Fate considered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a substance p. 303. 3. And what 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as an Energy or Act together with the etymological reasons of those sundry Appellations the Stoicks have imposed upon it p. 304. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THe second Classis of Philosophers who understood Fate to be a Constitution meerly Natural subdivided into 2 distinct Sects viz. 1 those who assert the Immutability and Inevitability of Fate 2 those who dâ—fend the possibility of its Alteration and Evasion p. 305. 2. The Leaders of the First Sect Heraclitus Empedocles Leucippus Paâ—menides and chiefly Democritus p. 306. 3. Democritus justly chaâ—ged with the patronage of Inevitable Fate and his doctrine concâ—rning it concisely râ—hearsed ibid. SECT III. ARTIC 1. THe Principal of the Second Sect Aristotle and Epicurus p. 312. 2. The Grounds of the Authors in puting the opinion both of Fates Identity with Nature and the possibility of its Mutation and Declination by either Fortuitous or Arbitrary Antagonists to Aristotle ibid. 3. Epicurus unanimoâ—s to Aristotle in the point of Physical and Eluctable Necessity p. 314. 4. The scope of Epicurus his Figment of the Declination of Atoms in the human Soul and his Accommodation thereof to the tuition of mans Liberty epitomized ibid. 5. An Exception in the name of Democritus against Epicurus Inference p. 316. 6. The justification thereof by a Respons conforme to the Physiology of Epicurus p. 317. 7. The most weighty Rejoynder of the connexion of those Causes which Avert the Mind from so well as of those which Attract it to an object to the eternal Series of Fate found too light to overbalance Epicurus his defence of mans Liberty p. 319. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. MAthematical Fate briefly described p. 321. 2. The gross Vanity thereof concealed from many Philosophers only by the cloud of Transcriptive Adhaesion to Antique Traditions ibid. 3. The Absurdity of Sydereal Necessity evicted 1 by an Argument desumed from the Hypothetical Necessity of the Matter on which Celestial Impressions are to operate 323 4. 2 By the common Experiment of the unaequal Fortunes of Twins p. 324. 5. 3 By the double Impiety inseparable from the belief thereof p. 325. CHAP. X. The Liberty of Mans Will Fortune and Fate conciliated to Providence Divine page 328. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THE intent of the chapter p. 328. 2. Democritus Fate inconsistent both to the Fundamentals of Religion and the Liberty of mans Will and therefore detested ibid. 3. Aristotle and Epicurus their Fate admitted in that it is Identical to Nature but abominated in that it clasheth with the Certitude of Divine Praescience p. 329. 4. The Platonick and Stoick Fate embraced so far as it is conceded to be a Constitution of the Divine Wisdome but abandoned in that it detracts from Divine Omnipotence ibid. 5. In what qualified sense Christianisme may tolerate the use of the term Fate ibid. SECT II. ARTIC 1. FAte and Fortune conciliated in the point of Providence Divine p. 330. 2. Plutarchs ingenious Assimilation of Fate to the Civil Law and his design therein p. 331. SCET. III. ARTIC 1. FAte concentrical to mans Elective Liberty in the point of Praedestination p. 332. 2. The Concord betwixt Theology and Philosophy in their admission of 2. orders of Causes natural viz. Necessary and Free the ground of the Affinity both betwixt the Difficulties and Solutions on either part as to the Abolition of the seeming Repugnancy between Fate and mans Free-will p. 333. 3. The First capital Difficulty desumed from Divine Praescience as stated by Divines p. 334. 4. The same as stated by Philosophers ibid. 5. The full solution of the same by vertue of the Divines Discrimination of Necessity into Absolute and Hypothetical p. 335. 6. The Solution of the same by the Philosophers proving that the definite Praenotion of future Contingents is no Cause of their definite Contingency but è contrà the definity of their Futurition the cause of their definite Praenotion p. 338. 7. The Disparity betwixt Divine and Human Praenotion p. 339. 8. The same exemplified ibid. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. THe Second Capital Difficulty erected upon a sophism called Ignava Ratio as it respecteth both Theology and Philosophy p. 340. 2. Two eminent Opinions of Divines touchant the Solution of this Difficulty recognized and their judicious Modelly in duely acknowledging the mysterie of Praedestination to be Arcanum Divini imperii commended p. 34â— 3. The First opinion found totally uncapable of Expedition from the Sophisme Ignava Ratio 343. 4. The Second Opinion to a great part extricated from the same Labyrinth p. 345. 5. The Fatists Subtersuge of the Infallibility of Divine Praenotion praecluded p. 346. 6. A second subtersuge of the Fatist viz. that the Subsequence of the Decree to Praenotion doth implicate the possibility of its Elusion and Mutability praevented ibid. 7. A third Conclusion viz. that the posteriority of the Decree of Election to Gods praevision of mans future good actions doth make man the Author of his own Discretion detected and redargued p. 347. 8. Two Extracts from the praemises 1 that the Cooperation of mans Will to sufficient Grace may be conceived a Cause of his Election 2 that to render a reason why God did not constitute All men such as that All should cooperate to sufficient Grace and so be Elect is an impossibility to mans understanding other then this that such was his eternal will p. 347. 9. The former Sophisme ignava Ratio in part dissolved by Plutarchs Distinction that though All effects are comprehended in yet all are not caused by Fate p. 348. 10. The insufficiency of that Distinction to the total solution of the Difficulty duely acknowledged p. 349. 11. The most promising Responses of some Philosophers concisely praesented viz. of 1. Of Plato ibid. 2. Seneca p. 350. 3. Chrysippus p. 351. 4. Aquinas p. 352. 12. These acute Responses aequitably audited and their import sound to be no more then this that man hath a Freedome of Assent but not of Dissent to the Will of God p. 352. 13. The Dehortation from immoderate Curiosity in Divine Mysteries and concise Adhortation to conform unto and calmly acquiesce in the Revealed Will of God 353. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD DEMONSTRATED CHAP. I. SECT I. ARistotle though an Ethnick poysoned Section 1. Article 1. Aristotle the most knowing and curious Ethnick did yet by his silence in the cardinal point of Theology proclaim the impossibility of mans full understanding the simple and perfect Essence of God with the Macedonian and Grecian Idolatry nay so given over to that sottish impiety Polytheisme that he could be content to make a Goddesse of his Wench and offer solemn sacrifices to her as a Deity whom his own obscene luxury had degraded from the native dignity of Humanity to devote his orisons to her for good whom his own temptations had frequently subdued to evill as Gassendus Exercitat 3. out of Diogenes Laert. hath accused him had
gentle enforcement of a stable beleif The Act of Conservation of all things in their originary stations and the perpetual obedience of all second Causes in their several Article 2. The Definition and received Division of divine Provldence motions to the laws of his will that elemented them hath ever been called Providence divine which derived high enough seems to import the constant operation of an infinite Wisdom and infinite Power combined in the effusion of an infinite Goodness This Providence for to that Appellation as most antient most common and therefore most familiar I shall adhere most Clerks have branched into General whereby the government of the whole Universe is administred and Particular or special whereby God doth take special care of mankind and regulate the affairs of his master-peice Now according to this necessary Division must I range my forces into two Files and draw up one to defeat those Atheists who have proclaimed open hostility against the First and the other to subdue those that have declared against the Second The Colonell to that black regiment that fought against the Article 3. A short list of the principal ethnick Physiologists who in order to theiâ— propagation of Atheism have attempted the eradication of this magisterial verity of divine Providence a gentle cure of S. Hieroms wound caused by his venial lapse from the same opinion of the government of the World by the Sceptre of Divine Monarchy is generally accounted Epicurus but in the authentique records of Stobaeus Ecl. Phys 25. we may finde him to have been no more then Captain-lievtenant to Leucippus who of all the Graecian Philosophers whose doctrines have escaped the spunge of oblivion was the first that appeared in the field against universal Providence and not long after surrendred the staffe to Democritus the elder whose immediate successor was Heraclitus as we are told by Nemesius De nat Homin 13. But whoever led up the van was closely followed by many both of the same and succeeding ages the most eminent whereof were Dicaearchus Cicero 4. Academ Strato Idem de Divinat 2. Ennius Idem de Nat. Deor. 3. Lucretius Libro ejus 2. Velleius Cicero de Nat. Deor. 1. Lucian in bis Accus who like a facetious villain personates Jupiter complaining of the oppression of overmuch business nay the devout Father S. Hieron in Comment in Abac. seems to have espoused the quarrel though doubtless upon another interest His words I shall faithfully transcribe for two important reasons First because I would not appear to have fixt a scandal upon so venerable a Pillar of our Church who otherwise hath deserved so amply of the Christian faith that the consideration of the transcendent merits of his pious labours had once almost perswaded me to beleive the possibility of justification by works Secondly to deliver his memory from the imputation of impiety for it may be naturally collected from the syntax and scope of his discourse that it was a noble esteem which he had of the majesty of the Divine Nature whom he thought too fully taken up with the blisfull contemplation of his own perfections in truth the only Felicity God can be capable of to be concerned in ordering the trifling occurrences of the world and not any conceit of the insufficiency of omnipotence that cast him upon this rock Caeterum absurdum est says he ad hoc Dei deducere majestatem ut sciat per momenta singula quot nascantur culices quotve moriantur quot cimicum pulicum muscarum sit in terra multitudo quanti pisces in aqua natent qui de minoribus majorâ—m praedae cedere debeant Non simus tam fatui Adulatores Dei ut dum potentiam ejus ad ima detrahimus in nosipsos injuriosi simus eandem rationabilium quam irationabilium Providentiam esse dicentes So that his diminution of the universality of Providence may seem the pardonable effect of immoderate devotion and but a high strained description of the glory of that essence which in strict truth can be concerned in nothing but it self and must then appear to be undervalued when most magnified by the extension of its influence to petty and trivial mutations and conceived to act a part in the interludes of Flies order the militia of Pismires and decree what and how many Gnats shall be devoured by swallowes in a summers day But as for Epicurus and the rest of that miscreant crew t is more then probable that a quite different interest inveigled them into this dangerous error For first their own writings bare record that they made it the grand scope of their studies to promote Atheisme by plotting how to undermine the received beleif of an omnipotent eternal Being to murder the immortality of the Soul the basis of all religion and deride the Compensation of good and evil actions after death In particular Epicurus did not blush to profess that the chief end at which his Physiology was collineated was this ut mens ex perspectis causis conquiescat neque aliam eamque divinam subesse causam suspicando felicitatem interturbet And Secondly the grounds upon which they erected this detestable negation of universal Providence may sufficiently satisfie a heedfull enquirer that not any intense honour or veneration of the most perfect and happy nature transported their minds to this height of delusion but rather a confiâ—med infidelity of the infinity of his Wisdome and Power which is affirmed by us that maintain the diffusion of Providence over all and descry the finger of Divinity in the smallest actions of inferior causes though ne're so contemptible in the eyes of Humane reason But a more ample knowledge of this doth offer it self to our thoughts in the particular examination of their Arguments to which we therefore immediately address The First Argument they drew from the apparent incompatibility of business and happiness or more plainly from the vast Article 4. The Atheists first Argument against universal Providence with the absurd and malicious comment of Lucretius thereupon disparity between the blisfull condition or contemplative quiet of the supreme Nature and the trouble or disturbance for so their ignorance unfitly apprehended it that must arise from the oversight and managery of such infinite variety of Actions as are every minute performed within the immense Amphitheatre of the World For Epicurus indiscreetly attempting to take the altitude of the Divine Intellect by the unequal Jacobs-staffe of the Humane rashly inferred that it could not be extended below the sphear of its own mansion and that no Intelligence could be so large as not to be overwhelmed by that Ocean of Cares that must flow from the multitude and diversity of continual emergencies here below This he contracted into that sentence Quod est beatum immortale neque sibi habet neque alteri exhibet negotium which so pleased him that he reputed it a Cornerstone in the fabrick of science and enacted it
alteration is not only above the hopes of man whose virtuous endeavours piety and prayers must therefore prove as fruitless and ineffectual towards the Aversion as vitiosities impiety and profaneness towards the Attraction or Acceleration of any misfortune predecreed but even of God himself whom though they allow to have bin the Author of that sempiternal and irrepealable law of Destiny yet they deny him to have reserved to himself the prerogative of exemption from the obligation thereof This was the Creed of Philetas when he sayd ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mortales superat quodcunque necesse est Vi solida quia nec superos reveretur in almis Qui Coeli spatiis degunt sine luctibus aevum Of that old Poet quoted by Cicero de Fato who sayd quod fore paratum est id summum exuperat Jovem and of that renowned Captain Hector when being importuned by his wife not to hazard himself in a salley upon the Graecian trenches he conjured her fond fears into a resolved confidenco that no sword could reach his heart but that of Fate by this spell Parce precor nimio misera indulgere dolori Nam quis me Fat is invitis mittet ad Orcum Nullum equidem vitasse hominum dico ultima Fata Prithee forbeare thy needless grief and know No hand can send me to the shades below Without the Fates assent I hold it true What Fate hath destin'd no man can eschew As also of those Military men mentioned by P. Gregorius Tholosanus lib. 21. de republ cap. 8. whose minds being seasoned with the same perswasion that the manner and moment of every mans Death is appointed by the immutable law of Fate and his lot inscribed in invisible Characters on his forehead became of so hard a temper as to be wholly insensible of the threats of that terrible Giant Danger nor did they account it other then a vanity resulting from the cowardize of Ignorance to provide against the blows of War either by caution or defensive armes urging the examples of many valiant Soldiers who have bin observed to have confronted whole showers of levelled bullets shot from the neer engines of the advancing Foe without a wound and yet at last have fallen by some petite and unexpected peble thrown from the sure sling of Destiny even then when they seemed immured in the secure Cittadel of Peace and thought their triumphant Lawrels armour of proof even against thunder Occidis Argivae quem non potuere phalanges Sternere nec Priami regnorum eversor Achilles Hic tibi mortis erant metae c. Virg. 12. Aeneid But alas 't is not the Academy of the Stoicks alone that affords patronage to this Error of Absolute Fatality nor the Camp that only contends for the propagation thereof nor the politick institutions of that Secretary of Hell Mahomet in his absurd Alcoran cap. 6. that only countenance the diffusion thereof in these our days for even the Schools of Christianity in some parts have advanced the reputation thereof to so unreasonable and dangerous a height as to make it an Article of Faith if not absolutely necessary yet at least collaterally conductive to Salvation and this by Auctority of the Councel of Dort which ratified the doctrine of their Apostle Calvir concerning Absolute Predestination and enjoyned the publick Assertion thereof to most of their Divines of the last reformation I sayd the Doctrine of Calvin concerning Absolute Predestination Article 11. The Stoical Fate and the Calvinists Predestination fully defined thereby though tacitly intimating my knowledge of the no small Disparity between the Fate of the Stoicks and that propugned by many Christian Divines The one being as Chrysippus hath defined it Sempiterna indeclinabilis series rerum catena quae seipsam velvit perpetuò implicat per aeternos consequentiae ordines ex quibus connexa est A sempiternal and indeclinable series syntax or chaine of Causes whose turnings convolutions and perpetual implications are dependent on it self by those eternal orders of consequence of which it is made up and connected the other as the best of School men hath defined it Pendens à Divino Consilio series ordoque caussarum a series or successive complexion and order of Causes dependent on the Will of God From the just Collation of which two Definitions our first thoughts may collect that the Difference between the Stoical and Theological Fate may be thus stated The Former in some things excludes Divinity from that Article 12. A full and câ—â—ar discrimination of the Stoical from the Theological Fate round or Circle of Causes reserring all events as well general as particular to the meer subsequence of Naturall Actives operating upon capable Passives subordinately connected unto and so by successive influx necessarily disposing each other to the production of those particular Effects to the Causation whereof their Natural Faculties were at first determinately accommodated and in others includes Divinity within it i. e. confines his Power and Will to that rigid and infringible Law of Necessity excogitated by his Wisdom from all eternity and established by his Decrce at the inauguration of Nature to Existence The Later makes the Will of God to be the first link in the chaâ—n of Causes and so superior to the restriction of natural necessity dependent thereon The Stoick being a declared Enemy to the Arbitrary Prerogative of God adligeth the Energie of the First and Infinite Cause to the capacity of Secondary and Finite and upon consequence doth acknowledge neither the Liberty of his Will nor the Absoluteness of his Power or Omnipotency But on the Contrary the Christian look's up to heaven as the Councel-house where the Instruments opportunity place and success of every Action receive their Specification to this or that determinate purpose to the Arbitrary Resolve of God as the Definite Sentence or Injunction and on all Second Causes but as subordinate and subalternally instrumental to the punctual execution and accomplishment of the same and upon legal consequence concludes that the Divine Will is absolutely Free knowing no circumscription but that of the Divine Wisdome that the meer Fiat of that Councel is the Director and Spring in the Enginâ— of the World and that the Author of Nature hath reserved to himself the Privilege of adding unto detracting from intending remitting inverting transcending or adnulling the fundamental Constitutions of Nature and so breaking that Concatenation of Causalities or the Chain of Fate at pleasure The Heathen absurdly dream't that all effects are inevitably produced by the conspiracy and coefficiency of natural Causes respectively qualified or that all Accidents spring up from the proper tendency of their particular Efficients without the influence direction or moderation of any other Virtue besides their own native and Congenial Faculties The more intelligent Christian proves that all natural Causes doe not produce their respective Effects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ex
