in my soul a knowledge of instinct nor any other I cannot tell if you are satisfied Arist But little truly Theod. Shall I tell you why you are not well satisfied 'T is because Erastus hath made a clear and evident answer to an Objection that was not so If you clearly understood what you object Erastus would answer you both clearly and quickly If hereafter you desire to receive from him more satisfaction than you have had hitherto consider well what you intend to ask him He cannot answer you speedily and clearly when he doth not understand you and you do not even understand your self He uses all his endeavours not to answer but when he hath consulted inward truth and had its answer but it never answers him when he doth not know what he asks Yet you would have him give you an answer and that speedy too If he made you any he would deceive you for it would be his answer and not Truths you should receive I will still put some questions to him that you may observe the method I think is proper to go about it and that his answers may instruct you of the Truth we seek I have obliged my self Erastus to prove the existence of God by the effects which fire seems to produce in us but to do it 't is of the greatest consequence to know that 't is not the soul that causes in her self her own sensations See if you have not still some other proof I do not say more solid but more able to convince Aristarchus Think on it Why do you sometimes suffer a pain Do you delight in it Erast I understand you Theodorus I am not to my self the cause of my happiness nor of my misery If I was the cause of the pleasure I feel seeing I love it I should always produce some in me And on the contrary if I was the cause of the pain I suffer seeing I hate it I would never produce it in my self I perceive that there is a superiour cause that acts on me and may make me happy or unhappy Since I cannot act on my self and that bodies produce not in me the sensations which I feel as we said just now Arist You have it not right Erastus you love your Body you either know or feel that there happens some good or ill to it you either rejoyce or are afflicted at it The one is your pleasure and the other your pain Erast What ever Aristarchus says to me puzzles me and throws me into darkness I beg of you Theodorus to disperse it Theod. I do not wonder at it Erastus Whatever he tells you is false or full of obscurity yet seems probable enough Will you never retire within your self Aristarchus How can you conceive I pray you that Erastus loves his body Whatever is within Erastus that is able to love is better than the body of Erastus Erastus knows it His Body cannot act on his Soul he knows it his Body cannot be his Good he knows that too it cannot be properly said then that he loves it But here lies the riddle Erastus loves pleasure more than his body and he resents pleasure when his body is well dispos'd 'T is that obliges him to mind his body and to defend it when any thing offends it Do you think the Drunkards love their body when they gorge it with Wine Do you think the Libertines love their body when they ruine their health Is it not rather because they love the present pleasure Do those who mortifie their body love it when they tear it or do you believe they hate it What is it then they love but the pleasures they hope one day to enjoy What do they hate on the contrary but the everlasting torments they fear to suffer Thus you may see that Erastus doth not cause in himself his pleasure because he finds or is sensible that the body he loves is well dispos'd For he doth not even know that his body is in a good state by any other thing than by the pleasure he hath by it It is true that when we feel by pleasure or by pain that our body is well or ill dispos'd we are affected with joy or grief but if you think on it seriously you will easily perceive that this grief and joy that are the effects of our knowledge differ mightily from those antecedent pains and pleasures of which we speak Therefore they must have some other cause than our selves Do you grant it Arist I am now convinced of it Theod. Now this cause must be superior and always present to us since it acts within us This cause can punish or reward us make us happy or unhappy since pleasure delights us and pain displeases and makes us uneasie If then this Cause were God we should know that God doth not only rule the motions of the heavens But that he hath a hand in our concerns rules whatsoever passes in us and that in order to our happiness we ought to fear him love him and follow his orders For since he makes continual applications to us he requires something from us and if we do not perform what he requires from us 't is not likely that he should reward us and make us happy Arist I own it But how would you prove that it is not some Angel or Demon that hath the Government of us and acts on us How would you prove that there is a Being infinitely powerful and who includes in his being all the perfections imaginable This seems to me very difficult Theod. It is difficult by the method I have taken but when we acknowledge a superior power that acts in us we have not much difficulty to consider him as Soveraign and to allow him all the perfections of which we have some idea Nevertheless I must endeavour to convince you fully