corruptis vix boum caprarúmque genus illud quidem rarum relictum fuisse quibus pascendis tunc homines vitam agebant civitatis verò disciplinae civilis legum memoriam quidem nullam fuisse putamus Tempore igitur progrediente c. genere hominum multiplicato ad eum quem nunc videmus habitum provecta omnia sunt Again the same Plato though in his Timaeus he gives us an Account of the Origination of Mankind yet he supposeth that a vast Period interceded between that Origination and the Age wherein he lived and within the compass of that Period that there happened very great and very many vicissitudes of Floods and Conflagrations in this inferior World whereby the state of things here was variously altered and the Numbers of Mankind and Animals corrected and reduced at several times to small proportions only sufficient to replenish the World until such time as its Excess and Increase received again a like Correction or Reduction by the like Revolutions of Floods and Conflagrations though still without a total destruction of the Species In this Book he gives us a personated Discourse between Solon and an Egyptian Priest who after some discourse of the Antiquity of Athens the Priest tells him Vos Graeci semper pueri estis nec quisquam è Graecia senex quia juvenis semper vobis est animus in quo nulla est ex vetustatis commemoratione prisca opinio nulla cana scientia Nam quod apud vos fertur Phaetontem quondam Solis filium currus ascendisse paternos nec patris aurigatione servata exussisse terrena ipsúmque flammis coelestibus conflagrasse quamvis fabulosum videatur verum quodammodo esse putandum est Fit enim longo temporis intervallo coelestis circuitus permutatio quaedam quam inflammationis vastitas necessario sequitur tunc hi qui edita incolunt loca magis pereunt quam mari fluviÃsque vicini Nobis prorò Nilus cum in plerisque rebus nobis salutaris est tum hujusmodi à nobis arcet exitium Quando verò Dii aquarum colluvione sordes terrarum diluunt pastores ovium atque bubulci qui juga montium habitant periculum illud evadunt vestrae autem civitates in planitie sitae impetu fluminum ad mare rapiuntur Sed in nostra regione neque tunc neque alias unquam aqua in agros supernè descendit contra verò sursum è visceribus terrae scaturit quamobrem antiquissimarum rerum apud nos monumenta servantur Proinde ubicunque nec imbrium tempestas nimia nec incendium ingens contingit licèt alias plures alias pauciores semper tamen homines sunt Quaecunque verò sive à nostris sive à vestris sive aliis nationibus gesta sunt memoratu digna modo ad aures nostrorum pervenerunt nostris in templis descripta servantur Apud vos quidem alias gentes res gestae nuper literis monumentÃsque traduntur sed certis temporum curriculis illuvies immensa coelitus omnia populatur ideo qui succedunt literis Musis orbati sunt quo fit ut quasi juvenes iterum sitis rudes praeteritarum rerum omnium prorsus ignari Nam ea ipsa quae modo ex vestris historiis recensentur à fabulis puerilibus parum distant primò quod unius tantum inundationis memineritis cum multae praecesserint deinde quod genus majorum vestrorum in regione vestra clarissimum ignoretis ex quo tu Athenienses cateri nati estis exiguo semine quondam publicae cladi superstite quod propterea vos latuit quia superstites illi eorúmque posteri literarum usu multis seculis caruerunt Then he tells him of the Building of Athens by the Goddess Athena 9000 Years since ex terra Vulcano accipiens semina the great Wars between them and the Inhabitants of the vast Island Atlantis greater than Lybia and Asia the swallowing up of that Island
Constitution of these Semina and so upon the whole account it is fortuitous 2. Some assign a natural determined Cause of the first production of Mankind namely the due preparation of the fat and slimy Earth after a long incubation of Waters and some admirable Conjunction of 〈◊〉 the Heavenly and Planetary Bodies in some certain Period of Time at a long distance from us which as naturally and necessarily produced the first Couples of Mankind and likewise of other perfect Animals as necessarily and naturally as the return of the Vernal Sun produceth divers sorts of Insects which though they are called sponte orientia yet they arise meerly from a Connexion of Natural Causes and the various Ferments and Dispositions of the Elementary and Positions and Influxions of the Heavenly Bodies Thus some of the Ancients and also Avicen Cardanus Caesalpinus Berogardus 3. Some of the Ancients that most truly assign the Origination of Mankind to the most High Intelligent Powerful Beneficent Being viz. Almighty God and the Beneplacitum and Fiat of his Omnipotent Will as Zeno Citicus And thus their differences arose touching the Cause of this Origination As to the second namely the different Manner of the Origination of Mankind Censorinus ubi supra Euseb praepar Evang. lib. 1. cap. 7 8 9. and others give it as followeth 1. The Opinion of Anaximander Videri sibi ex aqua terráque calefactos exortos esse sive pisces sive piscibus simillima animalia in his