truth God cannot foreknow the future actions of man or the effects of remedies administred otherwise then because of their necessary Futurity Since if we take a way the Futurition of events we necessarily destroy the Prenotion of God Which Abstrusity that we may the better comprehend let us begg the liberty to suppose some Momenta rationis or successive minutes in Eternity which though in reality impossible Eternity being one permanent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or instance as uncapable of division as cessation may yet serve as an excellent Perspective to our weak-sighted reason in its inspection of many sublime Phaenomena in Theology and humbly conceive that in the First Moment of Eternity God saw and only saw without any relation at all to his future decrees all things to come as well ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or such whose futurity is necessary from the condition of their Nature or impuls of their proper Causes as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Futura Contingentia which hang suspended in aequilibrio upon the Free Will of their Efficients so that they may or may not succeed whether they be Absolute or Conditionate in which First moment had God acquiesced and proceeded no farther then only to foresee the Necessity and Possibility of their Futurition then nothing should have bin to come That in the Second Moment God saw and only saw that this or that event was in Possibility of Futurition in the life of this or that particular man if such or such things were done in this or that time with this or that Temperament of body and other respective Circumstances but yet did neither determine any thing to absolute Necessity of Futurition and therefore nothing could be said to depend upon the Praeordination of God though all things should come to pass in the same manner as he foresaw them whensoever the Fiat of his Will should bring them into actual existence or educe them extra suas causas nor did he see that they would so and no otherwise come to pass from hence that he would they should so and no otherwise come to pass since this Praevision anteceds all Volition That therefore in the Third Moment of Eternity God decreed that he would make Future not all those Possible Effects whether Absolute or Conditionate but only some particulars as for example that he would make Alexander or Plato of this or that individual temperament of body in this or that climate and country of this or that particular cours of life with all conspiring Circumstances to whom all things should happen according to the possibility of their Futurition wherein God beheld them before the conception or pronunciation of his Decree so that by this influence of God's definitive Will those Events are no more then deduced into actual existence which formerly were only in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or in the womb of their Causes Now upon this Hypothesis our understanding is advanced to this manifest Conclusion That the Prescience of God doth nothing conduce adrem existentem nor to the Actions or Passions thereof since it is not the cause of their Inference nor doe his Decrees that are subsequent unto and in a manner grounded upon his Prevision work any the least mutation at all in the natures of his Creatures or by violence pervert their Virtues to the production of any Effects to which by their primitive Constitution and individuation they were not precisely adapted and accommodated Since in so doing he must take away from his Creatures those peculiar Faculties which he at their creation freely conferred upon their severall natures and innovate the fundamental laws of Nature Now this dark shadow of that darker mystery of Predestination Article 3. The diametâ—al Disparlty between that Divine Praenotion which is antecedent to Divine Praeordination and that which is subsequent amply declared how obscurely soever presented doth yet sufficiently commonstrate how vast and diametral a disparity is between that Divine Prenotion which is Antecedent and that which is subsequent to Divine Praeordination For that Praescience which hath for its object a thing to come without any praevious and praedeterminant Decree supposeth that particular thing to come together with the whole series or concatenation of its proper Causes and method or manner of its Futurition the Modus Futuritionis being as the Schoolemen well define Id quod futurum est sive quod ad rei quae futura praescitur futuritionem quolibet modo pertinet This that Rabbin Isac bar Sesat quoted by Menasseth Ben Israel de termino vitae pag. 226. seems well to have understood when he said Deus ab aterno disposuit totius mundi negotia divina sua sapientia ac perspicacia vidit omnes effectus qui in tempore futuri essent qui licet pendeant loquor enim de actionibus humanis a libero hominis arbitrio ut fiant aut non siant nihilominus tamen Deus certò infallibiliter eos praevidit ac praescivit Neque tamen ideoquicquam in tempore facit homo quia Deus ca facturum praescivit sed è contrà quia homo in tempore hoc vel illud facit aut operatur ideo Deus ab aeterno illud scivit But on the Contrary that Praescience which follows upon the Praedetermination of the Divine Will hath indeed for its object a thing to come and also presupposeth it as fully as the former but so that it comprehends the order and manner of its futurition as sixt and immutable being so constituted by virtue of the antecedent Praedestination For the further inculcation of this Distinction let us make use of an Example most familiar and pertinent to the difficulty in hand That Divine Praescience which hath no dependence on a praedeterminant Article 4. A second illustration of the same difference by a pertinent Instance or exâ—mplification decree let us suppose it to be a Praescience of the life and death of the health and sickness of the good or evil use of the Free will of Peter John and every individual man in the world and is twofold First Conditionate if Peter or John being born of a sound and durable constitution shall choose such a course of life as that he shall observe the wholsome Aphorismes of Temperance in his use of the Six nonnaturals shall opportunely in all distempers introduced by the inclemency of the aer the malignant impressions of the Stars epidemick contagions or other undeclinable Accidents recur to the use of such convenient remedies as both reason and experience prescribe for the preservation or restauration of health then I foreknow that he shall live healthy and long but if on the contrary then I foreknow that he shall be infested with frequent diseases and die immaturely Second Absolute I foreknow that Peter or John shall choose a prudent course of life convenient both to his Genius and temperament shall sedulously endevour the preservation of his health by moderation in diet and other
nonnaturals and the restauration of the same when impaired by any distemper by rational and approved medicaments and shall therefore enjoy health and attain to longaevity On the Contrary I foreknow that he shall lead a disorderly and luxurious course of life accelerate the dissolution of his temperament by the immoderate praemature or unseasonable use of Wine Woemen Passions c. and when assaulted by any disease chronique or acute shall either omit to consult learned judicious and experienced Physitians or disobey their pharmaceutical or diaetetical praescripts drinke wine in a Fever cold water in a Critical sweat salt sharp acid or corroding liquors in a Dysentery eate Astringents in obstructions frigid crude and dyspeptical fruits in an imbecillity of the stomach c. and shall therefore ruine his health and drop into the grave before hee 's ripe Now take which Praescience you please and either hath for its object the praecise Term of Peter or Johns life as a thing to come and fully and punctually presupposeth the same but so that together with that fixt Term it comprehends also all the order and manner of its Futurition or all the antecedent and conspiring causes amongst which the principal and most energetical is the right use or abuse of his own Free will in whose power it was to move that Term either forwards or backwards i. e. either to adduce or produce it So far therefore is this Praevision of God from excluding the necessity of Medical Remedies as the Defendants of Fate would impose according to that of Solon in Stobaeus Fato quaecunque manet sors Non hanc avertet victima sed nec aves Nec qui Paeonias aegris mortalibus herbas Saepe erraturam ferre laborat opem That it totally includes nay presupposeth it so necessarily that if we take away from man the Liberty of his Will and the opportunity of using either prophylactical or therapeutical means in order to the prolongation of his life we must also submove the Certainty of Gods Praescience since that determineth nothing but only praesupposeth all things nor doth God by a decree subsequent to that Prescience praeordain that this or that individual man shall recover of such or such a disease unless by virtue of such or such appropriate remedies which the Physician shall in the opportunity praescribe Nor is it a more justifiable plea at the bar of reason to argue thus if the Term of mans life be certainly and precisely foreknown to God then must it together with the order and manner of its Futurition be sixt and immutable then to argue thus if God hath a certain and precise cognition of any thing already past as of the Creation of the world therefore could that thing have come to pass no otherwise nor at any other time then it did therefore was the world created by God non liberé sed necessariò not by an Arbitrary but Necessary and restrained activity For as Science having for its object a thing Praeterite doth infer no necessity upon that thing praeterite that it should have bin so and no otherwise effected so doth Praescience having for its object a thing Future infer no necessity upon its futurition each being an Immanent Action in God extra rem or having no compulsive influence at all upon that particular thing or its Causes and Futurum esse imports no other thing but an object of Praescience nor Praeteritum esse any thing but an object of Science or Memorie Science is the perfection of the Subject or thing knowing not of the obiect or thing known much less the destruction of the thing known For necessary it is to perfect Science that it agree in all points with the nature of its object But wholly Antarctical to this is that Praescience which is grounded upon Divine Praedestination whereby not only the Term of every individuals life together with the whole order and manner of its Futurition is praefixt but also all those Causes whose refractary or counter-activity might in any respect hinder the precise accompletion of that prefixt Term are praevented or praedetermined to invalidity lest the Praescience become uncertain or dubious whether that Praedetermination dispose per modum Causae Efficientis by a certain Physical and really effective action or impression upon the will of man enforcing it to the election of such a course of life as may conduce to his punctual pervention to that praestitute Term or per modum Causae Desicientis by nonconcurrent but only permissive influence by some called Permissio simplex Simple Permission by others Permissio essicax efficacious permission since that rule amongst Philosophers Causa Desiciens in necessariis reducitur ad Efficientem doth warrant the Indifferency For this Decretory Praescience though it agree with the precedent simple Praescience in this that it hath for its object rem futuram includeth in its circle the whole order and manner of its Futurition and presupposeth both the end and respective means fully and absolutely yet it clearly and irreconcilably differs from it in this that the precedent Prescience presupposeth the liberty of mans Will and the use thereof not only incoacted and without irrefragable impuls but absolutely free and arbitrary but this wholly destroys the arbitrary monarchy of the Will by importing that the influence of the Decree not only inclineth by soft and gentle flexure or perswasion but by an irresistible violence forceth it upon the election and pursuit of those means which in a direct and natural line lead to the accomplishment thereof and this lest the Certitude or Infallibility of the Divine Praescience be infirmed and staggered To discriminate this Later from that Former Praescience yet Article 5. A third illustration of the same Difference by conceiving the Divine Decrees in the same subordinate scries which the Fatists have imagined morefully and so insinuate the result of the Distinction by the most intelligible and concise way of argumentation it will be necessaty for us to conceive the Decrees of God in the same method of subordination wherein they who found the infallibility of his Praevision upon the necessity of his Praedestination and Praedetermination have bin by the obscurity of the Subject compelled to range their thoughts in the declarement of their opinion The first Decree of God runs thus I will that Peter live till the expiration of the natural or temperamental lease of his life conceive it to be till his glass hath run 50. 60. 70. or 80. year but that John wither before hee 's ripe and fall in the June of his age conceive it to be in the 20. 30. or 40. year from his birth The Second thus I will praeserve Peter from this or that sickness defend him from this or that knock of misfortune conserve him in or restore him from this or that dangerous disease lest he expire before the praestitute Term of his life but for John he shall be invaded by such or such a mortal disease receive such
the real good of virtue attracteth the mind more weakly and the seeming Good of vice more strongly and on the contrary the real evil of vice averteth or disgusteth the mind more weakly and the seeming evil of good more strongly So he that offends may we confess with Ovid say Video meliora probóque deteriora sequor that he knows those things which he rejecteth to be the better and those things which he electeth to be the worse but yet this must be referred unto some other time when he recognizes his habitual Science and calls to mind that once he had other judgements of those things for he cannot justly say so of that time wherein he offended since then he judged those things he pursued to be the better and those he deserted to be the worse Now as for that internal regret contristation and poenitence which invades the mind of every Delinquent immediately after and most frequently in the same moment of the perpetration of his offence this proceeds from his animadversion that he suffers some loss of good But since this his apprehension of the loss of good and that reluctancy of mind attendant thereupon is but dull and weak in comparison of that complacency he is affected withall by the seeming good or pleasure of evil which subdues his judgement to an approbation of it hence it is manifest that he considers and perpends the impendent omission of Good and the incursion of evil not seriously and profoundly as he ought but only perfunctorily and slightly For were the punishment sorrow ignominy and other evils which he only lightly and confusedly apprehends and fears profoundly examined and lookt into by him not as absent not as future not as uncertain and avoidable but as impendent present certain and inevitable without all doubt the smallest glimpse of reason would be sufficient to let him see those forcible determents nor could he be so mad as from the rock of knowledge to precipitate himself into the most horrid gulph of vice And therefore albeit an offender may say that he saw and approved the Good but embraced the Evil yet is that Inconsideration or Non-advertency by reason whereof he doth not sufficiently discover all the qualities and circumstances of the evil object and what and how great mischiefs must necessarily ensue upon his actual prosecution thereof a kind of Ignorance And in this sense only can we allow Ignorance to be the mother of Sin for had man sufficiently understood the evil thereof he had never bin vicious To conclude therefore this Ignorance must prove but an Article 5. What kind of Ignorance that is which may in some degree excuse a Delinquent invalid and ridiculous plea at the judicious Tribunal of Justice nor ought a Delinquent to slatter himself with the vain hopes of impunity by such an excuse that he sinned for want of knowledge that he prosecuted the apparent Good he saw in the object that it was above his power to prevent the delusion of his understanding by Evil praesented under the species of Good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we cannot countermand Apparences that no man is vicious with his own consent nor happy against his will according to that Proverb Nemo malus ultrò est neque beatus non volens and that he wanted an ability of Jâ—udgement to do otherwise this we say cannot extenuate his guilt and consequently not avert the punishment due thereunto For that Ignorance which excuseth is of another nature such as we may more properly call Inscientia mera meer Nescience Ignorantia pura ac invincibilis pure and invincible Ignorance such as that of Cephalus when mistaking her to have bin a wild beast couchant in a brake he discharged his dart at his beloved wife Procris and unfortunately slew her and that of the constant Deianira when she poysoned Hercules with a shirt dipt in Nessus the Centaures gore which she intended for a Philtre to revoke his affections from Iole and that also of the fatal handed Gentleman who shooting at a Deer in New-Forest killed William Rufus but that Ignorance of which we here discourse is in proper truth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Incuria vel Negligentia mera meer Negligence Inadvertency or Heedlesness and is therefore for distinctions sake denominated Ignorantia crassa affectata supina gross affected supine ignorance To understand the nature of this Non-excusing Ignorance the more distinctly let us observe that every Delinquent must in justice charge the Ignorance he praetends upon one of these two Causes either that himself was to himself the cause of his ignorance or that he neglected the means and advantages of acquiring knowledge i. e. that he did not imploy his Cognoscent Faculty on the examination and consideration of the real good or evil of his action with that care seriousness and sedulity which was requisite To the First of these Causes belongs the ignorance of a Drunkard for in being the Cause of his Ebriety he is also the Cause of his Ignorance and 't was in his power to have praevented this by the praecaution of that and therefore his Ignorance is so far short of extenuating that it naturally aggravates his culpability and he if Aristotle may be judge deserves a double punishment one for making himself drunk another for the crime committed in his Drunkenness Hither also we are to refer his Ignorance who resisteth not the force of a Passion or perturbation of his mind in the first motion or beginning thereof while 't is yet but weak and to be supprest by a small opposition of reason but permits it to acquire more violence and gain upon him by degrees till its impulse grow impetuous and more inoppugnable as also his who suffers a vicious Inclination which he might without any considerable difficulty have at first refracted and totally extinguished to grow into a setled Habit which pleading praescription and possession is hardly ejected but plays the obsolute Tyrant ore the mind and holds the Scepter of both Understanding and Will by the ineluctable title of Conquest Thus if a man who having a rare Bird in his hand willingly lets it sly should complain that he cannot recover it again t is not to be expected that any rational person should pity him for his loss but rather deride his folly in that he manumitted it when t was in his power to have kept it and if a man contract some dangerous disease by intemperance who can afford him half so much compassion since t was in his power not to have bin intemperate as if he had bin invaded by some impartial Epidemick Contagion against which none the greatest temperance is an infallible praeservative To this purpose were these words of Aristotle intended Nemo enim caecitatem quam natura morbus ictus fecerit exprobret sed caeci potius misereatur at si illam aut ebriositas aut intemperantia alia fecerit non id opprobrio ducat in 3. Ethic. cap. 7. To the other belongs his