Mind me also Enastus As soon as we are prick'd with a Thorn we feel pain This pain doth not proceed from the Thorn nor from the Soul you grant all this it proceeds then from a superior power This power ought to know the moment when the Thorn pricks our body that he may in the same moment produce the pain in our soul But how shall he know it Think on it He cannot know it from us for we know nothing of it yet Nor from the Thorn for the Thorn cannot act on the spirit of that power nor represent it self to him for the Thorn is neither visible nor intelligible by it self there being no relation between bodies and intelligent beings Whence then shall this superior power learn the moment when the Thorn pricks us If you tell me that he shall know it from some other intelligent being I will ask you the same questions of the second intelligent being and if you fly to a third you will get no more by it Yet in the very instant when we are pricked we feel pain The superior cause must then have learnt that the Thorn pricks us without the help
Erastus all Spirits are essentially united to God nor can they be entirely separated from him without ceasing to be But what ought to be their Union with God that they may be as happy and perfect as it is possible for them to be Erast It is plain that this Union ought to be the narrowest that can be for none but God is the sovereign good of Spirits Theod. Thus Erastus we become more perfect the greater and the stronger the Union which we have with God is The damned have but just so much Union with God as is necessary to keep them in being But the blessed are united to God in so perfect a manner that they do not only receive from him a being but also its perfection Let us see therefore Erastus wherein consists this kind of Union with God whereby we receive all the perfection whereof we are capable in this life Erast I have learn'd in the Conferences which I have had with you and by the perusal of the Book of the Inquiry after Truth Chap. 8. of the last Book that God alone is the true cause and true mover as well of Bodies as of Spirits and that natural causes are only occasional causes which determin the true cause to act in consequence of his eternal Will I am persuaded that I can be united to the Bodies that are about me and to that which I animate and move only because I am united to God Dialog 1. for all Bodies cannot by themselves act in my Soul nor make themselves visible to her as she likewise hath not by herself the strength to move any Body since she doth not even know what must be done to stir an Arm. Thus Theodorus if I speak to you and understand you if my Spirit unites itself to yours or my Body to your Body God alone is the true cause of it he is the Bond of all the Unions which I am able to have with all his Works I can be immediately united to none but him since none but he can immediately act in me and I only act through his means But Theodorus I may be united to God and fix my self to him and in that have no relation to any other but him and I may also be united to God with relation to some other thing but God For when I think on abstracted Idea's of things I am united to God by my thought since I see those things only through the means of the Union that I have with God * Dial. 3. But this Union doth not bind me to Creatures On the other side when I feel sensible good it is only by the Union that I have with God and because he acts in me * Dial. 2. For all Bodies are insensible by themselves but this second Union which I have with God fastens me to sensible things for God unites among themselves all his Works and he alone can be the Bond of all Unions I therefore believe that our Union with God upholds our Being and that we should not exist without it But I am persuaded that the Union which fastens us to none but God and hath relation to none but him is that which gives the utmost perfection of which we are capable Theod. Do you not remember Erastus that the Author of the Book of the Inquiry after Truth demonstrates That our Senses never represent things to us as they are in themselves but only according to their relation to our selves and that therefore all sensible knowledg is useful for the preservation and conveniency of our lise but altogether unprofitable for the perfection of the Mind and the knowledg of Truth Erast I do remember it Theodorus and shall never forget it for it was that which persuaded me that of all our Knowledg and Notions none but those that are purely intellectual make us more perfect and indeed we can be said to see in God things as they are only through those forts of Notions When we have a sentiment of things we do not see them in themselves we have no knowledg of them and even in reality they are not the sensible Objects that we do feel but our very selves for our Sensations belong to us and not to those Objects to which we generally use to attribute them How then could our Senses lead us to the knowledg of Truth since we do not know Truth but when we see things such as they are Theod. If you remember also what that Book saith of the Errors of our Imagination and Passions you ought to grant that not only the Imagination and Senses hinder us from discovering Truth but also that our Passions carry and remove us from the true Good In a word that all the thoughts