your Friends condemn If I thought it fitter to convince you by Authority than by Reason I would let you see them but you ought to convince your self by such Proofs as may be acceptable to the Person whom you design to convert The most honest men are not infallible even all those who seem so are not such But however it be it is better to be sensible to light than to the most pious and most sanctified Air because God always enlightens and oftentimes the Way and Air imposes and seduces Arist This is true Theodorus but I fear that your Sentiment is not conformable to that of the holy Fathers Theod. But what occasion have you to fear it Have you ever read any thing contrary to it in the Fathers I see you have been told so gravely and you have believed it in the simplicity of your heart Hath not St. Austin who best understood the corruption of Nature explained the propagation of Original Sin by the example of hereditary Diseases By that of gouty Parents who beget Children subject to the Gout And of the sick Trees which yield a corrupted Seed that produces nothing but bad Trees For he knew that Original Sin can only communicate itself by the body because its principle is in the body and that in some sense it dwells in the body as St. Paul saith As for the other Fathers that lived before St. Austin they never undertook to make a particular discussion of the manner in which the transmission of that Sin could be explained Their Age was neither so incredulous nor malicious as ours and it was not then necessary to give probable explications of our mysteries to make those who called themselves Christians believe them No Aristarchus I could never find that the Fathers were against what I have told you now But I wonder to see that you who formerly used to treat the Churches Authority with so much indifference are now so full of Veneration for the Fathers as to be afraid without cause of dissenting from them by admitting some explications wherein we are not always obliged to follow them provided we keep with them to the Faith and Doctrin of the Church You are too credulous and your apprehensions are not just you do not meditate enough you are like those Children who walk by night without a light that are afraid of all things because they see nothing Whilst you did lead a careless sort of life the air of the Libertines used to persuade you and now you suffer your self to be convinced by the air of piety and gravity of certain persons who have not always as much light and charity as opinion and false zeal You are less in danger of being mistaken but yet you are not in the way of truth You ought to believe what must be believed but you ought to see what may and consequently what must be seen I hope that if you make serious Reflections on the things I have told you without troubling your self with what your Friends think of it your Uncertainties will be cleared and you will no more suffer your self to be scared by a sort of Men who assume an unjust power over the mind of others instead of bringing them to Reason by light and evidence I leave you with Erastus to confer together upon those things I have said to you meditate with him and endeavour either to convince your self or to offer to me that is in a clear and evident manner the Reasons that hinder you from doing it DIALOGUE V. Of the Reparation of Nature by Jesus Christ Arist WE have made many Reflections Erastus and I upon Original Sin and the Contagion that spreads itself in Spirits And have even found that Original Sin is transmitted into Children in some manner as the Sentiments and Passions of passionate men communicate themselves to those that are in their presence For as the union that is between men for the benefit of Society is the cause why a man by the air of his Face stamps on the brain of such as are touched by it the same impressions which the Passion that moves him forms within him See the 7th Chapter of the 2d Book of the Inquiry after Truth so the union of the Mother with her Child being very strict and the Childs wants very great the Child's imagination must needs be sullied by all the impressions and emotions of mind that incline the Mother to sensible things Theod. Thus Aristarchus those that live in the hurry of the world that are held by too many things that never consult their reason but suffer themselves to be convinced moved and run down by every one that hath some strength of imagination and whose air being lively is consequently insectious those civil men of the Town born for Company who are always so ready to receive their Friends Sentiments in a word Aristarchus those Persons that are such as you have been till now for you are the civilest and most complaisant Gentleman I ever knew those Persons I say that are like you have a double portion of Original Sin that which they received from their Mother when they were in her womb and that which they have suckt in by the commerce of the world You are happy Aristarchus in being able to withstand the impression of those two Sins How indebted are you not to inward truth for calling you back so loudly as to be heard by you in spight of the confused noise of your senses and passions You retire sometimes within your self as if your Reason was not corrupted and the concupiscence of original Sin had not been strengthned nor encreased by a concupiscence of thirty years standing You are so much altered to day from what you were yesterday that I believe you will no longer find any considerable difficulty in our following Conferences For all that hindered you from apprehending my sentiments proceeded from the obscurity and disorder wherein the converse of the world had thrown you so that being delivered from that disorder and resolved to retire incessantly within your self you will hearken to the decisions of that truth that presides to all spirits Arist Yes Theodorus I renounce all the impressions that used to prejudice me I plainly see that all manner of union to sensible things estrangeth and removeth us from truth that the union which I had in my Mother's womb made me a Sinner that the union which I have had with my Relations hath only given me a knowledge of the world useful indeed to unite me with it and make my self considerable in it but altogether unprofitable to the inquiry after truth In short that the union which I have had with my Friends and other Men hath filled me with a very great number of most dangerous prejudices which you know better than I. I have hitherto lived by Opinion I desire now to live by Reason I will believe nothing but what Faith and Charity oblige me to believe in all other things I
