this Basis was it that many Schooolmen erected that Axiom Praevisionem Dei nihil influere in humanas actiones that the Praevision of God hath no influence coactive upon the actions of man Now what hath bin argued for the Praevision and Praenotion of God is also to be extended to his Praediction especially because t is uncontrovertible that Praediction is posterior or subsequent to the Praenotion of any Contingent yet in the womb of Futurity since what is not exactly foreknown can never be certainly foretold For which respect shall any urge upon us that the Divine Praenotion and Praediction cannot be Fallacious we shall most willingly concede their position as most indubitate because nothing can be prognosticate by God as Future which is not really Future but when it shall be thence inferred that if Peter had once the absolute power in his own hands to have not denyed and rightly using that arbitrary power had actually not denyed in that case the praenotion and praediction of his denyal by God had proved Fallacious we must reject the Illation as illegal and absurd because had not Peters denyall bin realy Future God had neither praevised nor praedicted the same For it is the Reality of its Futurition that supports the Certitude of the Praediction of any future Contingent And therefore in case Peter had bin not to deny God had as certainly praedicted that He would not deny since so the Supposition had bin quite contrary viz. that Peter rightly using his Liberty of Election would determine it not to a Negation but Affirmation Whereupon we may safely conclude 1 that Peters Abnegation was Future and 2 that God both praevised and praedicted the same upon no other Necessity but only this that Peter when it should be in his own power to determine himself to either part would then actually determine himself rather to Disclaim and Abjure then own and avow his Master Thus the Divines And thus the Philosophers Non quia Dii definitò norunt Article 6. The Solution of the same by the Philosophers proving that the dâ—finite Praenotion of future Contingents is no Cause of their definite Contingency but è contrà the definity of their Futurition the câ—use of their dâ—finite â—â—anotion Contingentia ideo illa eventura sunt Neque enim quia Dii norunt ideo necessariò eveniunt sed quia cum naturae sint anâ—ipitis aut talem aut talem exhibebunt exitum norunt Dii necessariò qualem seu utrum obtinebunt adeo ut Contingens ex sua quidem natura indefinitum sit sed respectu tamen notitiae Deorum definitum Quinetiam constat nostra quoque notitia Contingens definitò cognosci cum viz. propriè Contingens deinceps non sit sed necessariò consequitur antegressas cur fiat Causas Saith Ammonius in lib. de interpret The whole importance whereof is this That the definite praenotion of Contingents by God is in no relation the cause of their definite Contingency but their being of themselves definitely Future or their Ambiguity being to be determined to Definity of Futurition is the Cause of their praenotion by God For though a Contingent be Indefinite in respect to its own nature i. e. it is equally determinable by the Liberty of its Causes to either of two contrary Events yet in respect to the Praenotion of God it is Definite because God hath an infallible praenotion to which of two contrary Events its Causes will determine it All which may be confirmed à Minori from the Praenotion of Man experience assuring that Physicians frequently prognosticate and praedict the death of their deplored Patients even to an hour Not that their Prognosticks have any influence upon the Disease to determine it to Mortal when yet t is Dubious but that the determination of the disease from Dubious to definitely Mortal by its causes is the ground of their Prognostick Here lest we be misconceived to confound Divine and Human Article 7. The Disparity betwixt Divine and Human Praenotion Praecognition we advertise that the Praenotion of God is Infallible because à Priori i. e. He foreknows Contingents while they are yet only in Possibility and in the womb of their Causes nor to him who demands Why or How God foreknows Events while they are yet in the Dark or Nothing of Futurity can any other response be given but this that He is Omniscient i. e. God but the Praenotion or rather Praesagitition of man is Fallacious because desumed à Posteriori from Effects educed extra Causas into actual Existence Which vast Disparity may be most adaequately Exemplified Article 8. The same exemplified thus God certainly Foreknows that Peter shall fall sick and die of such or such a disease viz. a Pestilent Fever How because He foreknows that those Causes which in respect to the Ambiguity or Indifferency of their event may or may not generate an intense putrefaction and malignity in the humors of Peters body shall lose that their Possibility and determine themselves to the actual production of that particular malignant or pestilential inquinament in his blood which constituteth the essence of that disease and that the disease so generated will be so violent and inoppugnable by the force of Nature that the Temperament of Peters body being too weak to sustain such a disproportionate Encounter will thereby be dissolved and so Death shall inevitably succeed But the Physician can only conjecture that Peter may fall sick of such a malignant Fever why because He discovers that Peters praevious Intemperance hath prepared the continent Cause or Fewell for a putrid Fever and that the access of Malignity either by Contagion communicated or from an intense Corruption of humors internally kindled may according to the Aptitude of its nature seise upon that praepared fewell and Ferment it into a pestilential Fever but Definitely He doth not know that Peter shall fall sick of such a pestilential disease in regard it transcends the maximes of his Art and the Capacity of his limited Reason to foreknow whether the Possibility of such an Effect from such Causes shall be determined to Necessity Nor can He praedict that Peter being invaded with that disease shall certainly perish thereby untill the Dubiosity of the Fever be actually determined to Lethality for then from Symptoms that signify the total Succumbency or yeelding of Nature to the victorious fury of the disease he may with good warrant and honour praesage the imminent death of Peter ¶ SECT IV. THe other Capital Difficulty being erected upon a certain circumventing Socraticisme or Interrogatory Sophisme Article 1. The Second Capital Difficulty erected upon a sophism called Ignava Ratio as it respecteth both Theology and Philosophy most adaequately denominated by Cicero de Fato 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ignava Ratio an unactive Argumentation because praevailing upon the mind it stupefies the same to a perpetual Restiveness or Supinity by charging even the Thoughts of every man upon the
there contend with him concerning the extent of Gods Providence even to every single and individuall nature urging no other proof of the Affirmative but the bare authority of Canonicall Writ though to us Christians of undoubted truth and more fiduciary then demonstration is the ready way to confirm him in his impiety and stiffen his infidelity in regard a plain and just exception lies against the Circle Nor have we any probable way left to break his objections but a sober reception of them in the shield of reason and a smart retort of arguments desumed from the proper magazine of all temporall knowledge the Light of Nature Hereupon when we had determined with our selves to erect a building of Physicall science upon those pillars or principles which to our judgment appear most solid firm and permanent because most sensible in all the operations or effects of Nature that can any way occurre to the disquisition of Philosophy as shall be amply commonstrated in the future application of them to particulars and submitted our assent to that excellent Rule of the School-men Nulla res qualiscunque est intelligi potest nisi Deus intelligatur prius revived into an Axiome by the incomparable Des Cartes in these words Omnem omnis scientiae certitudinem veritatem ab una veri Dei cognitione pendere adeo ut dum ignoramus DeuÌ„ esse verum esse nihil omnino de ulla alia re perfecte scire possimus we conceived it necessary to begin as high as the First Cause God and endevour the demonsâ—ration first of his Existence and consequently for strict reason will never endure their separation of those two generall operations of his Wisdome Power and Goodness viz. 1. the Creation of the world ex nihilo and and 2. the continuall Conservation of the same in its primitive harmony by his Providence and this by Arguments so purely extracted from the chief inducements of beleef that no Atheist how acute or refractary soever can justly except against them SECT II. T Is an Assertion