and motions of the Soul that excite themselves in us by reason of some changes that happen in our Body disunite us from God to unite us to Bodies For after all it is necessary that the Soul who ought to mind the preservation of her Body be warn'd to think on it when some new Accident happens to it Erast I grant all these things Theod. Let us suppose then that there never happens any change in the Brain but that the Soul receives some thought which takes it off from the light of truth and the love of true good and disunites her from God to unite her to Bodies If it is certain that the perfection of the mind consists in the knowledg of truth and in the love of true good in one word in an Union with God which hath relation to none but him I ask you In the state which we are in wherein we cannot hinder the communication of motion nor the bodies that are about us from penetrating and agitating ours what are we to do to tend continually towards our perfection do not consult the Gospel now consult only your reason Erast It is plain that we ought by flight to avoid being acted by those Bodies that are about us that we ought to mortify our Senses and keep shut as much as we can all the passages at which sensible Objects come in and disturb our Reason When we cannot stay the motion of those Bodies that are capable of offending us we never fail to step aside to avoid being struck by them Thus when we are not able to stop the action of sensible Objects we ought to avoid them by flight in the same manner as we use to preserve our selves from contagious distempers by change of Air. Let an Insect but prick us we immediately lose sight of the most solid truths let a Fly but buz in our Ears and our mind will be presently fill'd with darkness What shall we do then to hold this truth which still gets away and preserve this light which vanishes from us Must we kill all the Insects and drive away all the Flyes this can never be We must then remove somewhere else for after all it is impossible that the Sensations that divide your thinking Faculty should
is convincing and taste alone hath made all mankind agree in that If the mind saw in bodies but what is in them without having a sentiment of what is not in them their use would be very painful and inconvenient to us for who would take the pains to examine with care the nature of all things that are about us to cleave to or leave them What should tell us when we ought to sit down to dinner and when rise from it What should place us at a reasonable distance from the fire And should we not often doubt whether we burnt or warm'd our selves In short would it not happen sometimes that we should be the cause of our own death by Inadvertency by Grief or even out of desire of making near discoveries in Anatomies Therefore it is most reasonable that God incline us to seek the good of the body and shun its contrary by the foregoing sensations of Pleasure and Pain For after all if men were oblig'd to examine the Configuration of a Fruit those of all the parts of their bodies and the different relations which result from the one to the other to be able to judge if in the present heat of their blood and a thousand other dispositions of their body this Fruit were good to nourish them 't is obvious that such things as are altogether unworthy of the application of their minds would wholly fill its capacity and that also unprofitably enough since they would not be able to preserve themselves any considerable time by that only way Arist I must confess this conduct is very wise and most worthy its Author But yet we feel some pleasure in the use of sensible things why then must we not love them Theod. Because they are not lovely you are a rational creature and your reason doth not represent to you bodies as your good If sensible objects did contain in themselves what you feel when you use them if they were the true cause of your Pleasure and Grief you might love and fear them but your reason doth not tell you so as I yesterday prov'd it to you You may use them but not love them you may eat of a fruit but not settle your Love upon it Likewise you ought to avoid Fire or a Sword but ought not to fear them * See the 8th Chapter of the 6th Book of the Inquiry after Truth We must love and fear what is able to cause pleasure and pain that 's a common notion which I do not contradict But we must take heed not to confound the true efficient cause with the occasional I say it once more we must love and fear the efficient cause of pleasure and of pain and we may seek or avoid their occasional causes provided we do not do it against the positive orders of that efficient cause and do not force it in consequence of its natural Laws to work in us what is against its precepts And we must not imitate the voluptuous who make God an instument of their sensuality and oblige him in consequence of his first will to reward them with a sentiment of pleasure in the very moment when they offend him for that 's the greatest Injustice can be committed Believe me Aristarchus the good of the body cannot be belov'd but by Instinct but the good of the mind can and ought to be belov'd by reason The good of the body can be belov'd but by Instinct and with a blind Love because the mind cannot even perceive so clearly that the good of the body is a