well hereafter But when we judge rashly of things without consulting any other master than our imagination or the doctrine of certain false-learned 't is impossible for us to come near God Arist I can't express to you the pleasure I find in this new way of Philosophising I rejoyce to see that Children and ignorant men are the most capable of true wisdom and I am charm'd to learn from Erastus things on which I had not so much as thought before His answers instruct me more than the high reasonings of our Philosophers and methinks every word he speaks spreads in my mind a pure Light that doth not dazzle by its lustre and yet disperses all my Darkness Theod. I will go on then with my questions to Erastus since you are so well pleased with hearing him Hear me my dear Erastus you told me just now that Fire can move variously the particles of your hand because bodies can act on bodies You believe then that bodies have a power to move those they meet Erast My Eyes tell me so but my mind doth not tell me so yet for I have not yet examined that question Theod. Well then answer me Hath a body power to move it self Erast I do not believe it Theod. Is then the power that moves bodies distinguish'd from these bodies Erast I don't know Theod. Take notice Erastus that I do not speak of motion The local motion of a body is a kind of being of that body with respect to those that are about it I do not speak of that but of the power which causes it I ask you if this power is something that is corporeal and if it is in the power of bodies to communicate it Erast I do not believe it for if it were any thing corporeal it would not be able to move it self No Theodorus I do not believe that bodies can communicate to those they meet a power which they have not themselves a power they could not communicate though they had it In short a power whose diffusion and communication they could not be able to direct in a manner as regular as is that which we see since bodies do not even know either the bigness or motion of those they meet It seems to me that an intelligent being and one and the same intelligent being must produce and regulate all the motions of matter since the communication of the motion is always the same in the same accidents For all bodies or many intelligent beings would not easily agree together to act always after the same manner in the communication of motions Arist Methinks Erastus runs too fast and loses himself For it seems to me that those things which are always done the same way are not done by an intelligent being but by a blind action caeco impetu naturae Theod. You mistake your self Erastus is not out and you ought not to attribute to a blind impetuosity that which comes from the immutability of the author of nature I see you do not know that 't is the mark of an excellent workman to produce admirable effects by acting always after the same manner and by the most simple means I will not undertake to lead you to God that way it is too difficult and does not afford us a notion of God so useful to morality I would discover him to you as the Sole Author of the felicity of the Just and of the misery of the Wicked and in a word as being alone able to act in us For I ought not only to demonstrate to you that he is which certainly is but seldom doubted of but I ought also to demonstrate to you that he is our good in all respects for that 's a thing which is not sufficiently known I return to Erastus You are perswaded my dear Erastus that neither Fire nor the Sun nor any one of those bodies that surround you are the true causes of what you feel at their presence and in this you are wiser than all those who have worshipped Fire or the Sun You do not even believe that bodies have any natural power to move those they meet and in that too you see more clearly than those who worship the Heavens the Elements and all those bodies which Aristotle call'd divine because he believed they had in them a power to move themselves and to produce by this motion all the good or evils whereof men are capable But it is not sufficient to know that bodies do not act on you you must also discover the true cause of all that is produced in you You feel warmth and pain at the presence of Fire Now Fire doth not produce this warmth and this pain in you What must it be then Erastus Erast I must confess to you that I know nothing of it Theod. Is it not your soul who acts on her self who afflicts her self when Fire separates the particles of the body she loves or who rejoyces when the same fire produces in her body a motion proper to keep you alive and help the circulation of the blood Erast I do not believe it Theod. Why Pray Erast Because the soul doth not know that the fire moves or separates the fibres of the body I felt heat and pain before I had learnt by the reflections I made what fire is able to produce on my body And do not believe that Clowns who know nothing of what fire doth operate in them are free from pain when they are burnt Besides I do not know what is the motion that is proper to keep me alive and help the circulation of the blood And if I were to feel no heat till I knew it perhaps I should never feel any In short when I happen to burn my self by inadvertency I feel pain before all things I might perhaps conclude by the pain I feel that there is in my body some motion at work which offends it but ' its evident that the knowledge of those motions neither precede nor cause any pain Theod. Your Reasons Erastus are altogether sound But what think you of them Aristarchus Arist They seem to me probable enough However Erastus how can you tell but that your soul hath a certain knowledge of instinct which discovers to her in a moment all that happens in her body Answer me Erastus Answer me quickly then 'T is a strange thing you never answer me readily Erast I do not understand your meaning but all that I can say to you is that when I know actually something I am sure that I do know it for I am not distinguish'd from my self If my soul had actually some knowledge of instinct or whatsoever other you please for I don't understand that word very well I should know it Yet now that I come near the fire I do not know that I have the knowledge of the motions that are actually produced in my hand tho I feel in it sometimes a pain and sometimes a kind of pleasure or titillation There is not then actually
Truth doth not always answer our expectation for we do not know how to make our addresses We often ask it questions without knowing what we ask as when we go about to resolve questions whose terms we do not understand We ask it questions and then leave it not waiting for its answers as when Impatience seizes us and our Imagination is displeas'd that we think on things that have no relation to the good of the body We ask it questions and strive to corrupt it as when our Passions move us and we will have its answers to agree with our opinions In short we ask it questions we hear its answers and do not understand them as when our prejudices prepossess our mind and it is fill'd with false Ideas and our Imagination is utterly spoil'd by an infinite number of dark and confus'd notions that continually represent all things to us with respect to our selves Then God speaks and the body also reason and imagination the mind and the senses there arises a confused noise and nothing can be heard Darkness mixes it self with Light and nothing can be seen For we cannot always discern what God tells us Immediately and through himself to unite us to truth from what he tells us through our body to unite us to sensible things The various Imployments of your Life have fill'd your mind with a great number of prejudices that have imprinted on it a certain Character much esteem'd in the world which is but as a Seal that fastens those prejudices on our minds You have read much