which bids defiance to a whole host of Scepticks Article 1. The mind of man can have no cognition of the nature of its objects but by the mediation of their proper Ideas that the Soul of man while she animates this admirable engine the Body can apprehend no more of the Formes of Entities then what she reads in those reflex Characters Images or Ideas which she findes represented to her in the mirrour of Cogitation Now of those Ideas or Representations exhibited to the understanding there are three distinct orders 1. Some are Innate Article 2. Those Ideas are 1 Innate 2. Adventitious or Congenial for that I may understand what a Thing is what Truth is what the act of Cogitation is I need the assistance or information of no other nature but my own 2. Others are Adventitious or emergent from external objects for that I actually hear sounds see the light of the Sun feel the heat of fire and become sensible of all other qualities of bodies I have ever hitherto adjudged these acts of sensation to belong to my essence onely at second hand as being derivative from other causes forreign and alien to my nature 3. And finally others are Created 3 Imaginary modelled or coyned in the mint of the Imagination for the Phansie of the most stupid Ideot is naturally empowerd to forge or paint to it self and represent to the mind what images it please as Chimaeras Sirens Harpies Goblins c. As for those Ideas on which I look as proceeding from things existent without the circle of my self I make this enquiry whether Article 3. A strict enquiry whether the Ideas of objects existent without our selves hold an exact similitude to their natures there be any reason sufficient to perswade me to conceive that such Ideas are exactly like to those things whether these Copies or transcripts are drawn to the life so as in all particulars to resemble their originals And the determination wherewithall I satisfie my self is this that the Affirmative is taught me by nature as being hitherto instructed that those Ideas have no dependence at all on my Will and so by consequence proceed not from my self but are obtruded upon my cognition even against my Will For instance whether I will or nill I am sensible of the heat of Fire and therefore think this perception or Idea of heat to proceed from something distinct from my self viz. from the heat of that fire by which I stand and obvious it is beyond all hesitancy that I may judge that this fire doth immit into me rather the similitude of it self then any thing else The stability of which reasons I shall now strictly examine When I here say I am thus instructed by Nature I intend only that I am rapt on by a certain spontaneous violence or native propensity to submit my assent thereunto not that this declared unto me to be a firm and uncontrollable truth by the light of Nature For I discover a vast and irreconcileable disparity between the Dictates of these two Informers and the Difference may be stated thus Whatever things are declared unto me by the light of Nature as this that I am because I doubt that 2 and 3 make 5 c. can never on any pretence be doubted of in regard there can be no other faculty or Criterion to whose judgement or decision I can afford so ample and firme credit as to that of the light of Nature which onely can teach me whether those things are true or false But as for those Inclinations or Propensions naturall I have long since found by deplorable experience that by them I have been frequently hurried unto and in a sort impelled upon this evill in my solitary disputes with my self concerning my judicature and election of the Good and therefore am not in any measure convinced why I should depend upon their information pursue their conduct or resigne my assent to their testimony in other cases Again though these Extradvenient Ideas depend not on my Will yet is that no valid Argument that therefore of necessity they must proceed from things without my self for as those strong Propensities though seated in me and as it were annexed to my very being doe yet seem clearly distinct from my Will so also perchance there may be another third Faculty within me which I doe not yet sufficiently understand that coyns those Ideas as hitherto my conceptions have ever been that in my dreams such Ideas are created in my brain without the assistance of any forreign Objects invading my senses And lastly should I grant those Counterfeits or Ideas to be desumed from things distinct from my selfe yet could it be no justifiable inference that therefore they must in all points resemble those things or prototypes from which they were transmitted yea in many particulars I apprehend them to be disproportionate and dissimilar toto coelo by inequalities never to be parallels
the long and wary speculation of them such happy persons shall assuredly find in him more satisfactory ample and easie matter of clear and distinct cognition then in all the world beside Thirdly I discriminate an Intellection Adequate from an Intellection Gradual or conforme to the slender capacity of man 3. For the First t were madness beyond the power of Hellebor for any man to dream that he could understand an Infinite Conceptu adaequato by a comprehension fully as large and exactly proportionate unto that Infinite nay it may be a very hard question whether the armes of our understanding be long enough to commensurate the full nature of any Finite object though nere so small by an Idea exactly respondent and equal in all points for the other every sober man is able to find within himself that the wings of his mind are not so clipt as that it cannot aspire to the Gradual cognition of an Infinite finita ad modulum humani ingenii accommodata cognitione If any shall pervert this Distinction to so sinister a latitude as to retort that when I confess my understanding too shallow and dark to comprehend an infinite Conceptu adaequato I doe at the same time implicitely concede that I can know no more then a part of an infinite and indeed the least part which can be said to carry the representation of an infinite no more then the effigies of one single hair to represent the whole body of a man I shall smoothly rejoyne that to affirme that if we fully comprehend any thing that thing must be infinite is a plain and obvious contradiction in terminis since the Idea of an infinite if true cannot be comprehended Incomprehensibility being the formal attribute of an infinite and yet nevertheless it is evident that the Idea which we have of an infinite doth resemble not only some one particular part but even really and truly the whole thereof eo modo quo repraesentari debet per humanam ideam though doubtless a far more accurate and distinct i. e. perfect Idea may be allowed to be in the more luminous and clear intellect of God of Angels or other natures more intelligent then man Thus we doubt not but a Clown who never heard of Euclid or learned one Axiome in Geometry may notwithstanding have in his mind the Idea of a whole Triangle when he is once instructed that a Triangle is a Figure comprehended in three lines though he remain ignorant of many other things which a learned Geometrician knowes intelligible in that Figure and insatiately speculates in the Idea thereof for as to understand a figure included in three lines is sufficient to acquire the Idea of a whole Triangle so also to understand a thing not to be comprehended or terminated by any limits or ends is sufficient to the acquisition of a true and entire Idea of the whole infinite This Idea you have of God is no more then Ens rationis a Article 2. Object 2. That the Idea of the divine nature resident in the mind of man is a meer Ens rationis and the Solut. meer figment or Chimaera that hath no existence at all but in your intellect and therefore hath no more of perfection or reality objective then your own mind that framed it Ens rationis hath a double signification 1. it imports a meer abstracted Notion devoid of all reality or a pure Non-entity 2. it signifies every operation of the intellect or more plainly Ens a ratione profectum in which acceptation the whole World may be properly styled Ens rationis divinae or an entity created by a simple and pure act of the divine intellect Now in this last sense only can I allow that transcendent Idea of God to be Ens rationis a clear and distinct representation of the most perfect Being engraven by his own finger upon my understanding and to that unprevaricate judgment that shall maturely perpend the contents and logical connexion of our precedent meditation it will plainly appear that we intend such a Perfection or reality objective in this Idea which no less then that Artifice objective which is in the Idea of any engine most ingeniously fabricated requires a Cause wherein all that is really and formally contained which is included in the Idea