title to their Crowns and all men their Estates by the records or testimony of others 9. It is impudent arrogancy for every Infidel to tie God to be at his beck to work Miracles as oft as he requireth it To say I will not believe without a Miracle and if thou work never so many in the sight of others I will not believe unless I may see them my self § 12. There need not be new Revelations and Miracles to confirm the former and oblige men to believe them For then there must be more Revelations and Miracles to confirm the former and oblige men to believe those and so on to the end of the World And then God could not govern the World by a setled Law by Revelations once made which is absurd § 13. Therefore the only natural way to know all such matters of fact is sensible apprehension to those that are present and credible report tradition or history to those that are absent as is aforesaid which is the necessary medium to convey it from their sense to our understandings And in this must we acquiesce as the natural means which God will use § 14. We are not bound to believe all history or report Therefore we must be able to discern between the credible and the incredible neither receiving all nor rejecting all but making choice as there is cause § 15. History is more or less credible as it hath more or less evidence of truth 1. Some that is credible hath only evidence of probability and such is that of meer Humane Faith 2. Some hath evidence of certainty from Natural causes concurring where the conclusion is both of knowledge and of Humane Faith 3. And some hath evidence of certainty from supernatural attestation which is both of Humane Faith and of Divine § 16. That history or report which hath no more evidence than the meer wisdom and honesty of the author or reporter supposing him an imperfect man is but probable and the Conclusion though credible is not infallible and can have no certainty but that which some call Morall and that in several degrees as the wisdom and honesty of the reporter is either more or less § 17. II. Where there is an evident impossibility that all the witnesses or reporters should lie or be deceived there the Conclusion is credible by humane Faith and also sure by a natural certainty § 18. Where these things concurre it is impossible that that report or history should be false 1. When it is certain that the reporters were not themselves deceived 2. When it is certain that indeed the report is theirs 3. When they took their salvation to lie upon the truth of the thing reported and of their own report 4. When they expected Worldly ruin by their testimony and could look for no commodity by it which would make them any reparation 5. When they give full proof of their honesty and conscience 6. When their testimony is concordant and they speak the same things though they had no opportunity to conspire to deceive men yea when their numbers distance and quality make this impossible 7. When they bear their testimony in the time and place where it might well be contradicted and the falsity detected if it were not true and among the most malicious enemies and yet those enemies either confess the matter of fact or give no regardable reason against it 8. When the reporters are men of various tempers countreys and civil interests 9. When the reporters fall out or greatly differ among themselves even to separations and condemnations of one another and yet none ever detecteth or confesseth any falshood in the said reports 10. When the reporters being numerous and such as profess that Lying is a damnable sin and such as laid down their liberties or lives in asserting their testimonies did yet never any of them in life or death repent and confess any falshood or deceit 11. When their report convinceth thousands in that place and time who would have more abhorred them if it had been untrue Nay where some of these concurre the conclusion may be of certainty some of these instances resolve the point into natural necessity 1. It is of natural necessity that men love themselves and their own felicity and be unwilling of their undoing and misery The Will though free is quaedam natura and hath its natural necessary inclination to that good which is apprehended as its own felicity or else to have omnimodam rationem boni and its natural necessary inclination against that evil or aversation from it which is apprehended as its own undoing or misery or to have omnimodam rationem mali Its liberty is only servato ordine finis And some acts that are free are nevertheless of infallible certain futurition and of some kinde of necessity like the Love and Obedience of the Saints in Heaven 2. Nothing can be without a cause sufficient to produce it But some things here instanced can have no cause sufficient to produce them if the thing testified were false As the consent of enemies their not gainsaying the concurrence of so many and so distant and of such bitter Opposites against their own common worldly interest and to the confessed ruine of their souls and the belief of many thousands that could have disproved it if false and more which I shall open by and by There is a natural certainty that Alexander was the King of Macedonia and Caesar Emperour of Rome and that there is such a place as Rome and Paris and Venice and Constantinople And that we have had Civil Warrs between the King and Parliament in England and between the Houses of York and Lancaster and that many thousands were murdered by the French Massacre and many more by the Irish and that the Statutes of this Land were made by the Kings and Parliaments whose names they bear c. Because that 1. There is no cause in Nature which could produce the concurrence of so many testimonies of men so distant and contrary if it were not true 2. And on the contrary side there are natural causes which would infallibly produce a credible contradiction to these reports if they were false § 19. III. When they that testifie such matters of fact do affirm that they do it by Gods own command and prove this by multitudes of evident uncontrolled Miracles their report is both humane and divine and to be believed as most certain by a divine belief This is before proved in the proof of the validity of the testimony of Miracles and such Miracles as these § 20. The Testimonies of the Apostles and other Disciples of Christ concerning his Resurrection and Miracles were credible by all these three several sorts of credibility 1. They were credible and most credible by a humane belief as they were the testimony of honest and extraordinarily honest men 2. They were credible as reported with concauses of natural certainty 3. They were credible as attested by God
heard and did things which were nothing so for so long together nor yet so subtile as to be able to lay such a deceiving plot and carry it on so closely to the end And they that suspect the Apostles and first Disciples to be the Authors of the plot will not suspect all the Churches too For if there were Deceivers there must be some to be deceived by them If Christ deceived the Disciples then the Disciples could not be wilfull deceivers themselves For if they were themselves deceived they could not therein be wilfull deceivers And then how came they to confirm their testimony by Miracles If the Apostles only were deceivers then all the Disciples and Evangelists who assisted them must be deceived and not wilfull deceivers And then how came they also to do miracles If all the Apostles and Disciples of the first Edition were wilfull Deceivers then all the Churches through the World which were gathered by them were deceived by them and then they were not wilsul deceivers themselves which is all that I am now proving having proved before that they were not deceived § 47. 2. If they had been cunning enough it is most inprobable that so many thousands in so many Nations should be so bad as to desire and endeavour at such a rate as their own temporal and eternal ruine to deceive all the world into a blasphemy without any benefit to themselves which might be rationally sufficient to seem a tempting compensation to them § 48. For all these Churches which witnessed the Apostles Miracles 1. Did profess to believe lying and deceiving to be a heinous sin 2. And to believe an everlasting punishment for liars 3. They were taught by their Religion to expect calamity in this world 4. They had experience enough to confirm them in that expectation Therefore they had no motive which could be sufficient to make them guilty of so costly a deceit For 1. Operari sequitur esse A man will do ill but according to the measure that he is ill and as bad as humane nature is it is not yet so much depraved as that thousands through the world could agree without any commodity to move them to it to ruine their own estates and lives and souls for ever meerly to make the world believe that other men did miracles and to draw them to believe a known untruth And 2. as free as the will is it is yet a thing that hath its nature and inclination and cannot act without a cause and object which must be some apparent good Therefore when there is no good-appearing but wickedness and misery it cannot will it So that this seemeth inconsistent with humane nature § 49. And the certain history of their lives doth shew that they were persons extraordinary good and conscionable being holy heavenly and contemners of this world and ready to suffer for their Religion and therefore could not be so extremely bad as to ruine themselves only to do mischief to the world and their posterity § 50. And their enemies bare them witness that they did and suffered all this in the hopes of a reward in heaven which proveth that they were not wilful liars and deceivers for no man can look for a reward in heaven for the greatest known-villany on earth even for suffering to cheat all the world into a blasphemy Even Lucian scoffeth at the Christians for running into sufferings and hoping to be rewarded for it with a life everlasting § 51. 3. If they had been never so cunning and so bad yet was it impossible that they should be able for the successful execution of such a deceit as will appear by all these following evidences § 52. 1. It was impossible that so many thousands at such a distance who never saw each others faces could lay the plot in a way of concord but one would have been of one mind and another of another § 53. 2. It is impossible that they should agree in carrying it on and keeping it secret through all the world if they had accorded in the first contrivance and attempts § 54. 3. It is impossible that all the thousands of adversaries among them who were eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses as well as they should not discover the deceit All those Parthians Medes Elamites and other Country-men mentioned Act. 2. were not Christians and the Christians though many were but a small part of the Cities and Countries where they dwelt And Paul saith that Tongues and Miracles were for the sake of unbelievers and unbelievers were ordinarily admitted into the Christian assemblies and the Christians went among them to preach and most of the miracles were wrought in their sight and hearing § 55. 4. It is impossible that the falling out of Christians among themselves among so many thousands in several Nations should never have detected the deceit if they had been all such deceivers § 56. 5. It is impossible but some of the multitudes of the perverted exasperated separating or excommunicate Hereticks which were then in most Countries where there were Christians and opposed the Orthodox and were opposed by them should have detected this deceit if it had been such § 57. 6. It is impossible but some of the Apostates of those times who are supposed to have joyned in the deceit would have detected it to the world when they fell off from Christianity § 58. 7. It is scarce possible among so many thousands in several Lands that none of their own consciences living or dying should be constrained in remorse and terrour to detect so great an evil to the world § 59. 8. Much more impossible is it that under the conscience of such a villany they should live and suffer and die rejoycingly and think it a happy exchange to forsake life and all for the hopes of a reward in heaven for this very thing § 60. 9. Lastly it is impossible that these thousands of Christians should be able to deceive many more than themselves into the belief of the same untruths in the very time and place where the things were said to be done and where the detection of the deceit had been easie yea unavoidable Christianity was then upon the increase they that were converted did convert more than themselves Suppose in Jerusalem Ephesus Corinth Rome c. some thousands believed by the preaching of the Apostles in a few years at the first in a few years more there were as many more added Now supposing all this had been but a cheat if the Christians had told their neighbours Among us unlearned men speak in the Languages of all Countries they cast out devils they cure all diseases with prayer and annointing they prophesie and interpret Tongues they do many other miracles and the same Spirit is given to others by their imposition of hands and all this in the Name and by the Power of Jesus would not their neighbours easily know whether this were true or not And if it were false would they not
are taught to believe that sense is not deceived about the Accidents which they call the Species but about the Substance only when most of the simple people by the species do understand the Bread and Wine it self which they think is to the invisible body of Christ like as our bodies or the body of a Plant is to the soul So that although this instance be one of the greatest in the world of infatuation by humane authority and words it is nothing against the Christian verity Object V. You are not yet agreed among your selves what Christianity is as to the matter of Rule the Papists say it is all the Decrees de fide at least in all General Councils together with the Scriptures Canonical and Apocriphal The Protestants take up with the Canonical Scriptures alone and have not near so much in their Faith or Religion as the Papists have Answ What it is to be a Christian all the world may easily perceive in that solemn Sacrament Covenant or Vow in which they are solemnly entred into the Church and profession of Christianity and made Christians And the antient Creed doth tell the world what hath always been the faith which was professed And those sacred Scriptures which the Churches did receive doth tell the world what they took for the entire comprehension of their Religion But if any Sects have been since tempted to any additions enlargements or corruptions it s nothing to the disparagement of Christ who never promised that no man should ever abuse his Word and that he would keep all the world from adding or corrupting it Receive but so much as the doctrine of Christ which hath certain proof that it was indeed his delivered by himself or his inspired Apostles and we desire no more Object VI. But you are not agreed of the reasons and resolution of your faith one resolveth it into the authority of the Church and others into a private spirit and each one seemeth sufficiently to prove the groundlesness of the others faith Answ Dark minded men do suffer themselves to be fooled with a noise of words not-understood Do you know what is meant by the resolution and grounds of faith Faith is the believing of a conclusion which hath two premises to infer and prove it and there must be more argumentation for the proof of such premises and faith in its several respects and dependances may be said to be resolved into more things than one even into every one of these This general and ambiguous word Resolution is used oft'ner to puzzle than resolve And the grounds and reasons of faith are more than one and what they are I have fully opened to you in this Treatise A great many of dreaming wranglers contend about the Logical names of the Objectum quod quo ad quod the objectum formale materiale per se per accidens primarium secundarium ratio formalis quae qua sub qua objectum univocationis communitatis perfectionis originis virtutis adaequationis c. the motiva fidei resolutio and many such words which are not wholly useless but are commonly used but to make a noise to carry men from the sense and to make men believe that the controversie is de re which is meerly de nomine Every true Christian hath some solid reason for his faith but every one is not learned and accurate enough to see the true order of its causes and evidences and to analize it throughly as he ought And you will take it for no disproof of Euclid or Aristotle that all that read them do not sufficiently understand all their Demonstrations but disagree in many things among themselves Object VII You make it a ridiculous Idolatry to worship the Sun and Jupiter and Venus and other Planets and Stars which in all probability are animate and have souls as much nobler than ours as their bodies are for it 's like God's works are done in proportion and harmony and so they seem to be to us as subordinate Deities And yet at the same time you will worship your Virgin Mary and the very image of Christ yea the Image of the Cross which he was hang'd on and the salita capita and rotten bones of your Martyrs to the dishonour of Princes who put them to death as malefactors Is not the Sun more worthy of honour than these Answ 1. We ever granted to an Eunapius Julian Porphyry or Celsus that the Sun and all the Stars and Planets are to be honoured according to their proper excellency and use that is to be esteemed as the most glorious of all the visible works of God which shew to us his Omnipotency Wisdom and Goodness and are used as his instruments to convey to us his chief corporal mercies and on whom under God our bodies are dependant being incomparably less excellent than theirs But whether they are animated or no is to us utterly uncertain and if we were sure they were yet we are sure that they are the products of the Will of the Eternal Being And he that made both them and us is the Governour of them and us and therefore as long as he hath no way taught us to call them Gods nor to pray to them nor offer them any sacrifice as being uncertain whether they understand what we do or say nor hath any way revealed that this is his will nay and hath expresly forbidden us to do so Reason forbiddeth us to do any more than honourably to esteem and praise them as they are and use them to the ends which our Creator hath appointed 2. And for the Martyrs and the Virgin Mary we do no otherwise by them we honour them by estimation love and praise agreeable to all the worth which God hath bestowed on them and the holiness of humane souls which is his image is more intelligible to us and so more distinctly amiable than the form of the Sun and Planets is But we pray not to them because we know not whether they hear us or know when we are sincere or hypocritical nor have we any such precepts from our common Lord. It is but some ignorant mistaken Christians who pray to the dead or give more than due veneration to their memories And it is Christ and not every ignorant Christian or mistaken Sect that I am justifying against the cavils of unbelief Object VIII You make the holiness of Christian doctrine a great part of the evidence of your faith and yet Papists and Protestants maintain each others doctrine to be wicked and such especially against Kings and Government as Seneca or Cicero or Plutarch would have abhorred The Protestants tell the Papists of the General Council at the Lateran sub Innoc. 3. where Can. 3. it is made a very part of their Religion That temporal Lords who exterminate not Hereticks may be admonished and excommunicated and their Dominions given by the Pope to others and subjects disobliged from their allegiance