the Books of certain Scepticks who are proud of doubting of all things and yet speak of them peremptorily and I fear that like them you will have me hereafter prove you common notions and receive as principles opinions altogether unknown to the greatest part of mankind It is also much to be fear'd that your travels have too much disperst your thoughts and given your mind too much of the Court-air to let you hear with attention some things altogether unknown amongst Travellers and Military men You do not believe at present that your Studies and Travels have corrupted your reason and prepossess'd you with many unreasonable opinions You have some cause not to believe it and I will not undertake to convince you of it yet But that hereafter we may reconcile our differences let us take for a third a young man whom the conversation of the World hath not yet spoilt that Nature alone may speak in him and we may find who of us two is prepossess'd Methinks Erastes who heard us t'other day would be very fit for this I observ'd by his countenance that he often consulted within himself to examine our sentiments with those of his Conscience and always approv'd of the most reasonable tho he us'd to stand as it were amaz'd and surpriz'd without judging of any thing when ever he heard you relate certain things which you have read in Books Arist You do him a great deal of honour at my cost but I can find no fault with it that young man is so lovely that besides the tye of blood I have all the reason in the world to be glad of the esteem you have of his Wit I freely consent But here he comes in very good time Erastes Gentlemen will you be pleas'd to do me the same favour you did me lately Will you give me leave to stay here Arist With all our hearts Erastus we were thinking to send for you I have just now told you my resolution Theodorus and you approve of it Let us Philosophize I pray you but let it be after a Christian and solid manner Instruct me of the Truths that are essential and most capable of rendering us happy How would you prove that there is a God for I believe that 't is by this we ought to begin Theod. The Existence of God may be prov'd a thousand ways for there is nothing but may serve to demonstrate it and I wonder how a person of your parts so well read in Antiquity and so accomplisht every way seems not to be convinc'd of it Arist I am convinc'd of it by Faith but I must confess I am not fully convinc'd of it by Reason Theod. If you speak as you think you are convinc'd of it neither by reason nor by Faith For do you not know that the assurance of Faith comes from the authority of a God that speaks and who can never deceive us If then you are not convinc'd by reason that there is a God how will you be convinc'd that he hath spoke Can you know that he hath spoke without knowing that he is And can you know that the things which he hath reveal'd us are true without knowing that he is Infallible and never deceives us Arist I do not examine things so narrowly and the reason why I believe it is because I will believe it and that I have been told so all my life But let us see your proofs Theod. Your Faith hath much of the man in it and your answers shew much Indifference I design'd to give you the most simple and natural proofs of the Existence of God but I find by the disposition of your mind they would not be the most convincing You must have sensible proofs Here are many things about us which of them shall I make use of to prove you that there is a God Shall it be this Fire that delights us this Light that illuminates us the nature of Words by whose means we discourse together for as I told you just now there is nothing but may serve to shew the existence of its Author provided we consider it with all possible attention God acts incessantly in and by all his works 'T is he that illuminates us by this outward light that delights us by the warmth of this fire and discourses with us when we think we converse together God neither produces nor preserves any creature but which may cause those to know him who make good use of their reason I will convince you of it presently In the mean time Erastus take heed that neither of us prepossess you Answer me Aristarchus What doth Fire do in you Arist It warms me Theod. Then Fire causes a pleasure in you Arist I own it Theod. What causes in us some pleasure makes us in some measure happy Arist It is true Theod. Then what makes us in some manner happy is in some manner our good and in some manner above us and deserves in some manner love and veneration What think you of it Erastus is Fire in some manner above you Can Fire act in you Can it cause in you a pleasure it hath not it feels not it knows not and cause it in you that is to say in a Spirit in a being infinitely above it Erast I do not think so Theod. See then Aristarchus what you have to answer Arist You conclude too fast And I see what you drive at I distinguish Fire
in my soul a knowledge of instinct nor any other I cannot tell if you are satisfied Arist But little truly Theod. Shall I tell you why you are not well satisfied 'T is because Erastus hath made a clear and evident answer to an Objection that was not so If you clearly understood what you object Erastus would answer you both clearly and quickly If hereafter you desire to receive from him more satisfaction than you have had hitherto consider well what you intend to ask him He cannot answer you speedily and clearly when he doth not understand you and you do not even understand your self He uses all his endeavours not to answer but when he hath consulted inward truth and had its answer but it never answers him when he doth not know what he asks Yet you would have him give you an answer and that speedy too If he made you any he would deceive you for it would be his answer and not Truths you should receive I will still put some questions to him that you may observe the method I think is proper to go about it and that his answers may instruct you of the Truth we seek I have obliged my self Erastus to prove the existence of God by the effects which fire seems to produce in us but to do it 't is of the greatest consequence to know that 't is not the soul that causes in her self her own sensations See if you have not still some other proof I do not say more solid but more able to convince Aristarchus Think on it Why do you sometimes suffer a pain Do you delight in it Erast I understand you Theodorus I am not to my self the cause of my happiness nor of my misery If I was the cause of the pleasure I feel seeing I love it I should always produce some in me And on the contrary if I was the cause of the pain I suffer seeing I hate it I would never produce it in my self I perceive that there is a superiour cause that acts on me and may make me happy or unhappy Since I cannot act on my self and that bodies produce not in me the sensations which I feel as we said just now Arist You have it not right Erastus you love your Body you either know or feel that there happens some good or ill to it you either rejoyce or are afflicted at it The one is your pleasure and the other your pain Erast What ever Aristarchus says to me puzzles me and throws me into darkness I beg of you Theodorus