only objectively and at second hand or by reflexion Though we grant your Thesis that this Idea hath more of Perfection or objective reality then your Mind yet cannot Article 3. Object 3. That an effect may have more of reality or perfection then its Cause and the your Assumption stand that therefore your Mind cannot be the Author of this Idea since an Effect may have a degree of Perfection or reality which neither is nor ever was in the Cause thereof To instance common observation teacheth that Flies Frogs c. insects as also some Plants are generated by the Sun rain and earth mutually cooperating by a kind of seminal confermentation or fertile putrefaction and yet in neither of those causes will any man allow so high a Perfection as that of Vitality Ergo c. My Inference is founded on the rock of reason and therefore Solut. too impregnable to be demolished by so feeble a battery For first it is indubitate that there can be no Perfection in Animals devoyd of reason which is not also in bodies devoyd of Animation or if there were that Perfection must be extradvenient or derived unto them from some forreign principle nor are the Sun rain and earth the Adequate Causes of Insects or Animals whose produâ—â—ion is spontaneous and without other seminalitie then that analogous sperme of corruption and it sounds discordant in the harmonious ears of logick for any man only because he is ignorant of any other Cause that may conduce to the generaâ—ion of an insect i. e. hath so many degrees of perfection as as an Insect hath therefore to stagger the truth of an Axiome ratified by the Light of Nature For Quod nihil sit in effectu quod non vel simili vel eminentiori aliquo modo praeextiterit in causa is a First notion at which no man can quarel but he must implicitely abjure his own reason nor doth the ancient and vulgar maxime à nihilo nihil sieri differ from it but only in terminis because if it be conceded that any thing is found in the effect which cannot be found in its cause it must also be conceded that this something was made by nothing nor am I convinced why nothing may not be the cause of something but only from this evidence to the contrary that in such a cause there would not be the same nor any thing equivalent unto that which is in the effect Secondly that my Mind cannot be the Efficient cause of this transcendent Idea needs neither declarement nor support other then this canonical position that whatsoever reality or perfection is only objectively in our Ideas must be either formally or
not consent to his own Adnihilation though he might evade his torments by the bargain with advantage preferring the miserable condition of something to the horrid opacity of nothing Third that God made such abundant provision conductive to the utility of men that both from the Amplitude and Variety of 3. his work they might collect matter sufficient to incite them to the constant contemplation of his Wisdome and gratefull acknowledgement of his Munificence as also that having observed what of the Creatures were less commodious they might be directed in their election of the more commodious and beneficial as well for their Conservation as Delight Fourth that the labours of Agriculture are superfluous and voluntarily undergon by man more for the maintainance of his 4. delicacy and inordinate luxury then the provision of Necessaries to his livelyhood Since the same liberal earth which is Mother Nurse and Purveyer to all other Animals cannot be thought inhospitable to man only nor so cruelly penurious as to exclude her best guest from participating the inexhaustible bouÌ„ty of her table And though we grant some moderate labour necessary in order to the comfortable sustentation of our prodigal bodies always upon the expence yet have we good cause to esteem that more a blessing then a curse since the sweat of industry is sweet Not only because the active genius of man is constellated for business and therefore never more opprest then with the burthen of idleness but also because the sprightly hopes of a wealthy harvest sweeten and compensate the labour of semination Nor is the contentment which growes from ingenious Husbandry much below any other solace of the mind in this life if we may credit the experience of many Princes who having surfetted on the distractions of royalty have voluntarily quitted the magnified pleasures of the Court magnified only by such ambitious Novices who never discovered the gall that lyes at the bottom of those guilded sweets and with inestimable advantage exchanged the tumult of their palaces for the privacy of Granges have found it a greater delight to â—ultivate the obedient and gratefull earth then rule that giddy beast the multitude a happier entertainment of the mind and more wholsome exercise of the body to hold the easie plough then sway an unweildy Scepter and revell in the infatuating pomp of greatness Fifth that those preposterous seasons Blights Mildews Combustions c. putrefactive accidents that make the preguant earth 5. suffer abortion and so nip the forward hopes of the laborious swain doe neither intervene so frequently nor invade so generally as to introduce an universal famine or so cut off all provision as not to leave a sufficient stock of Aliment for the sustentation of mankind Sixth that the divine Intellect was the universal exemplar 6. to it self framing the types or ideas both of the world and of man within it self and accordingly configurating them This may be evinced by an argument à minori since even our selves have a power to design and modell some artificial engine whose pattern or idea we never borrowed from any thing existent without the circle of our selves but coyned in the solitary recesses of our mind Seventh concerning mans being obnoxious to the injury of many Contingencies as the voracity of wild beasts the venome of 7. Serpents the conflagration of Lightning the contagion of the Pestilence the corruption of swarms of other diseases both epidemick and sporadick c. that all these are the regular effects of Gods Generall Providence and have their causes times and finalities preordained and inscribed in the diary of Fate to whose prescience nothing is contingent But of this more satisfactorily in our subsequent consideration of universal Providence whither in strictness of method it refers it self Eight that this complaint against the unkindness of Nature 8. for producing man tender naked unarmed c. is grosly unjust For the imbecillity of our Infancy is necessary to the perfection and maturity of those noble organs contrived for the administration of the mandates of that Empress the Cogitant Soul and is amply compensated either by the vigor and acuteness of the senses or by diuturnity of life It being observed by Naturalists that those Animals which live long have a long gestation in the womb a long infancy and attain but slowly to their maturity and standard of growth the four general motions of life Inception Augmentation State and Declination carrying set and proportional intervals each to other as that truly noble Philosopher Scaliger hath hinted in his correction of that fabulous tradition of the extreme loâ—gaevity of Deer in these words De ejus vitae longitudine fabulantur neque enim aut gestatio aut incrementum hinnulorum ejusmodi sunt ut praestent argumentum longaevi Animalis As for his being born naked t is no disfavour nor neglect in her for that cumbersom wardrobe of raggs which man hath gotten upon his back is become necessary only by the delicacy of his education and custome not so intended by nature in the primitive simplicity and eucrasie of his constitution when there needed nothing but the skin either to warme or adorn the body Lastly those Armes which Nature hath denied him either he wants not at all or his own ingenious hands can provide at pleasure CHAP. IV. The General Providence of God DEMONSTRATED Sâ—CT I. THe Synopsis of my method exhibited in the hem of the first Section of the first Chapter was designed Article 1. The Authors reasons for his present adherence to the common discrimination of Providence from Creation as a clue to conduct the thoughts of my Reader along the series of those Attributes of the supreme Ens which as being of most general concernment and such as may be clearly demonstrated by the Light of Nature even to those who either never heard of or except against the testimony of Holy Writ I have promised to illustrate by the conviction of Arguments deduced from that catholique Criterion Reason to whose Judicature all Nations and Ages have readily submitted their assent and therefore I am not necessitated here to insert any farther explanation of the connexion and dependence of this Theme upon the precedent but only in avoydance of misconception to advertise that when I say the Creation of the World ex nihilo and the constant Conservation of the same in its primitive order and harmonious Coefficiency of causes subordinate are the general operations of the Wisdome and Power of the First cause I doe not intend that those are Acts really distinct each from other for in the demonstration of the Existence of God t is plainly though succinctly evinced that the Conservation of the Vniverse is nothing but the Act of Creation prolonged or continued but only conform my theory to the customary notions and terms of the Schools and yeeld to the necessity of a division in the gross capacity of mans understanding in order to the more