homines crevisse foetúsque ad pubertatem intus retentos tum demum ruptis illis viros mulierésque qui jam se alere possent processisse 2. The Opinion of Empedocles and Parmenides Primò membra singula ex terra quasi praegnante edita deinde coisse effecisse solidi hominis materiam igni simul humori permixtam 3. The Opinion of Democritus and Epicurus Ex aqua limóque primùm homines procreatos viz. uteros limo calefacto radicibus terrae cohaerentes primùm increvisse infantibus ex se editis ingenitum lactis humorem natura ministrante praebuisse quos ita educatos adultos genus hominum propagasse 4. The Opinion of Zeno Citicus the Founder of the Stoical Sect Principium humano generi ex novo mundo constitutum putavit primósque homines ex solo adminiculo divini ignis id est Dei providentia genitos Ovid though he were a wanton Poet and his Metamorphosis full of Fictions yet in the Description of the Creation he hath out-done many of the more serious Philosophers and I believe was not only acquainted with the Mosaical History but with most of those Writings that were extant in that time containing the Origination of the World and Mankind though he mingle his own Fancies with what he so learned He gives us an account of the Origination of Man Lib. 2 Fab. 2. and of other Animals Ibid. Fab. 8. Of the former Natus homo est sive hunc divino semine fecit Ille Opifex rerum mundi melioris origo Sive recens tellus seductaque nuper ab alto Aethere cognati retinebat semina eoeli Quam natus Iapeto mistam fluvialibus undis Finxit in effigiem moderantum cunct a deorum Touching the latter the Origination of other Animals after the Deluge he gives an elegant Description and from the Instance of the Productions after the Inundation of Nilus Ex eodem corpore sapè Altera pars vivit rudis est pars altera tellus So after the Flood by the moisture of the Ground and heat of the Sun Tellus Intulenta recenti Solibus aethereis altóque recanduit aestu Reddidit innumeras species As to the Origination of brute Animals he seems to ascribe the same in effect as happens in the equivocal production of Insects But as to the Origination of Man he seems to agree with the Stoicks but gives thereof a fuller Explication namely 1. That it was a Seminal Production and not so fortuitous as that of Animals 2. That these Semina humanae naturae were either the immediate Productions of the great Opifex rerum or at least were left in the Earth by the Celestial Nature while it stood mingled therewith in massa Chaotica By which means it seems he thought not that the production of Mankind was by a gradual process and maturation in the Earth and from it like the ordinary course of the Formative process in utero matris in the ordinary course of Generation but by a shorter and more compendious Method For according to the ancient Mythology Japetus signified the Heaven and Japeti satus or Prometheus the Son of the Heaven the Divine Providence which Almighty God exercised by the instrumentality of the Heavenly Motions And the Ancients attributed the Formation or Configuration of the humane Body in its first original to this Divine Providence whereby those Seminal Particles before described being taken and included in convenient Elementary Matter the whole Composition was by the Divine Providence moulded up into the humane Shape and Consistency in its first Origination This was that Notion that divers of the Ancients and Ovid out of them had concerning the first Origination of Mankind vide Caelium Rhodogin l. 7. cap. 19 20. and seems to have some analogy with that Hypothesis of Plato in his Timaeus hereafter mentioned Thus we have an account of the Opinions 1. Of the Pythagorean Philosophers 2. Of the old Academicks 3. Of the Peripateticks all seeming to agree in the Supposition of the Eternity of the World 4. Of the Epicureans under which I include that of Anaximander and Empedocles differing only in the modus 5. Of the Stoicks which give a true Account both of the Origination of Mankind and of the Manner of it where I have been the longer because it is a Key to all that follows and gives us a Scheme of it These several Opinions and the Authors and Assertors thereof I shall here farther illustrate and examin 1. Touching the Opinion of the Pythagoreans because we have nothing extant of his writing I can say little more touching his Opinion though some suppose he was not of Opinion that the World or Mankind was Eternal 2. Touching Plato it is true he seems very various and Poetical in his writing and by reason of the Method of his Discourses by way of Dialogues it is hard to determin what his Opinion was concerning the Eternity of the World or of the Generations of Mankind In the beginning of his third Book de Legibus but especially in the middle of his sixth under the Persons of Atheniensis hospes and Clinias he intimates his Opinion of the Eternity of the World and Mankind Athen. Scire omnes oportet hominum generationem vel nullum prorsus unquam initium habuisse neque terminum habiturum sed fuisse omninò semper fore aut si coepit inaestimabili ante nos temporis magnitudine incepisse Clin. Plané And again in his Menexemus under