to disperse it Theod. I do not wonder at it Erastus Whatever he tells you is false or full of obscurity yet seems probable enough Will you never retire within your self Aristarchus How can you conceive I pray you that Erastus loves his body Whatever is within Erastus that is able to love is better than the body of Erastus Erastus knows it His Body cannot act on his Soul he knows it his Body cannot be his Good he knows that too it cannot be properly said then that he loves it But here lies the riddle Erastus loves pleasure more than his body and he resents pleasure when his body is well dispos'd 'T is that obliges him to mind his body and to defend it when any thing offends it Do you think the Drunkards love their body when they gorge it with Wine Do you think the Libertines love their body when they ruine their health Is it not rather because they love the present pleasure Do those who mortifie their body love it when they tear it or do you believe they hate it What is it then they love but the pleasures they hope one day to enjoy What do they hate on the contrary but the everlasting torments they fear to suffer Thus you may see that Erastus doth not cause in himself his pleasure because he finds or is sensible that the body he loves is well dispos'd For he doth not even know that his body is in a good state by any other thing than by the pleasure he hath by it It is true that when we feel by pleasure or by pain that our body is well or ill dispos'd we are affected with joy or grief but if you think on it seriously you will easily perceive that this grief and joy that are the effects of our knowledge differ mightily from those antecedent pains and pleasures of which we speak Therefore they must have some other cause than our selves Do you grant it Arist I am now convinced of it Theod. Now this cause must be superior and always present to us since it acts within us This cause can punish or reward us make us happy or unhappy since pleasure delights us and pain displeases and makes us uneasie If then this Cause were God we should know that God doth not only rule the motions of the heavens But that he hath a hand in our concerns rules whatsoever passes in us and that in order to our happiness we ought to fear him love him and follow his orders For since he makes continual applications to us he requires something from us and if we do not perform what he requires from us 't is not likely that he should reward us and make us happy Arist I own it But how would you prove that it is not some Angel or Demon that hath the Government of us and acts on us How would you prove that there is a Being infinitely powerful and who includes in his being all the perfections imaginable This seems to me very difficult Theod. It is difficult by the method I have taken but when we acknowledge a superior power that acts in us we have not much difficulty to consider him as Soveraign and to allow him all the perfections of which we have some idea Nevertheless I must endeavour to convince you fully Mind me also Enastus As soon as we are prick'd with a Thorn we feel pain This pain doth not proceed from the Thorn nor from the Soul you grant all this it proceeds then from a superior power This power ought to know the moment when the Thorn pricks our body that he may in the same moment produce the pain in our soul But how shall he know it Think on it He cannot know it from us for we know nothing of it yet Nor from the Thorn for the Thorn cannot act on the spirit of that power nor represent it self to him for the Thorn is neither visible nor intelligible by it self there being no relation between bodies and intelligent beings Whence then shall this superior power learn the moment when the Thorn pricks us If you tell me that he shall know it from some other intelligent being I will ask you the same questions of the second intelligent being and if you fly to a third you will get no more by it Yet in the very instant when we are pricked we feel pain The superior cause must then have learnt that the Thorn pricks us without the help
of other intelligent beings ad infinitum For as you see he would not have so soon an answer seeing 't is no easie matter to find an ultimate in an infinite There must be then an intelligent being that learns in himself and by its self in what moment the thorn pricks us And this intelligent being can be no other than God that is to say a being whose power is infinite and whose will alone is the cause of things For after all there is none but him whose will is efficacious that can see in himself and by himself the existence and the motion of Bodies For it being impossible he should be ignorant of his own will he only can discover within himself the number figure and scituation of bodies and generally whatever happens to them It follows then that all other intelligent beings are enlightned by the Creator And as you see or as you will clearly see if you think on it seriously you should not know that you have a body and that there are others about you if you had not learnt it of him who knows it by himself Do you understand these things Erastus Erast I do plainly Theodorus This is your argument What causes pain is neither the Soul that feels nor the Thorn that pricks but a superior power This power ought at least to know the moment when the thorn pricks he cannot know it from the thorn seeing bodies cannot give any light to spirits they being neither visible nor intelligible by themselves and no relation being to be found between a body and a spirit He can know it then but by himself that is to say by the knowledge of his own will which creates and moves the thorn and whose power is infinite since it is able to create There is then a God and if there was no God I should not be pricked I should feel nothing see nothing and know nothing Theod. Very well But what think you of these reasons Aristarchus Arist Think I think that both you and your echo Erastus talk in the clouds The ground of your proof is that that there is no relation between bodies and spirits From whence you conclude that an Angel cannot see a body immediately and by himself To which I answer that that spirits may know bodies it is sufficient that they penetrate them Theod. What do you mean by penetrating them Certainly Erastus doth not understand you But without asking you explications that perhaps would puzzle and displease you doth your soul penetrate your body your heart or your brain the principal part where she resides Arist I believe it doth Theod. Pray tell me then how your brain is composed or that principal part wherein your soul resides Arist I do not understand Anatomy Theod. How You don't understand Anatomy Must you search in Books or in the head of other men which you do not penetrate to know how the brain which your soul penetrates is compos'd What signifies it then to a spirit to penetrate a body Arist I must confess I have nothing to answer Yet methinks if a spirit penetrates a body he ought to know that body But perhaps there is something that hinders it which I do not understand Theod. If it were so Aristarchus this something would be the God whom we seek I will lose no time to prove it to you For I will not prove the existence of God by imaginary