direct line conducted our single reason to the demonstration of his General Providence which indeed is the clearest mirror of his superexcellent Nature and to the opticks of mortality doth afford a lively reflexion of his infinite Wisedome Power and Goodness It succeeds that we endevour to look at Providence through the Telescope or Perspective of the World Since God made the World as hath been already proved it cannot but be absurd to imagine that he instantly deserted it or Article 3. The necessity of the worlds gubernation by the indesinent influence of Gods general Providence demonstrated from the consideration of the absolute and total dependence of all Second Causes upon the First having once imprest a virtue of motion upon the greater wheels of this vast machin immediately withdrew his hand from action leaving them to be carried on by their own rapt or swinge and all the lesser and subordinate wheels of particular natures to conforme to the impulsion of those greater For though he made all things Perfect i. e. omitted nothing requirable to the integral accomplishment of each Creature in suo genere yet since himself is the Vniversal Soul that both Materiald and Informed each particle of this great body in striâ—tness of consequence nothing can have existence longer then he shall please in every minute of its duration freshly to create it or to speak the interest of Providence to conserve it in being by a continual communication of it self all the Actions of Divinity being real Divinity at second hand or nothing but Dissusions or Emanations of its own essence Again who ever reared a magnificent structure a purpose to ruine it and since there is no Artificer so unnatural or stupid as not to desire rather that his Artifice should prosper and continue long by carefull looking to then be exposed to ruine by neglect or violence t is infinitely more improbable that the great Exemplar of all Mechanicks for no age ever produced a peice of Art whose pattern was not first in Nature should so far grow out of love with his own operation and despise those perfections which were but the extracts of himself as to disclaim it commit it to the imminent disorder and demolition of Fortune and not make provision of all things conducible to its preservation especially when no Intellect but his own could be large enough to comprehend the Idea of the work no Prudence but his own absolute enough to project the convenient modell of its due gubernation no Power but his own almighty enough to furnish him with requisites thereto Nor can it with safety or honour to our judgements be imagined that God might had he so pleased have constituted the World in such absolute perfection as that from the minute of its complete existence it might have continued independent and to all eternity have subsisted by it self and all its appointed motions have constantly without intermission or variation succeeded by the direction of their bequeathed impressions without the assiduous moderation of his care or the minutely supply of his providence since the Universe according to the Grammar of sound Philosophy is no Noune Substantive and enjoyes reality only by a distinction i. e. is something by dependence upon him who was eternally contrary to nothing and being at that instant when Omniety informed Nullity into existence educed out of nothing by the single Fiat of God and thence forward continued to be something by the continued Power of the Creator must unavoidably revert to nothing again if the perseverance of that identical power be substracted from which it once obtained to be something And as Light cannot subsist if separated from a lucid body but instantly vanishes into opacity so cannot the World which is but a reflexive deradiation from that Light which is invisible continue if the perpetual sourse of that miraculous Virtue which upholds its existence be withdrawn but must immediately vanish into nothing For the Analogy holds in all points and the dependence of the Creature upon the Creator is as highly absolute as that of Light upon the Sun or other lucid body And though there are some things which being once assisted into determinate essences by their causes doe afterwards subsist without them and keep possession of those Forms by their own native force yet are they such as were still something before their specification to this or that nature by their causes since all that natural Causes can doe is to mould an old matter into a new figure and so dispose the faculties existent therein that a new something may start out of the ruines of an old something But the World which was nothing before the fruitfull voyce of Elohim called it into something hath nothing from it self to subsist upon but must therefore in the twinckling of an eye become nothing again unless its existence be supported and maintained by the constant recruit of the same miraculous Power which first created it I say the same miraculous Power for the Creation doubtless was the greatest miracle that ever was wrought it being more difficult to turn Nothing into all things by the bare nutus or vote of the First Cause then to produce an extraordinary effect by inverting the usual method of Secondary Causes a harder wonder to make Nature herself then to praeposter or transcend her customary rules of acting to the causation of an effect either against or above her self Though to speak rationally and as men that understand something of Theosophy nothing can be a miracle to him to whom all things are not only of equal possibility but of equal facility also When therefore we say that God is the Cause of the world we are to understand him to be so in the same relation that the Sun is the Cause of Light and by consequence as the Light disappears in the Aer when the Sun discontinues its Actinobolisme or deradiation in our hemisphear by visiting the lower so also must the World disappear and be lost in adnihilation when God shall please to discontinue his influx of minutely Creation or to speak more conform to our praesent scope though it signifie the same thing in height of truth to intermit his Providence Moreover so immense are the bounds of this vast Empire the Article 4. The vastity of the world the infinite variety of its parts and the irreconcileable discord of many natures domonstrate as much World so numerous and various its subdivisions and those again dichotomized into so many myriads of Cantons or Provinces and each of those peopled with so many millions of different and discordant natures that no reason can admit it so much as probable that a constant correspondence could be maintained and a general amity observed though all without the conserving influence of a Rector General or Supervisor whose Will receives laws from his Wisdome and gives them to all besides himself And therefore their thoughts missed not much of the white of truth who conceived God to
combustible body to Fire may be sayd to be the Cause of its combustion in this respect only that it was Conditio sine qua non or if that Admotion had not praeceded the combustion had not succeded so also cannot that Concurse of Causes from which any Fortuitous Event doth result unexpectedly be sayd to be the Cause thereof in any other respect but this that it was Conditio sine qua non i. e. if that Concurse of Causes had not praeceded that Event had not succeded though not one of those Causes in the single energy of its nature nor all in confederacy ever any way intended it the Analogy betwixt these two cases standing faire and full in all points Again forasmuch as this indeliberate Syndrome or Combination of Causes is always uncertain and various the Causes being Article 5. Epicurus commended for illustrating the instability and uncertainty of Fortune neither elected nor connected nor managed by any Providence of their own we cannot in justice but applaud the wary judgment of Epicurus in this that he called Fortune 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Cause instable in Persons Times and Manners which is aequivalent to this that since she is a Cause of uncertain and indeterminate insluence none but Fools can hope that this Chamaeleon should constantly appear in the same colours or wear the same Countenance Nor is he