enim orbis parte accidit eo modo animaliae creari I have transcribed it at large as Eusebius did before me Lib. 1. Praepar because it contains a large and full Exposition of the Hypotheses of those Philosophers that thus suppose an Origination of Mankind and that by a spontaneous Production In these precedent Opinions of Anaximander Empedocles Epicurus and the Egyptians there is something that agrees with that Truth that I have asserted namely The Origination of Mankind ex non genitis And for this purpose these Instances are especially given by me But there is something that I shall in what follows impugn namely The Method or Manner of such Productions which according to these Mens Opinions is either purely Casual as Epicurus and his followers held or at least Natural and Necessary as Anaximander Empedocles and some of the loose passages of Aristotle seem to import viz. by some great Conjunction of the Heavenly Bodies and some great Natural Mutation in the Elementary World 5. I now come to the farther Examination of the Hypothesis of the Stoicks who also agree in this main Truth That Mankind had an Original ex non genitis and the Founder of that Sect hath given a rational and true Method thereof namely That this Origination was by the Power and Will of Almighty God But when those of this Sect came to give a more particular Explication of the Manner of this Production they seem to differ Tully was generally well inclined to the Stoical Sect yet sometimes he is a Stoick sometimes an Academick sometimes an Epicurean and indeed in some of his Discourses which he hath digested in Dialogues he seems to be every thing In his first Book de Legibus he hath this passage touching the Origination of Man Nam cum de natura omni quaeritur disputari solent nimirum ista perpetuis cursibus conversionibus coelestibus extitisse quandam materiam serendi generis humani quod sparsum in terras atque satum divino auctum sit animorum munere Nam quod aliquibus cohaerent homines è mortali genere sumserunt quae fragilia essent caduca animum esse ingeneratum à Deo ex quo verè vel agnatio nobis cum coelestibus vel genus vel stirps appellari potest Itaque ex tot generibus nullum est animal prater hominem quod habeat notitiam aliquam Dei de ipsÃsque hominibus nullagens est neque tam immansueta neque tam fera quae non etiam si ignoret qualem habere Deum deceat tamen habendum sciat Ex quo efficitur illud ut is agnoscat Deum qui unde ortus sit quasi recordetur ac noscat By this he supposeth that there might be as it were a Prosemination of the Humane Fabrick by the Conversion of the Heavens and then the same were stored with Souls immediately produced by Almighty God Seneca following the received Opinion of the Vicissitudes of the Destruction of the inferior World by Floods and Conflagrations and the Restitutions thereof by the Power of God though he seems to admit Eternal Vicissitudes of such Making and Unmaking and Restitutions of the inferior World in the latter end of his third Book of Natural Questions before cited Sect. II. Cap. 9. speaking of the Destruction of the World by Universal Floods Qua ratione inquis eadem qua conflagratio futura est utrumque fit cum Deo visum ordiri meliora vetera finire aqua ignis terrenis dominantur ex his ortus ex his interitus And in the end of that Book Nec ea semper licentia undis erit sed peracto exitio generis humani extinctisque pariter feris in quarum homines ingenia transierant iterum aquas terra sorbebit natura pelagus stare aut intra terminos suos furere coget rejectus è nostris sedibus in sua secreta pelletur Oceanus antiquus ordo revocabitur omne ex integro animal generabitur dabitúrque terris homo inscius scelerum melioribus auspiciis natus sed illis quoque innocentia non durabit nisi dum novi sunt And with this seems to accord the Judgment of Plutarch 2. Symposiac quaest 3. and out of him Macrob. in 7. Saturnal cap. ult where in the dissertation of that seeming ludicrous Question Ovúmne prius an Gallina the Disputant for the latter concludes Natura primum singula animalia perfecta formavit deinde perpetuam legem dedit ut continuaretur propagatione successio And Plutarch Probabile est primum ortum ex terra temporis perfectione absolutum fuisse nihÃlque indigentem hujusmodi instrumentis receptaculis vasis qualia nunc ob imbecillitatem natura parat machinatur parientibus This was the Sentence and Judgment of the Stoical Philosophers touching the Origination of perfect Animals and Men. Upon all which foregoing Discourse it should seem That the generality of the Learned World rather supposed an Origination than an Eternity of Mankind and this upon two great Motives 1. A Tradition which seems generally to have been derived unto Mankind from the first Parents thereof and so generally believed and entertained 2. A great congruity of Reason that attended this Hypothesis and an extrication thereby of the Minds of considering Men from infinite