real good for the mind cannot see what is not It cannot clearly perceive that Bodies are above the Spirit that they can act in it punish or reward it and render it more happy and more perfect but the good of the mind ought to be lov'd by reason God will be lov'd with a Love of choice with a reasonable Love a meritorious Love a Love worthy of him and worthy of us we see clearly that God is our good that he is above us that he can act in us that he can reward us and render us not only more happy but also more perfect than we are is it not this sufficient to make a Spirit love God And thus we see that God was not to make man love him by the instinct of Pleasure when he created him he was not to make use of this kind of art nor implore any force against the Liberty of a reasonable creature to lessen the merit of his Love For the first man ought to have adhered to God and could do it without the help of a preingaging pleasure though now Pleasure is commonly necessary to remedy the blindness which sin has brought upon us and to withstand the continual attacks of Concupiscence against our Reason I 'le say it again Aristarchus that you may remember it It was necessary that the antecedent pleasure and not the light of reason should incline us to the good of the body since reason cannot even represent to its self the bodies that are about us as a good But there was no need that God should make use of preingaging pleasure as of a kind of art to cause himself to be beloved by the first man since it was sufficient that he should enlighten his reason he being the sole and only good of Spirits Arist I grant all these things are very well imagin'd but there is still in your System a difficulty that puzzles me For methinks you confound Concupiscence with the institution of Nature and making God the Author of the pleasure we feel in the use of sensible things you also make him Author of Concupiscence since it is nothing else but that pleasure considered as striving against our reason Theod. This institution of Nature is thus Aristarchus God hath made the Soul and the Body of man and 't was his pleasure for the preservation of his work that as often as there should be in the body some certain motions there should result in the Soul some certain sentiments provided those motions did communicate themselves as far as a certain part of the Brain which I shall not specifie but because the will of God is efficacious there never hapned any motions in that part of the Brain but there followed some sensations and because the will of God is unchangeable this was not changed by the sin of the first man Yet as before man had sinned and whilst all things were in perfect good order it was not just that the body should hinder the Spirit from thinking on what is desired It follows that man had necessarily such a power over his body that he did as it were separate the principal part of his brain from the rest of his body and did hinder its usual communication with the sensitive Nerves as often as he desired to apply himself to truth or to some other thing than the good of the body And by those means it was in Adam's power first to make use
because he made us he will not have us such as we have made our selves far from this as such he cannot suffer us near him and always removes us from him Yet Aristarchus it is true that God is too just and loves himself too much not to desire to be beloved and to remove positively from him creatures whom he only made for himself for sensible pleasure or pain removes from God but indirectly and by our own fault First because being able to find out by reason that bodies are incapable of creating in us either pleasure or pain we ought neither to fear nor love them but God alone who hath power to cause these sensations in us When something wounds us we ought to fear God and when our senses are any ways pleased we ought to think on him and fear and love him in all things For it is a common notion that the true cause of pleasure and of pain ought to be loved and feared But our ignorance of the actual presence and continual operation of this true cause of our sensations makes us love and fear bodies imagining them to be capable to act in us Now this ignorance is not something positive caused in us by God it is nothing It is true that not to love or fear bodys it is absolutely necessary we should have a very clear and lively knowledge of the presence and continual operation of God upon us for the knowledge which Philosophy gives us of him doth not strongly enough dispose us to cleave incessantly to him But what can be concluded from God's not causing himself to be known enough without his grace to be Loved and feared in all things but that men have offended and displeased him God doth not therefore remove us positively from him when he causes some pleasure or pain in us by the means of bodys since we ought and may then think on him rather than on those bodys Now I come to the second reason Seeing we have a body it is necessary we should have notice of what passes in it It is necessary that at the appearance of objects we have sentiments moving us to cleave to or shun them It is also necessary that these sentiments be preingaging for some reasons that I have mentioned elsewhere So God doth not positively remove us from him when he causes