not sincerely receive these precepts if they let them not into the heart and answer them not with these affections And here is the great difference between the faith of an honest sanctified Plowman and of a carnal unsanctified Lord or Doctor the one openeth his heart to the doctrine which he receiveth and faithfully admitteth it to its proper work and so embraceth it practically and in love and therefore holdeth it fast as a radicated experienced truth when he cannot answer all cavils that are brought against it The other superficially receiveth it into the brain by meer speculation and treacherously shuts up his heart against it and never gave it real rooting and therefore in the time of trial loseth that unsound superficial belief which he hath God blesseth his word to the heart that honestly and practically receiveth it rather than to him that imprisoneth it in unrighteousness Cond 30. Lastly if yet any doubts remain bethink you which is the surest side which you may follow with least danger and where you are certain to undergo the smallest lâ—ss It is pity that any should hesitate in a matter of such evidence and weight and should think with any doubtfulness of Christianity as an uncertain thing But yet true Believers may have cause to say Lord help our unbelief and encrease our faith And all doubting will not prove the unsoundness of belief The true mark to know when Faith is true and saving notwithstanding all such doubtings is the measure of its prevalency with our hearts and lives That belief in Christ and the life to come is true and saving notwithstanding all doubtings which habitually possesseth us with the love of God above all and resolveth the will to prefer the pleasing of him and the hopes of heaven before all the treasures and pleasures of this world and causeth us in our endeavours to live accordingly And that faith is unsound which will not do this how well soever it may be defended by dispute Therefore at least for the resolving of your wills for choice and practice if you must doubt yet consider which is the safest side If Christ be the Saviour of the world he will bring Believers to Grace and Glory and you are sure there is nothing but transitory trifles which you can possibly lose by such a choice For certainly his precepts are holy and safe and no man can imagine rationally that they can endanger the soul But if you reject him by infidelity you are lost for ever for there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin but a fearful looking for of judgment and fire which shall devour his adversaries for ever There is no other Saviour for him who finally refuseth the only Saviour And if you doubted whether faith might not prove an error you could never see any cause to fear that it should prove a hinderance to your salvation for salvation it self is an unknown thing to most that do not believe in Christ and no man can well think that a man who is led by an age of such miracles so credibly reported to us to believe in one that leadeth up souls to the love of God and a holy and heavenly mind and life can ever perish for being so led to such a guide and then led by him in so good a way and to so good an end AND thus Reader I have faithfully told thee what reasonings my own soul hath had about its way to everlasting life and what enquiries it hath made into the truth of the Christian faith I have gone to my own Heart for those reasons which have satisfied my self and not to my Books from which I have been many years separated for such as satisfie other men and not my self I have told thee what I believe and why Yet other mens reasonings perhaps may give more light to others though these are they that have prevailed most with me Therefore I desire the Reader that would have more said to peruse especially these excellent Books Camero's Praelectiones de Verâ—o Dei with the Theses Salmurienses and Sedanenses on that subject Grotius de Veritate Religionis Christianae Marsilius Ficinus de Relig. Christ cum notis Lud. Crocii Lodovicus Vives de Verit. Fid. Christ Phil. Morney du Plessis de Verit. Fid. Christ John Goodwin of the Authority of the Scriptures Campanella's Savonarola's Triumphus Crucis both excellent Books excepting the errors of their times Raymundus de Sabundis his Theologia Naturalis Micrelli Ethnophronius an excellent Book Raymundus Lullius Articul Fid. Alexander Gill out of him on the Creed Mr. Stillingfleet's Origines Sacrae a late and very worthy labour Dr. Jackson on the Creed Mr. Vincent Hatecliffe's Aut Deus aut Nihil for the first part of Religion passing by Lessius Parsons and abundance more and Common Place-books which many of them treat very well on this subject And of the Ancients Augustine de Civitate Dei Eusebii Preparatio Demonstratio Evangelica are the fullest and almost all of them have somewhat to this use as Justin M. Athenagoras Tatianus Tertullian Clemens Alexand. Origen against Celsus c. Cyprian Lactantius Athanasius Basile Gr. Nazianzene Nyssen c. For my own part I humbly thank the Heavenly Majesty for the advantages which my education gave me for the timely reception of the Christian faith But temptations and difficulties have so often called me to clear my grounds and try the evidences of that Religion which I had first received upon the commendation of my Parents that I have long thought no Subject more worthy of my most serious faithful search and have wondred at the great number of Christians who could spend their lives in studying the superstructures and wrangling about many small uncertainties to the great disturbance of the Church's peace and found no more need to be confirmed in the faith In this enquiry I have most clearly to my full satisfaction discerned all those natural evidences for GODLINESS or HOLINESS which I have laid down in the first part of this Book And I have discerned the congruous superstruction and connection of the CHRISTIAN Religion thereunto I have found by unquestionable experience the sinful and depraved state of man and I have discerned the admirable suitableness of the remedy to the malady I have also discerned the attestation of God in the grand evidence the HOLY SPIRIT the ADVOCATE or Agent of Jesus Christ viz. 1. The antecedent evidence in the Spirit of Prophecie leading unto Christ 2. The inherent constituent evidence of the Gospel and of Christ the Image of God in the Power Wisdom and Goodness both of Christ and of his doctrine 3. The concomitant evidence of Miracles in the Life Resurrection and Prophecies of Christ and in the abundant Miracles of the Apostles and other his Disciples through the world 4. The subsequent evidence in the successes of the Gospel to the true sanctification of millions of souls by the powerful efficacy of Divine co-operation I have spent most
be more evident to reason than that something must be Eternal without beginning nothing being more evident than that Nothing hath no power no action no effects and so can make nothing And therefore if ever there had been a time when Nothing was Nothing could ever have been imagine that there were Nothing now and it is certain there never would be any thing Obj. Something may oriri de novo without any Cause as well as God be eternally without any Cause Answ It s impossible For he that is eternally hath all perfection eternally in himself and needeth no Cause being still in being and being the Cause of Causes But Nothing hath no perfection or being and therefore needeth an Omnipotent Cause to give it a being Obj. If the world may be created of nothing materially it may be what it is without any thing efficiently Answ Impossible Pre-existent matter is not necessary to the first created matter for Matter may be caused of Nothing by an Omnipotent Efficient as well as the wonderful frame of all things be made out of Matter But without an Efficient no Being can arise de novo So that it is most evident seeing any thing now is there hath been something eternally And if something it must needs be the first Cause which is chief in excellency and first in order of production and therefore of existence § 10. The first Cause must needs be independent in being perfections and operations and so be absolutely self-sufficient For it were not the first if there were any before it and being caused by nothing else it was eternally sufficient in and for it self otherwise that which it were beholden to would have the place of a Cause to it And if it caused not all or needed the help of any other it is not absolutely the first Cause to all others nor perfect in it self That which could be eternally without a cause and it self cause all things is self-sufficient and independent § 11. The first Cause must needs be free from all imperfection of Corporeity or Materiality Composition Passibility corruptibility Mutability and Mortality and all other imperfections of defendent beings There is such a thing as a Living Principle and a pure spiritual Nature in the created world and the Maker of it must be life and Spirit in a higher purer sense than it and therefore must be free from all its imperfections and having no cause hath no defect and having no beginning can have no end All this Reason doth certainly apprehend § 12. This perfect first Cause must be Immense or Infinite in Being Not by corporeal extension as if God as a Body were in a place and being more extensive than all place were called Immense But in the perfect Essence of an eternall Life and Spirit and Mind he is every where without Locality and all things live and move and be in him The thought of space is but a Metaphorical help to our conception of his Immensity § 13. Therefore he must needs be Omnipresent Not by extension quantitative but in a sort transcendent and more excellent according to the transcendent way of his Existence For if we must have conceived of him as no better than a Body and of Magnitude as an Excellency we might well have concluded that he hath made nothing greater than himself Nemo dat quod non habet and therefore he must be more extensive than all the world and consequently absent from no part of it Much more when his Being which surpasseth corporeity directeth us to acknowledge a more noble kind of Omnipresence than Extensive § 14. Therefore is he Incomprehensible as to humane understanding or any other created intellect Of our own incomprehension experience sufficiently convinceth us here and Reason evinceth the same of all created Intellects for the less cannot comprehend the greater and between finite and infinite there is no proportion We know nothing purely-intelligible so easily and certainly as that God is But there is nothing that we are so far from comprehending As we see nothing more easily and certainly than the Sun which yet we see not with a comprehensive but a partial and defective sight § 15. This Infinite Being can be but One. For if there were many they could not be Infinite and so indeed there would be none nor would there be any one first Cause of all things For if one caused one part of the World and another another part no one were the first Cause of all And if they joyned in causing all together they would all conjunctly make but one first cause and each one several be but part of the Cause If there be no one that is sufficient to make and govern all the World there is no perfect Being nor no God but the effect sheweth the sufficiency and the unity of the World the Orbs being one frame the unity of the first cause Perfection consisteth more in the unity of one all sufficient Being than in a voluntary concurrence of many Beings The most learned Heathens who thought there were many to be named Gods did mean but subordinate particular Gods that were under the one universal God whom the Stoicks and Academicks took to be the universal Soul and the subordinate Gods the Souls of the particular Orbs and Planets § 16. The Power of this God must needs be Omnipotency He that hath given so great Power to the creatures as is exercised by them especially the Sun and fixed Stars in their several Vortices or Orbs and he that could make such a World of nothing and uphold the being and maintain the order and cause and continue the rapid motions of all the Vortices or Orbs which are to us innumerable and each of incomprehensible excellency and magnitude is certainly to be accounted no less than Omnipotent By his Omnipotency I mean that by which in it self considered in primo instanti he can do all things possible that is which belong not to Impotency but to Power And by which in secundo instanti he can do all things which his Infinite Wisdom judgeth congruous and meet to be done And in tertio instanti can do all that he will do and are pleasing to him § 17. The understanding of the first Cause must needs be Omniscient and infinite Wisdom 1. He that hath given so much wisdom to such a Worm as Man must have more than all the men in the World Whatever knowledge is in the whole Creation being given by Him doth prove that formally or eminently he hath more Were it all contracted into one Intelligence it must be less than His that caused it He hath not given more wisdom than he had to give nor so much as he had or is himself For if he should make any thing equal to Himself there would be two Infinites and there would be a perfect self-sufficient being which yet had lately no sufficiency or being and there would be a being independent in facto
esse which was dependent in fieri which are Contradictions 2. The effects in the admirable frame and nature and motions of the Creation declare that the Creator is infinitely wise The smallest insect is so curiously made and so admirably fitted and instructed to its proper end and uses The smallest Plants in wonderfull variety of shapes and colours and smells and qualities uses and operations and beautifull flowers so marvellously constituted and animated by an unseen form and propagated by unsearchable seminal vertue The smallest Birds and Beasts and creeping things so adorned in their kinds and so admirably furnished for their proper ends especially the propagation of their species in love and sagacity and diligence to their young by instinct equaling in those particulars the reasonable creature The admirable composure of all the parts of the body of Man and of the vilest Beast and Vermine The quality and operation of all the Organs humours and spirits The operations of the Minde of man and the constitution of Societies and over-ruling all the matters of the World with innumerable instances in the creature do all concurr to proclaim that man as mad as madness can possibly make him in that particular who thinketh that any lower cause than incomprehensible wisdom did principally produce all this And that by any bruitish or natural motion or confluence of Atomes or any other matter it could be thus ordered continued and maintained without the infinite wisdome and power of a first Cause superiour to meer natural matter and motion What then should we say if we had a sight into the inwards of all the Earth of the nature and cause of Minerals and of the forms of all things If we saw the reason of the motions of the Seas and all other appearances of Nature which are now beyond our reach Yea if we had a sight of all the Orbs both fixed Starrs and Planets and of their matter and form and order and relation to each other and their communications and influences on each other and the cause of all their wonderous motions If we saw not only the nature of the Elements especially the active Element Fire but also the constitution magnitude and use of all those thousand Suns and lesser Worlds which constitute the universal World And if they be inhabited if we knew the Inhabitants of each Did we know all the Intelligences blessed Angels and holy Spirits which possess the nobler parts of Nature and the unhappy degenerate Spirits that have departed from light and joy into darkness and horrour by departing from God yea if we could see all these comprehensively at one view what thoughts should we have of the wisdom of the Creator And what should we think of the Atheist that denyeth it We should think Bedlam too honourable a place for that man that could believe or durst say that any accidental motion of subtile matter or fortuitous concourse of Atomes or any thing below a Wisdom and Power infinitely transcending all that with Man is called by that name was the first Cause and is the chief continuer of such an incomprehensible frame § 18. The first Cause must needs be infinitely Good By Goodness I mean all essential Excellency which is known to us by its fruits and appearances in the Creature which as it hath a Goodness natural and moral so is it the Index of that transcendent Goodness which is the first cause of both This goodness is incomparably beyond that which consisteth in a usefulness to the creatures good or Goodness of Benignity as relative to Man And it is known better by the meer name as expressing that which Nature hath an intrinsick sense and notion of than by definitions As sensible qualities light colour sound odour sweet bitter c. are known by the name best which lead to the sensitive memory which informeth the Intellect what they are As the mention of things sensible entereth the definition of sense and the mention of sense doth enter the definition of things sensible and yet the object is in order of nature before the act And as Truth must enter the definition of Intellection and Intellection the definition of Truth and yet Truth is in order before Intellection and contemporary with the Intellect so is it between Goodness and the Will But if we speak of uncreated Good and of a created Will then Good is infinitely antecedent to that Will But the Will which is created hath a nature suited to it and so the notion of Excellency and Goodness is naturally in our estimative faculty and the relish of it or complacency in it is naturally in the Will so far as it is not corrupted and depraved As if I knew a man that had the wisdom and virtue of an Angel my estimation calleth him Excellent and Good and my Will doth complacentially cleave to him though I should never look to be the better for him my self or if I onely heard of him and never saw him or were personally beholden to him That God is thus infinitely Excellent and Good the Goodness of his Creatures proveth for all the goodness that is in Men and Angels Earth and Heaven proceedeth from him If there be any Natural Goodness in the whole Creation there must be more in the Creator If there be any Moral Goodness in Men and Angels there must be more in eminency in him For he can make nothing better than himself nor give to creatures what he hath not § 19. The Goodness of the first Being consisting in this infinite Perfection or Excellency containeth his Happiness his Holiness and his Love or Benignity § 20. The HAPPINESS of the first Being consisteth 1. In his BEING HIMSELF 2. In his KNOWING HIMSELF 3. In his LOVING and ENJOYING HIMSELF The most perfect Being must needs be the most Happy and that in Being what he is his own Perfection being his Happiness And as Knowledge in the Creature is both his Perfection and Delight so the transcendent Omniscience of the Creator must needs be both part of his Perfection as distinguished by our narrow minds and such felicity as may be called Eminently his Delight though what God's Delight is we know not formally And as Love or Complacency is the perfective operation of the Will and so of the Humane Nature in Man and is his highest final and enjoying acts of which all Goodness is the object so there must be something in the Perfection of the first Cause though not formally the same with Love in Man yet eminently so called as knowable to us by no other name And this complacency must needs be principally in Himself because He himself is the Infinite and onely Primitive Good and as there was primitively no Good but Himself to Love so now there is no Good but derived from Him and dependent on Him And as his Creature of which anon is obliged to love Him most so he must needs be most amiable to Himself Self-love and self-esteem in