difficulties which the Supposition of Eternal Generations doth necessarily produce I should now come to those Philosophers and Learned Men of later Ages Avicen Cardan Pomponatius Cisalpinus Berogardus and others which nevertheless I shall referr to the next Chapter to be examined to another purpose CAP. II. Touching the various Methods of the Origination of Mankind HItherto I have endeavoured to shew those Evidences both of Reason and of Fact which seem to assert the Origination of Mankind and I have concluded with that last in the two precedent Chapters namely The Opinion and Perswasion of the Unlearned and Learned part of Mankind that have supposed such an Origination of Mankind the weight or authority of which rests in the consideration of those Means whereby this Opinion or Perswasion hath been ingenerated in Mankind For the Opinions or Perswasions of Men concerning especially a Matter of Fact have their weight or authority in argumentation from that Principle or Motive of such a Perswasion and this I have reduced to one or both of these 1. Some Tradition that hath been derived and derived in probability from the first Parents of Mankind that best knew their own Inception which hath since accordingly prevailed almost in all Places and Ages 2. The congruity of such a Supposition to Reason and the Solution of those Difficulties which must needs arise from an Eternal Succession of Mankind And this Motive of this Perswasion though it began with the more thinking and considering sort of Mankind yet from them hath been insinuated and derived unto the rest of Mankind and by them entertained as consonant to the common Reason of Humane Nature I have laid the weight of my reasoning touching the
seems a Fiction utterly inconsonant to the whole Method of Nature in relation to Mankind For what Person or what Age or Country ever saw any such kind of Production as this any such folliculi humani foetus Or that ever credibly heard of any Man conceived nisi in utero muliebri abating some of those Fables that Fortunius Licetus delivers in his First Book cap. 28. or such as have been begotten by an abominable conjunction Again how is it possible that an Infant whose Nature cannot be kept alive one moment sine calore uterino should be preserved in Bladders adhering to the cold Earth Or that that Infant who by the very course of Nature cannot be supported without the care and oversight of others for divers Months nay some Years after his Birth should be able sub dio Jove frigido to preserve it self Again who ever saw or credibly heard of those venae lacteae arising in the Earth and yielding a sutable nutriment to a new born Foetus These Suppositions must withall suppose a total Inversion of the Course and Nature of Things quite from what they now are and in all Ages have been which though it is true those that admit a higher Principle than Nature do and may with sufficient warrant and consonancy to their Hypothesis admit yet is utterly unreasonable for such a Philosopher who not only with some of the ancient Peripateticks excludes any Divine Providence below the Moon but wholly exterminates it ultra flammantis moenia Coeli And this is all I say at present touching that Opinion which supposeth a meer casual Production of Mankind There will be something in the ensuing Chapter which though it be applied to the Imaginary Hypothesis of the Natural Production of Mankind yet will be of use in relation to this Hypothesis of the Casual Production of Mankind CAP. III. Touching the Second Opinion of those that assert the Natural Production of Mankind ex non genitis or the possibility thereof THe second Opinion is that by a certain kind of natural Connexion of Causes Mankind not only may be but in their first Origination were produced ex non genitis Which though for distinctions sake from the ordinary course of Generation we may call spontaneous or accidental yet the same if it were true were truly natural and deduced by a certain Chain of Natural Causes as the yearly production of Insects ex putri materia or as the Mice or Rats in Egypt are supposed by Diodorus Siculus to be produced after the decrease of Nilus in Egypt This seems to be the Opinion of some of the Ancients that yet subscribed not to the Hypothesis of Epicurus touching the casual production of things by the uncertain concourse of Atoms as of Anaximander and some others which I shall not need here again to repeat and the same Opinion hath been asserted by others but with these two Correctives 1. That the same is no casual and fortuitous Production by the meer casual conjunction of Atomical Bodies as Epicurus would have the first Semina at least of Men and Animals to be made up but by an ordinary natural and necessary connexion of Natural Causes and Effects 2. That yet many of them blame the Ancients as being too venturous in telling us the particular Method or Order of these Productions out of Folliculi or Cortices spinosi or Fishes because that is not a thing discoverable by Experience or Natural Light yet herein they