effects You may think on it at your leisure But I rather advise you to make a serious reflection on the things I have told you now and then I hope you will visibly find that there is a God I mean a Being whose Will is Power and Power Infinite since it is able to create You will find that this God doth not walk about the Heavens as the Libertines will have it but that his providence extends it self to all things and that he acts incessantly in us That it is he that gives us the pleasing and painful sentiments we have of sensible objects and that consequently he may make us happy or miserable In short you will know God in the most useful manner for morality You will even confess that God hath made nothing but may serve to demonstrate his existence though 't is more conducing to morality to demonstrate it by something that passes within us One of the reasons why you are not easily brought to be of my mind is that you have perhaps never seriously thought on the things of which we have been speaking For I do not perceive that my proofs are remote or hard to be understood I will be judg'd of it by Erastus And I believe we ought to agree on that point that hereafter you may be prepared on the subjects on which we shall treat Arist It belongs to you Theodorus to set rules for every thing For you know that my resolution is to seek none but such truths as are essential and may make us wiser and more happy I need say no more to you Theod. To this effect Aristarchus I will tell you the course I intend to keep in our Conferences Observe it well that you may think on it at leisure and prepare your self to make me all the Objections you can I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated that there is a God who acts incessantly in us and who may make us happy or unhappy by pleasure and by pain of which he alone is the true cause and therefore I will bring no other proofs of it and will content my self with resolving your difficulties But I will prove to you that the design of God in creating man hath been that man might know and love him that God hath preserved man but to that end In short that that design is so unalterable that sinners and the damned themselves execute it in one sense and that they shall sooner cease to be than they shall wholly cease to know and to love God When I have establisht as a principle that since God acts always for himself we cannot be happy if we resist his will nor unhappy if we obey it I will demonstrate how God will be known and be loved how we can resist his orders and what is yet more â—trange how we are capable to offend him I will show that our nature is corrupted that sin dwells in us that the spirit is a slave to the flesh In short I will explain the cause and the effects of the corruption of nature how our disorders strange us from God and make us his enemies as also our want of a Mediator and Redeemer I will explain the qualities our Redeemer and Mediator ought to have to reconcile us to God and to satifie his justice that Jesus Christ possesses them all and none but him What may cure the blindness of the mind and the malice of our heart That those remedies are to be found in the precepts of the Gospel and the grace of Jesus Christ In fine I will show that none but a God
made man can restore reconcile and save us That nothing but the blood of Christ can cleanse us that nothing but his grace can strengthen us that only his precepts can conduct us to that wisdom and to that felicity you wish for and that all we have to do in this life is to study the moral of the Gospel to hear Jesus Christ to love Jesus Christ to follow and to imitate Jesus Christ who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that according as it is written he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord 1 Cor. 1.30,31 DIALOGUE II. Objections and Answers Aristarchus WE long'd with impatience to see you again Theodorus for we wanted you almost as soon as we had left you Erastus and I could not agree about the things you told us yesterday for there come into my mind some difficulties which seem to me not to be overcome and so we have done nothing but disputed all the while but at last Erastus saith he doth not understand me and that he hath nothing else to answer me Theod. Nothing but truth can reconcile minds and if you disagree it is because one of you doth not consult it I am very much affraid that you have consulted your imagination more than your reason and that you have lancht into the deepest recess of your memory for some justificative evidence of your prejudices Tell me is it not true Aristarchus that you have but little meditated on the things I told you yesterday and that whereas you should have examined them by the light of truth you have compar'd them with those things of which the perusual of the Ancients hath left you a tincture Will you never be brought to and will you never understand that you have in your self a faithful master ready to give you an answer at all times if you ask it with decency and submission that is to say in the calm of your senses and passions You tell me that you wanted me but pray are you not ashamed to have recourse to a man to be enlightned and ought you not to know that if I am capable of giving you some instruction 't is not by diffusing light into your mind but making you retire within your self and turning you towards the light that enlightens me Why are we sometimes of the same mind but because we both retire within our selves and harken to him of whom all mankind receives the like answers And why have you so much disputed with Erastus but because you told him things which the truth he consults did not tell him nor had ever told you I beg of you then Aristarchus that we may have no more disputes but let truth be the supreme Judge amongst us and use all your endeavours to make me no objections but such as you understand clearly and may also be understood by Erastus Arist Perhaps all the difficulty in the objections I made Erastus proceeded from our ignorance of a great many things and it may be that not being much used to meditate I have proposed to him my ancient prejudices as so many new truths which presented themselves to me by the strength of meditation But really I have started to him some difficulties which seem to me grounded upon evident Principles and are received by all men Here they are You have told us that none but God can act in our soul and that all the bodies which are about us are uncapable of causing in us the sentiments we have of them But pray is not the Sun bright enough to be visible Do you think I can suffer my self to be imposed upon by Philosophical Reasons to believe that 't is not the Sun that gives me light after all the experiments I have of it And supposing you could perswade me that Fire doth not cause the heat or pain I feel when 't is near me Do you think you may conclude that the Sun doth notdiffuse light and say in general as you do now that all the bodies that surround us are uncapable of producing in us the sentiments we have of them Theod. Forbear to consult your senses Aristarchus if you desire to hear the answers of Truth It dwells in the deepest recess of Reason Peruse at your leisure the first Book of