in us our sentiments since on the contrary it is the shortest means to warn us of the things that are necessary for the preservation of life without turning us away from him But those preingaging Sentiments ought not to disturb us nor oppose our Reason and seeing they do it is evident as I have already said it 2d Dial. That Man doth not deserve God should interrupt the Law of the communication of motions for his sake but this doth not imply that God really pushes us back from him In short men see all things in God their immediate object is the intelligible world and the very substance of God but they not thinking on him at the appearance of sensible objects imagine that some outward being altogether like the Idea they have of it acts in them Thus God moves them only towards himself since he only moves them towards what they see and not towards those things which they imagine to be external and it is only indirectly and through a mistake that they love the creatures which are neither so lovely nor such as they imagin them to be Erast You are much in the right Theodorus when you believe that the first cause of our disorders is our not having God always present to our minds and not seeing or rather not feeling him in all things For did we plainly and sensibly see that none but God really acts in us when bodies are present to our sences methinks we would fear and love none but him since we love or fear nothing but what acts in us How then could Adam estrange himself from God for he could see God in all things and had all the knowledge that was necessary to remain united to him If you do not explain how he could fall into sin perhaps Aristarchus will believe that the first man was made such as we are and that concupiscence is not so much a punishment for sin as the first institution of Nature Theod. You need not fear it Erastus he knows now that we ought not to leave a demonstrated Truth because we cannot solve some difficult Points he now sticks to what he sees But I understand what you mean and answer you thus The first man did clearly see God in all things he evidently knew that bodies could not be his true good nor properly make him in the least happy or unhappy he was fully convinc'd of God's continual operation on him but his was no sensible conviction he knew this but did not feel it on the contrary he could feel that bodies acted on him tho he could not know that they did it It is true that being endowed with reason he ought to have followed his light and not his sentiment and that he could easily have done it seeing he could stop his sentiments when he pleased being free from concupiscence However deferring too much to his sences and suffering himself by degrees to hearken to them more willingly than to God himself by reason that the sences always move pleasingly and God did not move him to hear him by preingaging pleasures which must have lessened his Freedom you easily conceive how he came to remove himself so far from God as to lose sight of him to adjoyn in will to a creature by whose means he received some satisfaction and which he might then confusedly imagin to be capable of making him as happy as the Serpent assured Eve it would For tho Adam was not attackt nor seduced by the Serpent as Eve was And Adam was not deceived 1 Tim. 2.14 Yet what God said after Adam's fall Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil Gen. 3.22 Sufficiently shows that he had some hopes of becoming happy by the means of the forbidden Fruit. Now to determine us to do a thing there is no absolute necessity that we be fully persuaded that our Motive is just and reasonable The hopes of a great benefit tho never so small are capable of making us do much So we may suppose that Adam was so strongly applied to sensible Objects and consequently so far removed out of God's presence that the least hope the slightest doubt and the most confused sentiment of so great an advantage as that of being like God hath been capable of moving him to do a thing which he did not perhaps think very sinful at the time of his Fall All finite Spirits must be subject to Error and Sin principally if they resent preingaging pleasures which incline them to seek things that they ought not to love and to shun what they ought not to fear For no finite Spirit can actually resent pleasure without
Injustice My Being is in a manner the Being of God and my Time is properly God's Time for I am more God's than my own or rather I am not at all my own nor do I subsist by my self and yet I neither live nor employ God's Time but for my self Alas how do I deceive my self O my God all that Time which I do not employ for thee I cannot be said to employ it for my self and I can neither seek nor find my self but by seeking and finding thee The Second Consideration MAN in himself is nothing but Weakness and Infirmity He cannot desire Good in general but by vertue of a continual Impression from God who does incessantly turn and force him towards himself for God is that indefinite and universal Good which comprehends all other good things Man is also not able by himself to desire any Particular Good but only so far as he is capable of determining the Impression which he receives from God Man is utterly unable to do Good but through a new supply of Grace which illuminates him by