disposition of Atoms from the frequent actuall production of an Iusect by the same means or principles countermined by an inversion or Argument à majori ad minus p. 65. 7. An exception against the seeming disparity betwixt their inserence and ours prevented and the invalidity of theirs though their own hypothesis were conceded in terminis declared by an adaequate similitude p. 67. 8. The conclusion of this section or the aequipondium of the praecedent reasons if perpended in the mass and conjunctively to the most perfect demonstration p. 68. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. THat Antique absurd expostulation who◠Instruments Auxiliants materials predisposed God made use of in his act of Fabrication of the Vniverse copiously satisfied and the energie of the Divine Will commonstrated superior to the indigence of either p. 69. 2. A second immodest interrogation wherefore God so long deferred the creation resolved with a detection of the unreasonableness of undecent curiosity p. 73. CHAP. III. Why God Created the World Page 77. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe improbability of the worlds creation by God insinuated by the Atheists from his defect of any possible Motive scope or final cause p. 71. 2. Their first Argument that the divine Nature is above the capacity of either emolument or delectation from the Vniverse p 78. 3. The satisfactory resutation thereof and Gods glory manifested to have been his prime and principal end p. 79. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THeir second Argument that God had no especial regard to the benefit of Man and the Fortification thereof by 8 reasons p. 82. 2. The total redargution thereof by a commonstrance that the benefit and felicity of man was Gods secondary end and the impossibility of satisfaction to the first end by any creature but man concluded from his 1. Rationality p. 86. 2. Sermocination p. 88. 3. Lucretius his 8. reasons subverted particularly p. 90. CHAP. IV. The General Providence of God Demonstrated page 94. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe Authors reasons for his praesent adherence to the common discrimination of Providence from Creation p. 94. 2. The Definition and received Division of divine Providence p. 95. 3. A short list of the principal ethnick Physiologists who in order to their propagation of Atheism have attempted the eradication of this magisterial verity of divine Providence and a gentle cure of S. Hieroms wound caused by his venial lapse from the same ibid. 4. The Atheists first Argument against universal Providence with the absurd and malicious comment of Lucretius thereupon p. 97. 5. Their second Argument and its convenient dissection into two parts viz. 1. The irregularity of contingencies p. 99. 2. The unequal or unjust distribution of good and evil p. 101. SECT II. ARTIC 1. That the Notion of General Providence is Proleptical inferred from the umversality of its recepeption p. 102. 2. From the misplaced devotion of Idolaters ibid. 3. From the confession of most Philosophers of the highest forme as of 1. Ecphantus p. 103 2. Plato ibid. 3. Aristotle ibid. 4. The Stoicks p. 104. 5. The Academicks and Scepticks ibid. 4. A review of the induction and the Argument found to be Apodictical on one side and on the other only perswasive p. 105. SECT III. ARTIC 1. GOds General Providence demonstrated by the Idea of his Nature reflected on our thoughts p. 107. 2. The same particularly supported by that trinity of Attributes viz. his 1. Infinite Wisdome p. 109. 2. Infinite Power ibid. 3. Infinite Goodness p. 110. 3. The necessity of the worlds gubernation by the indefinent influence of Gods general Providence demonstrated from the consideration of the absolute and total dependence of all Second Causes upon the First p. 111. 4. The vastity of the world the infinite variety of its parts and the irreconcileable discord of many natures demonstrate as much p. 113. 5. Vnder what restriction we are to understand that tropology of some Hermetical Philosophers Deum esse Animam Mundi p. 114. 6. The Atheists subterfuges of Nature and Fortune praecluded p. 116. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. THe Atheists first Antiprovidential Argument refuted by the Perfection of the Divine Nature and their absurdity in commensurating the excellencies of God by the infinitely inferior Faculties of man detected ibid. 2. Divinity demonstrated superior to the circumscription both of Time and Place p. 118. 3. That the procuration of all the infinitely various actions of second causes in the World cannot be any interturbation of Gods serene felicity proved by an Argument à minori p. 119. 4. The same illustrated by a second comparison p. 120. 5. That the administration of petty occurrences can be no indignity or disparagement to the sacred Majesty of God but on the Contrary absolutely essential to him firmly evicted from the universality of his Cognition and Presence p. 121. SECT V. ARTIC 1. THe first division of the Atheists second objection viz. that the apparent irregularity of events doth justisie their non-praedestination or meer Contingency strongly convelled and that to the praeordination of Divinity nothing can be casual clearly commonstrated p. 124. 2. The Authors Antithesis that all Natural Agents are under the strict laws of their distinct species p. 129. 3. A second Counterposition that those laws were instituted and sancited by an infinite wisdome ibid. 4. A third that the legislator hath reserved to himself a praerogative power to alter transcend invert or repeal the laws of Nature ibid. 5. The verity of the first and second Positions amply demonstrated p. 130. 6. The verity of the third Position demonstrated p. 136. 7. A farther confirmation of the same by an Argument from the miraculous operations of God in praeterito p. 137. 8. That there was an universal Deluge p. 138. 9. The Cessation of Satans Oracles after the advent of the Word of Truth proved authentiquely ibid. 10. That there was a prodigious Eclips of the Sun at the passion of our Saviour p. 140. 11. A Demonstration of the impossibility of the Catholique Deluges proceeding from Causes Natural p. 141. 12. That the Cessation of Pagan Oracles upon the incarnation of God was an effect meerly fupernatural comprobated uncontrollably p. 146. 13. That the Eclips of the Sun at the death of Christ was purely Metaphysical irrefutably demonstrated p. 149. 14. The Adaequatien of all to the verification of the Authors third Position p. 152. SECT VI. ARTIC 1. LUcretius his blasphemy that mans ignorance of the energy of Natural Causes is the sole basis of the opinion of an Universal Providence p. 152. 2. The redargution thereof p. 153. 3. Magnanimity the proper effect of Religion p. 154. 4. The opinion of a General Providence consistent with Physiology p. 155. 5. Lucretius his scruples concerning the seemingly temerarious effects of the Thunderbolt singularly resolved ibid. CHAP. V. The especial Providence of God Demonstrated page 157. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe introduction intimating the neer cognation betwixt this present and the precedent Theme and the necessity of the Authors
I should have given unto my self also all those perfections whereof I have the Idea in my mind and so I my self should have been God Nor am I bound to conceive that those excellencies wanting to the accomplishment of my nature can be more difficult to acquire then those graduall abilities of which I am already master for on the contrary t is manifest that it must import infinitely more of difficulty for me to have had a being i. e. for a Cogitant something to be deduced from nothing then for me being once constituted in a Capacity to attain to the cognition of many things whereof I am now actually ignorant which can be esteemed no more but the Accidents of that substance And assuredly had I borrowed the greater my substantiality from my own stock of power I should not have denied unto my self the less those Accumulations or accidentall additions nor any other of those divine accomplishments which I understand to be included in the Idea of God why because no one of those seem more difficult to be acquired and if any were more difficult for me to aspire unto t is more then probable I should understand that difficulty if I had those Faculties of which my nature stands possessed from my own donation in respect I should find my power to be terminated in them Nor doe I evade the convictive rigor of these reasons if I adventure on this supposition that I have been ever heretofore as I now am as if the induction of this hypothesis would be that therefore I am to trace the genealogy of my essence no higher then my self or seek out no other cause of my Existence for in respect that all time may be divided into innumerable parts each whereof hath no necessary dependence on the rest either precedent or subsequent from hence that I have formerly been is no valid consequence that therefore I must now be unlesse some other cause be admitted which dothfreshly create me in each of those particles or atoms of time and particularly in this instant moment i. e. doth constantly conserve me in being For manifest it must be to any that looks attentively into the nature of Duration that to the Conservation of any thing through all those several minutes in which its existence endureth is required no less then the same power and act which is necessary to the Creation of the same thing anew if it were not already existent and consequently that the act of Conservation doth not at all but in the cloudy reason of man differ from the act of Creation These things thus stated I am concerned to propose to my self this interrogation Whether there be any power inherent in my nature whereby I may be enabled to conserve my self the same in the future that I am now in the present for since I am nothing but a meer res cogitans for here I precisely regard only that part of my self which is properly and distinctly a Cogitant substance if there were any such power conservatory radicated in my essence doubtless I should be conscious of it but I am convicted there is none such and therefore from this one evidence that I cannot maintain or perpetuate my own being for the shortest moment imaginable I judge that I am subordinate unto and dependent upon some other Entity distinct from my self But to tolerate any doubt in this my meditation in order to the exclusion of all doubts from the intended result or conclusion put the case that this Entitie to whose sufficiency I owe my Conservation pardon ò thou incomprehensible Essence thou great and sole Preserver of men pardon this supposition that modestly intends only the clearer demonstration of thy Supremacy is not God and that I deduce my production from my Parents or some other cause less perfect then God For determination t is an Axiome to which every Sceptick will readily condescend Tantundem ad minimum esse debere in causa quantum est in effectu there must be so much at least in the cause as is found in the effect and therefore since I am res cogitans a substance thinking and having a certain Idea of God in me what cause soever be at length assigned for the principle or fountain of my being that cause also must be Ens cogitans and must possess the Idea of all those perfections which I ascribe unto God Now of that cause it may be again enquired whether it were derived from it self or from some other Cause for if from it selfe then may it bee naturally collected from what hath preceded in this disquisition that such a Cause is God For as it hath the power or act of self-existence or self-conservation so also undoubtedly hath it the ability of actually possessing all such perfections the Idea whereof it comprehends in it self i. e. all such accomplishments as I conceive to be concentred in God But if from some other cause then I repeat my question again Article 11. Oâ— from some other cause leâ—s perfect then God concerning this other cause whether that had its being from it self or from another untill I arrive successively at the first Cause or highest linke in the chain which also will be God For no melancholy can be so absurd as to dream of a progress in infinitum in the series of Causes especially since I doe not here intend that Cause only which did in time past produce me but principally that which doth conserve me in the present Nor can it be imagined that a plurality of Causes met concurred and conspired to the making up of my nature and that from one cause I inherited the Idea of one of the perfections which I attribute to God from a second the Idea of another from a third the Idea of another c. so that all those perfections may indeed be found severally in the distinct and scattered peices of the Universe but no where conjoyned and amassed together in one single Essence which might be God For on the contrary the Vnity Simplicity Inseparability or Identity of all those excellencies in God is one of the chiefest of those perfections which I understand to be in him nor assuredly could the Idea of the Vnity of all those his Perfections be placed in me by any other cause from whom I could not acquire the Ideas of other perfections also nor could he have effected that I should understand them conjoyned and married together by an indissoluble union unless he had also effected that I should know what they are in their distinction To expunge the last scruple and so render this demonstration of the Existence of God fair and immaculate have not my Article 12 Or from our Paâ—ents Progenitors devolved a being to my Parents and they devolved the like to me and may not this Idea of those perfections which I attribute to God be implanted radically in this my being so derived down to me by propagation without the necessary insertion of it by
rule to all other his actions And truely if Princes ground many of their designeâ— upon profound reasons of State the knowledge whereof is never diffused among their subjects but lockt up in the cabinet of their own heart why may not God who is all Counsel and Prudence be afforded the prerogative of having some weighty respects that moved him to create the World then when he did rather then either sooner or later Which respects for ought we can explore is Mercy in him to conceal from us sure I am t is a pride not much beneath if not equal to that of Lucifer in us to dare to enquire T is a confest truth that no man can know the thoughts of another who is constant to his resolve to reserve them sealed up within his own breast and can any man be so incurably over-run with the itch of vanity when he despaires of pretending certainly to divine the cogitations of his familiar friend whose inclinations he hath so frequently read in the book of his conversation yet to arrogate to himself an ability of searching into the abscondite counsels of him whom neither Minde nor Sense can touch Wherefore t is our duty to reclaim our wild curiosities to set bounds to our inquisitions and gratefully sate our boulimie of science with this wholsome morsel that from hence that the World was once created we may safely inferre that the Creator was pleased to declare himself so Potent that no impediment could intervene betwixt his eternal decree and the opportune execution thereof so Free as to be above the impulsion or constraint of any necessity so Wise as to prevent all temerity and collusion of Fortune so Good that the prescience of mans future ingratitude and so the infertility of his masterpeice could not dehort him from fulfilling his purpose of conferring that inestimable blessing of Existence both upon him and all things else for his sake As for the last clause of this foolish demand An vigilarit tanto aeternitatis spatio an verò dormierit mundi opifex Whether God continued vigilant or dormant from eternity untill he set about the fabrick of this vast All This includes a manifest incongruity and speaks a contradiction loud enough to answer and refute it self For those two terms Sleep and Divinity stand at open defiance and placed in one notion reciprocally deny each other the one importing an Affection of a Body or the effect of the Concidence or Augustation of the ventricles of the brain and slender conduits of the nerves in an Animal caused either by a deficiency or quiet of the spirits inservient to the Animal Faculties and causing a temporary and periodical cessation from the offices of sense and Arbitrary motion the other expressing an Eternal simple Essence neither opprest with corporeity nor therefore subject to defatigation upon any exolution or wast of spirits and consequently not capable of sleep However to manifest the extreme stupidity of their reply viz. that if he were perpetually awake yet we must grant him to have been constantly idle before he began his work of Creation I shall vouchsafe them that judicious rejoynder of many Fathers whose studies were also not rarely infested with these vermine that in all that precedent tract of eternity mortality will excuse the necessary solecisme he was fully imployed in the most blissfull contemplation of himself Which is an operation most easie most quiet most pleasant as all Philosophers who ever have by the steps of abstracted meditation advanced their minds so high as token that perfection of beatitude have observed CHAP. III. Why God Created the World SECT I. THat every Action presupposeth an end or scope is Canonical and hence is it customary amongst Article 1. The improbability of the worlds creation by God insinuated by the Atheists from his defect of any possible Motive scope or final cause men by so much the more hardly to beleive that such or such a considerable Action was done by such or such a Person by how much the less either of probable Pleasure or Emolument may appear to have invited him to that enterprise Nor was Velleius a stranger to this rule for fighting the unjust quarrel of that usurpress Fortune and having at first invaded Providence Divine with direct and down-right blowes unsuccesfully he at last contrives to wound it with oblique thrusts and attempts to stab the opinion of the Worlds Creation by God by striking at the End or more plainly by cutting off all possibility of either Pleasure or Profit to accrew to him thereby And in pursuance of this stratagem he endevours to prove 1. Conditum non fuisse mundum Dei causa that the World was not created for Gods sake i. e. that he is no more concerned in the construction of it then if it had never been altered from its Chaos 2 neque hominum gratia nor for the behoof of man i. e. that man hath no juster plea to the Royalty of the World then the meanest Animal nor did Nature look with a more amorous and indulgent aspect upon him then upon any other of her productions The First position he essays to illustrate and inferre by a Socratical Article 2. Their first Argument that the divine Nature is above the capacity of either emolument or delâ—ctation from the Universe way of argumentation or by circumventing our judgements with a chain of Interogatories all whose links are dependent each upon other though by a connexion so subtile as to be imperceptible to the incircumspect the Abstract whereof as taken by Cicero 1. De Natur. Deorum lies in these words Quid autem erat quod concupisceret Deus mundum signis luminibus tanquam Aedilis ornare Si ut Deus melius habitaret antea videlicet tempore infinito in tenebris tanquam in gurgustio habitaverat post autem varietaté ne eum delectari putamus qua Coelum Terras exornatas videmus quae ista potest esse oblectatio Deo quae si esset non ea tamdiu carere potuisset What politique respect put God upon the servile office of an Aedile What motive prevailed with him to trim the Universe with gawdy Asterisms and imbellish the azure roof thereof with variety of refulgent studs if to better his habitation t is a signe that forever before he was but ill accommodated with a dark and narrow mansion But afterwards can we conceive that he entertained and solaced himself with that variety of beauteous forms wherewith we observe both stories of this great Palace to be adorned What delight is that wherewith divinity can be affected if any such there be why would he so long deny himself the fruition of it Nor did Velleius want a second to joyne with him in this bloudy design for the assassination of that sacred Truth That God made the World chiefly for his own Glory for that witty villain Lucretius and the finest wits if not maturely pruned and kept under by the severe