The inquiry after Truth if you have a mind to be fully instructed of the errors of our senses with respect to sensible qualities for I do not intend to make it my business to explain to you all the difficulties of Philosophy which may puzzle you The only thing that 's necessary at present is that you know there is a God and he alone can cause in you the pleasure and pain you feel by the intervention of Bodies You believed it yesterday or I am mistaken Do you believe it now Arist I doubt of it for this Reason that if God did cause in me the pleasure I feel in the use of sensible things It seems he would dispose me to love them and to cleave to them as to my good For pleasure is the character of good 't is an instinct of nature which disposes us to love what produces or seems to produce it Yet faith teaches me that God will not have me to love bodies Can God draw me by pleasure to cleave to sensible things and forbid me at the same time to love them This is my difficulty judge of it now Theod. It is a solid one and 't is absolutely necessary to solve it for from its solution most of the true principles of morality may be deduced This is my system * It is taken out of the fifth Chapter of the first Book of the Inquiry after Truth I have taken several things from that Book and desire the Reader to take notice of it once for all Being made up of spirit and body we have two sorts of good to seek spiritual and corporal We have likewise two ways to know if a thing is good or bad viz. the use of the mind alone and the use of the mind jointly with the body We can know the good of the mind by an evident and clear knowledge of the mind alone and we can also discover the good of the body by a confus'd sentiment By the mind I know justice is to be beloved and by the taste I assure my self such a fruit is good The beauty of justice cannot fall under our senses for 't is unnecessary to the perfection of the body and the goodness of the fruit doth not fall under our understanding for a fruit cannot be useful to the perfection of the mind The good of the body not deserving the application of the mind which God made but for himself and God not being willing that we should be taken up with it it is necessary that the mind do know it without examination and by the short and incontestable proof of sentiment Bread is fit to nourish us and Stones are not The proof of it
truth he could not bear a little while before Arist I give you thanks for this advice Theodorus and will certainly make good use of it the Impatience which is excited within me by the hopes of being serviceable to my friend obliges me to break off our Conversation I must satisfie my self Theod. I commend your zeal and the sincerity of your friendship be of good heart Aristarchus I wish you may return satisfy'd and you Erastus be careful to have in your mind the things that we have said and to discourse about them with Aristarchus as soon as he comes back DIALOGUE III. Of the Order of Nature in the Creation of Man Theod. WEll Aristarchus you have converted your man Erastus told me just now all that past between you and him I even know that he desires to be your Disciple and to have an account of our following conferences Be pleas'd then for his sake to apply your self so that you may demonstrate all things to him with some exactness Arist You take the right way to ingage me for I am extreamly sensible to friendship and methinks my desire to know truth is doubled by the design I have to impart it to my friend Let us go on then I beseech you I am perswaded that there is a God that is to say a Being infinitely perfect whose wisdom and power have no bounds and whose providence extends it self not only to us but even to the atoms of matter I remember your proofs and am convinc'd of them Theod. I can demonstrate nothing of true Religion nor of true Morality till I know what God designs in the creation and preservation of our being Arist You must seek some other principle Theodorus My friend is a Cartesian his Philosophy doth not admit final causes and tho he is now convinc'd that there is a God he will not fail to tell me that we ought not to presume so much of our selves as to believe that God hath been pleas'd to make us privy to his counsels Theod. Your friend will never say this to you if he be a good Cartesian The knowledge of final Causes is of little or no use in Natural Philosophy as Descartes pretends But it is absolutely necessry in Religion Can you obey God if you do not know his will and can you hope to please him and that he will make you happy except you be obedient to him â—… may be you imagine that we can know nothing of Gods design on men by Reason but you are mistaken Do not think too much on your friend Pray think on what I am going to tell you You are perswaded that God is wise and ascribe to him all the perfections whereof you have some Idea God therefore loves most what is most lovely and so must love himself more than all things and be to himself the end of all his actions And by consequence the end of the Creation and preservation of our being It follows then that the faculty by which we know that is to say our Mind and that whereby we love which is our will 〈◊〉 made and preâ—…ved to know and to love God supposing as you do not doubt it they have been made to know and to love Do you find any darkness in what I have told you Pray think on it 't is the ground of all we shall â—ay hereafter Arist All this seems to me as evident as the most certain principles of Natural Philosophy Theod. It hath even more certainty the communication of motion is certain as experience teaches us nevertheless this communication might not be and it will in all likelihood cease after the resurrection that our bodies may be incorruptible but it shall never cease to be the will of God that we know and love him Since then this seems to be plain to you how can it happen that there be men that neither know nor love God since God preserves them but to know and love him Do you think it possible to resist God and that God hath any love for Spirits who have no knowledge of him nor any love for him Do you think God preserves them and do you not know that if God should cease to love them they should be no more Arist I begin to doubt of your principle for you draw some very sad consequences from it Theod. 