agree That this Production may be and hath been a Natural Production ex non genitis though the particular Manner of it is not so easie to be certainly explained Hippocrates the great Physician seems to have inclined to this Perswasion for Sect. 3. de Carnibus he writes to this purpose Quod Calidum vocamus id mihi immortale esse videtur cunctáque intelligere videre audire sentiréque omnia tum praesentia tum futura cujus pars maxima cum omnia perturbata essent in supremum ambitum secessit quod mihi veteres videntur Aethera appellasse altera pars locum infimum sortita Terra quidem appellatur frigida sicca multásque motiones habens in qua multum sanè calidi inest tertia verò pars medium aeris locum nacta est calidum quid existens quarta pars terrae proximum locum obtinens humidissima crassissima His igitur in orbem agitatis cum turbata esset calidi pars magna alias in terra relicta est partim quidem magna partim verò minor alias etiam valde parva sed in multas partes divisa temporis successu resiccata terra ista in ea tanquam in membranis contenta circum se putredines excitans longo tempore incalescens quod quidem ex terrae putredine pinguedinem sortitum est minimum humidi habens id citissimè ossa produxit And then assigns the Methods of conformation of the Nerves Veins Arteries and the rest of the Body in conformity to this Supposition So this great Physician and Naturalist delivers his Opinion Wherein we may observe that he takes the Hot or Fiery Nature to be God knowing and understanding all things which seems to be the ancient Error of the Eastern Countries especially the Persians Yet this is observable 1. That he supposeth an Origination of Mankind after the Formation of the World 2. Though the Formative Process of Mankind seems in his Opinion to be in a sort Natural yet he supposeth it not purely so but a Production by those fiery Particles which were Particles of a Divine Intelligent Nature And though he be mistaken in the Method of the Origination of Mankind as shall be shewn yet he supposeth it Opus intelligentis Naturae agentis per scientiam Avicen in the second Book of his Metaphysicks cap. 15. delivers his Opinion Possibile esse hominem generari ex terra sed convenientiùs in matrice which Opinion Averroes his Country-man perstringeth with some indignation Commentar 8. Physicor cap. 5. Iste sermo ab homine qui dat se scientiae est valde fatuus his Reasons I confess are such as may not be admitted for being a rigid Assertor of the Eternity of the World in the state it now stands he formeth his Reasons against the Opinion of Avicen principally if not altogether upon that Hypothesis Cardanus in his ninth Book de Animalibus quae ex Putredine generantur discoursing about Locusts hath this passage Et non solum ea minuta sed majora animalia è putredine imo omnia credendum est originem ducere cum jam de Muribus constet Pisces in aquis recentibus sponte generentur but his severe Corrector Julius Scaliger in Exercit. 193. calls it Illa impia nefaria vox Si Bos aliquando ex putri ortus est cur post hominum memoriam ex ejusmodi procreatione nullus exstitit Caesalpinus in his fifth Book Quaestionum Peripateticarum cap. 1. undertakes an entire Defence of the
it is expresly affirmed that both Sexes in distinct Persons were then created Male and female created he them and such transpositions are not unusual neither in the Holy History nor in other Histories The first Chapter gives the brief and orderly Relation of the whole Series of Times and Things done in them and the second Chapter is only a fuller and more explicit Declaration of some things that are briefly and compendiously delivered in the first Chapter as appears not only by the Relation of the Formation of Eve but divers other passages relating to what was transacted in the first Chapter 7. The Formation of Man was the last Work of the Creation the last Work of the last Day and the Reasons of this Order seem to be these 1. Because in the Method of the Creation of Sublunary Natures Almighty God proceeded from the less to the more perfect and curious Parts of the visible Creation as first he made Vegetables then Fishes and Birds then Brutes and Man in the last place as the most perfect and containing not only the Faculties of Vegetables and Animals and that in a more perfect nature but also a superadded intellectual spiritual Soul So he was the noblest part of the Creation at least of this lower World 2. Because Mankind should be furnished to his hand with all things convenient and useful to his existence and operation as the Grass was provided before the Brutes were created so before the Creation of Mankind Fruits of the Earth were provided for his food and delight a Paradise for his entertainment and employment of his Senses and Industry Idleness being not indulged even in Paradise and the goodly Furniture of the visible World both Celestial and Sublunary to raise his Admiration Contemplation and Delight 3. Because God Almighty intended him a liberal Patrimony which he would furnish and compleat in all its numbers before Man was created and as soon as he had created him gave him this inferior World as his Usufructuary and Steward at least but yet withall gave him a subordinate dominion of that whereof he made him his Steward and this great Benefactor prepared this Gift of this inferior Terrestrial World to be ready for his Creature Man's reception as soon as he had a Being and accordingly gave it him with all its Furniture Gen. 1.28 29. 