To consider the innumerable number of the Orbs the multitude of the Fixed Stars which may be called so many Suns and to think of their distances magnitude powers orders influences communications effects c. and how many millions of these for ought we know there may be besides those which are within our sight even though helped by the most perfect Telescopes it striketh the Soul with unspeakable admiration at the Power that created and maintaineth all this When we think of the unconceivable rapid orderly perfect constant motions of all these Orbs or at least of the Planets and circumjacent bodies in every Vortex All these thoughts do make the Deity or first Being to be just to the mind as the Sun is to the eye the most Intelligible of Beings but so Incomprehensible that we cannot endure to gaze too much or near upon his glory § 27. Whether the whole world be animated or inanimate Whether the whole have one constitutive Soul or not Whether each Orb have its particular Soul or not are things unrevealed and beyond the Certain knowledge of the natural mind But it is certain that the first Being is not the proper constitutive Form or Soul of the world but yet that he is much more to it than such a Form or Soul even the total perfect first Cause of all that it is and hath and doth He is not the constitutive Form or Soul of the Universe as it seems Cicero with the Academicks and Stoicks thought because then the Creator and the Creature should be the same or else the Creature should be nothing but dead passive matter and then Man himself who knoweth that he hath a Soul would either be God which his experience and the conscience of his frailty forbiddeth him to imagin or else he should be a Creature more noble than the Universe of which he is so small a part which his reason forbiddeth him also to believe But yet that God is much more to the world than a constitutive Soul is undeniable because he is the creating Cause which is more than a constitutive Cause and his continued causation in its preservation is as a continued creation As in Man the Soul is a dependent cause which can give nothing to the Body but what it hath received nor act but as it is acted or impowered by the first efficient And therefore though we call not God the Soul of Man because we would not so dishonour him nor confound the Creator and the creature yet we all know that he is to us much more than the Soul of Souls for in him we live and move and have our being So also it is as to God's causation of the Being Motion and Order of all the world God is incomparably more to it than its Form as being the total first Cause of Form and Matter To be the Creator is more than to be the Soul § 28. The glory of all being action and order in the creatures is no less due to God when he worketh by means than when he worketh by none at all For when no Means is a Means nor hath being aptitude force or efficacy but from himself he onely communicateth praise to his creatures when he thus useth them but giveth not away the least degree of his own interest and honour for the creature is nothing hath nothing and can do nothing but by him It useth no strength or skill or bounty but what it first received from him therefore to use such means can be no dishonour to him unless it be a dishonour to be a communicative Good As it is no dishonour to a Watch-maker to make that Engine which sheweth his skill instead of performing all the motions without that little frame of means But yet no similitude will reach the case because all creatures themselves are but the continued productions of the Creator's will and the virtue which they put forth is nothing but what God putteth into them And he is as neer to the effect when he worketh by means as when without § 29. Those that call these three faculties or Principles in the Divine Essence by the name of three Hypostases or Persons do seem to me to speak less unaptly than the Schools who call Deum seipsum intelligentem the Father and Deum ut a se intellectum the Son and Deum a se amatum the Holy Ghost For that in God which is to be conceived of us by Analogy to our essential faculties is with less impropriety called an Hypostasis or Person than that which is to be conceived by us in Analogy to our actus secundi or receptions § 30. And those that say the first faculty Omnipotency as eminently appearing in the frame of Nature may therefore be said to be specially therein personated or denominated the Creating Person speak nothing which derogateth from the honour of the Deity § 31. Though we cannot trace the vestigia the adumbration or appearances of this Trinity in Vnity through the whole Body of Nature and Morality because of the great debility and narrowness of our Minds Yet is it so apparent on the first and most notable parts of both as may make it exceeding probable that it runneth in perfect method through them all if our understandings were but able to follow and comprehend that wonderfull method in the numerous minute and less discernable particulars I shall now give no other instance than in two of the most noble Creatures The Soul of Man which is made after Gods Image from whence we fetch our first knowledge of him hath in the unity of a living Spirit the three foresaid faculties of vital and executive Power Vnderstanding and Will which are neither three species nor three parts nor three accidents of the Soul But three faculties certainly so far distinct as that the Acts from whence they are denominated really differ and therefore the faculties differ at least in their Virtual Relation to those acts and so in a well-grounded denomination To understand is not to will for I understand that which I have no will to even against my will for the Intellect may be forced Therefore the same Soul hath in it the virtue or power both of understanding and willing and so of executing which are denominated from the different acts which they relate to There is some Reason in the powers virtues or faculties of the real difference in the acts So in the Sun and all the superior Luminaries there is in the unity of their Essence a Trinity of Faculties or Powers 1. Motiva 2 Illuminativa 3. Calefactiva causing motion light and heat The doctrine of Motion is much improved by our late Philosophers when the doctrine of Light and Heat are so also and vindicated from the rank of common accidents and qualities the nature of the Luminaries and of Fire will be also better cleared The Sun is not to these Powers or Acts either a Genus a Totum or a Subjectum
It is not one part of the Sun that moveth and another which illuminateth and another which heateth But the whole Sun if it be wholly Fire or aethereal matter doth move the whole illuminateth and the whole doth heat And Motion Light and Heat are not Qualities inherent in it But Motion Illumination and Calefaction are Acts flowing immediately from its Essence as containing the faculties or powers of such acts He that could write a perfect method of Physicks and Morality would shew us Trinity in Unity through all its parts from first to last But as the Veins Arteries and Nerves the Vessels of the Natural Vital and Animal humours and spirits are easily discernable in their trunks and greater branches but not so when they are minute and multiplied into thousands so is it in this Method But I must desire the Reader to observe that though I here explain this Trinity of Active Principles in the Divine Essence which is so evident to Natural Reason it self as to be past all controversie Yet whether indeed the Trinity of Hypostases or Persons which is part of the Christian Faith be not somewhat distinct from this is a question which here I am not to meddle with till I come to the second part of the Treatise Nor is it my purpose to deny it but only to prepare for the better understanding of it Of which more shall there afterward be said § 32. And thus all Creatures and especially our selves declare that there is a first Being and Cause of them all who is a Substance Life a Spirit or Minde an Active Power Vnderstanding and Will perfect eternall independent and self-sufficient not compounded not passible not mutable corruptible or mortall Immense Omnipresent Incomprehensible only One Omnipotent Omniscient and most Good most Happy in Being Himself in Knowing himself and enjoying him most Holy transcending all the Creatures of a Perfect Will the Fountain of all Morall Good Love or Benigne having a Trinity of essential Transcendent Principles in unity of Essence which have made their adumbration or appearance on the World whereof though he be not the constitutive form or Soul He is to it much more the first Efficient Dirigent and ultimate final Cause of all That is THERE IS A GOD. CHAP. VI. Of GOD as RELATED to his Creatures especially to Man And I. as his OWNER PAssing by all that is doubtfull and controverted among men truly Rational and taking before me only that which is certain undenyable and clear and wherein my own Soul is past all doubt I shall proceed in the same method secundum ordinem cognoscendi non essendi The word GOD doth not only signifie all that I have been proving viz. The perfect nature of the first Cause but also his Relations to us his Creatures And therefore till I have opened and proved those Relations I have done but part of my work to prove that THERE IS A GOD. § 1. GOD having produced Man and all the World by his Power Vnderstanding and Will is by immediate resultancy Related to him as his CREATOR Though he made his Body of pre-existent Matter yet was that Matter made of nothing and therefore God is properly Mans CREATOR and not his Fabricator only And a CREATURE is a Relation which inferreth the Correlate a CREATOR as a Son doth a Father This therefore is Gods first grand Relation unto Man which hath no cause to produce it but his actual Creation which is its fundamentum § 2. This Grand prime Relation inferreth a Trinity of Grand Relations viz. That God is our OWNER our RVLER and our BENEFACTOR of which we are now to speak in order That these Three are justly distinguished from each other is past doubt to all that understand what is meant by the terms An Owner as such is not a Ruler or Benefactor a Ruler as such is not an Owner or a Benefactor A Benefactor as such is neither an Owner nor a Ruler And the enumeration is sufficient All humane affairs or actions of converse and society belong to Man in one of these three Relations or such as are subordinate to them and meer dependents on them or compounded of them They are in some respect the Genera and in some as it were the Elements of all other Relations And from the manner of men they are applyed to God with as much propriety of speech as any terms that man can use concerning him And he that could draw a true scheme or method of the Body of Morality or Theology for all is one with me would reduce all the dealings of God with Man which are subsequent to the fundamental Act of Creation to these three Relations and accordingly distinguish of them all Yet in the Mixt acts as most are such distinguishing only of the compounding Elements I mean the interest of these three Relations as making up the several acts § 3. A full Owner or Proprietor is called Dominus in the strictest sense and is one that hath a Jus possidendi disponendi utendi a right of having or possessing disposing and using without any copartner or superior Proprietor to restrain him The meaning is better known by the bare terms of denomination through common use than by definition We know what it meaneth when a man saith of any thing It is mine own There are defective half-proprieties of Co-partners and subordinate Proprietors which belong not to our present case The word Dominus Dominuim is sometime taken laxely as comprehending both Propriety and Rule and sometime improperly for Government or Command it self But among Lawyers it is most commonly taken properly and strictly for an OWNER as such But lest any be contentious about the use of the word I here put instead of it the word Owner and Proprietor as being more free from ambiguity § 4. GOD is jure Creationis Conservationis the most absolute Owner or Proprietor of Man and the whole Creation It is not possible that there should be a more full and certain title to propriety than Creation and total conservation is He that giveth the World all its Being and that of nothing and continueth that being and was beholden to no pre-existent matter nor to any co-ordinate concause nor dependent on any superiour cause in his causation but is himself the first independent efficient total cause of being and well-being and all the means thereto must needs be the absolute Owner of all without the least limitation or exception It is not the supereminency of Gods nature excelling all created beings that is the foundation of this his Propriety in the creature For Excellency is no title to Propriety And yet he that is unicus in capacitate possidendi that is so transcendently excellent as to have no Copartner in a claim might by Occupation be sole Proprietor in that kinde of Propriety secundum quid which Man is capable of Because there is no other whom he can be said to wrong But GOD hath a
yet is as obligatory and as much if not more than a Law which maketh it more than the Duty of a Subject to answer love and goodness with gratitude and love so that if per impossibile you suppose that we had no other obligation to God but this of love and goodness or abstract this from the rest I question whether it be not most eminently morall and whether the performance of it do not morally fit us for the highest benefits and felicity and the violation of it merit not morally the rejections of our great Benefactor and the withdrawing of all his favours to our undoing But this Controversie my Cause is not much concerned in as I have said because the same God is our Soveraign also § 2. The duty which we specially owe to God in this highest Relation is LOVE which as such is above obedience as such The difference of Understandings and Wills requireth Government and obedience that the understanding and will of the superiour may be a Rule to the subjects But LOVE is a Concord of Wills and so farr as LOVE hath caused a concord there is no use for Government by Laws and Penalties And therefore the Law is not made for a Righteous man as such that is so far as Love hath united his Soul to Virtue and separated it from sin he need not to be constrained or restrained by any Penal Laws no more than men need a Law to command them to eat and drink and preserve their lives and forbear self-destruction But so far as any man is unrighteous or ungodly that is hath a will to sin or cross or averse to Goodness so far he needeth a penal Law which therefore all need while they remain imperfect Nature hath made Love and Goodness like the Iron and the Load-stone The Vnderstanding doth not so ponderously incline to Truth as the Will doth naturally to Good For this being the perfect act of the Soul the whole inclination of Nature goeth after it Therefore Love is the highest duty or noblest act of the Soul of Man the end and perfection of all the rest § 3. The essential act of this LOVE is COMPLACENCIE or the Pleasedness of the minde in a suitable Good But it hath divers effects concomitants and accidents from whence it borroweth divers Names § 4. The LOVE of Benevolence as it worketh towards the felicity of another is the Love of God to man who needeth him but not of Man to God who is above our benefits and needeth nothing § 5. Our LOVE to God respecteth him either 1. as our Efficient 2. Dirigent 3. or final Good which hath accordingly concomitant duties § 6. I. Our LOVE to God as our Chief good efficiently containeth in it 1. A willing Receiving Love 2. A Thankfull Love 3. A Returning devoted serving Love which among men amounts to retribution § 7. 1. An absolute dependent Beneficiary ought with full dependance on his Totall Benefactor to Receive all his Benefits with Love and willingness An undervaluing of Benefits and demurring or rejecting them is a great abuse and injury to a Benefactor Thus doth the ungodly World against all the Grace and greatest mercies of God They know not the worth of them and therefore despise them and will not be intreated to accept them but take them for intollerable injuries or troubles as a sick Stomack doth its Physick and Food because they are against their fleshly Appetites An open heart to receive Gods mercies with high esteem beseemeth such Beneficiaries as we § 8. 2. Thankfulness is that Operation of Love which the light of Nature hath convinced all the World to be a duty and scarce a man is to be found so bruitish as to deny it And our Love to God should be more thankfull than to all the World because our Receivings from Him are much greater than from all § 9. 3. Though we cannot requite God true gratitude will devote the whole man to his Service Will and Honour and bring back his Mercies to him for his use so far as we are able § 10. II. Our LOVE to our DIRIGENT Benefactor is 1. A fiducial Love 2. A love well-pleased in his conduct 3. A following Love Though it belongeth to God chiefly as our sapiential Governour to be the Dirigent Cause of our Lives Yet he doth it also as our Benefactor by a commixture of the effects of his Relations § 11. 1. So infinite and sure a Friend is absolutely to be Tristed with a General Confidence in the Goodness of his Nature and a particular Confidence in the Promises or significations of his good-will Infinite Good cannot be willing to deceive or disappoint us And if we absolutely Trust him it will abundantly conduce to our holiness and peace § 12. 2. We must also love his Conduct his Precepts and his holy Examples and the very way it self in which he leadeth us All that is from him is good and must be loved both for it self and for him that it cometh from and for that which it leadeth to All his Instructions helps reproofs and all his conducting Means should be amiable to us § 13. 3. Love must make us cheerfully follow him in all the wayes which by Precept or Example he is pleased to lead us And so to follow him as to love the tokens of his presence and footsteps of his will and all the signs of his approbation And with an Heroick fortitude of Love to rejoyce in sufferings and venture upon dangers and conquer difficulties for his sake § 14. III. Our LOVE to GOD as our final Good is 1. A Desiring LOVE 2. A seeking LOVE and 3. A full complacential delighting Love which is the perfection of us and all the rest And accidentally it is sometimes a Mourning Love § 15. 1. Man being but in Via under the efficiency and conduct of Love to final Love and Goodness hath his End to intend and his means to use and therefore Love must needs work by Desire § 16. So far as a man is short of the thing desired Love will have some sense of want and so far as we are crossed in our seekings and frustrate in any of our hopes it will be sorrowfull § 17. 2. Man being appointed to a course and life of Means to his last end must needs be employed in those Means for the Love of that End And so the main work of this life is that of a Desiring seeking Love § 18. 3. The complacential delighting LOVE hath three degrees The first in Belief and Hope The second in foretaste and The third in full enflamed exercise § 19. 1. The well-grounded Hope of the foreseen Vision and fruition of the Infinite Good which is our End must needs possess the considerate minde with a delight which is somewhat answerable to that Hope § 20. 2. When the Soul doth not only Hope for its future end but also at present close with God subratione finis in the exercise