its Light and attracts him by its Sweetness for by himself he is only able to Sin He could not so much as move his Hand if God did not communicate to his Blood and to the Aliment by which he is nourished a part of that Motion which he has spread through the whole Mass of Matter and afterwards determine the Motion of the Spirits according to the different Acts of the impotent Will of Man by guiding them towards the Pipes of the Nerves which the Man himself does not so much as know A Man indeed may desire to move his Hand but 't is God alone that can and knows how to move it For if Man did not eat and if that which he eats were not digested and agitated in his Entrails and Heart to be afterwards turn'd to Blood and Spirits without expecting the Orders of his Will or if these Spirits were not guided by a knowing Hand through a Million of different Tubes it would be in vain for Man who is ignorant of his own Body to desire to put it into Motion The Elevation of the Soul to GOD. O GOD let me never forget that without thee I can neither desire nor do any thing not even so much as move the smallest Member of my Body Thou O God art all my Strength in thee do I place all my Hope and Confidence Do thou cover me with shame and confusion and fill me with inward remorse if ever I shall be guilty of so much Ingratitude and Presumption as to lift up that Arm against thee which owes even that Motion which I seem to give it rather to the invincible Power of thy Will than to the feeble Efforts of mine The Third Consideration MAN in himself is nothing but Darkness He does not produce in himself those Ideas by which he perceives all things for he is not his own Light and since Philosophy teaches me that the Objects cannot form in the Mind those Ideas by which they are represented it must be acknowledg'd that 't is God alone who enlightens us He is that great Sun which penetrates all things and fills them with his Light and that Great Master who instructs every Man that comes into the World All that we see we see in him and in him we may see all that we are capable of seeing For since God includes the Ideas or likenesses of all Beings and we also are in him for in him we live move and have our Being 't is certain that we see or may successively see all Beings in him He is that intelligible World in which all Spirits are and in which they perceive the Material World which is neither visible nor intelligible by it self The Elevation of the Soul to GOD. O GOD to whom I owe all my Thoughts thou Light of my Soul and of my Eyes without whom the Sun himself in all his Glory would be invisible to me make me ever sensible of thy Power and my Weakness thy Greatness and my Meanness thy Light and my Obscurity and in a word what thou art and what I am The Fourth Consideration MAN by himself is insensible and in a manner Dead The Body cannot act upon its own Soul A Sword indeed may pierce me and cause some alteration in the Fibres of my Flesh but I perceive clearly that it cannot make me suffer Pain A harmonious sound may first shake the Air and then the Fibres of my Brain but my Soul cannot be shaken by it My Soul is far above my Body neither is there any necessary Relation between those two Parts of my self On the other hand I find that Pleasure Pain and all my other Sensations are produced in me without any dependency upon me and oftentimes even in spight of all my endeavours to the contrary And therefore I cannot doubt but that there is a Being different from my Soul which inspires it with Life and Sensation and I know no other Power but that of God which is able to act thus upon his Creatures 'T is he then who is the Soveraign of the Soul and can only punish or reward it The Elevation of the Soul to GOD. O GOD since I live but by thee make me also to live only for thee and may I be insensible of all things but the love of thee O God make me sensible that none of all the Creatures can either hurt me or do me good That there is not one among them all that can make me feel either Pleasure or Pain That I ought neither to scar nor love them That thou alone O my God deservest both my love and fear because thou art only able to reward me with the Joys of thy Elect or punish me with the Torments of the Reprobate O my chaste Delight thou Author of Nature and cause of all the Pleasures that I feel thou knowest that these very Pleasures instead of uniting me to thee who alone canst make me sensible of them chain me like a wretched Slave to the Earth Grant I beseech thee that I may never more be so violently assaulted by them in the use of those things which thou hast forbidden Scatter a holy dread and a wholesome bitterness on the Objects of my Senses that I may be able to disengage my self from them and let me feel in thy love those unutterable delights of thy Grace which may unite me closer to thee Grant that the sweetness which I taste in loving thee may augment my love and that my love may renew the sense that I have of thy sweetness May I grow thus in Charity till at last being full of thee and empty of my self and every thing else I may re-enter and lose my self in thee O my All as in the Fountain of all Beings May that Word God shall be All in All be entirely accomplished on me and may I find my self and all things else in thee Of MAN Considered as the Son of a