less to be commended for his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Article 6. Her Indivinity manifested how she came by her Deification Cave ne habeas Fortunam Deam apud Diogen Laert. Epist 3. Epicuro conscripta endeavours to degrade Fortune from her imaginary Divinity and deride the egregious folly of her solemne Worship for so great is the imbecillity of vulgar minds that what they doe not well comprehend they not only immoderately admire but superstitiously revere as somthing wholly Divine and as farr above Nature as it seems above their Capacity and undoubtedly mans Ignorance of the praevious Conspiracy of Accidentaly concurrent Causes from which any Event extraordinary and superintentional doth emerge first praevailed upon him to invest Fortune in such a specious disguise under which he might with less dishonour to his ownâ— Intellectuals advance her to the reputation of a Deity and adore her T is more then probable that men did not at her first Canonization either much care for or enquire into the condition and extent of her Power and evident that when she began to be cryed up for producing strange Effects in the transactions of the world and by a kind of impervestigable superintendency to dispose the activity of Natural Causes to the induction of Events above or beside their proper and Customary Destinations then began the Vulgar to think themselves concerned in the conciliation of her favour and early atonement of her displeasure and so by those to whom she seemed friendly and prosperous was she accounted a Good and Propitious Numen and to those to whom she appeared Inclement and Adverse an Evil and Malevolent one And hence the Error like Rivers still enlarging were stately and magnificent Temples erected for her popular and solemne Adoration and several Inscriptions respective to that particular Attribute which her fond Votaries conceived most eminent in her or most advantagious to themselves ingraven in capital letters on their Porches such as ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of which I have seen at the house of that ingenious Benefactor to Antiquaries Mr Vernon in Essex with no small cost and difficulty digged up in a field neer Smyrna and together with many other very antique Monuments brought by him into England Malae Fortunae Averruncae Blandae Calvae Vitreae Equestri Fallaci Aureae c. a large catalogue of which Appellations we may read in Pliny lib. 2 cap. 7. Plutarch lib. de Fortuna Romanorum and Natalis Comes lib. 4. Mytholog cap. 9. This Pliny with some indignation at the ridiculous delirium of the world in the Deification of this Non-entity takes ample notice of in these words Toto mundo locis omnibus omnibusque horis omnium vocibus Fortuna sola invocatur una nominatur una accusatur una cogitatur sola laudatur sola arguitur cum convitiis colitur volubilis à plerisque verò caeca etiam existimata vaga inconstans incerta varia indignorum fautrix huic omnia expensa huic omnia feruntur accepta in tota ratione mortalium sola utramque paginam facit adeoque obnoxiae sumus sortis ut Sors ipsa pro Deo sit qua Deus probatur incertus We are not ignorant nor in duety to the praeservation of their memories from ingratefull Detraction ought we to conceal Article 7. All sober Philosophers vindicated from the guilt of ascâ—ibing Divinity to Fortune how difficult it is for any man to impeach any one Philosopher among those many whose Names or Writings have hitherto escaped the jawes of Oblivion of this absurd Delusion of ascribing Divinity to Fortune For though Plato de legibus lib. 4. hath this saying Deum omnia ac secundum Deum Fortunam Tempus omnia gubernare Aristotle 2 Phys 4. affirmes that some there were who held Fortunam esse causam quidem sed humanae menti obscuram Stobaeus Ecles Physic tells us of others Qui partem aliquam Fortunae ex eo esse Divinam censerent quo quidam temere agentes optatum finem consequerentur caeteros verò prudentia utentes optata dâ—stituerent who opinioned that Fortune was in some part Divine for this reason that some men who enterprized their designes rashly and inconsiderately did not withstanding accomplish them successfully and happily attain their ends while others who grounded theirs upon the most apparent probability and managed the means conducing to their procuration with great prudence and circumspection were however fooled in their attempts crost in their hopes and frustrated of their purposes by the suddain intervention of some occult impediment which as no Forecast could discover so no Caution praevent yet cannot all this be justly interpreted any other then their wary and tacite Confession of their Ignorance of the cryptick ways and imperceptible Ends of Providence Divine nor did these great Book-men speak other then the Dialect of the Illiterate and conforme their Expressions to the customary notion of the Multitude when they referred to Fortune those Contingents which to the jndgement of Reason seemed to want a Natural Series of Causes proper for their induction being as it were obtruded upon man by a power Supernatural i. e. so far above the praecaution of his Prudence as the investigation of his Sapience And though some few perhaps whose Curiosity was weak but Superstition strong may be found to have contributed toward the propagation of this Error yet cannot that in reason be extended to the attainder of the major and more judicious number of Philosophers who upon the strictest examination of their Reliques must be found guilty of no more then
De Fluxibus Lapsus graves Nuperriméque Calculum foetum Suum O abdita praeclarior Gemniâ Liber Donasse luce publicum gaudet bonum Jam nunc ad altiora surgit Numinis Assertor est Vindexque providentiae Fortuna Fati vis Voluntas Libera Summi docentur obsequi Dictis Dei Deo favente Cuncta Vocum Copiam Lectissimarum mirer an Rerum magis Utramque miror pariter atque exosculor Utramque pronus veneror longè sequor O Autor annumerande Charltonis Tuis Gassende Chartes Magne Sennerte Angliae Et ipse vivas Libri vivant diu Et Artium de Te optimae certent diu Homines priori Opere devinctos habes Nunc Maximum Tibi obligavisti DEUM Clemens Barksdallus THE CONTENTS SERIES AND ORDER OF THE WHOLE BOOK CHAP. I. The Existence of God demonstrated page 1. SECT I. ARTIC 1. ARistotle the most Knowing and curious Ethnick did yet by his silence in the cardinal point of Theology proclaim the impossibility of mans full understanding the simple and perfect Essence of God p. 1. 2. The Hebrews intimated so much in the immoderate Veneration enjoyned towards his Name Jehovah p. 3. 3. The clearer sighted Christian also can perceive no more of the Divine Nature then what is shadowed in its Attributes ibid. 4. And therefore the Author restrains the Readers expectation only to a Demonstration of the Existence of God in this chap. subnecting a short scheme of his praesent Design and Method p. 4. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THe Mind of man can have no cognition of the Nature of its Objects but by the mediation of their proper Ideas p. 5. 2. Those Ideas are 1 Innate 2 Adventitious 3 Imaginary p. 6. 3. A strict enquiry whether the Ideas of objects existent without our selves hold an exact simlitude to their Natures ibid. 4. A second Disquisition whether any of those things whose Ideas are found in the mind of man have any existence without it p. 8. 5. A firm induction that its impossible for any Idea to import or comprehend more of perfection then its prototype or Cause p. 10. 6. And therefore if any Idea contain more of perfection then can be sound in our minds â— certainly our minds cannot be the Efficient of that Idea ibid. 7. The diversity of Ideas respective to the diversity of Entities ibid. 8. The possible originals of each sort severely examined and all sound desumable from our selves the Idea of God only excepted p. 11. 9. The Idea of God here described cannot be either formally or materially false but the most clear distinct and true of all others p. 13. 10. A declarement of the impossibility of the divine Ideas desumption either from our selves p. 15. 11. Or from some other cause less perfect then God p. 18. 12. Or from our Parents p. 19. 13. The concernment of all or a conclusion that the Idea of the divine nature is innate and congenial to the mind of man p. 20. 14. An abstract or Anacephalaeosis of the whole demonstration p. 21. SECT III. ARTIC 1. THe importance of the term Cogitation p. 21. 2. Of an Idea ibid. 3. Of the objective reality of an Idea p. 22. 4. Of the â—oâ—mal and eminent being of Attributes in the objects of Ideas ibid. â— Of a substance ibid. 6. Of the word Mind ibid. 7. Of a Body p. 23. 8. Of the real distinction of two substances ibid. 9. Of the substance supremely perfect ibid. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. OBject 1. That the mind of man being sinite cannot extend to the clear and distinct intellection of an Infinite quatenus an Insinite and the Solution thereof by three distinctions p. 23. 2. Object 2. That the Idea of the divine nature resident in the mind os man is a meer Ens rationis and the Solut p. 27. 3. Object 3. That an effect may have more os reality or persâ—ction thâ—n its Cause and the Solut p. 27. 4. Object 4. That the existence of such an excellent Idea as hath been described of the Divine Nature doth not necessitate the existence of an Entity in all points respondent or superior thereto because of the possible composing such an Idea out of our collections from sensible objects p. 29. And the ample Solut p. 31. 5. Object 5. That the Idea conceived of God is capable of Augmentation and diminution and the clear Solut p. 32. 6. Many scruples concerning the finality manner and form of the Idea imprcst as also concernining the seeming Heterogeneity or Alterily between the essence of the mind and that of the Idea particularly satisfied p. 33. CHAP. II. That God created the world ex nihilo proved by Arguments Apodictical page 39. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe insâ—parability or rather identity of God and Creator b. 39. 2. The two respects which inclined the Author to amore a mâ—le comprobâ—tion of the first Article of our Christian creed together with a dielenchical explosion of that antiquatated delusion that the Vniverse was autocthenous in its original or constructed meerly by Chance ibid. 3. The summary of Empedocles Leucippus Epicurns Democritus c. doctrineâ— of the worlds spontaneous result from a Chaos of Atoms p. 40. 4. A Digression winnowing the Chaffe from the Wheat concealed in the former theory of Epicurns and by the Corollary of some castigations restrictions and additions declaring the great advantages that this Hypothesis of Atoms hath beyond any other concerning the Material Principle of all Bodies as yet excogitated p. 43. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THe conceit of the Worlds fortuitous production disparaged by a praepollency even of Pagan Auctority that profoundly asserted the contrary viz. of 2. Thales Milesius p. 47 48. 3. Anaxagoras ibid. 4. Pythagoras and Plato ibid. 5. The Stoicks p. 49. 6. Aristotle ibid. SECT III. ARTIC 1. THe pretext of Fortune destroyed by the constancy of Nature in her act of specification i. e. the restraint and determination of the semnalties of Animals to the procreation of their like in specie and the Atheists objection of fiequent Anomalous and Heteroplasmical or monstrous Productions dissolved p. 53. 2. The necessity of the Worlds Creation by an Agent infinite in Science and Power proclaimed by the constant Vniformity of Nature in her perpectuation of Vegetables p. 56. 3. The Sun convincively demonstrates the infinite wisdome of its Creator by 3. Arguments viz. 1. The universal convenience of its situation in its proper orb p. 57. 2. The appointment of its continual Circ umgyration p. 58. 3. The contrivement of its oblique motion along the line Ecliptick p. 59. 4. The impresses of an infinite Intelligence plainly legible in the fronts even of Subterraneous Inanimates p. 60. 5. The impossibility of the worlds Creation by any Agent but God illustrated both by the Magnitude and Pulchritude thereof and the Epicureans dream of a motive faculty eternally inherent in Atoms derided p. 61. 6. The Epicureans grand Argument of the possibility of the consiguration of the Vniverse by a casual and spontaneous
disposition of Atoms from the frequent actuall production of an Iusect by the same means or principles countermined by an inversion or Argument à majori ad minus p. 65. 7. An exception against the seeming disparity betwixt their inserence and ours prevented and the invalidity of theirs though their own hypothesis were conceded in terminis declared by an adaequate similitude p. 67. 8. The conclusion of this section or the aequipondium of the praecedent reasons if perpended in the mass and conjunctively to the most perfect demonstration p. 68. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. THat Antique absurd expostulation who◠Instruments Auxiliants materials predisposed God made use of in his act of Fabrication of the Vniverse copiously satisfied and the energie of the Divine Will commonstrated superior to the indigence of either p. 69. 2. A second immodest interrogation wherefore God so long deferred the creation resolved with a detection of the unreasonableness of undecent curiosity p. 73. CHAP. III. Why God Created the World Page 77. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe improbability of the worlds creation by God insinuated by the Atheists from his defect of any possible Motive scope or final cause p. 71. 2. Their first Argument that the divine Nature is above the capacity of either emolument or delectation from the Vniverse p 78. 3. The satisfactory resutation thereof and Gods glory manifested to have been his prime and principal end p. 79. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THeir second Argument that God had no especial regard to the benefit of Man and the Fortification thereof by 8 reasons p. 82. 2. The total redargution thereof by a commonstrance that the benefit and felicity of man was Gods secondary end and the impossibility of satisfaction to the first end by any creature but man concluded from his 1. Rationality p. 86. 2. Sermocination p. 88. 3. Lucretius his 8. reasons subverted particularly p. 90. CHAP. IV. The General Providence of God Demonstrated page 94. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe Authors reasons for his praesent adherence to the common discrimination of Providence from Creation p. 94. 2. The Definition and received Division of divine Providence p. 95. 3. A short list of the principal ethnick Physiologists who in order to their propagation of Atheism have attempted the eradication of this magisterial verity of divine Providence and a gentle cure of S. Hieroms wound caused by his venial lapse from the same ibid. 4. The Atheists first Argument against universal Providence with the absurd and malicious comment of Lucretius thereupon p. 97. 5. Their second Argument and its convenient dissection into two parts viz. 1. The irregularity of contingencies p. 99. 2. The unequal or unjust distribution of good and evil p. 101. SECT II. ARTIC 1. That the Notion of General Providence is Proleptical inferred from the umversality of its recepeption p. 102. 2. From the misplaced devotion of Idolaters ibid. 3. From the confession of most Philosophers of the highest forme as of 1. Ecphantus p. 103 2. Plato ibid. 3. Aristotle ibid. 4. The Stoicks p. 104. 5. The Academicks and Scepticks ibid. 4. A review of the induction and the Argument found to be Apodictical on one side and on the other only perswasive p. 105. SECT III. ARTIC 1. GOds General Providence demonstrated by the Idea of his Nature reflected on our thoughts p. 107. 2. The same particularly supported by that trinity of Attributes viz. his 1. Infinite Wisdome p. 109. 2. Infinite Power ibid. 3. Infinite Goodness p. 110. 3. The necessity of the worlds gubernation by the indefinent influence of Gods general Providence demonstrated from the consideration of the absolute and total dependence of all Second Causes upon the First p. 111. 4. The vastity of the world the infinite variety of its parts and the irreconcileable discord of many natures demonstrate as much p. 113. 5. Vnder what restriction we are to understand that tropology of some Hermetical Philosophers Deum esse Animam Mundi p. 114. 6. The Atheists subterfuges of Nature and Fortune praecluded p. 116. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. THe Atheists first Antiprovidential Argument refuted by the Perfection of the Divine Nature and their absurdity in commensurating the excellencies of God by the infinitely inferior Faculties of man detected ibid. 2. Divinity demonstrated superior to the circumscription both of Time and Place p. 118. 3. That the procuration of all the infinitely various actions of second causes in the World cannot be any interturbation of Gods serene felicity proved by an Argument à minori p. 119. 4. The same illustrated by a second comparison p. 120. 5. That the administration of petty occurrences can be no indignity or disparagement to the sacred Majesty of God but on the Contrary absolutely essential to him firmly evicted from the universality of his Cognition and Presence p. 121. SECT V. ARTIC 1. THe first division of the Atheists second objection viz. that the apparent irregularity of events doth justisie their non-praedestination or meer Contingency strongly convelled and that to the praeordination of Divinity nothing can be casual clearly commonstrated p. 124. 2. The Authors Antithesis that all Natural Agents are under the strict laws of their distinct species p. 129. 