the less do forfeit his mercies by their inhumane and irrational ingratitude and abuse Which is the sin of all proud covetous voluptuous persons the ambitious fornicators gluttons drunkards and lovers of sports recreations idleness or any pleasure as it turneth them from God § 34. Above all other sin we should most take heed of the inordinate love of any creature for it self or for our carnal self alone because it is most contrary to our love to God which is our highest work and duty § 35. Those mercies of God are most to be valued desired and sought which shew us most of God himself or most help up our love to him § 36. We must love both our natural selves and neighbours the bad as well as the good with a love of benevolence desiring our own good and theirs But at the same time we must hate our selves and them so far as wicked with the hatred of Displicency and with the love of Complacency must only so far love our selves or others as the Image of Divine Goodness is in us or them I speak not of the meer natural passion of the parent to the child which is common to man and beast nor of the exercises of love in outward acts for those may be directed by God's commands to go more to one as a wicked child that hath less true amiableness in him But all holy love must be suited to the measures of the truest object § 37. The love of God should be with all our soul and with all our might not limited suppressed or neglected but be the most serious predominant action of our souls How easie a matter is it to prove Holiness to be naturally mans greatest duty when love to God which is the summ of it is so easily proved to be so All the reason in the world that is not corrupted but is reason indeed must confess without any tergiversation that it is the most great and unquestionable duty of man to love God above all yea with all our heart and soul and might And he that doth so shall never be numbred by him with the ungodly for those are inconsistent § 38. The exercises of love to God in complacency desire seeking c. should be the chief employment of our thoughts For the thoughts are the exercise of a commanded faculty which must be under the power of our will and the ultimate end and the exercises of love to it should daily govern them And what a man loveth most usually he will think of with his most practical powerful thoughts if not with the most frequent § 39. The love of God should employ our tongues in the proclaiming of his praise and benefits and expressing our own admiration and affection to kindle the like in the souls of others For the same God who is so amiable hath given us our speech with the rest of his benefits and given it us purposely to declare his praise Reason telleth us that we have no higher worthier or better employment for our tongues and that we should use them to the best The tongues of men are adorned with language for charitable and pious communication that they may be fit to affect the hearts of others and to kindle in them that sacred fire which is kindled in themselves Therefore that tongue which is silent to its Makers praise and declareth not the Goodness and Wisdom and power of the Lord and doth not divulge the notice of his benefits condemneth it self and the heart that should employ it as neglecting the greatest duty it was made for § 40. The lives of Gods Beneficiaries should be employed to his praise and pleasure and should be the streaming effects of inward love And all his mercies should be improved to his service from a thankful heart All this hath the fullest testimony of reason according to the rules of proportion and common right To whom should we live but to him from whom and by whom we live What but our ultimate end should be principally intended and sought through our whole lives A creature that hath all from God should in love and gratitude bring back all to him and thus we make it more our own § 41. This Life of Love should be the chiefest Delight and Pleasure of our Souls which all other pleasure should subserve and all be abhorred which contradicteth it Nothing is easilier confessed by all than the desirableness of Delight and Pleasure and the most excellent object which most be most beloved must be our chief delight for Love it self is a delighting act unless some stop do turn it aside into fears and sorrows Nothing can it self be so delectable as God the chiefest Good and no employment so delectable as loving him This therefore should be our work and our recreation our labour and our pleasure our food and feast Other delights are lawful and good so far as they further these delights of holy love by carrying up our hearts to the original and end of all our mercies and delights But nothing is so injurious to God and us as that which corrupteth our minds with sensuality and becometh our Pleasure instead of God § 42. The sense of the present imperfection of our Love should make us long to know God more and to love him and delight in him and praise him in perfection to the utmost extent of our capacities If it be so good to love God then must the highest degree of it be best and reason teacheth us when we feel how weak our Knowledge and Love is to long for more yea for perfection § 43. Thus hath Reason shewed us the end and highest felicity of man in his highest duty To Know God to Love him and Delight in him in the fullest Perfection and to be Loved by him and be fully pleasing to him as herein bearing his Image is the felicity and the ultimate end of man LOVE is mans final act excited by the fullest Knowledge and God so beheld and enjoyed in his Love to us is the final Object And here the Soul must seek its Rest Obj. But quae supra nos nihil ad nos God indeed is near to Angels but he hath made them our Benefactors and they have committed it to inferiour Causes there must be suitableness as well as excellency to win love we find no suitableness between our hearts and God And therefore we believe not that we were made for any such employment And we see that the far greatest part of mankind are as averse to this life of Holiness as our selves and therefore we cannot think but that it is quite above the nature of man and not the work and end which he was made for Answ 1. Whether God have made Angels or Rulers or Benefactors or what love or honour we owe them as his Instruments is nothing to our present business For if it be granted that he thus useth them it is most certain that he is nevertheless
and rectitude and felicity of the Will If it be not by God that the Love and Desires of God are kindled in us then no good is to be ascribed unto God For we have here no greater good Now that God will satisfie these desires is proved In that he maketh nothing in vain nor kindleth any such desires as shall deceive them and make all their lives a meer delusion Yea and do this by the very best of men None of this is consistent with the perfections of God § 8. VIII If there were no life of Retribution after this Obedience to God would be finally mens loss and ruine But Obedience to God shall not be finally mens loss and ruine Ergo there is another Life The Major is proved before However it would be best in point of Honesty it would be worst to thousands in point of personal Vtility Even to all those that forsaking all the sinfull pleasures of this World do conflict with their flesh and keep it under and suffer the loss of all outward comforts by the cruelty of Persecutors and it may be through melancholy or weak fears have little comfort from God instead of them and at last perhaps be tormented and put to death by cruelty Few will think this desirable for it self And that our Obedience to God shall not be mens final loss and ruine needeth no proof but this that he hath made our self-love a Principle inseparable from our nature and maketh use of it in the Government of the World and commandeth nothing but what is finally for our good and so conjoyneth the pleasing of him and our own felicity inseparably in our end His Regiment is paternal His Glory which he seeketh by us is the Glory of his Goodness communicated and accumulated on us This taken in with the Wisdom and Goodness of his Nature will tell any man that to be a loser finally by our Obedience to God is a thing that no man need to fear He doth not serve himself upon us to our hurt nor command us that which will undo us He neither wanteth Power Wisdom nor Goodness to make us gainers by our duty It is the desire of natural Justice in all ut bonis bene sit malis male If I finde but any duty commanded me by God my Conscience and my sense of the Divine perfections will not give me leave to think that I shall ever prove finally a loser by performing it though he had never made me any promise of reward so far the Law of Nature hath a kinde of Promise in it that if he do but say Do this I will not doubt but the doing of it is for my good And if he bid me but use any means to my own happiness I should blaspheme if I suspected it would tend to my loss and misery and was made my snare § 9. IX The highest Love and Obedience to God is never a work of imprudence or folly nor ever to be Repented of But such they would be to many if there were no life to come Ergo By imprudence and folly I mean that course which tendeth to our own undoing as aforesaid No man shall ever have cause to repent of his fidelity to God and say I did foolishly in ruining my self by it This argument being but a meer consectary of the former I pass over § 10. X. If no man living be certain that there is no future life of Retribution then it is certain that there is such a life But no man living is certain that there is no such life Ergo its certain that there is The Major is proved thus If all men be in Reason obliged to seek the happiness and escape the punishments of another life before all the treasures and pleasures of this World then it is certain that such a Life of happiness and punishments there is But if no man be certain that there is no such life the bare probability or possibility that there is such doth in reason oblige all men to seek it above all the World Ergo it is certain that such a life there is My argument is from our Obligation to seek it before all to the certain being of it 1. That no man is certain that there is no life to come I need not prove as long as no man ever proved such an opinion and the boldest Atheists or Infidels say no more than that they think there is no other life but all confess that they have no assurance of it 2. If so then that the possibility or probability obligeth us to regard it in our hopes fears and endeavours before all this World is evident from the incomparableness of them or great disparity of the things When most of the World think there is another life and there is so much for it as we here lay down and a few Atheists say only we do not believe it or it is not likely though it be not a thing that we are certain of now Reason commandeth every man that loveth himself to preferr it before all earthly things Because we are fully certain beyond all doubt that all earthly things are of short duration and will quickly leave us and when they are gone they are to us as if they had never been They are a shadow a dream a something which is next to nothing To say It will shortly have an end doth blot out the praise and embitter the pleasures of all below What the better are all generations past for all the wealth and fleshly pleasures which they ever received in the World There is no wise man but would preferre the least probability of attaining full felicity and escaping death and torments before the certainty of possessing a pin or a penny for an hour The disparity is much greater between things temporal and everlasting than any such similitude can reach All the Christians and all the Mahometans and most of the Heathens of the World do hold the Immortality of the Soul and the perpetuity of the Happiness or misery hereafter The Atheist is not sure of the contrary and he is sure that a few years or hours will put an end to all his temporal pleasures and equal those that lived here in pleasure and in pain And therefore that at the worst his loss or hazard of the pleasures of sin for the hopes of eternal pleasure is not a thing considerable If those that dissent from him prove in the right the sensualist is utterly undone for ever He must live in endless pain and misery and must lose an endless unspeakable joy and glory which he might have possest as well as others But if he himself prove in the right he gets nothing by it but the pleasing of inordinate concupiscence for a few years and will die with as much emptiness of content as if he had lived in continual pain Now this being the true case no sober reason can deny but that wisdom obligeth
them they saw him fulfill § 9. All these eye-witnesses were not themselves deluded in thinking they saw those things which indeed they did not see For 1. They were persons of competent understanding as their Writings shew and therefore not like Children that might be cheated with palpable deceits 2. They were many the twelve Apostles and 70 Disciples and all the rest besides the many thousands of the common people that only wondered at him but followed him not One or two may be easilyer deceived than such multitudes 3. The matters of fact were done neer them where they were present and not far off 4. They were done in the open light and not in a corner or in the dark 5. They were done many times over and not once or twice only 6. The nature of the things was such as a juggling deluding of the senses could not serve for so common a deceit As when the persons that were born blinde the lame the Paralitick c. were seen to be perfectly healed and so of the rest 7. They were persons who followed Christ and were still with him or very oft and therefore if they had been once deceived they could not be so alwayes 8. And vigilant subtile enemies were about them that would have helped them to have detected a deceit 9 Yea the twelve Apostles and 70 Disciples were employed themselves in working Miracles healing the sick and Demoniacks in Christs own life-time and rejoyced in it And they could not be deceived for divers years together in the things which they saw and heard and felt and also in that which they did themselves Besides that all their own Miracles which they wrought after Christs ascension prove that they were not deceived 10 There is no way left then but one to deceive them and that is if God himself should alter and delude all their senses which it is certain that he did not doe For then he had been the chief cause of all the delusion and all the consequents of it in the World He that hath given men sight and hearing and feeling will not delude them all by unresistable alterations and deceits and then forbid them to believe those lies and propagate them to others Man hath no other way of knowing things sensible but by sense He that hath his senses sound and the object proportionate and at a just distance and the medium fit and his understanding sound may well trust his senses especially when it is the case of many And if sense in those cases should be deceived we should be bound to be deceived as having no other way of knowing or of detecting the deceit § 10. Those that saw not Christ's miracles nor saw him risen received all these matters of fact from the testimony of them that said they saw them Having no other way by which they could receive them § 11. Supposing now Christs Resurrection and Miracles to be true it is certain that their use and obligation must extend to more than those that saw them even to persons absent and of other generations This I have fully and undenyably proved in a Disputation in my Book against Infidelity by such arguments as these 1. The use and obligation of such Miracles doth extend to all that have sufficient evidence of their truth But the Nations and generations which never saw them may have sufficient evidence of their truth that they were done Ergo the use and obligation doth extend to such The Major is past all contradiction He that hath sufficient evidence of the truth of the fact is obliged to believe it The Minor is to be proved in the following Sections 2. The contrary doctrine maketh it impossible for God to oblige the World by Miracles according to their proper use But it is not impossible Therefore that doctrine is false Here note that the use and force of miracles lyeth in their being extraordinary rather than in the Power which they manifest For it is as great an effect of Omnipotency to have the Sun move as to stand still Now if miracles oblige none to believe but those that see them then every man in every City Countrey Town Family and in all generations to the end of the World must see Christ risen or not believe it and must see Lazarus risen or not believe it and must see all the miracles himself which oblige him to believe But this is an absurdity and contradiction making Miracles Gods ordinary works and so as no miracles 3. They that teach men that they are bound to believe no Miracles but what they see do deprive all after-ages of all the benefit of all the miraculous works of God both Mercies and Judgements which their forefathers saw But God wrought them not only for them that saw them but also for the absent and after-times 4. By the same reason they will disoblige men from believing any other matters of fact which they never saw themselves And that is to make them like new comers into the World yea like Children and Fools and to be uncapable of Humane Society 5. This reasoning would rob God of the honour of all his most wonderous works as from any but those that see them so that no absent person nor following age should be obliged to mention them believe them or honour him for them which is absurd and impious 6. The World would be still as it were to begin anew and no age must be the wiser for all the experiences of those that have gone before if we must not believe what we never saw And if men must not learn thus much of their Ancestors why should they be obliged to learn any thing else but Children be left to learn only by their own eye-sight 7. If we are not bound to believe Gods wonderous works which have been before our dayes then our ancestors are not bound to tell them us nor we to be thankfull for them The Israelites should not have told their Posterity how they were brought out of the Land of Egypt nor England keep a day of Thanksgiving for its deliverance from the Powder-plot But the consequent is absurd Ergo so is the antecedent What have we our tongues for but to speak of what we know to others The love that Parents have to their Children will oblige them to acquaint them with all things usefull which they know The Love which men have naturally to truth will oblige them to divulge it Who that had but seen an Angel or received instructions by a Voice from Heaven or seen the dead raised would not tell others what he had seen and heard And to what end should he tell them if they were not obliged to believe it 8. Governments and Justice and all humane converse is maintained by the belief of others and the reports and records of things which we see not Few of the Subjects see their King Witnesses carry it in every cause of Justice Thus Princes prove their Successions and
these Who can say that God is unable to raise the dead who seeth so much greater things performed by him in the daily motion of the Sun or Earth and in the support and course of the whole frame of Nature He that can every Spring give a kinde of Resurrection to Plants and Flowers and Fruits of the Earth can easily raise our bodies from the dust And no man can prove that the Wisdom of God or yet his Will are against our Resurrection but that both are for it may be proved by his Promises Shall that which is beyond the power of Man be therefore objected as a difficulty to God 2. Yea it is congruous to the Wisdom and Governing Justice of God that the same Body which was partaker with the Soul in sin and duty should be partaker with it in suffering or felicity 3. The Lord Jesus Christ did purposely die and rise again in his humane body to put the Resurrection out of doubt by undenyable ocular demonstration and by the certainty of belief 4. There is some Natural Reason for the Resurrection in the Souls inclination to its Body As it is unwilling to lay it down it will be willing to reassume it when God shall say The time is come As we may conclude at night when they are going to bed that the people of City and Countrey will rise the next morning and put on their Cloaths and not go naked about the streets because there is in them a Natural inclination to rising and to cloaths and a natural aversness to lie still or to go uncloathed so may we conclude from the souls natural inclination to its body that it will reassume it as soon as God consenteth 5. And all our Objections which reason from supposed contradictions vanish because none of us all have so much skill in Physicks as to know what it is which individuateth this Numerical Body and so what it is which is to be restored But we all confess that it is not the present mass of flesh and humours which being in a continual flux is not the same this year which it was the last and may vanish long before we die Obj. X. If Christ be indeed the Saviour of the World why came he not into the World till it was 4000 years old And why was he before revealed to so few and to them so darkly Did God care for none on earth but a few Jews or did he not care for the Worlds recovery till the later age when it drew towards its end Answ It is hard for the Governour of the World by ordinary means to satisfie all self-conceited persons of the wisdom and equity of his dealings But 1. it belongeth not to us but to our free Benefactor to determine of the measure and season of his benefits May he not do with his own as he list And shall we deny or question a proved truth because the reason of the circumstances is unrevealed to us If our Physician come to cure us of a mortal disease would we reject him because he came not sooner and because he cured not all others that were sick as well as us 2. The Eternal Wisdom and Word of God the second Person in the Trinity was the Saviour of the World before he was incarnate He did not only by his Vndertaking make his future performances valid as to the merit and satisfaction necessary to our deliverance but he instructed Mankinde in order to their recovery and Ruled them upon terms of grace and so did the work of a Redeemer