transcend all other in perfection and excellencies how palpable a contradiction did he fall upon in commensurating the latitude of its Power and Wisdome by the span of an imperfect and caduce nature betwixt which and Omnipotent-omniscience are so many degrees of difference as all the figures and cyphers of Arithmetick cannot amount to their compute nor is mortality qualified to conceive To paint a Sound is a far easier task then to describe the impervestigable manner of Gods operations and to deny the possibility of that whose reason we cannot explore is to proclaim our ignorance of any nature more perfect then our own and that upon consequence is to make our nature more imperfect then really it is by rendring it uncapable of the greatest Truth nay of that truth upon whose certitude the assurance of all possible cognition doth necessarily depend This had the rash Epicurus considered doubtless he never had disparaged the nature of man by equalizing it to Gods I say disparaged because to conceive a Finite essence as perfect as an Infinite is openly to confess that nature which can conceive so horrid and sensible an Absurdity to be far more frail and contemptible then all other of its actions declare it to be not but in direct verity t is the greatest disparagement and no less then blasphemy to the infinitely sacred majesty of God to be put in the scales against vile ignorant and impotent Man And while his thoughts flagged so many sphears below the Empyreum of all perfection t was no wonder that he was staggered at Vniversal Providence that being a notion impossible to be instilled into any mind that is not first prepared with the beleif of an Vniversal Intelligence Again to draw into a sharper angle and render the absurdity of this Comparison more ridiculous the Reasons why a man though of the strongest brain and greatest abilities for business must of necessity suffer disquiet distractions and wearisome solicitude from the multiplicity of cares are 1. the narrowness of his Understanding which cannot he expansed to take in all the remote proxime and confederate Causes events dependencies connexions circumstances c. of occurrences 2. the shortness of his Power which cannot stretch to furnish him with all things necessary as well to the prevention and remove of all incident impediments as to the molition promotion and accompletion of his designes and 3. the restraint of his Person to Time Place and distance But on the other side God is Omniscient Omnipotent Omnipraesent and therefore in the praeordination direction and compulsion of all things to the causation of those effects which his Will hath decreed he knows infinitely less of labour or disquiet then the healthiest man doth in the motions of respiration in his soundest sleep That God is not subject to the restraint of Time is manifest Article 2. Divinity demonstrated superior to the circumscription both of Time and Place from his Eternity for that is indivisible and knows no distinction of tenses and therefore what we whose imperfect reason cannot compute the duration of things but by the successive instances or concatenated moments of time call Praedestination is really no praedetermination of what 's to come in respect to God but an act of his will already accomplisht and as soon fulfilled as decreed and so we may truely say that in relation to himself there is no Foreknowledge in God all things which to our inferior Capacities seem either past or to come being actually praesent to him whose whole duration is altogether or but one constant and permanent point one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 entire in unity and uncapable of division into successive minutes or articles That he is not subject to the restraint of Place is evident from his Omniety his being all in all Vbiquity being the proper and inseparable Attribute of his nature His being All in All. not only ratione Praesentiae but ratione Essentiae also he being the chief Soul not only of all Bodies but of all Spirits also And for this reason we cannot offend Theology if we affirme that God is as fully Present in Hell among the accursed as in Heaven among the blessed natures though not so comfortably and that the Devils would rejoyce if they could conceive it possible for him to be absent thence since their existence and so their Torments would then cease his presence being the original and support of all existence Now if all this be amassed into one demonstration and that duely perpended I demand as well of the most contumacious infidelity as the rankest ignorance what can remain desirable in order to the full information of our reason that if there were a million of Worlds nay as many as there are individuals in this and in each a 1000000 times more business then in this yet could the oversight and gubernation of them all and the regular managery of every the smallest occurrence in them put Divinity to no more trouble disquiet or interruption of felicity then the simple Act of Volition doth induce upon the soul of man However for further illustration I cannot think it unnecessary to superadd this that since Man himself doth ordinarily perform Article 3. That the procuration of all the infinitely various actions of second causes in the World cannot be any interturbation of God◠serene felicity proved by an Argument à minori some actions particularly those which he is not only qualified and impowered but also inclined to doe by the native virtue or congenial propensity of his Essence as to Cogitate Desire Love Rejoyce in the manifestation of his good parts or endowments c. not only without labour and inquietude but even with superlative delight and content it cannot but be concordant to reason to assert that God is so far from sustaining any difficulty molestation or diminution of felicity in the constant act of Vniversal Providence which is the natural effect of his Infinite Intelligence and Indefatigable Activity that t is rather a part of his Beatitude so to exercise and manifest his Divinity Not that the abyss of his Happiness was not full before the World was but because being moved by his own immense Goodness to create a convenient subject whereon to actuate his Munificence he is pleased still to delight himself in the continued diffusion and communication of his excellencies by the conservation and regulation of the same according to the most prudent laws of his Will I have often consulted the most knowing and best ordered minds with whom I could attain the blessing of a free conversation and such doubtless are the only competent judges of delight wherein lay the Philosophers stone of Content in this life and in what actions of their lives they discovered the highest and most permanent pleasure and they all concurred in this determination Aliis prodesse quám licet plurimis bene facere And this upon no slender ground since the Beatitude of Man doth radically and totally
endowed and which she constantly declares in the prosperous exercise of her Monarchy with the short line of our intelligence or to estimate her Providence according to the rate of our cheaper faculties is both ignorance and unjustice how infinitely more stupid and unwarrantable a course doth that wretch take who adventures to commensurate the superexcellent knowledge and almighty virtue of God whereby he procures and moderates the affairs of the World That man is for the most incurious of smal and trivial occurrences is so far from being a wonder that contrariwise those who could tripartite their thoughts to the contrivemeÌ„t of but three different businesses at once as Caesar have been lookt upon as Prodigies and he that can lay the grounds of but one popular designe so as to have it succeed without impediment or the intervention of cross accidents is reputed a profound Politician and his head a whole sphear above the vulgar This I am not ignorant the haughtiness of his spirit hath referred to the fixation of his thoughts upon objects either of his pleasure or ambition when in modest truth this pretension of sublimity is but a gloss or specious vernish to conceal the imbecillity and limitation of his intelligence For that being two narrow to be extended to the forecast and reguiation of many things at once and his stomach too high to descend to a due acknowledgment of the imperfection of his nature he guilds over the poverty with the pride of his minde and endevours to excuse his frailty by insimulating that to attend the study of trisles and in the interim supersed the projection of matters of importance is a disparagement to the nobility of his Intellectuals When if his reason were so capacious as to admit the care of petty affairs without the confusion or neglect of others of more concernment nothing though nere so mean and ordinary could seem below the dignity of his Providence But that God should be incurious of any action in the world is absolutely impossible since contrapugnant to the Vniversality of his Cognition and Praesence for what is Omniscient and Vbiquitary can be ignorant of nothing and consequently it can be no more either of Profanation to the Sanctity or dishonour to the glorious Majesty of the Deity to extend his Providence to the meanest contingents in nature then it can be to the Soul to vegetate and inspire each single hair of that body she informs SECT V. TO their Second objection that all events in the World are either the non-praedestinate and extemporary results of Article 1. The first division of the Atheists second objection viz. that the apparent irregularity of events doth justifie their non-praedestination or meer contingency strongly convelled and that to the praeordination of divinity nothing can be casual clearly commonstrated Chanâ—e or the necessary and setled effects of Nature all Actives and Passives being by the unalterable laws of their primitive constitutions firmely adliged unto and irresistibly impelled upon the causation of determinate effects respective to the energy of their particular consigurations we as easily as uprightly answer First that to the praedestination of that Almighty Cause which can and doth dispose the motions of all things according to the praescripts of his own Will no event can be casual or unexpected though indeed if we have regard to the praescience and forecast of man to whose dim opticks all things are invisible that stand in the dark of futurity many events seem meer Accidents and the most mature determinations of Fate may pass for the rash and inconsiderate hitts of Fortune And if so how audacious a temerity is it in us so to magnifie our own slender perspicacity as when we cannot discern why this or that particular concurse and encounter of natural causes should occur rather then another and such or such an issue of their confederate activities succeed rather then another instantly to conclude that there can be no Superior Cause or superintendent power which hath thus or thus ordained and disposed those certain means to those certain ends and whose counsels we are not privy unto Look we no farther then the ordinary Providence of Princes and in every Republick our observation shall meet with a thousand events which in the judgements of their vulgar subjects and such as stand aloof from the Councel table are deemed meer Contingents as never at all designed upon any secret reasons of State when yet to the Prince himself and those to whom he hath communicated the mystery of his designations they really are the intended effects of his Prudence which had so politickly ordered his affairs and so wisely prepared all Agents requisite to the bringing about of his purposes that they could not but hit and be accomplish't accordingly And is there then why we should not be confirmed that in this immense Commonwealth in whose government the most inobservant cannot but take notice of innumerable passages so admirable both in respect of the weak Insturments that served to bring them to pass and of the obscurity or impervestigability of the Ends at which they were levelled that nothing less then an infinite Wisdome could contrive nothing less then an infinite Power effect them there must of necessity be a Rector General or President Paramont by whose soveraign dictates all subordinate ministers are set on work in order to the execution of his pleasure and in their operations vary not a hairs-bredth from the rules prescribed by his Will though neither the manner of their activities nor the Ends to which they are destined fall under the discovery of our puâ—blinde reason For the Polity of God is inscrutable and may well delight our Piety with wonder but must empuzle our insolent Curiosity and the eye of our souls being in this life far dimmer then that of Moses body cannot survey so much as the back parts or dark side of Divinity much less pry into the maze of his Counsels and read the invisible decrees of that mystical Sâ—nate wherein though there be a consult of three Persons there is yet but one minde which votes without contradiction and his Volition deliberation and Election make but one simple act For my part that the wayes of God in the World are past finding out that there is a Sanctum Sanctorum in the Ark of Providence into which blind mortality cannot look and that the cryptick turnings doublings and redoublings of that hand which works all its rarities in the dark and sometimes inverts now and then transcends and anon infringes the Axloms of Nature to shew that as he made so he can alter her and tune all her strings to a concord with his will make a labyrinth to intricate and lose the presumptious reason of man that dares hope to explore and trace it this I say is demonstration enough to me that there is one Vniversal Intelligence which both moves and directs all individual Agents to act in order to the accomplishment of some positive
Voluntary motion and yet are forced by an host of difficulties to retire and suspend their hopes of perfecting their designe were contrived by Fortune and not by the skill of an Artist infinite in Science and Power How familiar is this Logick to every mans understanding the Figures of all things in the adspectable World are exactly Geometrical their actions and uses respectively accommodate their motions constant and regular at all times their effects certain and the laws of every distinct species immutable as to themselves ergo those Figures Actions Vses Motions and Laws were delineated appointed assigned begun and enacted by an Omniscient and omnipotent Providence And this I conceive sufficient to demonstrate the truth of our First assertion viz. that that constant Tenor or establisht method according to which all Natural causes operate was instituted and is perpetuated by an Infinite Wisdome For the support of our Third Thesis that though the actions of all Second causes are impulsive and necessary yet those of the First Article 6. The verity of the third Position demonstrated Cause are Elective and Arbitrary though God hath by the severe laws of Nature bound up the hands of his Creatures limited their activities and punctually consigned them their several provinces yet he hath reserved his own free and as an absolute Monarch can at pleasure alter transcend or pervert those Statutes and give a new Commission to his Ministers to work by a new way in order to the causation of any extraordinary effect which his providence hath decreed of universal or particular benefit we need erect no other pillar of argument but that one firme and immoveable basis the importance of the word Creator For since to be able to produce all things out of nothing by the single efficacy of his word or the energetical blast of his will to endow each distinct species with faculties exactly proportionate and meridional to their distinct destinations and to entail upon them to the expiration of Times own lease that estate in which he enfcoffed them at their creation doth necessarily imply a greater perfection of power then meerly to vary or innovate their efficiencies according to the expedients emergencies or occasional designes of his Providence it remains indisputable upon consequence that to allow him the Greater and yet deny him the less to beleive him to be the Author of that mighty and difficult miracle the Creation and yet doubt the supremacy of his Power by conceiving that he cannot turn Natural Agents out of their common road and order their digressions to the effecting of smaller and easier Rarities must be a manifest Contradiction and an Absurdity that stabbs it self However that we may not seem to entrust so noble and sacred a Article 7. A farther confirmation of the same by an Argument from the miraculous operations of God in praeterito Truth to the protection of one single Reason it becomes our care to superadd for the more security this defence also If God hath frequently manifested his Supremacy by working effects as well above as against the establisht and customary power of natural Agents in times past then doubtless is not his arme shortned nor the fountain of his energy dryed up and he can do the like in the future but he frequently hath ergo c. The Major I am sure no man will boggle at who shall consider that t is the proper privilege of Divinity to be still the same that that virtue which is extreme and so above all addition must necessarily also be above all decay or diminution and therefore he that conceives God subject to Mutability Aâ—â—erity or Deslux blasphemes the Simplicity Purity and Eternity of his Essence and holds but a false Idea of his Nature Nor can the Minor require more proof then its bare Prolation unless the unbeleif of any man shall be so inslexible as not to bowe at the Convulsion of a truth which the Records of all Nations Times and Religions lye open to attest For that there have been observed Prodigious and miraculous accidents such as the most obstinate Idolaters of Nature and those who grew gray in the study of her laws customes and secret magnalias and kept a list of her forces were surprized with aftonishment at the consideration of and after a vain and tedious scrutiny into their abstruse Causalities were forced to refer to the immediate arme of a Supernatural efficient the indisputable monuments of faithfull Antiquity bear witness And he who hath not heard of those Three grand Examples to omit the enumeration of any other that are not universally beleived by men of all interests and perswasions of the superiority of Gods power to that of his servant Nature viz. The Vniversal deluge the Cessation of Oracles and the total Eclipse of the Sun at the passion of our Redeemer can give but weak testimony that he is either Iew Mahometan or Christian The First being reputed not onely true but sacred and thereforeheld Article 8. That there was an universal Deluge as point of faith in common by all three Religions nay countenanced even by Pagan stories and more their setled account of time they computing the second space or intervall of Time the First being little better to them then Prolepticall or as the Heathen called it Adelon immanifest and obscure was dated from the beginning of the World to Ogyges Floud which was about 530 yeers after Noahs from the Floud to the first Olympiad which answers to the year of the World 3174. and comes within about 20 years before the foundation of Rome The Second being imbraced and made authentical by the general consent of Christians upon the forced acknowledgment of Article 9. The Cessation of Satans Oracles after the advent of the Word of Truth proved anthentiquely those whose interest obliged them to invalidate it and those not only Pagans surrounded with the horrid darknesse of idolatry and expecting no day-break from the glorious Sun of Righteousness but even of the Devil himself who though the Father of lies and his honour so highly concerned in the intercision of his impostures and delusions could not yet dissemble this verity but at four severall times and in as many severall places publickly proclaimed it First when from his famous Oracle at Delphos he confest himself to be tongue-tied his fallacious predictions countermanded and his so solemnly pretended Divinity expired being able to return no other answer to the great Augustus whose errand was to have his fortune told him but this Me Puer Hebraeus Divos Deus ipse gubernans Cedere sede jubet tristemque redire sub Orcum Aris ergo dehinc tacitus discedito nostris An Hebrew Child that God whose power 's above All other Gods commands me to remove Hence to the Court of sorrow wherefore goe My Altars quit in silence and nere moe Of Future things from me expect to know A second time when Legion howled out the hideous dirge of their black