'T is very strange Aristarchus you should doubt of things of which you have an evidence Will you always forget that light ought to be preferred to darkness and that clear truths are not to be forsaken because we find some difficulty in clearing some dark objections Learn to distinguish truth from what seems to be so and observe that what I objected to you just now is true in one sense and false in another For there is no man but knows and loves God in one sense as you will see it hereafter Therefore stick firmly to this truth that God hath made and preserves spirits but to know and love him And this truth being granted since it is evident endeavour to discover how it may be conceiv'd that all spirits know and love God for that is of the greatest consequence I will put some questions to Erastus that I may insensibly lead you to that truth Do you think Erastus that Spirits can see Bodies Or rather do you think that this material and sensible world can be the immediate object of the mind Do you think that bodies can act in the mind make themselves visible to the mind or enlighten it Erast I do not think it Theod. What then do you see immediately when you see the material and visible world Erast I see If I may say so the Intelligible World Theod. How when you look upon the Stars do you not see the Stars Erast When I look upon the Stars I see the Stars when I look upon the Stars of the material world I see the Stars of the intelligible world and judge that those material Stars are like those of the intelligible world I see For the Sun that I see is sometimes bigger and sometimes less and is never bigger than an intelligible Circle of two or three foot diameter but the material Sun is always the same and according to the sentiment of some Astronomers about thirty thousand times bigger than the Earth 't is not then this Sun I see when I am looking upon it Theod. But Erastus where is this intelligible world which you see Do you think to include it within your self Do you think your soul comprehends in an intelligible manner all the beings that God can make and you can see Can your Soul whose bounds are too narrow whose perfections are finite and who certainly doth not include all things see all things by reflecting on herself Erast I do not think it but I dare not tell you my opinion I imagine that there is none but God that includes the intelligible world and that we see in God whatever we see Theod. But why are you afraid to
our love and we are so free in the love of finite good that we even feel the secret reproaches of our reason when we fix our selves on it Because he that made us for himself speaks to us that we may turn to him and give no bounds to the motion of love which he incessantly produces in us All the motion that the soul hath towards good comes from God and God only acting for himself all the motion of the soul hath no other end nor bound than God in the Institution of Nature God presenting to spirits no other Idea but himself since he hath made spirits for himself All the motion of our wills is towards him since wills move themselves towards those things only which the spirit perceives But men thinking that they see creatures in themselves the consent they give to the motion that God imprints in them ends in the creatures and it may be said with a great deal of truth that the free will of men or their consent to the motion they receive from God tends to the creatures though the natural motion of their love can tend only to God By this you see Aristarchus that God preserves spirits for himself only that the faculties they enjoy to know and love know and love none but him that sinners do not overturn the laws of nature that they are inviolable and that this general principle of Religion and Morality viz. That God hath made us for himself is undeniable Arist But if the order of nature is that we know and love God and if we cannot resist that order since the motion of our love for the creatures tends of necessity towards the Creator how can it be said that we really offend God Theod. It may be said for many reasons God incessantly moves spirits towards good either general or particular for all good is to be beloved He invincibly moves them towards general good but 't is otherwise with the impression he gives them towards particular good God doth not limit towards that good the act which he produces in them For if we observe it duely we sufficiently perceive that in the very time when we fix on some finite good we have some motion to go further if we will So we offend God by stopping his act and not letting him act in us according to the full extent of his act The reason why God moves us towards good is because it moves us towards him and he moves us towards himself because he loves himself 'T is then the love of God to himself that produces our love in us Therefore our love ought to be like to that which God bears to himself But it is not like it when it concenters in a particular good it is then unworthy of the cause that hath produced it and it may be said to be displeasing to him Order is certainly the essential and necessary Will of God according to which and by which he wills whatever he wills for God loves order he wills nothing but order his will always follows order But a creature who loves more those things that are less lovely thwarts order withdraws himself from it and even overthrows it as much as he is capable of it He resists then to the will of God and so deserves to come into the order of his justice since he leaves that of his goodness which is the first and most natural God alone can act in the soul and cause in her some pleasure And by his decree or general will that makes the order of nature 't was his desire that pleasure should attend certain motions in the body So those that produce in their body these motions without reason even against the secret reproaches of their reason oblige God in consequence of his general will to renumerate them by pleasing sentiments even in the very time when they ought to be punished They therefore use violence against his justice and offend him But they only use this violence by the love they have for particular good So this love offends God For all those who love their pleasure without minding the true cause that produces it offend that cause since God never causes pleasure with an intent that we should fix on it but rather that we may love the cause that produces the pleasure and that we may unite with the thing that determines that cause to produce it You see therefore Aristarchus that God is offended when we fix the motion of love he causes in us on particular good But though you might not see it you cannot doubt but it is so for when we confine our love to some particular good we feel an inward check in the secret of our reason and a just check is a mark of infidelity against him that causes it those checks or reproaches can proceed but from a general cause since they are generally to be found in all mankind and must therefore be just since they are caused by a just God and this just God is offended when we confine our love to particular good This single Argument is sufficient for 't is unnecessary to seek metaphysical proofs of a thing whereof we are convined by inward sentiments that is by a light which strikes through the blindest and by a punishment that stings the most hardened sinners Arist I believe all this and I pray you to go on Theod. If you believe all this Aristarchus you may see your friend ask him at first if he desires to be happy Show him that none but God can act and cause in him that pleasure he loves so much and that renders him the more happy the greater it is Let him know that God is just that he will be obey'd that it cannot be conceived he should make truely happy those who do not follow his orders nor unhappy those that follow them that so we ought to use all our endeavours to know the Will of God and ought to obey it with all the fidelity imaginable You are sensible that men must be either stupid or out of their senses not to see those things and that those that see them and are not affected with them must either be mad or desperate but do not tell him so take heed above all things you do not awaken his passions and principally his pride for he would conceive nothing of what you might tell him make him understand as much as you can that God acts only for himself That he hath made our spirit only for himself That he hath given some motion to our heart only to incline it towards him That therefore we ought not to make an ill use of the motion of love which God causes in us by loving any thing besides him or without relation to him Make him understand that God is his true good not only by being alone capable to make him happy but also because none but God can make him more perfect not only as he is the cause of pleasure but also as he is