or Mediator even as Prophet Priest and King before his Incarnation He enacted the Covenant of Grace that whoever repenteth and believeth shall be saved and so gave men a conditional pardon of their sins 3. And though Repentance and the Love of God was necessary to all that would be saved even as a constitutive cause of their salvation yet that Faith in the Mediator which is but the means to the Love of God and to sanctification was not alwayes nor in all places in the same particular Articles necessary as it is now where the Gospel is preached Before Christs coming a more general belief might serve the turn for mens salvation without believing that This Jesus is the Christ that he was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buryed and descended to Hades and rose again the third day and ascended into Heaven c. And as more is necessary to be believed since Christs incarnation and resurrection than before so more was before necessary to the Jewes who had the Oracles of God and had more revealed to them than to other Nations who had less revealed And now more is necessary where the Gospel cometh than where it doth not 4. So that the Gentiles had a Saviour before Christs Incarnation and not only the Jewes They were reprieved from Legal Justice and not dealt with by God upon the proper terms of the Covenant of Works or meer Nature They had all of them much of that mercy which they had forfeited which came to them by the Grace of the Redeemer They had time and helps to turn to God and a course of means appointed them to use in order to their recovery and salvation According to the use of which they shall be judged They were not with the Devils left remediless and shut out of all hope under final desperation No one ever perished in any Age or Nation of the World who by believing in a mercifull pardoning holy God was recovered to love God above all And if they did not this they were all without a just excuse 5. The course of Grace as that of Nature doth wisely proceed from low degrees to higher and bringeth not things to perfection at the first The Sun was not made the first day of the Creation nor was Man made till all things were prepared for him The Churches Infancy was to go before its Maturity We have some light of the Sun before it rise much more before it come to the height As Christ now teacheth his Church more plainly when he is himself gone into Glory even by his Pastors whom he fitteth for that work and by his Spirit so did he though more obscurely yet sufficiently teach it before he came in the flesh by Prophets and Priests His work of Salvation consisteth in bringing men to live in Love and Obedience And his way of Teaching them his saving doctrine is by his Ministers without and by his Spirit within And thus he did before his coming in flesh and thus he doth since we that are born since his coming see not his Person any more than they who were born before But we have his Word Ministers and Spirit and so had they His reconciling sacrifice was effectual morally in esse cognito volito before the performance of it And the means of reconciling our mindes to God
Apostles may cause variety of style and other accidental excellencies in the parts of the holy Scriptures and yet all these parts be animated with one soul of Power Truth and Goodness But those men who think that these humane imperfections of the Writers do extend further and may appear in some by-passages of Chronologies or History which are no proper part of the Rule of Faith and Life do not hereby destroy the Christian cause For God might enable his Apostles to an infallible recording and preaching of the Gospel even all things necessary to salvation though he had not made them infallible in every by-passage and circumstance no more than they were indefectible in life As for them that say I can believe no man in any thing who is mistaken in one thing at least as infallible they speak against common sense and reason for a man may be infallibly acquainted with some things who is not so in all An Historian may infallibly acquaint me that there was a Fight at Lepanto at Edge-hill at York at Naseby or an Insurrection and Massacre in Ireland and Paris c. who cannot tell me all the circumstances of it or he may infallibly tell men of the late Fire which consumed London though he cannot tell just whose houses were burnt and may mistake about the Causers of it and the circumstances A Lawyer may infallibly tell you whether your cause be good or bad in the main who yet may misreport some circumstances in the opening of it A Physician in his Historical observations may partly erre as an Historian in some circumstances yet be infallible as a Physician in some plain cases which belong directly to his Art I do not believe that any man can prove the least error in the holy Scripture in any point according to its true intent and meaning but if he could the Gospel as a Rule of Faith and Life in things necessary to salvation might be nevertheless proved infallible by all the evidence before given Object XVIII The Physicks in Gen 1. are contrary to all true Philosophy and suited to the vulgars erroneous conceits Answ No such matter there is sounder doctrine of Physicks in Gen. 1. than any Philosopher hath who contradicteth it And as long as they are altogether by the ears among themselves and so little agreed in most of their Philosophy but leave it to this day either to the Scepticks to deride as utterly uncertain or to any Novelist to form anew into what principles and hypothesis he please the judgment of Philosophers is of no great value to prejudice any against the Scriptures The sum of Gen. 1. is but this That God having first made the Intellectual Superiour part of the world and the matter of the Elementary world in an unformed Mass or Chaos did the first day distinguish or form the active Element of Fire and caused it to give Light The second day he separated the attenuated or rarifi'd part of the passive Element which we call the Air expanding it from the earth upwards to separate the clouds from the lower waters and to be the medium of Light And whether in different degrees of purity it fill not all the space between all the Globes both fixed and planetary is a question which we may more probably affirm than deny unless there be any waters also upwards by condensation which we cannot disprove The third day he separated the rest of the passive Element Earth and Sea into their proper place and bounds and also made individual Plants in their specifick forms and virtue of generation or multiplication of individuals The fourth day he made the Sun Moon and Stars either then forming them or then making them Luminaries to the earth and appointing them their relative office but hath not told us of their other uses which are nothing to us The fifth day he made inferiour Sensitives Fishes and Birds the inhabitants of Water and Air with the power of generation or multiplication of individuals The sixth day he made first the terrestrial Animals and then Man with the power also of generation or multiplication And the seventh day having taken complacency in all the works of this glorious perfected frame of Nature he appointed to be observ'd by mankind as a day of rest from worldly labours for the worshipping of Him their Omnipotent Creator in commemoration of this work This is the sum and sense of the Physicks of Gen. 1. And here is no errour in all this what ever prejudice Philosophers may imagine Object XIX It is a suspicious sign that Believing is commanded us instead of knowing and that we must take all upon trust without any proof Answ This is a meer slander Know as much as you are able to know Christ came not to hinder but to help your knowledge Faith is but a mode or act of knowing How will you know matters of History which are past and matters of the unseen world but by believing If you could have an Angel come from heaven to tell you what is there would you quarrel because you are put upon believing him if you can know it without believing and testimony do God biddeth you believe nothing but what he giveth you sufficient reason to believe Evidence of credibility in Divine faith is evidence of certainty Believers in Scripture usually say We know that thou art the Christ c. You are not forbidden but encouraged to try the spirits and not to believe every spirit nor pretended prophet Let this Treatise testifie whether you have not Reason and evidence for Belief it is Mahomet's doctrine and not Christ's which forbiddeth examination Object XX. It imposeth upon us an incredible thing when it perswadeth us that our undoing and calamity and death are the way to our felicity and our gain and that sufferings work together for our good At least these are hard terms which we cannot undergoe nor think it wisdom to lose a certainty for uncertain hopes Answ Suppose but the truth of the Gospel proved yea or but the Immortality and Retribution for Souls hereafter which the light of Nature proveth and then we may well say that this Objection savoureth more of the Beast than of the Man A Heathen can answer it though not so well as a Christian Seneca and Plutarch Antonine and Epictetus have done it in part And what a dotage is it to call things present Certainties when they are certainly ready to pass away and you are uncertain to possess them another hour who can be ignorant what haste Time maketh and how like the Life of man is to a dream What sweetness is now left of all the pleasant cups and morsels and all the merry hours you have had and all the proud or lustfull fancies which have tickled your deluded fleshly mindes Are they not more terrible than comfortable to your most retired sober thoughts and what an inconsiderable moment is it till it will be so with all the rest
she spake to him as the Priests of Baal to their God that could not hear and made but matter of laughter and pity to those that heard of it There hath not been in England in our dayes that ever I could hear of either by Jesuit Fryer Quaker or other Fanatick so much as a handsome Cheat resembling a Miracle which the People might not easily see to be a transparent foolery But many wonders I have known done at the earnest Prayers of humble Christians So that he who shall compare the Fryers and Fanaticks with the Apostles and other Disciples of Christ whose Miracles were such as afore-described will see that the Devils apish design though it may cheat forsaken Souls into infidelity is such as may confirm the faith of sober men 4. And what Spirit of sanctification doth accompany any of their peculiar doctrines If any of them do any good in the World it is only by the doctrine of Christ But for their own doctrines what do they but cheat men and draw the simple into sin A Frier by his own doctrine may draw men to some foppery or ridiculous ceremony or subjection to that Clergy whose holy diligence consisteth in striving who shall be greatest and Lord it over the inheritance of Christ and rule them by constraint and not willingly A Quaker by his own doctrine may teach men to cast away their bands and cuffs and points and hat-bands and to say Thou instead of You and to put off their hats to no men and to be the publick and private revilers of the holiest and ablest Preachers of the Gospel and the best of the people and with truculent countenances to rail at God's servants in a horrid abuse of Scripture-terms If this image and work of the Devil were indeed the image and work of God it were some testimony of the verity of their doctrine And yet even these Sects do but like a flash of lightning appear for a moment and are suddenly extinct and some other sect or fraternity succeedeth them The Quakers already recant most of those rigidities on which at first they laid out their chiefest zeal If a flash of such lightning or a squib or glow-worm be argument sufficient to prove that there is no other Sun then Friers and Fanaticks as oft as they are mad may warrant you to believe that all men are so too even Christ and his Apostles Object IV. But the power of cheaters and credulity of the vulgar is almost incredible The great number of Papists who believe their holy cheats and the greater number of Mahometans who believe in a most sottish ignorant deceiver do tell us what a folly it is to believe for company Answ This is sufficiently answered already no doubt but cheaters may do much with the ignorant and credulous multitude but doth it follow thence that there is nothing certain in the world None of these were ever so successful in deceiving as to make men of sound understanding and senses believe that they saw the lame and blind and deaf and sick and lunatick healed and the dead raised and that they themselves performed the like and that they saw and were instructed by one risen from the dead when there was no such thing or that abundance of men did speak in many unlearn'd tongues and heal the lame and blind and sick and raise the dead and this for many years together in many Countries before many Congregations and that they procured the same spirit to those that believed them to do the like and that by this means they planted Churches of such believers through the world Who is it that hath been such a successful deceiver As for the Mahometans they do but believe by education and humane authority that Mahomet was a great Prophet whose sword and not his miracles hath made his sect so strong that they dare not speak against it Those few miracles which he pretendeth to are ridiculous unproved dreams And if there be found a people in the world that by a Tyrants power may be so barbarously educated as to believe any foppery how foolish and vain soever be the report it doth not follow that full and unquestionable evidence is not to be believed Object But what can be imagined by the wit of man more certain than sense when it is sound senses and all the senses and all mens senses upon an object suitable and near with convenient media c. And yet in the point of Transubstantiation it is not a few fools but Princes Popes Prelates Pastors Doctors and the most profound and subtil School-men with whole Kingdoms of People of all sorts who believe that all these senses are deceived both other mens and their own What therefore may not be believed in the world Answ And yet a nihil scitur vel certum est is an inhumane foolish consequence of all this nor hath it any force against the certainty of the Scripture Miracles For 1. All this is not a believing that positively they see and feel and taste and hear that which indeed they do not but it is a believing that they do not see and hear and feel and taste that which indeed they do they are made believe that there is no Bread and Wine when indeed there is But this is no delusion of the senses but of the understanding denying credit to the sense If you had proved that all these Princes Lords Prelates and People had verily thought that they had seen and tasted and felt Bread and Wine when it was not so then you might have carried the cause of unbelief but upon no other terms which is to be remarked than by proving that nothing in all the world is certain or credible For all the certainty of the Intellect is so far founded in the certainty of sense and resolved into it in this life that it cannot possibly go beyond it If you suppose not all mens sound consenting senses to have as much infallibility as man is capable of in this life for the ordinary conduct of his judgment you must grant that there is no further infallibility to be had by any natural way For he that is not certain of the infallibility of such consenting senses is not certain that ever there was a Bible a Pope a Priest a Man a Council a Church a World or any thing 2. And for my part I do not believe that all these that you mention do really believe that their senses are deceived though if they did it s nothing to our case Most of them are frightned for carnal preservation into a silencing of their belief others know not what Transubstantiation meaneth Many are cheated by the Priests changing the question and when they are about to consider Whether all our senses be certain that this is Bread and Wine they are made believe that the question is Whether our senses are certain of the Negative that here is not the real Body and Bloud of Christ And they
another life and is made only to be happy in that knowledge love and fruition of God which the Gospel most effectually leads you to Cond 21. Mark well the prophesies of Christ himself both of the destruction of Jerusalem and the successes of his Apostles in the world c. and mark how exactly they are all fulfilled Cond 22. Let no pretence of humility tempt you to debase humane nature below its proper excellency lest thence you be tempted to think it uncapable of the everlasting sight and fruition of God The devils way of destroying is oftentimes by over-doing The proud devil will help you to be very humble and help you to deny the excellency of reason and natural free-will and all supernatural inclinations when he can make use of it to perswade you that man is but a subtil sort of bruit and hath a soul but gradually different from sensitives and so is not made for another life Cond 23. Yet come to Christ as humble learners and not as arrogant self-conceited censurers and think not that you are capable of understanding every thing as soon as you hear it Cond 24. Judge not of the main cause of Christianity or of particular texts or points by sudden hasty thoughts and glances as if it were a business to be cursorily done but allow it your most deliberate sober studies your most diligent labour and such time and patience as reason may tell you are necessary to a learner in so great a cause Cond 25. Call not so great a matter to the trial in a case of melancholy and natural incapacity but stay till you are fitter to perform the search It is one of the common cheats of Satan to perswade poor weak and melancholy persons that have but half the use of their understandings to go then to try the Christian Religion when they can scarce cast up an intricate account nor are fit to judge of any great and difficult thing And then he hath an advantage to confound them and fill them with blasphemous and unbelieving thoughts and if not to shake their habitual faith yet greatly to perplex them and disturb their peace The soundest wit and most composed is fittest for so great a task Cond 26. When upon sober trial you have discerned the evidences of the Christian verity record what you have found true and judge not the next time against those evidences till you have equal opportunity for a full consideration of them In this case the Tempter much abuseth many injudicious souls when by good advice and soberest meditation they have seen the evidence of truth in satisfying clearness he will after surprise them when their minds are darker or their thoughts more scattered or the former evidence is out of mind and push them on suddenly then to judge of the matters of immortality and of the Christian cause that what he cannot get by truth of argument he may get by the incapacity of the disputant As if a man that once saw a mountain some miles distant from him in a clear day should be tempted to believe that he was deceived because he seeth it not in a misty day or when he is in a valley or within the house Or as if a man that in many days hard study hath cast up an intricate large account and set it right under his hand should be called suddenly to give up the same account anew without looking on that which he before cast up when as if his first account be lost he must have equal time and helps and fitness before he can set it as right again Take it not therefore as any disparagement to the Christian truth if you cannot on a sudden give your selves so satisfactory an account of it as formerly in more clearness and by greater studies you have done Cond 27. Gratifie not Satan so much as to question well resolved points as oft as he will move you to it Though you must prove all things till as learning you come to understand them in their proper evidence time and order yet you must record and hold fast that which you have proved and not suffer the devil to put you to the answer of one and the same question over and over as often as he please this is to give him our time and to admit him to debate his cause with us by temptation as frequently as he will which you would not allow to a ruffian to the debauching of your wife or servants and you provoke God to give you up to errour when no resolution will serve your turn After just resolution the tempter is to be rejected and not disputed with as a troublesome fellow that would interrupt us in our work Cond 28. Where you find your own understandings insufficient have recourse for help to some truly wise judicious Divine Not to every weak Christian nor unskilful Minister who is not well grounded in his own Religion but to those that have throughly studied it themselves you may meet with many difficulties in Theology and in the Text which you think can never be well solved which are nothing to them that understand the thing No Novice in the study of Logick Astronomy Geometry or any Art or Science will think that every difficulty that he meeteth with doth prove that his Author was deceived unless he be able to resolve it of himself but he will ask his Tutor or some one versed in those matters to resolve it and then he will see that his ignorance was the cause of all his doubts Cond 29. Labour faithfully to receive all holy truths with a practical intent and to work them on your hearts according to their nature weight and use For the doctrine of Christianity is scientia affectiva practica a doctrine for Head Heart and Life And if that which is made for the Heart be not admitted to the Heart and rooted there it is half rejected while it seemeth received and is not in its proper place and soil If you are yet in doubt of any of the supernatural Verities admit those truths to your hearts which you are convinced of else you are false to them and to your selves and forfeit all further helps of grace Object This is but a trick of deceit to engage the affections when you want arguments to convince the judgment Perit omne judicium cum res transit in affectum Answ When the affection is inordinate and over-runs the judgment this saying hath some truth but it is most false as of ordinate affections which follow sound judgment For by suscitation of the faculties such affections greatly help the judgment and judgment is but the eye of the soul to guide the man and it is but the passage to the will where humane acts are more compleat If your wife be taught that conjugal love is due to her husband and your child that filial love and reverence is due to his father such affections will not blind their judgments but contrarily they do