Prince and the shoars were heard by Mariners far off at sea to echo their groans into this dismal note Great Pan is dead as Plutarch hath reported in his defect of Oracles A third about the time of Constantine so affectionately magnified by Eusebius in his sad complaint that his lips were sealed up his Prognosticks suppressed and his sophistry fooled by the Righteous upon earth as the same Eusebius hath related in Vita Constantini And again in his excuse to the Emperour Iulian who being superstitiously curious to foreknow the success of his great expedition into Persia and therefore addressing himself with exceeding solemnity to the temple of Apollo Daphnes to anticipate the knowledg of his fortune could notwithstanding worm out of him no other satisfaction but this that he should first remove the bodies about him before he could have the liberty to return him an answer as Theodoret hath registred who also tells us that not long after that Temple was consumed by lightning But I must heer arrest my Reader with a civil and short Advertisement that by the Cessation of Oracles I may not intend a total and absolute expulsion of that grand Impostor from all his Fanes Tripods and other shops wherein he professed his delusions at once as if the Incarnation of Truth had strook him dumb at one blow but an extermination of him from his metropolitan Temple at Delphos and an Intercision Diminution or sensible Decay of his Amphibologies Predictions and other Collusions in all other places For otherwise I should not only steal a contradiction upon my self that unsatisfactory response which he stammerd out to Iulian being full 363 years after the nativity of him that crush't the Serpents head but also incur the just censure either of being ignorant of or undecently neglecting those solid reasons which Plutarch Suetonius and our modern learned Wits Montacutius and D â— Browne have adduced to attest the continuation of his ceremonious Legerdemain and solemn cheats practised upon gross and credulous Pagans in the point of Vaticination much beyond the rising setting and resurrection of the Sun of righteousness who came down to dispell those foggs of Hell and irradiate the poor benighted world with Light supernatural And the Last is sworn to by all For 1 the Christian hath it Article 10. That there was a prodigious Eclips of the Sun at the passion of our Saviour ratified to him both by sacred and profane Auctority 2 the Jews that deny Christ to have bin the true Messias do yet acknowledg the prodigious Eclipse of the Sun that renowned his passion and 3 the Turks who allow him to have bin no more then a geat and holy Prophet as their Alcoran frequently intimateth are yet so zealous of the honour of their antient records that they would confute him with a scimiter who should dare to indubitate the preterition of so remarkable a wonder which certified the half of the earth of its verity by the sensible perswasion of a panick terror insomuch that many of the Jews who beheld it were so shatterd with fear that their hearts were rent aswell as the vail of the Temple and themselves ready to sneak into the graves of those Saints that were newly risen to evidence his conquest over death and give humanity a prelibation or tast of the benefit of his sufferings Nor was this as other Eclipses only Partial and Vertical to Hierusalem but the darkness was visible to the whole Hemisphear els how could the Aegyptian Astronomer take notice of it and being amazed at the unnatural Apparition cry out Aut Deus Naturae patitur aut machina mundi dissolvitur as the reverend Father his namesake Dionysius hath remembred in his Epistle to Polycarpus and Apollophanes els how could the antient Greeks in their Annals have filed up a monstrous Defection of the great Luminary in the 4 th year of 202. Olympiad as Phlegon Trallianus notethâ— Now the 4 th year of the 202. Olympiad jumps even with the 19 th of Tiberius and the 33. of the Nativity which was the 4745. of the Julian period and therefore that exact synchronisme makes that monstrous Eclipse observed by the more mathematical eyes of the Greeks to be the same which happened at the death of the Lord of life That the Catholique Deluge was purely Supernatural and the destruction of all Living Creatures upon the sublunary Gloâ—e Article 11. A Demonstration of the impossibility of the Catholique Deluges proceeding from Causes Natural those few that were shifted aboard the Ark only preserved by an Abyss of Waters immediately caused by the revenging Will of that same Fruitfull Spirit that formerly brooding upon the same abyss of waters had hatchtt hem into being though of some difficulty to him that shall wave all testimonies deduceable from the sacred relation adscribed to Moses can yet be no impossibility to prove from Considerations meerly Physical For First the vast Quantity of Waters requisite to overflow the whole earth and prevail upon the high hills nay exceed the heads of the most lofty mountains by 15 cubits for mountains there were before the floud els how could the waters by degrees encreasing ascend and cover them and therefore those wanton Wits which affirm the Antediluvian earth to have had her face a meer Plane or level without those protuberancies and rugosities undertake not only a Paradox but a manifest Absurdity point blanck repugnant aswell to the Text as to the natural Necessity of those Inaequalities could not be powred out from the Receptaries or storehouses of the Ocean the Earth having as great if not a greater share in the Terraqueous Globe as the Waters and the perpendicular Altitude of the mountains by more then two parts of three at least transcending the profundity of the deepest Chanel of the Sea that ever the sounding line of any Mariner did profound except of that Barathrum or Vorago Aquarum in mari dulci between Roest and Leoffelt described by Olaus Magnus which yet is but a kind of Sluice or sink and therefore of no considerable latitude For that the Eminency of the highest Hills hath scarcely the same proportion to the Semidiametre of the Earth that there is betwixt 1. 1000 hath bin frequently demonstrated by many of our best Geographers and though we descend to Eratosthenes his commensuration who hath affirmed that by instruments Dioptrick and an exact measure of the distances of Places he hath certainly found the Altitude of the highest mountains not to exceed ten stadia we shall not however be provided of water enough in the bowells of the Sea to advance our inundation the depth of the profoundest ocean seldom amounting to a 100 Fathom as Scaliger 38 Exercit. contra Cardanum hath upon justifiable grounds declared Nor can this immane Collection of Waters be derived as some have inconsiderately opinioned from the Whole lower Region of the Aer condensed into clouds and those comprest into waters For to take no strict notice
be so immoveably prefixt by the Decrees of Divine Providence as that neither temperance or care on mans part can extend nor the violence of second Causes situate without the oâ—b of his moâ—eration accelerate it Necessary it is that we seriously examine and search into the marrow of two things conductive to the right stating and consequently the right understanding of the Question 1 What we are to understand by the Term of Life 2 In what sense we are to understand this Term to be sixt or moveable What we are to understand by the Term of Life Concerning the First obvious it is that all things or causes inservient both to the Conservation of life and the adduction of Article 3. The necessary relation of all Causes both of life and death to three Generall heads viz. Necessary Fortuitous Supernatural supports the discrimination of the Term of life into Supernatural Natural Accidentary the impertinency of the consideration of the Supernatural Term to the present scope its period Death fall under the contents of three General heads for either they must refer to those that are Necessary or such as by the ordinary course of Nature no man can subsist without to which classis belong our Aliment Aer sleep c. or 2 Non necessary or Fortuitous which no way conduce to the Fomentation or fewel of our Vital Flame but point blank to the Extinction of it and therefore the instinct of nature perswades every man to avoyd them such are Shipwracks stabbs shots precipices halters c. causes of immature suddain and violent deaths or 3 Meerely Supernatural or the Will of God which as it is impossible without Special Divine Revelation for us to foreknow so also to alter or prevent Upon these three pillars was it that Laurentius Joubertus erected his triple Difference of the Term of mans life making one Supernatural such as the Breath of our nostrils was pleased to assign to most of the Antediluvian Patriarchs or Seminaries of Humanity either in order to the more expedite multiplication of mankind to the more advantageous invention and propagation of Arts and Sciences or for some other considerable respect at which our ignorance can only squint by conjecture which being long since cancelled Art sits down in a contented despaire to renovate nor can the records of the world afford us the story of any impudence that durst rant so high as to promise it except that of a certain Mountebanck Greek derided by Galen and our late Nugipolyloquides Paracelsus both which experimentally confuted their own unpardonable Arrogance before their sands had run out 50 years Another Natural which Physiologie defines by that space of time during which our radical Balsam or the oleaginous Fewel of our vital Lamp maintains the innâ—te Heate or Flame of life untill the total exhaustion of the one causeth a total privation of the other or more plainly that circle of time which comprehends the seven Segments or Ages of man which though prestitute and limited by the Governour of Nature according to the compute of the Psalmist to 80. years of Plato to 81. of the Aegyptians to 100. Caelius Rodiginus 19. antiq Lect. cap. 21. Ioh. Langius lib. 1. Epist Medicinal 79. of the best of the Sibylls to a 100. as is exprest in those 2. verses corrected by the incomparable Salmasius Pliniarum observat pag. 77. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And of the ancient Jews to 120. Ioseph Antiq. Iudaic. lib. 1. is yet left to some considerable latitude and hath more or less of Duration respective to the more or less durability of the Principles of life i. e. the Eucrasy or Dyscrasy of the body in every individual provided that neither the oyle be inquinated by crude or putrid Supplies nor prodigally depredated by immoderate intension of its consumer the Flame nor that immaturely either suffocated or wasted by Diseases or suddainly extinguished by violent Accidents which make the third Difference or Accidentary Term of life But as for the first branch of this Ternary the Metaphysical or Supernatural Term of mans life dependent on the Divine Will immediately since according to the doctrine of Nicholaus Florentinus in Serm. the Conciliator in different Medicis and Joubertus in Errorib popular it concerns only the first Age of the World this place may very conveniently want any farther consideration thereof nor can it much avail to the atchievement of our design to insist upon more then the two last By the Term of life therefore we ought to understand either Article 4. The proper import of the Natural Term of mans life and also of the Accidental 1 that period of every individual mans days which is caused by a sensible decay and total dissolution of the ligaments which chain the Soul to the Body or more expresly by an extinction of his Vital Flame naturally succeeding upon a consumption of its Pabulum or fewel the Radical Moysture when both those Principles of life are permitted to their natural and proper tenor i. e. when no Preternatural Cause intervenes and by Corruption anticipates the dissolution of that Disposition or Temperament of the Elements of the body upon which the subsistence of life doth necessarily depend or 2 the end of every mans life in general whensoever and by what means soever either Diseases or violent and unexpected Accidents introduced without any respect to the gradual and successive declination and consequent cessation of the Natural Temperament in the marasmus of old age Now from the acceptation of the Term of Life in the First signification there genuinly emerge Two Questions First Whether this Term of life which is circumscribed per Article 5. The result of our acceptation of the Term of life in the first signification ipsius temperamenti defluxum decursum by the natural Deflux or wearing out of the requisite Temperament of the body and which we may without impropriety call a kind of mature easy and spontaneous falling asunder of the Ligaments of life be absolutely and definitely fixt so that God hath constituted to leave the nature of every Individual to its own moderation nor by any means to interrupt or alter its course prescribed i. e. not by any means to procure that this Deflux of the Temperament should have more or less duration then what may naturally be expected from the more or less durability thereof dependent on the more or less perfect proportion that the Passive and Active Principles hold each to other or more plainly that the Renitency or Resistence of the Oyle holds to the depredatory and consumptive Activity of the Flame Secondly if this Term of life be thus Fixt and that God indeed hath decreed not to intend or prolong that Deflux of the Temperament beyond the point of its natural Durability whether yet notwithstanding without alteration of his Decree of committing Nature to its own establish'â— course he may not being thereunto moved by our
inevitabili necessitate by the absolute and never-failing power of their Essential Qualities or inherent endowments but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quatenus fieri licuit or according to the possibility of their Concingency and therefore though he confesseth that all Events are foreknown and preordained in the eternal Councel of God yet he stands assured as well upon the ground of Reason as Faith that the precise and opportune contingency of every individual Event proceeds from the insluence of this Providence which disposeth and conjoyneth some certain convenient Causes to the production of this or that determinate Effect in some sort respecting the last of Ends his own Glory To conclude the Stoick hath clip't the immense and towering wings of mans Will and allows it no wider range then what the line of Fate affords while the sublimer Christian scornes to stoop to the Lure of any Necessity besides the special Decrees of the Divine Councel not conceiving his will subject to the inclination much less the compulsion of any force below that of him who conferred that infinite liberty upon it For he indeed holds the rains of our Wills and can bend them yet non coactione violenta sed leni suavique influxu not by violent Coaction but gentle and sweet Invitation as the School-men distinguish Now if we consider Fate in the notion of the Stoicks 't will Article 13. A list of the execrable Absurdities impendent on the opinion of Ablute Fatality so accepted as the Stoick proposeth it be no easy wonder if any man though his reason be never so much hoodwinckt with the veile of Prejudice shall not at first glance discover it to be an opinion Blasphemous in respect to God insomuch as it strikes at no less then the cardinal and inseparable Attribute of his Nature Omnipotence by coercing his infinite and arbitrary Activity with the definite laws of second Causes and denying him the prerogative of absolute superiority to his mechanique Vicegerent or rather Instrument Nature and inrespect of man intolerably Absurd since it subverts the Liberty of all humane actions and leaves nothing in the power of mans Will either to elect or avoide For whoever conced's that the mind of man is subject to the compulsive regiment of Fatal Necessity and so that all the actions of our lives are but the accomplishments of so many ineluctable immoveable and inevitable Decrees from the birth of time enrolled in the Ephimerides of Destiny must also concede upon clear inference that our Creator endowed us with the Semi-divine Faculty of Rationality either to no purpose at all or at best to facilitate our betraying our selves into the snares of ruine and misery beyond possibility of reparation or redemption Must induce that the Will being deposed from her arbitrary throne the judgement seate of Reason must fall to the ground nor can there be any room left for Consultation to sit and determine the debates of the Soul concerning the good or Evil of her objects since notwithstanding all our most profound serious and prudent Deliberation the success of our actions as well as the results of our councels would then be no other but what hath bin resolved on and predecreed by Fate and then to conceive our selves obnoxious to punishment for incurring those sins which are imposed upon our wills by a necessity beyond our controll is an open derogation to the equity and Justice of the Divine Nature and to ascribe our Evil to that which is by essence superlatively Good That Prudence is miserable Folly the study of Wisdome laborious Vanity and all our ancient Lawmakers either ridiculous Fools or detestable Tyrants since they prescribe and enjoyne those things which either we must have done had not they injoyned them or are restrained from doing in spite of our own conformable inclinations by the contrary impulsion or seduction of Destiny And finally that all Divine and Human Exhortation to Good and Dehortation from evil are unnecessary and supersluous Thus shall Virtue and Vice vanish into meer and empty notions and Religion become what Libertines would have it a mysterious and well contrived invention to support temporall Greatness and fright vulgar minds into a tame submission to the arbitrary dictates of their imperious Lords nor shall there be a Heaven to compensate suffering Piety or a Hell for the punition of Villainy because as the Good man could not but live honestly and religiously whether he would or no so must it not be in the power of the Wicked man to abstain from doing Evil. Thus shall Love and Hatred the two most usefull Affections of our Souls be robbed of their proper Objects Amiable and Detestable nor shall Justice find convenient subjects whereon to place Laudation and Vituperation since Praise only belongs to those who have chosen to do Good when 't was in their power to have done Evil and Dispraise is the due guerdon of those who choose to do Evil when t was in their power to have done Good And thus shall all our Prayers be fruitless our vowes hopeless our Sacrifices unprofitable and all other acts of Devotion desperate Vanity The least of which and of a myriade of other equivalent Absurdities Incongruities and oblique or appendent and inferrible Blasphemies shooting up from this one poysonous root of Absolute Fatality is more then enough inconsistent to the fundamentals both of Reason and Religion to deterr even Heathens from approaching much more embracing and defending it But as for Theological Fate or Predestination if accepted in the legitimate sense of the Primitive Church and not in that rigorous and inflexible notion of the German Calvinist I conceive it fully concordant not only to many Texts of Sacred writ but even conciliable to mans Free will notwithstanding the apparent repugnancy betwixt them as I shall endevour to prove singularly in an ensuing chapter SECT III. AS for the Second Opinion viz. that the Term of mans Life Article 1. The Authors adhesion to the Second opinion justified by two important reasons is not fixt beyond possibility of either Anticipation or Postposition this I profess my judgement inclines me to prefer as that which seem's to be drawn in the directest line from the point of Truth and that for two mighty Reasons First because there are very few places or testimonies of Scripture which may be thought to advantage the doctrine 1. of Absolute Fatality but on the contrary very many allegable in defence of this Secondly because those Texts which make for this have 2. their importance so perpendicular that nothing but a violent perversion can wrest so perspicuous that nothing but obscure interpretations can darken so soft and easy that nothing but over nice and unnatural Exceptions can harden it And Justice will frown on that stupid partiality that shall prefer paucity to multitude obscurity to clarity and difficult to genuine and familiar solutions To explain and justify this by Instance the Hercules or Article 2. The great