3. A second Counterposition that those laws were instituted and sancited by an infinite wisdome ibid. 4. A third that the legislator hath reserved to himself a praerogative power to alter transcend invert or repeal the laws of Nature ibid. 5. The verity of the first and second Positions amply demonstrated p. 130. 6. The verity of the third Position demonstrated p. 136. 7. A farther confirmation of the same by an Argument from the miraculous operations of God in praeterito p. 137. 8. That there was an universal Deluge p. 138. 9. The Cessation of Satans Oracles after the advent of the Word of Truth proved authentiquely ibid. 10. That there was a prodigious Eclips of the Sun at the passion of our Saviour p. 140. 11. A Demonstration of the impossibility of the Catholique Deluges proceeding from Causes Natural p. 141. 12. That the Cessation of Pagan Oracles upon the incarnation of God was an effect meerly fupernatural comprobated uncontrollably p. 146. 13. That the Eclips of the Sun at the death of Christ was purely Metaphysical irrefutably demonstrated p. 149. 14. The Adaequatien of all to the verification of the Authors third Position p. 152. SECT VI. ARTIC 1. LUcretius his blasphemy that mans ignorance of the energy of Natural Causes is the sole basis of the opinion of an Universal Providence p. 152. 2. The redargution thereof p. 153. 3. Magnanimity the proper effect of Religion p. 154. 4. The opinion of a General Providence consistent with Physiology p. 155. 5. Lucretius his scruples concerning the seemingly temerarious effects of the Thunderbolt singularly resolved ibid. CHAP. V. The especial Providence of God Demonstrated page 157. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe introduction intimating the neer cognation betwixt this present and the precedent Theme and the necessity of the Authors
To instance I finde within my self two divers Ideas of the Sun the one taken from my sense which I therefore think fit to refer to that classis of Ideas called Adventitious representing the Sun in a very small round of less diameter then a Coach wheel the other from the reasons or maximes of Astronomy i. e. extracted by way of induction from certain Notions implantate in me or by any other way whatever composed or modelled which represents the Sun in a vast circumference much larger then the Terraqueous Globe Now both these cannot exactly respond in magnitude to their Originall the Sun existent without me and reason offers me invincible evidence to assure that image to be the most unlike which seems to have most neerly streamed from the Sun it self All which considerations to ample satisfaction evince that hitherto I have not upon any scientificall and authentick judgement but onely upon a certain obscure and blinde impulse from within beleived that there are a sort of Entities existent without the sphear of my nature which by subtle transfusion through the organs of my senses convey the Ideas or Idols of themselves into my mind But I have found out another certain way for the more happy progress of my enquiry Whether any of those entities whose Article 4. A second disquisition whether any of those things whose Ideas are sound in the mind of man have any reall existence without it Ideas sojurn within me have any reall existence without me and this is it These Ideas considered in this relation that they are certain modi cogitandi or means which the soul makes use of in order to her act of Cogitation have indeed no dissimilitude Alogy or inequality amongst themselves and all seem to slow from me in one and the same chanel after one and the same manner but considered in this interest that one represents one thing a second another a third another quite different from both manifest it is that they hugely differ each from other as to the degrees of more or lesse objective reality For doubtlesse those Ideas which represent substances are more something or to speak more intelligibly though more scholastically contain in them more of objective reality then those which represent only certain modifications of substances or meer Accidents and again that Idea by which I speculate some supreme Essence or Deity eternall omniscient omnipotent creator and conservator of this great All c. seems in severe truth to comprehend more of objective Reality or Formall Verity then such poor Ideas that carry onely the shadowes of some subordinate dependent and finite substances Now evident it is by the light of Nature that there must be so much at least if not more in the Cause efficient and Total as is in the effect of the same Cause For I demand from what can the effect derive its reality but from the Cause and how can the Cause bequeath that to the effect which it self is destitute of Out of which root spring two branches of ever flourishing truth 1. Nihil à nihilo fieri nothing can be made by nothing 2. Id quod magis perfectum est hoc est quod plus realitatis in se continet fieri non posse ab eo quod minus perfectum est A more perfect something i. e. which imports more of objective reality cannot be produced by a lesse perfect something So that I may safely infer that this position hath not its verity restrained to those effects onely whose Reality is Actual or Formal but extended also to those Ideas in which is considered only their Reality objective For example a stone that never was before cannot only not now begin to be unless it be produced by some other thing which in it self hath formally and eminently what ever is included in the perfect or full nature of the stone nor can heat be introduced into any subject that was not formerly hot unless by something of equal perfection or at least equivalent to heat but besides all this there cannot be in me the Idea of a stone unless that Idea be first inserted into me by some cause wherein there is so much at least of reality as I conceive to be in the stone or in the heat For though that Cause transfuse nothing of its Actual or Formal reality into my Idea yet am not I therefore to apprehend my Idea to be the less reall but that the nature of it is such that it can require no more reality formal ex se then what it borrowes from my cogitation whose manner of apprehension it is But that this my Idea comprehends this or that objective reality rather then another this must of necessity inevitable arise unto it from some other Cause wherein is so much at least of reality Formal as the Idea contains of objective For if I grant any thing to be found in the Idea which was not in the Cause thereof that something it must derive from nothing but how imperfect soever that Modus essendi or manner of being whereby a thing is objectively in the Intellect by an Idea or representative be yet is it not wholy nothing and cannot therefore proceed from nothing Nor have I any cause to suspect that since the reality which I consider in my Ideas is onely objective that therefore the same reality cannot be formally inherent in the causes of them but that it is sufficient to their nature that it be in them only objectively For as that Modus essendi objectivus belongs to those Ideas by the charter of their own peculiar nature so doth that Modus essendi sormalis properly belong to their causes at least to the principal and grand cause by the law of their essence Further though I allow it possible for one Idea to produce Article 5. A firme induction that its impossible for any Idea to import or comprehend more of perfection then its prototype or cause another yet I can never heer admit a possibility of a progress in infinitum of unravelling the pedigree to a length so immense as never to goe so high as the Adam or Grandfather Idea but must at length arrive at the Ne ultra or first Idea whose cause is the Archtype or Protoplast wherein all that reality is inherent Formally which is in the Idea only objectively So that by the light of Nature I read this unalterable Axiome that those Ideas or Images of other natures or entities which are in my understanding are certain Counter-parts or resemblances which in truth come short of the perfection of those objects from which they were desumed and cannot be conceived to contain any thing greater or of more perfection then their Causes From hence my thoughts advance to this conclusion If the Article 6. And therefore if any Idea contain more of perfection then can be found in our minds certainly our minds cannot â—e the efficient of that transcendent Idea reality objective of any Idea be so