because he made us he will not have us such as we have made our selves far from this as such he cannot suffer us near him and always removes us from him Yet Aristarchus it is true that God is too just and loves himself too much not to desire to be beloved and to remove positively from him creatures whom he only made for himself for sensible pleasure or pain removes from God but indirectly and by our own fault First because being able to find out by reason that bodies are incapable of creating in us either pleasure or pain we ought neither to fear nor love them but God alone who hath power to cause these sensations in us When something wounds us we ought to fear God and when our senses are any ways pleased we ought to think on him and fear and love him in all things For it is a common notion that the true cause of pleasure and of pain ought to be loved and feared But our ignorance of the actual presence and continual operation of this true cause of our sensations makes us love and fear bodies imagining them to be capable to act in us Now this ignorance is not something positive caused in us by God it is nothing It is true that not to love or fear bodys it is absolutely necessary we should have a very clear and lively knowledge of the presence and continual operation of God upon us for the knowledge which Philosophy gives us of him doth not strongly enough dispose us to cleave incessantly to him But what can be concluded from God's not causing himself to be known enough without his grace to be Loved and feared in all things but that men have offended and displeased him God doth not therefore remove us positively from him when he causes some pleasure or pain in us by the means of bodys since we ought and may then think on him rather than on those bodys Now I come to the second reason Seeing we have a body it is necessary we should have notice of what passes in it It is necessary that at the appearance of objects we have sentiments moving us to cleave to or shun them It is also necessary that these sentiments be preingaging for some reasons that I have mentioned elsewhere So God doth not positively remove us from him when he causes in us our sentiments since on the contrary it is the shortest means to warn us of the things that are necessary for the preservation of life without turning us away from him But those preingaging Sentiments ought not to disturb us nor oppose our Reason and seeing they do it is evident as I have already said it 2d Dial. That Man doth not deserve God should interrupt the Law of the communication of motions for his sake but this doth not imply that God really pushes us back from him In short men see all things in God their immediate object is the intelligible world and the very substance of God but they not thinking on him at the appearance of sensible objects imagine that some outward being altogether like the Idea they have of it acts in them Thus God moves them only towards himself since he only moves them towards what they see and not towards those things which they imagine to be external and it is only indirectly and through a mistake that they love the creatures which are neither so lovely nor such as they imagin them to be Erast You are much in the right Theodorus when you believe that the first cause of our disorders is our not having God always present to our minds and not seeing or rather not feeling him in all things For did we plainly and sensibly see that none but God really acts in us when bodies are present to our sences methinks we would fear and love none but him since we love or fear nothing but what acts in us How then could Adam estrange himself from God for he could see God in all things and had all the knowledge that was necessary to remain united to him If you do not explain how he could fall into sin perhaps Aristarchus will believe that the first man was made such as we are and that concupiscence is not so much a punishment for sin as the first institution of Nature Theod. You need not fear it Erastus he knows now that we ought not to leave a demonstrated Truth because we cannot solve some difficult Points he now sticks to what he sees But I understand what you mean and answer you thus The first man did clearly see God in all things he evidently knew that bodies could not be his true good nor properly make him in the least happy or unhappy he was fully convinc'd of God's continual operation on him but his was no sensible conviction he knew this but did not feel it on the contrary he could feel that bodies acted on him tho he could not know that they did it It is true that being endowed with reason he ought to have followed his light and not his sentiment and that he could easily have done it seeing he could stop his sentiments when he pleased being free from concupiscence However deferring too much to his sences and suffering himself by degrees to hearken to them more willingly than to God himself by reason that the sences always move pleasingly and God did not move him to hear him by preingaging pleasures which must have lessened his Freedom you easily conceive how he came to remove himself so far from God as to lose sight of him to adjoyn in will to a creature by whose means he received some satisfaction and which he might then confusedly imagin to be capable of making him as happy as the Serpent assured Eve it would For tho Adam was not attackt nor seduced by the Serpent as Eve was And Adam was not deceived 1 Tim. 2.14 Yet what God said after Adam's fall Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil Gen. 3.22 Sufficiently shows that he had some hopes of becoming happy by the means of the forbidden Fruit. Now to determine us to do a thing there is no absolute necessity that we be fully persuaded that our Motive is just and reasonable The hopes of a great benefit tho never so small are capable of making us do much So we may suppose that Adam was so strongly applied to sensible Objects and consequently so far removed out of God's presence that the least hope the slightest doubt and the most confused sentiment of so great an advantage as that of being like God hath been capable of moving him to do a thing which he did not perhaps think very sinful at the time of his Fall All finite Spirits must be subject to Error and Sin principally if they resent preingaging pleasures which incline them to seek things that they ought not to love and to shun what they ought not to fear For no finite Spirit can actually resent pleasure without