more both of Imprudence and Inconstancy it must import to play the uncircumspect Sophister with those who as our Adversaries themselves affirme stood possessed with a full perswasion that the Term of every mans life was absolutely and without any respect to his future piety or Impiety predetermined I profess sincerely I am yet to be perswaded that any Credulity can be so pedantique and slavish as to entertain a beleif that even Man I forbear to say God can thus openly and detectibly dissimulate with any the most stupid and indiscreet person alive unless he be first resolved to expose himself to the just scorn and derision of all men and by this loose and childish jugling forfeit that reputation which he had acquired by his former grave and oraculous treaties and the just performance of all Articles to which he had subscribed 'T is one thing to admit that the Holy Ghost doth sometimes descend to discourse in the stammering and amphibological Phrase of man when he is pleased to hint unto us those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or ineffable Mysteries which are too fine to be spun into words by the gross fingers of flesh and are notions reserved to entertain the Soul when enfranchized from the bonds of Corporeity such are those glances whereby he affords us a dark landskip of the New Jerusalem and allegorical description of the joyes and glories of the Eternal Life an idea of the majesty of his incomprehensible Essence and three distinct Subsistences in one indivisible Existence c. and a far different nay contrary to say that he doth speak Anthropopathically and conform to our unequall capacities when he promiseth those things which do not only not transcend our faculties of comprehension but are familiar to our knowledg nay such as the neerest concernment of our nature requires us fully and perspicuously to know And such is the quality of those Blessings which the Bounty of Providence hath by promise assured unto the Virtuous in order to the demulsion and dulcification of the sharp condition of this life and particularly that of longevous subsistence upon earth To conclude the Spirit or Form of a Promise doth consist in this that they to whom the promise is made do understand the good therein specified to be really bona fide in specie intended to be performed by him who made the promise Now if there arise any doubt whether or no that promise be repugnant to a verity formerly declared then doth the force and sanction together with the Dignity thereof totally vanish and become voyd Our Adversaries have rejoyned that God doth therefore promise Longevity to obsequious Children because he hath formerly decreed to qualifie their particular Constitutions with respective Durability But alas this subterfuge neither dissolves the Difficulty nor prevents the Doubt For if his Decree concerning their Longevity be Absolute devoyd of all Suppositionality and suspended upon no respect to his Prevision of their obedience no reason can discover what Force or Energy the promise can pretend unto from the performance of the Condition required Again how can that Promise 〈◊〉 way of invitation or allurement affect those who are already confirmed that what the promise imports is formerly by the positive and non-conditionate Will of God made inevitable and hath the Possibility of its Futurition determined to precise Necessity In fine the Postulation of that Condition can neither consist with the Eternal Identity of God that promises nor effectually move those to whom he makes the promise to endeavour the Consequution of that ample reward of filial obedience for his Decree concerning the Term of their life doth and shall forever stand firm and immote whether the Condition be performed or not The last Testimony they have essayed to extort from us is the Article 8. The sixth Testimony cleared from 4. Exceptions Instance of Ezekiah and this by a Fourfold Cavillation 1 By this Excuse Singulare aliquod Exemplum non evertere regulam that one single denormous Example is not sufficient to evert the general obligation of a law or one swallow makes no summer This Exception I confess might have had some colour or slender pretext of Validity had not our Opponents themselves totally excluded it by asserting that the immutable law of Destiny was equally extended to all and every individual person from Adam down to us For most certain it is that God never limited his free Omnipotence by any fixt law or bound up his own hands with the same setled Constitutions whereby he circumscribed the definite activity and duration of his Creatures it being the Prerogative of his Nature to know no Impossibility but to be able to act either above or against the statutes of his Deputy whensoever and upon what subject and to what end soever he pleases But I have no warrant to beleive that among the Propugnators of Fate any one hath deviated inro so remote an Alogie as to opinion that the Lots of all men are not delivered out of one and the same common urne but that the Decrees concerning the Destinies of some particular persons are not so definitive precise and immoveable as those of all others in generall 2 By this Response that under the seeming Absoluteness of the Prophets Sentence Morieris Thou shalt dye there lay concealed a tacite Hypothesis which was this Nisi seria poenitudine te ad Deum convertas unless by serious and profound repentance thou shalt mortify the old man of sin and apply thy self wholly to the Mercies of God Against this mistaken plea our defence shall be that it wants the principal inducement to beleif and so can afford no satisfaction at all For besides this that it quadrates neither to their First Exception nor their Thesis concerning the Immobility of Destiny what Logick can tolerate the induction of an Hypothetical upon a Categorical Proposition or more expresly how can any Condition be comprehended under that message which by a definitive and peremptory decree and such as carried no respect to the performance or non-performance of any condition whatever tels the K. in down right terms that the date of his life was now expired and that the severe Publican Death stood ready at the door of his chamber within some few hours to exact from him the common tribute of Nature Subordinata non pugnant is an Axiome I well know and am ready to receive a challenge from any singularity that dares question the universality of its truth but that a condiiional Decree can be subordinate to an Absolute I am bold to deny nor need I goe far for an Argument to prove the impossibility thereof the very Antithesis of those notions Absolute and Conditional sufficiently declaring as much To take the just dimensions of this Cloud every Condition is moveable upon the hinge of Indefinity or Uncertainty as being suspended upon an uncertain and mutable Cause viz. the Arbitrary Election of mans Free will insomuch that the Event thereof cannot be known
nay not unto the Omniscience of God who is the only Cardiognostes and sees beyond our very Essences so long as it hangs in suspence or indecision by reason of the Indifferency or non-determination of its Cause i. e. while it is not determined to either part by the Actual Volition of mans will But as for an Absolute decree that cannot but be Certain and Immutable as being constitute without and antecedent to any Prevision of a Condition that is to be or hath bin performed or is not to be or hath not bin performed 3 By insinuating that God made use of this sharp Commination in order to the more Expedite and effectual reduction of the K. to Penitence But alas this also is a broken reed and he shall fall into the ditch of Error who relies thereon For who can be perswaded that this Commination could be serious and in earnest that must not at the same time dissolve the rigour and immutability of Gods decree concerning the fatal Term of the K s. life or how could it be serious if it were fully constituted from all Eternity that the K. should not die till full 15. years after the Sentence This is a pure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and something that no man can comprehend For to comminate suddain death to him whom our Adversaries acknowledge reserved by the law of Destiny till the complete expiration of his prefixt Term of life is not to comminate in earnest but in jest and argue the God of Truth of Dissimulation Again what Efficacy or inforcing Virtue could that Commination have over the Affections of Ezekiah if he firmly beleived that he should not could not dye before the precise term of his life constituted and made intransible from Eternity Assuredly if so he had no just cause either to complain of or fear the abscission of his days 4 By recurring to this their last refuge Deum hac ratione palam facere voluisse quam Regi ab aeterno designarat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that God was pleased to take this course for the promulgation of that Longevity which he had from eternity designed to Ezekiah This is more impertinent and less satisfactory then any of the precedént Exceptions For extremely ridiculous it is to opinion that God would by a Commination suspended on a condition or by a hypothetical decree make that known which long before he had by an Absolute Decree without any condition or prevision of any condition constituted firme and immoveable Unworthy and disparaging thoughts both of the Wisdome and Justice of the Supreme Being doth that unhappy man entertain who ascribes unto it the making of Decrees subordinate disparate and irreconcileable That Sacred omniscient omnipotent Agent as himself makes nothing in vaine so would he have us make him our Exemplar and doe no action but what points at some certain end and conduces both to our benefit and the last of ends his Glory But in vain had he promised in vain threatned had he either promised or threatned those things which his own irrevocable Decree had formerly made immutable which must of necessity had they never bin promised or threatned have come to pass in their predetermined opportunity or such to whose Existence it was wholly and absolutely necessary that that very thing under which the promise or commination was made should be effected by such a power to which no other power can resist And this we hope at least is sufficient to the ample justification of our opinions right to those Three appropriate and Convincing Testimonies of the Mobility of the Term of mans life desumed from holy Writ ¶ SECT IV. IT remains only that we endeavour to wind our reason out of Article 1. The necessity of our enquiry into the mystery of Predestination in order to the solution of the present difficulty and the Fatists grand Argument that profound abyss of Predestination of which the Apostle though he had the advantage of all other men in this that he had the eye of his Soul illuminated by beams deradiated immediately from the Soul of Light did yet excuse himself for his non-comprehension with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into which the solution of this grand difficulty hath unavoidably precipitated it for the strongest hold which the Defendants of Absolute Fatality have left them to retreat unto is erected upon this Foundation It makes no materiall difference say they whether the Prescience of God be conceived precedent to his Preordination of any future Event and so Predestination be founded upon Prevision or on the contrary this Praeordination precedent to his Praescience and so Praedestination be the basis of Paervision for from the concession of either it follows of absolute necessity that the Term of mans life in individuo must be fixt and intransible We answer Article 2. The refutation thereof by the conciliation of the infallibility of Gods Praenotion to the indetermination of mans free will to the actual election of Good or Evil. That the Consequence indeed ought to be admitted as firme and impregnable For this Praescience whether it praeced or succed Divine Praedestination is and must be ever certain praecise and infallible or so supposed to be at least and therefore must the Term of mans life be constituted certain precise and immutable ex necessitate si non consequentis saltem consequentiae by necessity if not of the Consequent yet of the consequence i. e. if not from the Virtue or Efficiency yet from the Hypothesis or Conditionality of that Praescience For no Sceptick can disallow of this Consequence if God doth infallibly foreknow that this and no other shall be the Term of my life ergo this and no other shall be the Term of my life But this is not the point at which our inquiry is levelled Manifest it is aswell from our precedent discourse as from the Condition of the subject that these two Propositions are not repugnant each to other viz. The Term of mans life is fixt and immutable in respect to the infallibility of Gods Praescience and the Term of mans life is moveable in respect to our right use or abuse of the Liberty of our Will Though I confess with the great Mersennus that the apparent discord betwixt the infallibility of Gods Prenotion and the indetermination of mans Free Will to the actual election of good or evil hath bin the rock against which many the greatest wits of all Ages and Religions have bin shipwrackt in their perswasions of the irresistible enforcement of Destiny To extricate our judgements out of this maze let us remember and adhaere unto that excellent Axiome of the most and most learned of the School-men Praevisionem Dei nihil influere i◠nostras actiones that the Praevision of God hath no influence upon the actions of man nor upon the operation of the remedies applyed by the Physician to the cure of diseases but presupposeth both the one and the other For in
gathered the first flowers of its triumphant wreath in Nase by Field and supinely give Coloquyntida or Scammony in a Dysentery Antimony in the Iliaca Passio Opium in a Crisis Aqua Fortis for a Julep c. since no Art can supersede nor Poyson accelerate his departure whose time of transition to the invisible world Destiny hath limited to a moment Et cum Fata volunt bina Venena juvant Nor can it be rightly esteemed a Virtue in the Physician to be studious and solicitous or a Vice to be debaucht ignorant and negligent of the safety of his Client if it be only the irresistible Impulse of Fate which forceth his Will to the election of either in order to the precise accomplishment of its Decree or more plainly if the Care or Negligence of the Physician be but the Medium whereby Fate brings about its end concerning the dissolution of the Patient And if so what Moral obligation remains upon the conscience of the Physician Assuredly none at all Which every moderate judgement will soon detect to import so manifest dangerous and detestable an Absurdity that of it self t is able not only to discredit the opinion of Fatality but also to accuse and convict the Abettors thereof of unpardonable Inconsideration Stupidity and Irreligion The Second Inconvenience or rather Absurdity inseparably Article 7. A Second Absurdity connected to the same conjoyned to this opinion of a Decretory Prescience in God is this Whoever shall grant that all the means or remedies and so the sedulity or negligence as well of the Sick as the Physician are subordinately predetermined by the Decree of Fate must also by the necessity of natural consequence be compelled to grant that to allow the merit of Praise or Dispraise Commendation or Reprehension unto either is open Injustice For by what pretext of Equity can a Sick man challenge to himself the honor of having done a praise-worthy action in endevouring to preserve himself both by observing a course of Diet contrary to his disease and seasonable consulting with and strictly conforming unto the advice of a learned and judicious Physician or the Physician for the full discharge of his duty in regulating the sick according to the most profound and salutiferous maximes of his Art if the obedience of the one and the care of the other be not Arbitrary but coacted or necessitated by the Force of the complex Decree of Fate as instrumental to the subsistence of the sick man till the predestined term of his life Vbi mera necessitas locum habet ibi laudem exulare necesse est where meer Necessity is admitted thence all Laudation is excluded And with what justice can we reprehend the sick man for being incurious in the disquisition or irregular in and averse from the use of the means prescribed for his restauration if that his supinity irregularity and aversion be imposed upon his Will by the impuls of Destiny and predetermined as a necessary Medium to accomplish the Decree of his immature death or the Physician either for his neglect or ignorant and inartificial tractation of his Client if t were decreed he should be so to the end the client might expire according to the decree Persuasum est omnibus saith Menasseh Ben Israel de Termino Vitae pag. 205. nec laudandum nec arguendum quemquam nisi qui libero arbitrio consulto benè agit aut delinquit adeo ut nullus suasioni consiliis redargutioni praemio aut poenae locus sit si homo non est liber in actionibus suis Article 8. Two Subterfuges of the Fatists Precluded From this distress our Opponents have promised themselves an easy evasion by replying that both Patient and Physician are wholly ignorant of the Decree the Opticks of Mortality being too weak and remote to read the lines in the Book of Fate without the perspicill of Divine Revelation But this way of Subterfuge may be blockt up by rejoyning that though the Decree be known to neither yet t is sufficiently manifest to both from the Hypothesis of this opinion that not only their Actions but also the Successes thereof are the prescripts and consignations of Fate and so can be no other then what is included in and necessitated by the Decree and consequently that there can remain no just Cause of reprehension on either side Should they insist yet further upon the same plea and urge that t is part of the Decree that either the Physician or Patient or both should be negligent and so become Culpable we may soon exped this obstruction only by demanding what reason or equity can be found to justify such an accusation and respective punition where the Will of the delinquent is controlled inflected nay impelled upon the commission of a crime or omission of a duty by a power infinitely superior to his reluctancy and not only the act but time place instruments means c. conspiring circumstances precisely preordained by a decree of that Will which is Omnipotence Reprehension imports not only an Act of the Reprehendent but also the Guilt or Culpability of the Reprehended otherwise it cannot be just To the legality therefore of a reprehension it is undeniably necessary that the ground or cause thereof be a real and proper Guilt in the person reprehended Now Guilt can have no place where that which is impeached cannot be a Voluntary Agent but a Medium or Instrument ordained and actuated by an irresistible Power to the execution of an infallible Decree The Third and last Absurdity imports no less then the subversion Article 9. A third Absuidity inseparable from the hypothesis of a Decretory Prescience Divine of the very fundamental Principle or basis of all Moral Virtues and Christian Graces by inferring a deniall of Justice in the reward of Good and punishment of Evil either before or after death For t is the Liberty of the Will only that supports the Equity of Compensation and therefore he who doth a good action when t was not in the election of his Will to have omitted that good action or to have done it otherwise then he did hath but a weak claim to a reward nor hath he who commits a sin which is not in his power to leave uncommitted more reason to feare a punishment from the even hand of Divine Justice To conclude therefore since these are the Absurdities which every mans Logick may perceive necessarily and immediately to slow from the doctrine of Decretory Prescience or such as is subsequent to Divine Predetermination and since the same nor any others of equal danger to the Principles of our Knowledge and Articles of the Christian Faith can ever be deduced from the hypothesis of that Simple Prevision or unactive Prescience which we have allowed of as consistent to the justice of God because consistent to the Arbitrary freedome of mans Will t is no hard task to determine in which opinion our judgements may with more safety and permanent
