Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	air_n	reason_n	zone_n	21	3	12.4776	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27428	The folly and unreasonableness of atheism demonstrated from the advantage and pleasure of a religious life, the faculties of humane souls, the structure of animate bodies, & the origin and frame of the world : in eight sermons preached at the lecture founded by ... Robert BOyle, Esquire, in the first year MDCXCII / by Richard Bentley ...	Bentley, Richard, 1662-1742.	1699 (1699)	Wing B1931; ESTC R21357	132,610	286

of the four Seasons of the Year and the Variation in length of Days If we take away the Inclination it would absolutely undo these Northern Nations the Sun would never come nearer us than he doth now on the tenth of March or the twelfth of September But would we rather part with the Parallelism Let us suppose then that the Axis of the Earth keeps always the same Inclination toward the body of the Sun this indeed would cause a variety of Days and Nights and Seasons on the Earth but then every particular Country would have always the same diversity of Day and Night and the same constitution of Season without any alteration some would always have long Nights and short Days others again perpetually long Days and short Nights one Climate would be scorched and swelter'd with everlasting Dog-days while an eternal December blasted another This surely is not quite so good as the present Order of Seasons But shall the Axis rather observe no constant inclination to any thing but vary and waver at uncertain times and places This would be a happy Constitution indeed There could be no health no life nor subsistence in such an irregular System by those surprizing Nods of the Pole we might be tossed backward or forward in a moment from Ianuary to Iune nay possibly from the Ianuary of Greenland to the Iune of Abessinia It is better therefore upon all accounts that the Axis should be continued in its present posture and direction so that this also is a signal Character of Divine Wisdom and Goodness But because several have imagin'd that this skue posture of the Axis is a most unfortunate and pernicious thing that if the Poles had been erect to the Plane of the Ecliptic all mankind would have enjoyed a very Paradise upon Earth a perpetual Spring an eternal Calm and Serenity and the Longaevity of Methuselah without pains or diseases we are obliged to consider it a little further And first as to the Universal and Perpetual Spring 't is a mere Poetical Fancy and bating the equality of Days and Nights which is a thing of small value as to the other properties of a Spring it is naturally impossible being repugnant to the very form of the Globe For to those People that dwell under or near the Aequator this Spring would be a most pestilent and insupportable Summer and as for those Countries that are nearer the Poles in which number are our own and the most considerable Nations of the World a Perpetual Spring will not do their business they must have longer Days a nearer approach of the Sun and a less Obliquity of his Rayes they must have a Summer and a Harvest-time too to ripen their Grain and Fruits and Vines or else they must bid an eternal adieu to the very best of their sustenance It is plain that the Center of the Earth must move all along in the Orbis Magnus whether we suppose a Perpetual Aequinox or an oblique Position of the Axis So that the whole Globe would continue in the same Distance from the Sun and receive the same quantity of Heat from him in a Year or any assignable time in either Hypothesis Though the Axis then had been perpendicular yet take the whole Year about and the Earth would have had the same measure of Heat that it has now So that here lies the question Whether is more beneficial that the Inhabitants of the Earth should have the Yearly quantity of Heat distributed equally every day or so disposed as it is a greater share of it in Summer and in Winter a less It must needs be allowed that the Temperate Zones have no Heat to spare in Summer 't is very well if it be sufficient for the maturation of Fruits Now this being granted 't is as certain and manifest that an even distribution of the Yearly Heat would never have brought those Fruits to maturity as this is a known and familiar experiment That such a quantity of Fewel all kindled at once will cause Water to boil which being lighted gradually and successively will never be able to do it It is clear therefore that in the constitution of a Perpetual Aequinox the best part of the Globe would be desolate and useless and as to that little that could be inhabited there is no reason to expect that it would constantly enjoy that admired Calm and Serenity If the assertion were true yet some perhaps may think that such a Felicity as would make Navigation impossible is not much to be envied But it 's altogether precarious and has no necessary foundation neither upon Reason nor Experience For the Winds and Rains and other affections of the Atmosphere do not solely depend as that assertion supposeth upon the course of the Sun but partly and perhaps most frequently upon Steams and Exhalations from subterraneous Heat upon the Positions of the Moon the Situations of Seas or Mountains or Lakes or Woods and many other unknown or uncertain Causes So that though the Course of the Sun should be invariable and never swerve from the Equator yet the temperament of the Air would be mutable nevertheless according to the absence or presence or various mixture of the other Causes The ancient Philosophers for many ages together unanimously taught that the Torrid Zone was not habitable The reasons that they went upon were very specious and probable till the experience of these latter ages evinced them to be erroneous They argued from coelestial Causes only the constant Vicinity of the Sun and the directness of his Rayes never suspecting that the Body of the Earth had so great an efficiency in the changes of the Air and that then could be the coldest and rainiest season the Winter of the Year when the Sun was the nearest of all and steer'd directly over mens heads Which is warning sufficient to deterr any man from expecting such eternal Serenity and Halcyon-days from so incompetent and partial a Cause as the constant Course of the Sun in the Aequinoctial Circle What general condition and temperament of Air would follow upon that Supposition we cannot possibly define for 't is not caused by certain and regular Motions nor subject to Mathematical Calculations But if we may make a conjecture from the present Constitution we shall hardly wish for a Perpetual Aequinox to save the charges of Weather glasses for 't is very well known that the Months of March and September the two Aequinoxes of Our year are the most windy and tempestuous the most unsettled and unequable of Seasons in most Countries of the World Now if this notion of an uniform Calm and Serenity be false or precarious then even the last supposed advantage the constant Health and Longaevity of Men must be given up also as a groundless conceit for this according to the Assertors themselves doth solely as an effect of Nature depend upon the other Nay further though we should allow them their Perpetual Calm and Aequability of Heat they