of the World and the pleasures of the flesh for the Love of God and the Hopes of Glory And he that doth thus much shall undoubtedly be saved But to think that you must ask your hearts such a question as whether you can be content to be damned for Christ is but to abuse God and your selves Indeed both Reason and Religion command us to esteem God infinitely above our selves and the Churches welfare above our own because that which is best must be best esteemed and loved But yet though we must ever acknowledge this inequality Yet that we must never disjoyn them nor set them in a positive opposition or competition nor really do any thing which tendeth to our damnation upon any pretense of the Churches good is past all question He that hath made the love of our selves and felicity inseparable from man hath made us no duty inconsistent with this inclination that is with our humanity it self For God hath conjoyned these necessary ends and we must not separate them § 3. The Interest of the Church is but the Interest of the Souls that constitute the Church and to preferre it above our own is but to preferre many above one § 4. He that doth most for the publick good and the Souls of many doth thereby most effectually promote his own consolation and salvation § 5. The Interest of God is the Vltimate End of Religion Church and particular Souls § 6. Gods Interest is not any addition to his Perfection or Blessedness but the pleasing of his Will in the Glory of his Power Wisdom and Goodness shining forth in Jesus Christ and in his Church § 7. Therefore to promote Gods Interest is by promoting the Churches Interest § 8. The Interest of the Church consisteth I. Intensivè in its HOLYNESS II. Conjunctivè harmonicè in its Unity Concord and Order III. Extensivè in its increase and the multiplication of Believers § 9. I. The HOLYNESS of the Church consisteth 1. In its Resignation and submission to God its Owner 2. In its subjection and obedience to God its Ruler 3. In its Gratitude and Love to God its Benefactor and Ultimate End § 10. These acts consist 1. In a right estimation and Belief of the minde 2. In a right Volition Choice and Resolution of the Will 3. In the right ordering of the Life § 11. The Means of the Churches HOLYNESS are these 1. Holy Doctrine Because as all Holiness entereth by the understanding so Truth is the instrumental cause of all § 12. 2. The holy serious reverent skilfull and diligent preaching of this doctrine by due explication proof and application suitably to the various auditors § 13. 3. The holy lives and private converse of the Pastors of the Church § 14. 4. Holy Discipline faithfully administred encouraging all that are godly and comforting the penitent and humbling the proud and disgracing open sin and casting out the proved impenitent gross sinners that they infect not the rest embolden not the wicked and dishonour not the Church in the eyes of the unbelievers § 15. 5. The election and ordination of able and holy Pastors fit for this work § 16. 6. The conjunct endeavours of the wisest and most experienced members of the flock not usurping any Ecclesiastical office but by their wisdom and authority and example in their private capacities seconding the labours of the Pastors and not leaving all to be done by them alone § 17. 7. Especially the holy instructing and governing of families by catechizing inferiours and exhorting them to the due care of their souls and helping them to understand and remember the publick teaching of the Pastors and praying and praising God with them and reading the Scripture and holy books especially on the Lord's day and labouring to reform their lives § 18. 8. The blameless lives and holy conference converse and example of the members of the Church among themselves Holiness begetteth holiness and encreaseth it as fire kindleth fire § 19. 9. The unity concord and love of Christians to one another § 20. 10. And lastly holy Princes and Magistrates to encourage piety and to protect the Church and to be a terrour to evil doers These are the means of holiness § 21. The contraries of all these may easily be discerned to be the destroyers of holiness and pernicious to the Church 1. Vnholy doctrine 2. Ignorant unskilful negligent cold or envious preaching 3. The unholy lives of them that preach it 4. Discipline neglected or perverted to the encouraging of the ungodly and afflicting of the most holy and upright of the flocks 5. The election or ordination of insufficient negligent or ungodly Pastors 6. The negligence of the wisest of the flock or the restraint of them by the spirit of jealousie and envy from doing their private parts in assistance of the Pastors 7. The neglect of holy instructing and governing of families and the lewd example of the governours of them 8. The scandalous or barren lives of Christians 9. The divisions and discord of Christians among themselves 10. And bad Magistrates who give an ill example or afflict the godly or encourage vice or at least suppress it not § 22. To these may be added 1. The degenerating of Religious strictness from what God requireth into another thing by humane corruptions gradually introduced as is seen among too many Friars as well as in the Pharisees of old 2. A degenerating of holy Institutions of Christ into another thing by the like gradual corruptions as is seen in the Roman Sacrifice of the Mass 3. The degenerating of Church-Offices by the like corruptions as is seen in the Papacy and its manifold supporters 4. The diversion of the Pastors of the Church to secular employments 5. The diminishing the number of the Pastors of the Church as proportioned to the number of souls as if one school-master alone should have ten thousand scholars or ten thousand souldiers but one or two officers 6. The pretending of the soul and power of Religion to destroy the body or external part or making use of the body or external part to destroy the soul and power and setting things in opposition which are conjunct 7. The preferring either the imposition or opposition of things indifferent before things necessary 8. An apish imitation of Christ by Satan and his instruments by counterfeiting inspirations revelations visions prophesies miracles apparitions sanctity zeal and new institutions in the Church 9. An over-doing or being righteous over much by doing more than God would have us over-doing being one of the devils ways of undoing When Satan pretendeth to be a Saint he will be stricter than Christ as the Pharisees were in their company Sabbath-rest and ceremonies and he will be zealous with a fiery consuming zeal 10. Accidentally prosperity it self consumeth piety in the Church if it occasion the perdition of the world the Church is not out of danger of it § 23. II. The
they have done fair though afterwards they consider not that interest of his in all operations which their own concessions necessarily infer 10. Lastly I perceive that they proceed not methodically in their collections but confound all by mixing certainties with uncertainties Whereas the first the great the most discernable truths should be first congested as CERTAINTIES by themselves and the uncertainties should not be pleaded against them nor suffered to stand in contest with them Perceiving all these general Reasons to distrust this sort of Philosophers above others though I resolve to be impartial I cannot willingly be so foolish as to over-look their disadvantage in the present cause II. The particular reasons which disswade me from believing the Epicurean sufficiency of Matter and Motion are these following 1. They all with whom I have now to do are constrained to confess an incorporeal intellectual substance even that there is a God and that GOD is such Epicurus himself doth not deny it yea seemeth to speak magnificently of God and in honour to him would excuse his providence from the minding of inferiour things For 1. They know that matter did not make it self and motion is but its mode and therefore matter cannot be made by its own motion It s being is in order of nature before its motion And matter is in it self so dull a thing and by the adversaries stripped of all forms which are not caused by motion that if it were said to be from eternity in its duration they will confess it could be but as an eternal effect of some nobler cause So that at the first word they grant that matter hath an incorporeal cause 2. And motion as it is found in matter could not cause it self though it be but of the mode of matter it is such a mode as must have a cause And the passive matter yet unmoved is supposed by themselves to be void of all antecedent moving power So that they are all fain to say that God made the matter and gave it the first push And so all matter and motion is reduced to a first efficient who is incorporeal And therefore an incorporeal being is acknowledged 2. I meet with none of them who dare deny this God to be an intellectual free Agent so that though it be granted them that intelligere velle be not in God the same thing formally as it is in man yet is it something which eminently must be so called man having no fitter conception or expression of it than from these acts of his own soul Epicurus will not make God defectively ignorant impotent or bad When themselves divide all things into such as have understanding and such as have none of which part do they suppose GOD to stand Things that are void of understanding formally or eminently are below the dignity of things that have understanding So that they confess there is existent an incorporeal intelligent free Agent 3. As they confess that this intellectual Agent is the first cause both of matter and motion so they cannot deny that he still causeth both by his continued influx or causing efficacy For there can be no effect without a cause and therefore when the cause ceaseth the effect must cease The material part of a moral cause may cease and yet the effect continue But that moral causation continueth which is proportioned to the effect The Parent may die while the child surviveth but there is a continued cause of the life of the child proportioned to the effect Matter is not an independent being To say that God hath made it self-sufficient and independent is to say that he hath made it a God Suppose but a total cessation of the Divine emanation influx and causation and you must needs suppose also the cessation of all Beings If you say that when God hath once given it a Being it will continue of it self till his power annihilate it I answer if it continue without a continuing causation it must continue as an independent self-sufficient being But this is a contradiction because it is a creature GOD is no effect and therefore needeth no cause of subsistence but the creature is an effect and cannot subsist a moment without a continued cause As the beams or communicated light cannot continue an instant if there were a total cessation of the emanation of the luminary because their being is meerly dependent and they need no other positive annihilation besides the cessation of the causation which did continue them It was from one of your own Poets that Paul cited In him we live and move and have our being for we are his off-spring And nothing is more abhorrent to all common reason than that this stone or dirt which was nothing as yesterday should be a God to it self even one independent self-sufficient being as soon as it is created and so that God made as many demy-gods as atoms We see past doubt that one creature cannot subsist or move without another on which it is dependent how much less can any creature subsist or move without its continued reception of its Creator's influx If you could suppose that for one moment there were no God you must suppose there would be nothing If I thought any would deny this besides those inflated vertiginous brains that are not to be disputed with I would say more for the illustration of it Object But though matter subsist not without a continued divine causation or emanation or efficacious volition yet motion may continue when all divine causation of it ceaseth Because when God hath given it one push that causeth a motion which causeth another motion and that another and so in infinitum if there were no stop Answ 1. If this were so it must be on supposition of a vis motiva communicata vel impressa for if there had been no such the first motion would have not been or all have presently ceased for want of a continued cause As there is no motion sine vi motiva so none can be communicated but by the communication of that force Action is not nothing nor will be caused by nothing As the delapsus gravium would presently cease if we could cause the pondus or gravity to cease so is it in all other motions If there be no vis or strength communicated along with the motion there would be nothing in that motion to cause another motion nor in that to cause another And if it were by way of traction if the cause cease which is the prima trahens all the motion ceaseth and so also if it be by way of pulsion So that in every motion there is something more than matter and motion 2. All motion of things below within our reach hath many impediments and therefore would cease if the first cause continued not his powerful efficacy It is tedious and needless to enumerate instances 3. The moving power of the noblest creatures is not purely active but partly passive and partly
these whose Souls are material and mortal Answ 1. It is easie for men that set themselves to say all they can either with Mr. Chambre to extol the bruits as rational or with Gassendus to talk of the whispers and consultations of the Ants or with Telesius and Campanella to say that every thing hath sense or on the other hand with Cartesius to deny all to a bruit which belongeth not to an engine But our converse with them doth teach all men to judge of their natures as between both these extremes unless by study and learning they learn to know less than they did before and do but study to corrupt their understandings and obliterate things that are commonly known I doubt not but the Minerals have something like life and the Vegetatives have something like to sense and the Sensitives have something like to reason but it doth not follow that therefore it is the same But this is so copiously written of by very many that I supersede my further labour about it 2. If it were so that the apprehensions of a bruit might be called Reason or Intellection yet the difference betwixt it and humane Intellection is so great as may easily prove to those that have their reasons in free use that they are several species of creatures made for several uses and ends And none of the twenty Arguments which I used are at all debilitated by this If a bird have reason to build her nest and to feed her young yet she hath none to build Cities and Castles nor to use Navigation nor any of the Arts much less to set up Government by Laws and to write Systems of Philosophy and other Sciences and least of all to enquire after God the cause of all things or to hope for blessedness in another life or to escape a future misery or to be ruled in this life by the interest of another Beasts think not of God nor of loving him seeking him pleasing him or enjoying him or of being judged by him I know the perverse wrangler will ask me How I know this And I can answer him no better than thus As I know that a Stone doth not see or feel or that my Paper doth not talk because they manifest no such thing And these are all operations which they that exercise are apt to manifest and things that in their nature are unapt to be long hid Campanella who hath written de sensu rerum to prove Bruits Rational and Plants sensible hath yet in his Atheismus Triumphatus written more for the excellency of humane nature and the Souls immortality than any Infidel can soundly answer 3. And how prove you that the Souls of Bruits exist not after death Of their Individuation we shall say more anon But there is no part of their substance annihilated as you will confess Nor any part of it abased below the same nature which it had in the composition Only the constituting parts are separated retaining their several natures still All men that confess that Bruits are sensible do confess that there is some one predominant part in their composition which is the principal cause of sense whether it be the finest Atomes or the materia subtilis or globuli coelestes or Elementary Fire or Aristotles quintessence analogous to the coelestial Starry substance or yet an incorporeal soul whatever it is it is not annihilated nor the nature of the simple essence destroyed 4. And here let me venture to tell you once for all that I never found cause to believe that any mortal man is so well acquainted with the true difference between a Corporeal and an Incorporeal substance as to tell us certainly wherein it doth consist and to lay the stress of this Controversie upon that difference I know what is said of Moles extensio partes extra partes of divisibility and impenetrability and so on the contrary side But how much of this is spoken in the dark Are you certain that no true matter is penetrable If you say that which is so we call not Matter and so make the Controversie de nomine only intelligible I must pass it by And are you sure that no matter is indivisible And that no spiritual incorporeal substance is quantitative extended or divisible It now goeth for current that Light is a Body And Patricius that so judgeth doth take it to be indivisible in longitudine radiorum and to be penetrable and that it can penetrate other bodies And it 's hard to be sure that Diaphanous bodies are not penetratrated by Light I know Gassendus and others think that it passeth but through the pores of the Glass or Chrystal But I have heard of no Engyscope that hath perceived pores in Glass In Cloth they are certainly discernable and large and numerous when yet the Light doth not penetrate it as it doth the Glass Gassendus saith the reason is because the pores of the Glass and other diaphanous bodies are all one way so that the Light is not intercepted by their irregularity And he giveth us a proof of his opinion because that if you set white Papers on each side the Glass there will be umbels on one side and light reflected on the other I have oft tried and see indeed abundance of such umbels But I as plainly see that they all answer the Squilts or sanded faults that are in the Glass the bigger sort of which are all as visible as the shades And surely all the rest of the Glass is not pores or nothing And if the pores lie all one way how cometh it to pass that a Glass of water or a Ball of Chrystal is equally perspicuous every way Look which way you will it is all alike Therefore it must be every way equally porous But I would know whether we have any atomes smaller than the body of Light which thus penetrateth the Glass and Chrystal I think they all make it the most subtile matter And yet Gassendus thinketh that they are Bodies and such as have their hamuli too which flow from the Load-stone to the Iron And if so then those Bodies must be more penetrating than Light For they will pass through a brick wall and operate by their attraction on the other side where no light can pass And whether the Air be penetrable by Light is scarce well cleared or understood They that think there is no Vacuum I think with Gâ—ssendus can never prove that there can be any motion unless the Air or some bodies are penetrable Let them talk of a Circulation with Cartesius as long as they will some body must cedere before the next can move And no one can give way till the motion or cession begin at the utmost part of the coporeal world My understanding is past doubt that there must be an inane or a penetration And yet on the other side I am satisfied that Entity is the first excellency and that something is better than nothing And