self i. e. in the simplicity of its nature is either more good or absolutely good adhaere to a second judgement which of its self is either less good or absolutely evil but yet notwithstanding that in the object which affects and inclines the Intellect is always ipsa veri species the Apparence of Truth which it observes and is attentive to And because that species of Truth may be either real or counterfeit therefore may that which is in its own nature really true be presented under the disguise of an absolute falshood or less Truth and that which is in its own nature really false be presented likewise under the disguise of an absolute truth or less falshood and so the Intellect becoming subject to deception in the point of judicature may be allected to the prosecution of an absolute falshood or less truth while the object remains obvelated under the delusive vizard of an absolute truth or a less falshood è contra This seriously considered supports three excellent Consequences 1 that as often as the Intellect having adhaered to a true judgement Article 16. Three considerable Inferences from the praemises quits and pursues a false one so often of necessity doth something intervene which detracts the genuine or natural Apparence from the good object and imposes a counterfeit Apparence upon the evil one and by that means causes a mutation of the Intellects assent or judgement and therefore 2 that the commutation of the species or Apparence of the object is the sole immediate cause of the Commutation of the Intellects judgement and assent and therefore 3 that since the Will is obliged by that necessity formerly declared to conforme to the conduct and directions of its Guide the Intellect it is in vain therefore to hope or attempt that the Will should change its Appetition unless care be first taken that the Intellect change its judgement or that the Will should be constant to its Appetition unless we provide that the Intellect be constant to its judgement And therefore that Mind which having discovered the incomparable beauties of virtue is become enamoured on her and stands resolved to court no other Mistress but her ought to be exceeding circumspect and cautious in this particular that it submit to the allurement of no object untill it hath profoundly examined whether that species of Good therein presented be really true or only superficial and counterfeit that so it may render its self superiour to the delusion of painted Vice The admirable Des Cartes in 3. part passion artic 22. praesenting a general praeservative against all the excesses and Article 17. Cartesius his general Praeservative against the excesses of Passions exorbitancies of our passions gives us this excellent advice that having learned first to distinguish betwixt those motions or Affections which are terminated in the Soul and those which are terminated only in the Body we should when we feel our blood and spirits agitated by any affection which concernes only the body reflect upon this as a general Maxime that all things which offer themselves to the imagination do tend to no other purpose but to the deception of the Soul and to perswade the rational and judicative Faculty that those reasons inservient to the Commendation of the object of that passion are far more solid sirme and worthy our assent then really they are and on the contrary that those reasons inservient to the Improbation or disallowance of the object are far more trivial infirme and less worthy our assent then really they are That when the passion perswades to those things whose execution may admit suspension or delay we abstain from passing our verdict too hastily upon them and divert our cogitations to the serious examen of the inconveniences impendent on their pursuit and execution or at least to some other object till time and sleep shall have calmed the impetuous commotions of the blood and spirits which the seeming good of the object hath excited And that when the Passion incites to those actions whose fleet occasion gives the soul little or no time to consult and deliberate we always endevour to convert our Understanding to the perpension and our Will to the prosecution of those reasons which are conttary to those inferred and urged by that passion notwithstanding they shall at the first view appearless valid and ponderous for thereby we shall mainly refract and abate the violence of the passion Now this may be our Exemplar in ordering our advice how Article 18. General Rules praescribed by the Author how to praevent the Delusion of the Vnderstanding and dependent seduction of the will by Evil disguifed under the similitude of Good to prevent the Delusion of our Understanding and the seduction of our Will by Evil disguised under the similitude of Good First we ought to learn the discrimination of the goods of the Mind from those pertinent only to the Body and then when we meet with any object apparently good abstractly to examine whether that good concerns either the body alone or the mind alone or both body and mind equally or more the body then the mind or more the mind then the body If only the body we are to convert our cogitations upon the reasons which disswade more intently then upon the reasons which perswade the election of and adhaerence to it that so we may if there be any detect the Evil couched under that vernish of good and also conquer the Minds impatience which too often beares a large share in our deceptions If only the Mind in that case we are to bring it to the touchstone of the Divine Will i. e. examine whether those reasons whereby it perswades our Intellect to an Approbation and consequently our Will to an affectation and prosecution of it are correspondent to that inseparable or proper sign or mark of true Good Conformity to the Will of God or not for the very Soul or quintessence of virtue doth radically consist â—n this that man without all haesitancy murmur diffidence and reluctancy conforme his Will to the indeceptible Divine Will as being ascertained that he can will nothing more excellent in its self nor convenient to him then what God hath willed before If both body and mind equally then to abstract those reasons which insinuate the interest of Sense and insist only upon those which praefer it to the mind for if they shall be found worthy of assent we need the Authority of no other to justify our election of that object If more the body then the mind then we ought to aestimate the convenience of it by that lesser relation it holds to the mind and not by that greater it holds to the body And finally if more the mind then the body since the interest of the mind is infinitely to be praeferred to that of the body where the reasons are equall on each part t is manifest we may safely acquiesce in that judgement and embrace the object
which otherwise would not have come to pass doth or some other Cause interposeth which besides its proper destination and the unpraemeditated concurse of certain other things effecteth that some even◠which otherwise would doth not come to pass or that some event which otherwise would not doth come to pass hence is it manifest that this Posterior kind of Contingency is in the general that w ch men call Chance and if it be especially in Man besides or beyond whose intention any Effect eveneth then is it what they call Fortune unless that somtimes they confound both these and then 't is indifferent whether the event be referred either to Fortune or Chance However we perceive reflecting upon the former Example since the Double Effect viz. the digging of the earth and the invention of the treasure had but one single Cause viz. the man that digged that for this reason the Digger may justly enough be sayd to be Causa per se in respect of the one and per accidens in respect of the other To which we may add this that since in Effects meerly Natural one and the same thing may be both Fortune and Nature or a Natural Cause therefore Gassendus had very good reason to justifie Epicurus in this particular that he made Fortune and Nature no more then synonoma's signifying one and the same thing in Reality Now though common Enquirie may goe away satisfied with Article 3. Their Anatomy of her Nature desicient a more perfect one praesented this pausible Adumbration of Fortune yet cannot a profound and more ocular Scrutiny be terminated therein for the Example introduced to explain it comes largely short of a requisite Adaequation insomuch as no rational man can appositely enough accept either him that digged or his Action of digging for all that 's comprehended under that obscure notion of Fortune Wherefore omitting the consideration of Res Fortuita or the Event which is most frequently apprehended for Fortune it self or the cause of that insperate event let us understand Fortune to be such a concurse of various Causes made without all mutual consultation or praecogitate conspiracy betwixt them as that from thence doth follow an Event or fortuitous Effect which neither all the Causes concurrent nor some of them nor especialy he to whom the Event happens ever in the least measure intended or could expect Now according to the tenor of this Defifinition in regard to the fortuitous Invention of a treasure is required not only the Person who digg's and finds it but also he who first digg'd and hid it it is no obscure nor controvertible truth that Fortune or the Cause by Accident of the invention of the treasure is the Concurse both of the Occultation and Effossion thereof in that particular place We sayd without mutual Consultation and besides the intention of any or all the Causes concurrent thereby intimating that though one or more of the Causes may have haply intended that event yet nevertheless t is properly and absolutely Fortune in relation to that Cause which intended it not Thus if any man who foreknowes or at least conjectures that such a Person will come and digg in such a place doth there hide treasure to the end that the other may find it in this case in respect to him that hid it the Invention of the treasure is not a Fortuitous Effect but in respect to him who unexpectedly finds it it is Thus was it not altogether Fortuitous in respect of Nitocris what hapned at the Violation of his Tomb in regard he praesumed that in process of time there would be some King or other who invited by this promising Inscription If any of my Successors the Kings of Babylon shall want mony let him break open this Sepulchre and thence take what may supply his wants but on no condition unless his wants be real let him attempt it for it shall redound to his no swale detriment would open it but yet in respect to Darius that instead of mony he therein found this deriding Engravement Had'st not thou bin insatiable with riches and covetous of sordid lucre thou wouldst not have thus prophaned the Ashes of thy Praedecessors and ransack't the sacred Dormitory of the Dead this was meerly Fortuitous And thus also though Democritus hath pleaded hard to free Fortune from having any hand in the incomparable Death of good old Aeschylus why because his bald pate being mistaken by a volant Eagle for a white stone in the field was the cause why the Eagle drop't a Tortois perpendicular thereupon yet had we bin of the Jury we should have found her guilty of the Murder 1 in respect of the Poet since that sad event was besides his intention he at the same time having withdrawn himself from the Town for fear of being destroyed according to the tenor of the Astrologers praediction by the fall of an house nor could he possibly foresee that prodigious mischance impendent 2 in respect of the Eagle who drop't not the Tortois with purpose to brain the Poet but to break its shell that so he might come at his prey the flesh thereof However we are willing because in truth we ought to acknowledge that if we regard the height or punctilio of her Propriety Fortune is chiefly when among all those several Causes which concurr no one either principally or collaterally intends or aimes at that Event which unexpectedly succeeds upon that their concurse of which we have a most illustrious and competent Example in the Dilatation of the death of Socrates a day beyond the time praefixt by his Judges for the Execution of their Sentence upon him as Plutarch de Fato hath praecisely observed We have it from the pen of that oraculous Secretary of Nature Article 4. Fortune nothing but a meer Negation of all Praenotion in a Concurse of natural Causes respective to a fortuitous Event D r Harvey that he never dissected any Animal but he always discoverd somthing or other more then he expected nay then ever he thought on before so useful infinite in variety is the Magna Charta of Nature and perhaps some of our Readers may here have occasion to say as much of this our Dissection of Fortune for while we have exercised our thoughts in the exploration of her Nature we have unexpectedly found that if considered per se reverà she hath no nature at all i. e. that in Reality she is nothing For when we have abstracted all those Causes in the Concurse which act per se or by natural virtue there remains no more but a meer Privation or Negation of all Praenotion in the concurrent Causes of that particular Concurse and also of the intention and expectation of the subsequent Event nor can that unpraemeditate Concurse of Causes be rightly accounted the Cause of the Fortuitous Event by any neerer relation then that which Philosophers have termed Conditio sine qua non Since as the Admotion of any
sayth positively Non potest Artifex mutare materiam it was not in his power to Abstract it because not to alter the Matter But not to leave our Explanation of Democritus Fatum Materiale imperfect we may from what hath praeceded perceive at what mark these words of his were directed Necessitatem quâ omnia fiunt esse Fatum Iustitiam Providentiam opisicem mundi apud Plutarch 1. placit 45. that the Necessity whereby all things are effected is both Fate Justice Providence and Maker of the World viz. this that the Series of things in which the reason or essence of Fate doth consist could not have bin otherwise constituted that upon this Series it depends why one thing is accounted Just and another Unjust why the world is governed thus and all things proceed according to the praesent method and no other and why the adspectable form of the Universe was made in all points responsible to what it now holds c. For He referred the Causation of all things to those newly explicated congenial motions of Atoms and so conceived that even the Soul or Mind of man which He also fancied to be a certain Contexture of sphaerical or orbicular Atoms is variously agitated not only by those internal motions of its own insensible particles which vary according to its individval Complexion i. e. the Atoms composing the Soul of a Melancholy man are of one sort at least of one contexture those of a Cholerick of another those of a Phlegmatick of a third c. but also by those Extradvenient motions caused by Objects by whose Species or Images incurrent which Atoms also constitute the Mind cannot but be Attracted if they be consentaneous and allective or gratefull nor not be Averted if they be dissentaneous and repulsive or ingratefull That if the Mind be not alwaies allected by Attractive Species the reason is because at the same instant there occur unto it the more potent sollicitations of their Contrary Averting Species and if it be not alwaies Averted by Repellent the reason is equal viz. because at the same instant it is more strongly sollicited by their Contrary Attractive Species That therefore the Mind cannot but be carried on toward Good or that which is gratefull and allective so long as it discovers no Evil admixt thereto nor not be averted from Evil or what is ingratefull and aversant so long as it perceives no Good to be commixt therewith That therefore the Mind cannot when two Goods are objected but pursue the greater Good as that which attracteth more potently nor when two Evils are objected but avoyd the greater as that whereby it is averted more potently That when two objects the one Good the other Evil at the same time praesent their Species it cannot but neglect the Good so long as the Evil averts more potently then the Good attracts nor not be carried towards the Good while the Evil averts more weakly and the Good attracts more strongly Finally that since by reason of the Ignorance or Dimness of the Mind it doth frequently not perceive the Evil consequent upon its prosecution of some Good therefore is it subject to Deception in some cases and is often carried on to that from which it ought to have bin averted nor perceive the Good that is consequent upon its prosecution of some Evil and is therefore as often averted from that object to which it ought to have bin converted But notwithstanding insomuch as all objects by this and no other way occur unto and affect the Mind still it cannot but Necessarily be carried whither it is carried nor but be averted from that from which it is averted and consequently that there remains to it only a Desire of Truth i. e. that no Counterfeit Species may occur but that all objects may appear such as in reality they are nor Good be concealed under the disgusting vizard of Evil nor Evil gilded o're with the splendid semblance of Good For this is the summe of what Empiricus 2. advers Physic makes Democritus to have desiderated when He sayd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Exoptat rerum imagines consentaneas posse nancisci Now by this complex Argumentation Democritus may be understood to have inferred that though some Actions seem situate within the praecincts of our own jurisdiction or that it is absolutely in our power to Elect or Reject this or that object insomuch as every mans experience doth demonstrate to him that he doth and can consult and deliberate about the Good and Evil of Objects and actually electing the one refuseth the other and that not by Compulsion but Freely yet notwithstanding is nothing really in our power because not only the occasion of our Consultation but also the Consultation it self is imposed upon us by inevitable Necessity First that the Occasion of Consultation or the Exhibition of many objects which almost equally affecting the Mind and by reason of the aequipondium of their Verisimility or moments of Good holding it suspended in aequilibrio of necessity ingage it to a Deliberation cannot but be imposed upon us we conceive it not obscure to him who shall deduce the conducing Series of things ftom a due Epoche or height and analytically undoe the chain of Causes and Secondly that also the act of Consultation is a Necessary Effect is manifest from hence that when two objects occur to the mind so equally Attractive that their Apparencies of Vtility or Praesentations of Good are aequilibrated and reciprocally counterpoise each other the mind must of necessity be agitated by a kind of Fluctuation and detained in the suspence of Indifferency or Indetermination or Consultation untill it acquiesce in its Election of that Object whose praesentation of Vtility seems to praeponderate the others Which aequitably audited amounts to no more then this that Election is nothing but the prosecution of an Object which either really is or at lest seems more Good and that a spontaneous one without all coaction or renitency in respect that man doth both spontaneously affect and willingly prosecute Good And that you may not admire this bold assertion viz. that both the Occasion and Consultation and free or rather libent Election of Objects are all links in the Chain of Fate and so comprehended under this Natural Necessity propugned by Democritus the Stoicks intercept your wonder by obtruding another as strange viz. that it depends on the same Concatenation of things that you now read this our discourse of Fate as Manilius lib. 2. Hoc quoque fatale est sic ipsum expendere Fatum And this because whatever Action of any man you shall suppose it can be no difficulty according to this Hypothesis to find out the proxime Cause exciting him thereunto and to refer that Cause to the permotion of another remote one and that third to the permotion of a fourth that fourth to the induction of a fifth c. unravelling the series of Causes so that it must at length be inferred