their proper Structures and Designs of the Artificers Whereas on the contrary all Bodies are observed to have always a certain and determinate Motion according to the degrees of their External Impulse and their inward Principle of Gravitation and the Resistance of the Bodies they occurr with which therefore is without Error exactly foreseen and computed by sagacious Artists And if ever Dead Matter should deviate from this Motion it could not proceed from it self but a supernatural Agent and ought not to be called a Chance but a Miracle For Chance is but a mere name and really Nothing in it self a Conception of our own Minds and only a Compendious way of speaking whereby we would express That such Effects as are commonly attributed to Chance were verily produced by their true and proper Causes but without their designing to produce them And in any Event called Casual if you take away the real and physical Causes there remains nothing but a simple Negation of the Agents intending such an Event which Negation being no real Entity but a Conception only of Man's Intellect wholly extrinsecal to the Action can have no title to a share in the production As in that famous Example which Plutarch says is the only one where Fortune is related to have done a thing artificially when a Painter having finish'd the Picture of a Horse excepting the loose Froth about his Mouth and his Bridle and after many unsuccessfull essays despairing to do that to his satisfaction in a great rage threw his Spunge at it all besmear'd as it was with the Colours which fortunately hitting upon the right place by one bold stroke of Chance most exactly supplied the want of Skill in the Artist even here it is manifest that considering the Quantity and Determination of the Motion that was impressed by the Painter's hand upon the Spunge com pounded with the specifick Gravity of the Spunge and resistance of the Air the Spunge did mechanically and unavoidably move in that particular line of Motion and so necessarily hit upon that part of the Picture and all the paint that it left there was as certainly placed by true natural Causes as any one stroke of the Pencil in the whole Piece So that this strange effect of the Spunge was fortuitous only with respect to the Painter because he did not design nor forsee such an effect but in it self and as to its real Causes it was necessary and natural In a word the true notion of Fortune 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 denoteth no more than the Ignorance of such an event in some Knowing Agent concerned about it So that it owes its very Being to Humane Understanding and without relation to that is really Nothing How absurd then and ridiculous is the Atheist that would make this Fortune the cause of the Formation of Mankind whereas manifestly there could be no such Thing or Notion in the World as Fortune till Humane Nature was actually formed It was Man that first made Fortune and not Fortune that produced Man For since Fortune in its proper acceptation supposeth the Ignorance of something in a subject capable of Knowledge if you take away Mankind such a Notion hath no Existence neither with relation to Inanimate Bodies that can be conscious of nothing nor to an Omniscient God that can be ignorant of nothing And so likewise the adequate Meaning of Chance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is distinguished from Fortune in that the latter is understood to befall only Rational Agents but Chance to be among Inanimate Bodies is a bare Negation that signifies no more than this That any Effect among such Bodies ascribed to Chance is really produced by Physical Agents according to the established Laws of Motion but without their Consciousness of concurring to the Production and without their Intention of such an Effect So that Chance in its true sense is all one with Nature and both words are used promiscuously by some ancient Writers to express the same thing And we must be wary lest we ascribe any real Subsistence or Personality to this Nature or Chance for it is merely a notional and imaginary thing an abstract Universal which is properly Nothing a Conception of our own making occasion'd by our reflecting upon the settled Course of things denoting only thus much That all those Bodies move and act according to their essential properties and qualities without any consciousness or intention of so doing So that in this genuine acceptation of Chance here is nothing supposed that can supersede the known Laws of Natural Motion and thus to attribute the Formation of Mankind to Chance is all one with the former Atheistical Assertion that ascribes it to Nature or Mechanism and consequently it hath received a prolix and sufficient Refutation in my preceding Discourse 3 But thirdly 't is likely that our Atheist may willingly renounce the Doctrine of Chance as a thing differing from Nature and may allow it to be the same thing and that too no real and substantial Agent but only an abstract intellectual Notion but still he hath another Expedient in reserve which is a middle and safe way between the former rigorous Mechanism and the extravagancies of Fortuitous Motion viz. That at the Beginning all things 't is true proceded necessarily and fatally according to the Mechanical powers and affections of Matter but nevertheless the several Kinds of Animals were not formed at the first trial and effort without one error or miscarriage as strict Mechanism would suppose but there was an immense Variety of Ferments and Tumors and Excrescences of the Soil pregnant and big with Foetus's of all imaginable shapes and structures of Body Millions of which were utterly uncapable of Life and Motion being the Molae as it were and the Abortions of Mother Earth and many of those that had Life and Powers to preserve their own Individuals yet wanted the due means of Propagation and therefore could not transmit their Species to the following Ages and that those few only that we now find in Being did happen for he cannot express it but by the Characters of a Chance to have all the parts necessary not only for their own Lives but for the Continuation of their Kinds This is the favourite Opinion among the Atheists and the most plausible of all by which they think they may elude that most formidable Argument for the Being of God from the admirable contrivance of Organical Bodies and the exquisite fitness of their several Parts for those Ends and Uses they are put to and seem to have been designed for For say they since those innumerable Instances of Blunder and Deformity were quickly removed out of Knowledge and Being it is plain that no Animals ought now to be found but such as have due Organs necessary for their own nourishment and increase of their Kinds so that this Boasted Usefulness of Parts which makes Men attribute their Origination to an intelligent and wise Agent is really