to assure us that he will never create any thing hereafter Cannot a workman look on his house and see that it is well done and say I have finished it without obliging him never to build another nor to make any reparations of that as there is cause May not God create a new Heaven and Earth may he not create a new Star or a new Plant or Animal if he please without the breaking of any word that he hath spoken For my part I never saw a word which I could discern to have any such signification or importance The argument from Genes 1. is no better than theirs who from Christ's consummatum est do gather that his death and burial which followed that word were no part of his satisfactory meritorious humiliation On the contrary there have been both Philosophers and Divines who have thought that God doth in omni instanti properly create all things which he is said to conserve of whom the one part do mean only that the being of the creatures is as dependant on his continual causation as the life of the branches is on the tree but that the same substance is continued and not another daily made But there are others who think that all creatures who are in fluxu continuo not per locomotum but ab entitate ad nihilum and that they are all but a continual emanation from God which as it passeth from him tendeth to nothing and new emanations do still make such a supply as that the things may be called the same as a River whose waters pass in the same Channel As they think the beams or light of the Sun doth in omni instanti oriri festinare ad nihilum the stream being still supplied with new emanations Were it not for the overthrow throw of individuation personality rewards and punishments that hence seemeth to follow this opinion would seem more plausible than theirs who groundlesly prohibit God from causing any more new beings But though no doubt there is unto all beings a continual emanation or influx from God which is a continued causation it may be either conservative of the being first caused or else restorative of a being continually in decay as he please for both ways are possible to him as implying no contradiction though both cannot be about one and the same being in the same respect and at the same time And our sense and reason tell us that the conservative influx is his usual way 2. But it is commonly and not without reason supposed that generation produceth things de novo in another sense not absolutely as creation doth but secundum quid by exalting the seminal virtue into act and into perfection New individuals are not made of new matter now created but the corporeal part is only pre-existent matter ordered compounded and contempered and the incorporeal part is both quoad materiam suam metaphysicam formam vel naturam specificam the exaltation and expurgency of that into full and perfect existence which did before exist in semine virtuoso When God had newly created the first man and woman he created in them a propagating virtue and fecundity this was as it were semen seminis by this they do first generare semen separabile which suppositis supponendis hath a fecundity fit to produce a new suppositum vel personam and may be called a person seminally or virtually but not actually formally and properly and so this person hath power to produce another and that another in the same way And note that the same creating word which said Let there be light and Let us make man did say also to man as well as to other creatures Increase and multiply not create new souls or bodies but by generation Increase and multiply which is the bringing of many persons out of two and so on as out of a seminal pre-existence or virtual into actual formal existence He knoweth not the mysteriousness of this wonderful work of God nor the ignorance of mankind who knoweth not that all generation of man bruits or plants hath much that is to us unsearchable And they that think it a dishonour to a Philosopher not to undertake or pretend to render the just causes of this and all other the Phaenomena in nature do but say I will hide the dishonour of my ignorance by denying it that is by telling men that I am ignorant of my ignorance and by aggravating it by this increase and the addition of pride presumption and falsity This much is certain 1. That whatsoever distinct parts do constitute individuals which are themselves of several natures so many several natures in the world we may confidently assert though we understand not whether they all exist separatedly or are found only in conjunction with others 2. We certainly find in the world 1. An intelligent nature 2. A sensitive nature 3. A fiery active vegetative nature 4. A passive matter which receiveth the influx of active natures which is distributed into air and water and earth 3. The most active nature is most communicative of it self in the way of its proper operations 4. We certainly perceive that the Sun and fiery nature are active upon the air water and earth which are the passive Elements And by this activity in a threefold influx Motion Light and Heat do cause the sensible alterations which are made below and so that it is as a kind of life or general form or soul to the passive matter 5. We also find that Motion Light and Heat as such are all different totâ specie from sensation and therefore as such are not the adequate causes of it And also that there is a sensitive nature in every animal besides the vegetative 6. Whether the vegetative nature be any other than the fiery or solar is to man uncertain But it is most probable that it is the same nature though it always work not to actual vegetation for want of prepared matter But that the Sun and fiery nature is eminenter vegetativè and therefore that vegetation is not above the nature of fire or the Sun and so may be an effect of it 7. In the production of vegetatives by generation it is evident that as the fiery active nature is the nearest cause efficient and the passive is the matter and recipient So that this igneous nature generateth as in three distinguished subjects three several ways 1. As in Parentibus semine into which God ab origine in the creation hath put not only a spark of the active virtucus fiery nature in general but also a certain special nature differencing one creature from another 2. The Sun and superiour globes of the fiery nature which cast a paternal though but universal influx upon the foresaid semen 3. The calor naturalis telluris which may be called as Dr. Gilbert and others do its soul or form which is to the seed as the anima matris is to the infant And all these three the
fiery nature of the semen of the Sun and of the calor naturalis telluris are generally the same and by their agreeableness do meet in co-operation for generation 8. Herein all three as conjunct are the cause of Life as Life the Sun the seed and the calor telluris communicating conjunctly what in their natures they all contain that is an active nature having a power by motion light and heat to cause vegetation and its conjunct effects But the calor motus solis and the calor telluris are but universal causes of life as life but the virtus seminalis is both a cause of life in genere and a specifying cause of this or that sort of Plants in specie the reason why e. g. an Oak an Elm a Rose-tree and every plant is what it is in specie being to be fetch'd from the seed alone and the Creator's will 9. Though the seed be the chief or only specifying cause why this is Adeantum and that Betonica and that Calendula c. yet the Sun and Earth the universal causes do contribute much more to the life as life than the seed it self 10. This fiery or solar active nature is so pure and above the full knowledge of mortals that we have no certainty at all whether in all this generative influx it communicate to vegetatives from it self a pre-existent matter and so draw it back to it self again by circulation or whether it do only by the substantial contact of its active streams cherish and actuate and perfect the substance which it findeth in semine materiâ passivâ or whether per influxum virtutis it operate only by that which is commonly called Quality without any communication or contact of substance 11. In all this operation of the Solar or fiery nature in generation it is quid medium between the passive matter and the animal nature and is plainly an image of the animal nature and its operations so like it that it hath tempted many to ascribe all animal operations only to the Solar or fiery nature and hath caused wise men to doubt whether this nature be to be numbred with things corporeal or incorporeal and to place it between both as participating in several respects of both 12. If the sensitive nature be really above or specifically different from the fiery we may in what is said conjecture much at the order of the generation of things sensitive viz. by a three-fold cause co-operating one specifying and two universal and cherishing The specifying is the virtus seminalis maris foeminae conjunct and of neither alone the same God which bless'd the single seed of a plant with the gift of multiplication bless'd only the conjunct seeds of male and female animals with that gift The superiour universal cause is either some anima universalis ejusdem naturae or God immediately By an Anima universalis I mean not an anima totius mundi but of that superiour vortex or part which this earth belongs to Either this is the Sun or some invisible soul If it be the Sun it is not by its simple fiery nature before mentioned because sensation seemeth to be somewhat totâ specie different from motion light and heat and then it must prove that the Sun is compound and hath a superiour form and nature which either formaliter or eminenter is sensitive and that by this it is that it animateth inferiour sensitives But of this we mortals have no certainty It seemeth very improbable that a worm or flie should have a nature superiour to any that the Sun hath but probabilities are not certainties there are things highest and things lowest in their several kinds But remember that if it should be the Sun it is by that nature superiour to fire by which it doth it The maternal universal Cause of the sensitive life is the Mother Whether the spirits of a sensitive Creature have more in them than the spirits of a Plant and do more by nutrition than cause Vegetation whether they nourish sensitive Life as such is doubtfull But if they do so they be but an universal and not a specifying Cause that is the Cause of Life as Life but not of the vita bovis equi canis felis aquilae qua talis And therefore if the late-discovered trick of passing all the blood of one animal into another be prosecuted to the utmost tryal possibly it may do much to the advantage of Life and Sense as such but never to the alteration of the species to turn a Dog into a Swine or any other sort of Animal 13. Whether the sensitive nature be most refined-corporeal or totally incorporeal is past the reach of man to be assured of 14. The foresaid difficulty is greater here than in the Vegetative Generation viz. Whether in the multiplication of sensitive souls there be an addition of substance communicated from the Universal Causes or a greater quantity or degree of matter physical or metaphysical propagated and produced into existence by generation than there was before It seemeth hard to say that a pair of Animals in Noahs Ark had as much matter or substance in their souls as the millions since proceeding from them But whether such souls have quantitive degrees or by what terms of gradation the souls of millions are distinct from one besides the number or whether God in the blessing of multiplication hath enabled them to increase the quantity of matter which shall serve for so many more forms are things which we cannot fully understand 15. In the like manner we may rise up and conceive of the Generation of Mankind We are sure that he hath an intelligent nature much nobler than the sensitive And we know that homo generat hominem And we know that in his Generation there is an Vniversal Cause and a specifying Cause for though there be but one species of men yet there are more of Intelligences and that one may have an Vniversal Cause producing that and other effects and an Univocal special Cause We know that because he is Generated the specifying Cause is the fecundity or propagating power of the Parent generating a separable seed which seed in conjunction as aforesaid suppositis supponendis is semen hominis and is man seminally and virtually but not actually that is Hath both Passive and Active Power and virtue by reception of the influx of the universal Cause to become a man The universal inferior or feminine Cause is the Mothers Body and Soul or the whole Mother in whom the Infant is generated and cherished I call it Vniversal For it is only the semen that specifieth And therefore by a false or bruitish semen a woman may produce a Monster The Vniversal Paternal Cause is certainly GOD ut prima and it is probable also ut sola For he made Mans Soul at first by that immediate communication which is called Breathing it into him And the Intellectual nature though specified into Angels and Men is the
Light be not still the same till all the passive matter be consumed is more than you know So also if you argue from the Vegetative life of a Tree Whether the same Principle of Vegetation enlarging it self continue not to the end to individuate the Tree though all the passive Elements Earth Water and Air may be in fluxu and a transient state It is certain that some fixed Principle of Individuation there is from whence it must be denominated the same The water of the hasty River would not be called the same River if the Channel which it runs in were not the same Nor your Candle be called the same Candle if some of the first Wick or Oyl at least did not remain or the same fire continue it or the same Candlestick hold it And what is it in the Tree which is still the same or what in the Bird that flyeth about which is still the same when you have searched all you will finde nothing so likely as the vital Principle and yet that something there must be 2. But doth not the light of Nature and the concurrent sense and practice of all the World confute you and tell you that if you cannot understand what the Individuating Principle is yet that certainly some such there is and doth continue Why else will you love and provide for your own Children if they be not at all the same that you begat nor the same this year as you had the last Why will you be revenged on the Man that did beat you or hang the Thief that robbed you or do Justice on any Murderer or Male-factor seeing that it is not the same man that did the deed If he transpire as much as Sanctorius saith and his substance diminish as much in a day as Opicius saith certainly a few dayes leave him not the same as to those transitory parts Surely therefore there is something which is still the same Else you would deny the King his title and disoblige your selves from your subjection by saying that he is not at all the same man that you swore Allegiance to or that was born Heir of the Crown And you would by the same reason forfeit your own Inheritance Why should uncertain Philosophical whimsies befool men into those speculations which the light and practice of all the world doth condemn as madness But arguing ab ignotis will have no better success Of the individuation of Bodies in the Resurrection I spake before OBJECTION XVII IF the Soul be a substance we must confess it not annihilated But it is most like to proceed from some Element of Souls or Vniversal Soul either the Anima Mundi or rather the Anima Solis vel hujus systematis And so to be reduced to it again and lose its individuation and consequently to be uncapable of Retribution Answ 1. That the Soul which we speak of is a substance is past all controversie For though as I have shewed there is truely an order or temperament of the parts which he that listeth may call the form the life the soul or what he please yet no man denyeth but that there is also some one part which is more subtile pure active potent and regnant than the rest and this is it whatever it is which I call the Soul We are agreed of the Thing let them wrangle de nomine who have nothing else to doe 2. That this substance no substance else is not annihilated as I have said is past dispute 3. Therefore there is nothing indeed in all this business which is liable to Controversie but this point of Individuation which this Objection mentioneth and that of action and operation following And I must confess that this is the only particular in which hereabouts I have found the temptation to error to be much considerable They that see how all waters come from the Sea and how Earth Water Air and Fire have a potent inclination of union and when the parts are separated have a motus aggregativus may be tempted to think it a probable thing that all Souls come from and return unto a Universal Soul or Element of which they are but particles But concerning this I recommend to the sober Reader these following Considerations 1. There is in Nature more than a probability that the Vniverse hath no Vniversal Soul whatever particular Systems or Globes may have For we finde that Perfection lyeth so much in Vnity and as all things are from One so as they go out from One they go into Multiplicity that we have great cause to think that it is the Divine Prerogative to be Vnicus Vniversalis He is the Vnicus Vniversalis in Entity Life Intelligence c. As he hath made no one Monarch of all the Universe no nor of all the Earth nor no one Head of all the Church that is not God whatever the Roman Vice-god say nor hath given any one a sufficiency hereto whatever a self-Idolizer may imagine of himself so he hath not given away or communicated that Prerogative which seemeth proper to the Deity to be an Vniversal Minde and consequently an Vniversal Parent and King yea more to be Omnia in Vno Having no sort of proof that there is any such thing finding it so high and Divine a Prerogative we have little reason to believe that there is any such thing at all in being 2. If you mean therefore no more than an Vniversal Soul to a particular Systeme or Vortex in the World that Vniversal will be it self a particular Soul Individuated and distinct from other Individuals And indeed those very Elements that tempt you might do much to undeceive you There is of Fire a specifical Unity by which it differeth from other Elements but there is no universal aggregation of all the parts of Fire The Sun which seemeth most likely to contend for it will yet acknowledge individual Starrs and other parts of Fire which shew that it is not the whole The Water is not all in the Sea we know that there is much in the Clouds whatever there is elsewhere above the Clouds We have no great cause to think that this Earth is Terra Vniversalis I confess since I have looked upon the Moon through a Tube and since I have read what Galilaeus saith of it and of Venus and other Planets I finde little reason to think that other Globes are not some of them like our Earth And if you can believe an Individuation of Greater Souls why not of Lesser The same reasons that tempt you to think that the Individuation of our Souls will cease by returning into the Anima Systematis vel Solis may tempt you to think that the animae systematum may all cease their Individuation by returning into God and their existence too 3. If this were left as an unrevealed thing you might take some liberty for your Conjectures But when all the Twenty Arguments which I have given do prove a continued Individuation