that that supposed action could not but follow upon those other actions subalternately praecedent and consequently that it must be as Democritus would have it Fatal or Necessary Which opinion Aristotle ardently impugneth in lib. de Interpre cap. 8. when discussing the verity and necessity of Propositions He contends to evince that though of two opposite singular propositions which concern a thing either Praeterite or Praesent one must be true the other false yet the Canon holds not in two Contrary singular propositions which concern a thing Future the Verity of the one not necessitating the Falsity of the other For as He there argues if every Affirmation or Negation concerning a thing to come were true or false ex Necessitate then would the Futurity of any thing include a Necessity of its Futurition i. e. whatever is Future would be Necessary and on the contrary whatever is not Future would be Not-necessary and upon just inference nothing could remain either Fortuitous or Arbitrary which to admit is an Incongruity so manifest that the repugnancy of every mans Experience detects it an Incommodity so intolerable that it not only disparageth but confuteth it self And this if there be any Fidelity in the records of our Memory is the Summary of their Theory who have apprehended and asserted Fate to be a meer Natural Constitution of Causes subalternately connected as not dependent on any thing Divine nor any Eternal Decree so not capable of any mutation or interruption by the intervention of any Impediment purely Fortuitous or Counter-activity of any Arbitrary Agent SECT III. Article 1. The Principal of the Second Sect Aristotle and Epicurus IN the other Division of Philosophers who also conceded Fate to be a meer Natural Constitution of Causes subalternately dependent c. but yet denied the inevitable or necessary insequution of all Effects upon that concatenation allowing the possibility of its mutation or interruption by either Chance or mans Free will the Principal are Aristotle and Article 2. The Grounds of the Authors imputing the opinion both of Fates Identity with Nature and the possibility of its Mutation Declination by either Fortuitous or Arbitrary Antagonists to Aristotle Epicurus First as for Aristotle that He held Fate or fatal Necessity to be nothing but very Nature or if you like it better every particular Cause acting secundum suam naturam naturalémve ductum according to its proper or natural Virtue is manifest from his own words in sundry places of his Writings To particular 1 He sayth in 2. phys cap. 6. Eas generationes acoretiones alterationes quae violentae sunt ut dum ex arte ob delicias cogimus plantas aliquas praematurè pubescere adolesceréque esse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non Fatales hoc est non Naturales making Fatal Effects to be meeâ—ly Natural And 2 He sayth 1 Meteorol cap. ultim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fatalibus temporibus magnas quasdam hyemes imbriúmque excessus quibus creentur diluvia contingere eo modo quo contingit hyems statis anni temporibus which rightly paraphrased imports thus much that as Winter the Sun receding from our climate at some certain period of the yeer according to the Ecliptick progress consigned unto it by Nature is the regular effect of the Suns remove to larger distance even so are hard Winters and immoderate rains the regular effects of some periodal Conjunctions of the Planets proceeding in their motions according to the setled Constitutions of Nature From whence we have an advantage to observe that though Stobaeus Ecl. Phys tells us Aristotelem non tam existimasse Fatum esse Causam quà m modum Causae advenientem rebus ex necessitate statutis that Arist conceived not Fate to be so much a Cause as the manner of a Cause advenient to things determined by Necessity yet nevertheless are we so to comment upon this his nice descant as that we understand Fate not to be any new kind of Cause but Nature her self which in respect to her Agency is called a Cause and in respect to the certain proper and necessary manner or way of her acting is called Fate And that He impugned the former Error viz. that all Agents included in this Universal Subalternation act ex inevitabili necessitate or cannot but doe what they doe is not obscurely intimated in this that He defined Fate to be pure Nature Since the Works of Nature are not effected of inoppugnable necessity as may be boldly concluded from the frequent Experiments not only in Generation which is commonly impeded by the intervention of any indisposition or impatibility of Matter and other resisting Accidents but also in Generous and virtuous Minds which easily subdue and countermand those strong inclinations or propensities to Avarice Luxury Audacity Incontinency c. which may not unjustly be esteemed the genuine Effects of their very constitutive Principles and branches that shoot up from the root of their Corporeal Temperament Upon which reason we may conjecture that Arist reflected when He sayd of Socrates praeter naturam ac fatum suum continens evasit He acquired an Habit of Continency even in spite of the contrary sollicitation of his individual Nature and particular Fate Secondly as for Epicurus that his thoughts made an Unison Article 3. Epicurus unanimous to Arist in the point of Physical and Eluctable Necessity with those of Aristotle in the key of a Non-ineluctable Fate is sufficiently constant from hence that having admitted a certain Necessity Natural in this sentence Naturam à rebus ipsarúmve serie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doceri cogique sive necessitate agi in Epist ad Herodotum He yet denied the Inevitability or Absoluteness thereof in another Fragment of his revived by Stobaetis in Ecl. Phys where He delivers as a general Canon Omnia sieri trium modorum aliquo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Necessitate Consilio Fortuna For in that he makes Fortune and Consultation or mans Free will equal competitors in the empire of the world with Necessity Natural He manifestly excludes it from being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sole Despot or Monarch and reserves to the two others an equal dominion Which assurance may duely be augmented by the superaddition of this also that Cicero de Fato introducing Epicurus disputing about the verity of Future Events makes him deny with Aristotle that of two contrary singular Enunciations about a thing to come the one must be true and the other false subnecting this reason Nulla est in natura talis Necessitas And certainly as He stood equal with Aristotle in the denial so hath He outdone him by many degrees in his endevours Article 4. The scope of Epicurus his Figment of the Declination of Atoms in the human Soul and his Accommodation thereof to the tuition of mans Liberty epitomized for the Refutation of this unsound opinion of an Absolute Necessity insomuch as he excogitated his Hypothesis of the Declination of Atoms illustrated
this by mediation of the Spirits discurrent or rather transmitted through all parts of the body All which Lucretius fully expresseth in these Verses Declinamus item motus nec tempore certo Necregione loci certa sed ubi ipsa tulit Mens Nam dubio-procul his rebus sua quoique voluntas Principium dat hinc motus per membra vagantur lib. 2. Again perhaps Epicurus will not gainsay but that the motion of Declination is as much Natural as the motion of Gravity But yet will He by no perswasions yeeld that the Mind being contemperate of Declinatory Atoms is so affected and attracted by Necessity toward one object that it cannot instantly be deflected to another For as a mixt Nature is made so is the Mobility of its insensible parts varied and from various Natural motions retused or refracted ariseth a Third Nature according to which its motions may be sayd to be Voluntary and Natural both insomuch as they proceed à Natura libera from Nature free and uncoacted Nor will He deny supposing the Occursation and Arietation of Atoms that it is pure Necessity that Percussions Repulses and either Reflexions or Cohaesions should succeed among them but yet may He refuse to allow a Necessity of such Occursations as if they could not be impeded nor their Consequents be diverted Hence concerning that eternal series of the Causes of the Apple and the Mind Epicurus will grant that when things are already effected a kind of Necessity may be attributed thereunto such in respect whereof those things cannot be uneffected since non datur jus in praeterita there is no countermanding things Praeterite but before those things were peracted there was no such Necessity since both Fortune or Contingency and the opposing Liberty of mans Will might have interrupted inverted and changed it For few are ignorant of the wide disparity between these two Assirmations viz. What is once done cannot be not done and what is done might not have bin done Since in the Former a thing is considered as already past and in the Later as yet to come and as according to the Former it is Necessary so according to the Later it may be or Contingent or Voluntary By which reason was it possible that the Apple might not have bin praesented to the eye possible that the Tree which bare it might first have withered that the Seed of which that tree was generated might either have proved abortive and steril or else have bin sowed in some other place that other of its Causes might have bin divers ways praepeded which also may be affirmed of the Mind and its Causes and consequently none of the many Causes which did antecede the Appetition of the Apple can be conceived to have bin Necessary as they might if the Causes were of themselves uncapable of Impediment or if there were one Cause Paramont to all others in the Concatenation which by an absolute soveraignty or despotique power had directed and coacted them Allbeit we concede that the Appetition of the Apple by the mind is the Consequent of the Minds Cognition thereof and that Cognition the consequent of its Occursation to the eye and that the Consequent of its Position in a place convenient for sight and that the consequent of its Existence and so from link to link retrograde up to eternity yet notwithstanding can no man justify this Inference that therefore the Mind is Necessitated to that Appetition because still there remains a Posse to the Mind of being Averted from the Affectation and Prosecution thereof in case either the Species of a better object or a suspicion of poyson therein concealed shall intervene or a refrigeration of the Stomach by the dyspeptical and slatulent juice thereof be feared or any other Cause of moment sufficient to perswade the mind to abstain from the use thereof shall be interposed Nor is this Rejoynder disswasive that when the Mind is averted Article 7. The most weighty Rejoynder of the oonnexion of those Causes which Avert the Mind from so found too light from the Appetition of the Apple the Causes Antecedent were not such as might induce the mind to an Appetition but such as induced it to an Aversation and that these Averting not those Attracting Causes were so connected to the series of Fate that the mind could not but be averted from it well as of those which Attract it to an object to the eternal Series of Fate to overbalance Epicurus his defence of mans Liberty For though the Mind be contemperate of such a Contexture of Atoms as that it may be Commoved by the irruent Species of external Objects yet is the nature of its contexture such also as that it can derive from it self some motions distinct from nay contrary to those motions excited by Extradvenient Images which motions being instituted by no other Principle but it self are manifestly Spontaneous and Voluntary and by which it is empower'd to resist External motions and therefore may not so be carried to one Object as not to be upon advantage deflected to another And hence we may Conclude that the Mind is not obliged to a necessity of any one Object but stands Free to refuse that and elect another and that the Reason of a thing to come is not a little different from that of a thing already past since in respect to a thing Future there remains an Indifferency to the Mind of electing either of two Objects but in respect to a thing Praeterite there is a Necessity of its election of one If this Solution be thought too light we can superadd another of weight sufficient to counterpoyse the Doubt viz. that which Carneades in Cicero insinuated when he taught that the Epicureans might have defended the Liberty of mans Mind without their commentitious Declination of Atoms For having once declared that the Mind hath Voluntary motions of its own institution they needed no other Argument to confute Chrysippus to whom when they had conceded that no motion can be without a Cause Movent there remained no reason why they should have granted that all Effects have their Antecedent Causes since to the will of man no Causes are Antecedent it being to it self the Principium à quo of all its motions Voluntary And this is the faithfull Abridgement of Epicurus his Doctrin concerning Fate as a Constitution meerly Natural and capable of interruption alteration opposition by either of the Two other in his Triumvirate viz. Fortune or pure Contingency and the Liberty of mans mind which He conceived Copartners in the Empire of the World ¶ SECT IV. THere is yet another Species of Fate retaining to our Second Article 1. Mathematical Fate briefly described Genus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose exceeding vanity and inconsiderableness had well-nigh occasioned our total Inconsideration thereof in this place and that is Fatum Mathematicum sive Astrologicum the Mathematicians and Astrologers Fate being a certain imaginary Necessity Natural imposed upon
to the virtues of their Causes shall come to be effected manifest it is that that particular Event whose Ambiguity is determined to Certainty of Futurition and is actually brought to pass is Fatal or Necessary i. e. could not but come to pass For otherwise the Gods must be confest subject to Mendacity One of the two therefore must be granted viz. that all things come to pass Necessarily as they are foreknown and Praedicted by the Gods and so that the word Contingens is excluded as importing no Reality but a meer Chimaera or that the Affairs or Occurrences of man are neither praecognite nor procured by the Gods the Impossibility of which assertion doth also fully exclude all Contingency To the Solution of this Difficulty t is well known the Divines Article 5. The full solution of the same by virtue of the Divâ—â—s Discrimination of Necessity into Absolute and Hypothetical have most judiciously accommodated their Distinction of Necessity into Absolute and Suppositional For instance that 2. and 3. make 5. or that yesterday is praeterlapsed is Absolutely Necessary but that I should to morrow take a journey into the Country or write a Consult for such or such a Patient is not absolutely Necessary yet if I suppose that I shall travel or write then there ariseth a Necessity of my travelling or wâ—iting ex Suppositione from that my Supposition Now in respect t is manifest from this Distinction that the Necessity Absolute of any Action doth destroy the Liberty of the Agent but the Suppositional doth not for though I journy or write according to my Supposition yet was it possible to me to have done neither thereupon doe they most excellently reason thus that Peters Abnegation was foreseen and praedicted by God as an Event to come of Necessity not Absolute but Suppositional by which nothing was detracted from Peters Liberty of not denying For as now in the praesent if He be interrogated concerning his Master he is intirely Free or to avouch or disavow his knowledge of him so also will He be in the Future when He shall be interrogated Wherefore as if He now determine himself rather to deny then affirme and according to that determination actually deny He doth that Freely notwithstanding from the moment he denied his denial is Necessary insomuch as it is supposed that he hath actually denied so also in the Future when He shall determine himself rather to deny then affirme and according to that determination shall actually deny shall his denial be Free or Arbitrary however it cannot but be granted Necessary that He hath denyed because he hath already actually denied Nor is it paradoxical or difficult to affirme that this Suppositional Necessity and Peters Liberty are not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Discordant or Inconsistent in any respect because the Necessity is subsequent not antecedent to the Determination of his Liberty and because it doth not consist so much in Re vel Actione in the Thing or Action it self as in Temporis Circumstantia the Circumstance of Time when ' tiâ— done Since when we say t is Necessary that Peter hath denyed that Necessity is not understood to have bin any thing Antecedently in him which compelled him to deny but that it is radicated now in Time it self which as it is really past and cannot be not past so the Action done in that past time however it was done cannot be not done And hence it is evident though no man can justly assert that t was Necessary to Peter to deny because according to that assertion there must be understood some Antecedent Cause by which he was coated to deny yet justified it may be that Now t is Necessary that he hath denyed because the Action being once done and so impossible to be not done all the Necessity falls upon the Praeterition of the Time Now in respect that God is Omniscient He cannot but Foresee that Peter will deny yet that Divine Praenotion of Peters Abnegation is subsequent to the Divine Praevision of Peters Free Determination and therefore God Foresees that Peter will deny only because He Foresees that Peter abusing his Liberty will freely determine himself to a denial And hence comes it to be embraced amongst the most judicious School-men as a truth indisputable That Peter will deny not because God hath praevised and praedicted that he will deny but that because Peter will deny when he shall be examined therefore and for no other reason doth God Foresee and Foretell that he will deny For uti Scientia praeteritam rem pro objecto habens nullam rei praeteritae ut ita non alitèr fieret necessitatem infert ita Praescientia rem suturam pro suo objecto habens rei futurae sive Futuritioni nullam potest inferre necessitatem utraque enim est extra rem in Deo actio Immanens that as Science having for its object a thing Praeterite doth induce no necessity thereupon that it should have bin so and no otherwise so also doth Praescience having for its object a thing Future inferr no necessity upon its Futerition that it shall so and no otherwise come to pass for both Science and Praecience are distinct from and alien to their Objects and Actions Immanent in God i. e. not at all effluxed to the object to the destruction or alteration of its Nature this we say is a Verity which demonstrateth it self and which we have more praecisely insisted upon in the 4. Articl 4. Sect. of our discourse of the Mobility of the term of mans lifè And that all Cognition is a thing really distinct from and extraneous to its Object and that a thing comes to be actually what it is not from the Cognition thereof by an Idea in all points consimilar but from it self or its Efficient Cause needs no other probation but the conviction of this instance that Snow is white not because t is known to be white but contrary that it is known to be white because really it is so To speak a profound truth plainly in few words herein consists the Disparity between Divine and Human Cognition viz. that Human can be extended only to Praesent and Praeterite but Divine doth extend it self with equal Certitude to Future Contingents also Now insomuch as Praeterite Contingents were sometimes Future and in the same condition with those which are yet Future and again those which are yet Future may be understood to be praeterite in time to come and in the same condition with those which are already Praeterite manifest it is that as neither Divine nor Human Cognition is the Cause why Contingents already Praeterite are praeterite but è contrà they are known as Praeterite because really they are so in like manner that those which are Future are not therefore Future because God holds an exact praenotion of them as Future but è contrà because they really are Future therefore doth God hold an exact praenotion of their Futurition And upon