8. That Man was by Almighty God in his first Creation in a state of perfect Felicity and Immortality but under a condition of Obedience to the Divine Will Command and Law that he had implanted in his Mind and Conscience certain Principles of Moral Goodness and Righteousness which are the Original of those common Notions of Good and Evil as so many secret Byasses and Inclinations to the observance of the Good and avoidance of the Evil. And as even the inferior Animals have implanted in them secret Instincts and Tendences for the preservation and advance of their sensible individual and specifical natures so these implanted Notions and Moral Inclinations in the Mind of Man were therein lodged to guide and lead him in a conformity to his excellent Constitution and for the attainment of an intellectual and eternal Good and these though the vigour and brightness of them were much abated by his Fall yet were transmitted with his nature to his Descendents And this is the Original of those common Notions which yet remain in the Humane Nature though refracted and abated by the Fall of Man this is that common Light and Law of Nature which to this day in some measure prevails in the generality of Mankind to the Acknowledgment Adoration and Reverence of a Deity and Moral Righteousness this is that Law of Nature mentioned by the Apostle Rom. 1. written in the Hearts of Men wherby they do by Nature the things contained in the Law But of this I shall write somewhat fuller in the ensuing Chapter 9. Besides this Moral inscribed Law God Almighty for the tryal of Man's Obedience gave him a positive Law prohibiting the eating of the forbidden Fruit under pain of temporal and eternal Death and Curse and Man was left in the hands of his own liberty to obey or disobey it 10. That Man being left to the free liberty of his own Will though furnished with sufficient abilities to have obeyed Almighty God yet by the temptation of Satan his own sensual appetite and ambitious affectation violated his Maker's Law and broke that Condition upon which much of his Perfection and Happiness was conferred upon him and although he retained his Essentials namely his Essential Constitution this Spirituality and Immortality of his Soul his Faculties of Understanding and Will he thereby incurred these unhappy deprivations 1. A loss of the immortal state of his Composition being now obnoxious to the separation of Soul and Body 2. A very great abatement of that temporal Felicity he had in this Life and obnoxious to the everlasting separation from God with the Death of the Soul 3. An abatement and diminution of those Habits of Knowledge and Rectitude of Soul and a great weakning and decay of the vigour and activity of connatural implanted Notions or Inclinations 4. A great disorder in the due subordination of his Faculties and a great confusion and corruption prevailing upon his noble Faculties and weakning disordering and abasing them 5. An impair of that Sovereignty and Dominion over the Creatures who rebelled against Man as soon as he forsook his Maker 6. Diseases Disorders Weaknesses Sicknesses Harbingers and Forerunners of Death attaquing his Bodily Constitution 7. A transmission of these Hereditary Imperfections and Decays to his Posterity And herein and hereby we have an Account of that great Quaesitum among the Learned Heathen where yet for want of this Discovery by the Holy Scriptures they could never attain the full knowledge and reason namely the Original of Sin and Evil and those many Corruptions Defections and Miseries of Mankind And thus much concerning the Divine History of the Creation and Defection of Man CAP. IV. The Reasonableness of this Hypothesis of the Origination of the World and particularly of the Humane Nature and the great Advantages it hath above all other Hypotheses touching the same THat the World had a beginning of its Being at least in that order and consistence that it now holds I have shewed in the beginning of this Book Again if there could be any imaginable doubt or question whether the great Integrals of the World were eternal and without beginning yet I have shewed that Mankind or the successive Generations thereof ex ante genitis is in Nature and Reason impossible and in Fact and Experience apparently improbable and therefore that there were some common Parents of Mankind who had their beginning of existence and that in some other way than they are now produced All that have supposed an Origination of Mankind ex non genitis have admitted something either of Matter analogous to it out of which Mankind hath had such his Origination