to a soul when it is separated from the corporeal spirits Or if the soul out of the body were as liable as it is by diseases of the body while it is in it to the loss of memory yet all those arguments which prove the Life of Retribution hereafter do fully prove that God will provide it a way of exercise and prevent all those hinderances of memory which may make his Judgment and Retribution void Again therefore I say To argue ab ignotis against clear evidence in matters that our own everlasting joy or sorrow is concerned in so deeply is a folly that no tongue can express with its due aggravations OBJECTION XX. THe belief of the immortality of souls doth fill men with fears and draw them to superstition and trouble the peace of Kingdoms by unavoidable sects in the prosecution of those things which are of such transcendent weight when otherwise men might live in quietness to themselves and others and in promoting of the publick good Answ This is the maddest objection of all the rest but in our days there are men found that are no wiser than to make it I have answered it fully in divers popular Treatises as that called A Saint or a Bruit c. 1. The greatest and best things are liable to the worst abuses Thus you may argue against Reason that it doth but fill mens brains with knavish craft and enable them to do mischief and to trouble the world and to live themselves in cares and fears c. Upon many such reasons Cotta in Cic. de Nat. Deor. doth chide God for making man a rational creature and saith he had been happier without it And were it not for this wit and reason we should have none of these evils which you have here now mentioned Why then is not reason as well as Religion on that account to be rejected On the same reason Philosophy and Learning may be accused as it is with the Turks and Moscovites What abundance of sects and voluminous contentions and tired consuming studies have they caused witness all the volumes of Philosophers and School-men On the same account you may cry down Kings and Civil Government and Riches and all that is valued in the world for what wars and bloudshed hath there been in the world for Crowns and Kingdoms what hatred and contention for honour and wealth If you could make all men swine they would not stir for gold or pearls or if they were dogs they would not fight for Kingdoms and if they be blind and impious worldlings they will not be zealous about Religion unless to dis-spirit it and to reduce it to the service of their fleshly interest which is the hypocrites zeal No man will contend for that which he valueth not But 2. Consider that though dogs will not fight for Crowns they will fight for bones and some times need men of reason to stave them off And though swine fight not for gold they will fight for draff and burst their bellies if they be not governed And though unbelievers and Atheists trouble not the world to promote Religion they set Families Towns and Countries and Kingdoms together by the ears for their worldly pelf and fleshly interest Enquire whether the wars of the world be not most for carnal interest even where Religion hath been pretended and hearken in Westminster-hall and at the Assizes whether most of the contendings there are such as are caused by Religion or by the love of the world and of the flesh And where Religion seemeth to be a part of the cause it is the Atheists and ungodly that are commonly the chief contenders who think it not enough to hope for no life to come themselves but they cannot endure other men that do it because they seem wiser and better and happier than they and by their holiness gall their consciences and condemn them 3. The extremity of this objections impudency appeareth in this above all that it is most notorious that there is no effectual cure for all the villanies of the world but true Religion and shall the cure be made the cause of that disease 1. Read and judge in Nature and Scripture whether the whole matter of Religion be not perfectly contrary to the vices of the world Will it trouble Kingdoms or disquiet souls to love God above all and to honour and obey him and be thankful for his mercies and to trust his promises and to rejoice in hope of endless glory and to love our neighbours as our selves and to do no injustice or wrong to any to forbear wrath and malice lust adultery theft and lying and all the rest expressed in this treatise 2. Is it not for want of Religion that all the vices and contentions of the world are Would not men be better subjects and better servants and better neighbours if they had more Religion Would not they lie and deceive and steal and wrong others less Do you think he that believeth a life to come or he that believeth it not is liker to cut your purse or rob you by the high way or bear false witness against you or be perjured or take that which is not his own or any such unrighteous thing Is he liker to live as a good subject or servant who looketh for a reward in heaven for it or he that looketh to die as a beast doth Is he liker to do well and avoid evil who is moved by the effectual hopes and fears of another life or he that hath no such hopes and fears but thinketh that if he can escape the Gallows there is no further danger Had you rather your servant that is trusted with your estate did believe that there is a life to come or that there is none Nay why doth not your objection militate as strongly against the thief's believing that there will be an Assize For if the belief of an Assize did not trouble him he might quietly take that which he hath a mind to and do what he list but this fills his heart with fears and troubles 3. Compare those parts of the world Brasil and Soldania c. which believe not a life to come if any such there be with those that do and see which belief hath the better effects 4. What is there of any effectual power to restrain that man from any villany which he hath power to carry out or policy to cover who doth not believe a life to come 5. And if you believe it not what will you do with Reason or any of your faculties or your time How will you live in the world to any better purpose than if you had slept out all your life What talk you of the publick good when the denying of our final true felicity denyeth all that is truely Good both publick and private But so sottish and malignant an objection deserveth pity more than confutation Whatever Religious persons did ever offend these men with any reall Crimes I can assure
duration yet it is after God in order of being as caused by Him as the shadow is after the substance and as the beams and light are after the Sun or rather as the leaves would be after the life of the Tree if they were conceived to be both eternal One would be an eternal Cause and the other but an eternal Effect 2. It is certain that this present World containing the Sun and Moon and Heavens and Earth which are mentioned Genes 1. is not from Eternity And indeed Reason it self doth make that at least very probable as Revelation makes it certain Which will appear when I have opened the Philosophers opinions on the other side 2. Among your selves there are all these differences and so we have several Cases to state with you 1. Some think that this present Systeme of compounded beings is from Eternity 2. Others think that only the Elements and Heavens and all simple Beings are from Eternity 3. Others think that Fire or Aether only as the Active Element is from Eternity or the incorruptible matter of the Heavens 4. Others think that matter and motion only were from Eternity 5. Others think that only spiritual purer beings Intelligences or Mindes were from Eternity and other things produced immediately by them 6. And there have been those Heathen Philosophers who held that only God was from Eternity Among all this variety of opinions why should any one think the more doubtfully of Christianity for denying some of them which all the other deny themselves Is it a likely thing that any individual mixt body should be eternall when we know that mixt bodies incline to dissolution and when we see many of them oriri interire daily before our eyes And if Man and Beast as to each individual have a beginning and end it must be so as to the beginning of the species for the species existeth not out of the Individuals and some individual must be first And as Bp. Ward argueth against Mr. Hobs If the World be eternal there have infinite dayes gone before e. g. the birth of Christ and then the whole is no greater than the parts or infinity must consist of finite parts The Heavens and the Earth therefore which are compounded beings by the same reason are lyable to dissolution as man is and therefore had a beginning So that the truth is there is no rational probability in any of your own opinions but those which assert the Eternity of some Simple Beings as Matter or Intelligences or an Anima Vniversalis Now consider further that if ever there was a moment when there were no Individuals or mixt Beings but only some universal Soul or Matter then there was an Eternity when there was nothing else For Eternity hath no beginning And then will it not be as strange to your selves to think that God should from all Eternity delight himself in Matter unformed if that be not a contradiction or in an Anima simplex unica without any of all the variegated matter and beings which we now finde besides in Nature as that he should eternally content himself with Himself alone If all individuals of compound beings were not from Eternity what was Either the Egge or the Hen must be first as the old instance is If you will come to it that either Anima unica or Atoms unformed were eternal why should not God as well be without these as be without the formed Worlds What shall a presumptuous minde now say to all these difficulties why return to modesty Remember that as the Bird hath wit given her to build her nest and breed her young as well as man could do it and better but hath no wit for things which do not concern her so man hath reason for the ends and uses of reason and not for things that are not profitable to him and that such looks into Eternity about things unrevealed do but over-whelm us and tell us that they are unrevealed and that we have not one reason for such employments And what is the end of all that I have said Why to tell you that our Religion doth not only say nothing of former worlds but 2. that it also forbiddeth us to say Yea or Nay to such questions and to corrupt our minds with such presumptuous searches of unrevealed things And therefore that you have no reason to be against the Scripture on this account for it doth not determine any thing against your own opinion if you assert not the eternity of this present world or system but it determineth against your presumption in medling with things which are beyond your reach And withall it giveth us a certainty that as in one Sun there is the Lux Radii Lumen so in one God there is Father Son and holy Spirit eternally existent and self-sufficient which quieteth the mind more than to think of an eternity of an Anima or Materia which is not God All this I have here annexed because these Philosophical self-deceivers are to be pitied and to have their proper help And I thought it unmeet to interrupt the discourse with such debates which are not necessary to more sober Readers but only for them who labour of this disease and I know that when they read the first leafe of the book which proveth that man hath a Soul or Mind they will rise up against it with all the objections which Gassendus Mr. Hobs c. assault the like in Cartesius with and say You prove not this Mind is any thing but the subtiler part of Matter and the temperament of the whole To whom I now answer 1. That it is not in that place incumbent on me nor seasonable to prove any more than I there assert 2. But I have here done it for their sakes more seasonably though my discourse is entire and firm without it And I desire the unbelieving Reader to observe that I am so far from an unnecessary incroaching upon his liberty and making him believe that Christianity condemneth all those conjectures of Philosophers which it asserteth not it self that I have taken the liberty of free conjecturing in such cases my self not going beyond the evidence of probability or the bounds of modesty and that I think them betrayers of the Christian cause or very injurious to it who would interess it in matters with what it medleth not and corrupt it by pretending that it condemneth all the opinions in Philosophy which themselves are against Nor am I one that believe that Christianity will allow me that zeal which too hastily and peremptorily condemneth all that in such points do hold what I dislike I do not anathematize as Hereticks all those who hold those opinions which either Stephanus or Guilielm Episc Parisienses condemned in their Articul Contra varios in fide errores though I think many of them dangerous and most very audacious e. g. Quod intelligentia motrix coeli fluit in animas rationales sicut
must give light to Christianity and prepare men to receive it And they think to know what is in Heaven before they will learn what they are themselves and what it is to be a man Cond 4. Get a true Anatomy Analysis or Description of Christianity in your minds for if you know not the true nature of it first you will be lamentably disadvantaged in enquiring into the truth of it For Christianity well understood in the quiddity will illustrate the mind with such a winning beauty as will make us meet its evidence half-way and will do much to convince us by its proper light Cond 5. When you have got the true method of the Christian doctrine or Analysis of faith begin at the Essentials or primitive truths and proceed in order according to the dependencies of truths and do not begin at the latter end nor study the conclusion before the premises Cond 6. Yet look on the whole scheme or frame of causes and evidences and take them entirely and conjunct and not as peevish factious men who in splenish zeal against another sect reject and vilifie the evidence which they plead This is the Devils gain by the raising of sects and contentions in the Church he will engage a Papist for the meer interest of his sect to speak lightly of the Scripture and the Spirit and many Protestants in meer opposition to the Papists to sleight Tradition and the testimony of the Church denying it its proper authority and use As if in the setting of a Watch or Clock one would be for one wheel and another for another and each in peevishness cast away that which another would make use of when it will never go true without them all Faction and contentions are deadly enemies to truth Cond 7. Mark well the suitableness of the remedy to the disease that is of Christianity to the depraved state of man and mark well the lamentable effects of that universal depravation that your experience may tell you how unquestionable it is Cond 8. Mark well how connaturally Christianity doth relish with holy souls and how well it suiteth with honest principles and hearts so that the better any man is the better it pleaseth him And how potently all debauchery villany and vice befriendeth the cause of Atheists and unbelievers Cond 9. Take a considerate just survey of the common enmity against Christianity and Holiness in all the wicked of the world and the notorious war which is every where managed between Christ and the Devil and their several followers that you may know Christ partly by his enemies Cond 10. Impartially mark the effects of Christian doctrine where ever it is sincerely entertain'd and see what Religion maketh the best men and judge not of serious Christians at a distance by false reports of ignorant or malicious adversaries And then you will see that Christ is actually the Saviour of souls Cond 11. Be not liars your selves lest it dispose you to think all others to be liars and to judge of the words of others by your own Cond 12. Be-think you truly what persons you should be your selves and what lives you should live if you did not believe the Christian doctrine or if you doe not believe it mark what effect your unbelief hath on your lives For my own part I am assured if it were not for the Christian doctrine my heart and life would be much worse than it is though I had read Epictetus Arrian Plato Plotinus Jamblichus Proclus Seneca Cicero Plutarch every word and those few of my neighbourhood who have fallen off to infidelity have at once fallen to debauchery and abuse of their nearest relations and differed as much in their lives from what they were before in their profession of Christianity though unsound as a leprous body differeth from one in comeliness and health Cond 13. Be well acquainted if possible with Church-History that you may understand by what Tradition Christianity hath descended to us For he that knoweth nothing but what he hath seen or receiveth a Bible or the Creed without knowing any further whence and which way it cometh to us is greatly disadvantaged as to the reception of the faith Cond 14. In all your reading of the holy Scriptures allow still for your ignorance in the languages proverbs customs and circumstances which are needful to the understanding of particular Texts and when difficulties stop you be sure that no such ignorance remain the cause He that will but read Brugensis Grotius Hammond and many other that open such phrases and circumstances with Topographers and Bochartus and such others as write of the Animals Utensils and other circumstances of those times will see what gross errors the opening of some one word or phrase may deliver the Reader from Cond 15. Vnderstand what excellencies and perfections they be which the Spirit of God intended to adorn the holy Scriptures with and also what sort of humane imperfections are consistent with these its proper perfections that so false expectations may not tempt you into unbelief It seduceth many to infidelity to imagine that if Scripture be the word of God it must needs be most perfect in every accident and mode which were never intended to be part of its perfection Whereas God did purposely make use of those men and of that style and manner of expression which was defective in some points of natural excellency that so the supernatural excellency might be the more apparent As Christ cured the blind with clay and spittle and David slew Goliah with a sling The excellency of the means must be estimated by its aptitude to its end Cond 16. If you see the evidences of the truth of Christianity in the whole let that suffice you for the belief of the several parts when you see not the true answer to particular exceptions If you see it soundly proved that Christ is the Messenger of the Father and that his word is true and that the holy Scripture is his word this is enough to quiet any sober mind when it cannot confute every particular objection or else no man should ever hold fast any thing in the world if he must let all go after the fullest proof upon every exception which he cannot answer The inference is sure If the whole be true the parts are true Cond 17. Observe well the many effects of Angels ministration and the evidences of a communion between us and the spirits of the unseen world for this will much facilitate your belief Cond 18. Over-look not the plain evidences of the Apparitions Witches and wonderful events which fall out in the times and places where you live and what reflections they have upon the Christian cause Cond 19. Observe well the notable answers of Prayers in matters internal and external in others and in your selves Cond 20. Be well studied at home about the capacity use and tendency of all your faculties and you will find that your very nature pointeth you up to