I should have given unto my self also all those perfections whereof I have the Idea in my mind and so I my self should have been God Nor am I bound to conceive that those excellencies wanting to the accomplishment of my nature can be more difficult to acquire then those graduall abilities of which I am already master for on the contrary t is manifest that it must import infinitely more of difficulty for me to have had a being i. e. for a Cogitant something to be deduced from nothing then for me being once constituted in a Capacity to attain to the cognition of many things whereof I am now actually ignorant which can be esteemed no more but the Accidents of that substance And assuredly had I borrowed the greater my substantiality from my own stock of power I should not have denied unto my self the less those Accumulations or accidentall additions nor any other of those divine accomplishments which I understand to be included in the Idea of God why because no one of those seem more difficult to be acquired and if any were more difficult for me to aspire unto t is more then probable I should understand that difficulty if I had those Faculties of which my nature stands possessed from my own donation in respect I should find my power to be terminated in them Nor doe I evade the convictive rigor of these reasons if I adventure on this supposition that I have been ever heretofore as I now am as if the induction of this hypothesis would be that therefore I am to trace the genealogy of my essence no higher then my self or seek out no other cause of my Existence for in respect that all time may be divided into innumerable parts each whereof hath no necessary dependence on the rest either precedent or subsequent from hence that I have formerly been is no valid consequence that therefore I must now be unlesse some other cause be admitted which dothfreshly create me in each of those particles or atoms of time and particularly in this instant moment i. e. doth constantly conserve me in being For manifest it must be to any that looks attentively into the nature of Duration that to the Conservation of any thing through all those several minutes in which its existence endureth is required no less then the same power and act which is necessary to the Creation of the same thing anew if it were not already existent and consequently that the act of Conservation doth not at all but in the cloudy reason of man differ from the act of Creation These things thus stated I am concerned to propose to my self this interrogation Whether there be any power inherent in my nature whereby I may be enabled to conserve my self the same in the future that I am now in the present for since I am nothing but a meer res cogitans for here I precisely regard only that part of my self which is properly and distinctly a Cogitant substance if there were any such power conservatory radicated in my essence doubtless I should be conscious of it but I am convicted there is none such and therefore from this one evidence that I cannot maintain or perpetuate my own being for the shortest moment imaginable I judge that I am subordinate unto and dependent upon some other Entity distinct from my self But to tolerate any doubt in this my meditation in order to the exclusion of all doubts from the intended result or conclusion put the case that this Entitie to whose sufficiency I owe my Conservation pardon ò thou incomprehensible Essence thou great and sole Preserver of men pardon this supposition that modestly intends only the clearer demonstration of thy Supremacy is not God and that I deduce my production from my Parents or some other cause less perfect then God For determination t is an Axiome to which every Sceptick will readily condescend Tantundem ad minimum esse debere in causa quantum est in effectu there must be so much at least in the cause as is found in the effect and therefore since I am res cogitans a substance thinking and having a certain Idea of God in me what cause soever be at length assigned for the principle or fountain of my being that cause also must be Ens cogitans and must possess the Idea of all those perfections which I ascribe unto God Now of that cause it may be again enquired whether it were derived from it self or from some other Cause for if from it selfe then may it bee naturally collected from what hath preceded in this disquisition that such a Cause is God For as it hath the power or act of self-existence or self-conservation so also undoubtedly hath it the ability of actually possessing all such perfections the Idea whereof it comprehends in it self i. e. all such accomplishments as I conceive to be concentred in God But if from some other cause then I repeat my question again Article 11. Oâ— from some other cause leâ—s perfect then God concerning this other cause whether that had its being from it self or from another untill I arrive successively at the first Cause or highest linke in the chain which also will be God For no melancholy can be so absurd as to dream of a progress in infinitum in the series of Causes especially since I doe not here intend that Cause only which did in time past produce me but principally that which doth conserve me in the present Nor can it be imagined that a plurality of Causes met concurred and conspired to the making up of my nature and that from one cause I inherited the Idea of one of the perfections which I attribute to God from a second the Idea of another from a third the Idea of another c. so that all those perfections may indeed be found severally in the distinct and scattered peices of the Universe but no where conjoyned and amassed together in one single Essence which might be God For on the contrary the Vnity Simplicity Inseparability or Identity of all those excellencies in God is one of the chiefest of those perfections which I understand to be in him nor assuredly could the Idea of the Vnity of all those his Perfections be placed in me by any other cause from whom I could not acquire the Ideas of other perfections also nor could he have effected that I should understand them conjoyned and married together by an indissoluble union unless he had also effected that I should know what they are in their distinction To expunge the last scruple and so render this demonstration of the Existence of God fair and immaculate have not my Article 12 Or from our Paâ—ents Progenitors devolved a being to my Parents and they devolved the like to me and may not this Idea of those perfections which I attribute to God be implanted radically in this my being so derived down to me by propagation without the necessary insertion of it by
the immediate hand of any such Supreme nature really existent in which all those Attributes are Formally inherent and coessential By no means For though I may in some latitude allow my Parents to be the causes of my generation yet cannot I think them to be the cause of my Conservation since they cannot conserve themselves nor have they made me what I am i. e. constituted me to be Res cogitans an Entitie whose nature is to think but onely as subordinate and instrumental causes have contributed certain requisite dispositions or qualifications to that matter in which I understand my self i. e. my mind or rational soul which in this discourse I constantly take for the whole of my self to be enshrined And upon the credit of this consideration there can be no difficulty taken up to countermand the certitude of my assertion but I may safely conclude that from this position I am existent and my minde contains a certain Idea of a most perfect being i. e. of God it is most genuinly and most evidently demonstrated that God is also Existent Having sufficiently assured my self that this Idea which I have of the Supreme Being or most and only perfect Ens is too excellent Article 13. The concernment of all or a conclusion that the Idea of the divine nature is innate and congenial to the mind of man to be desumed from my self from my Parents or from other Causes which import not so much of Reality Formal and Eminent as the Idea imports of objective it remains only that I explore how and when I received this Idea from God For I never drew it in through the windowes of my senses nor was it ever obtruded upon me without either my expectation or notice as frequently the Ideas of sensible objects are when those objects offer themselves to the external organs of the senses nor was it ever modelled or coyned by me in the laboratory of my Imagination since it is not in my power either to detract any thing from or superadd any thing unto it Wherefore it must be primitively implanted in and congenial to my very Essence no otherwise then as the Idea of my self is implanted or essentially impressed upon my self And surely to a sober and well ordered consideration it can seem no wonder that God when he was pleased to create me hath imprinted this Idea of himself upon my Soul that it might remain as an indelible Mark or Signature whereupon when I reflect my cogitations I should instantly know and acknowledge my self to be the work of his almighty hand Nor is it necessary that this Mark or Impress should be a thing plainly distinct from the work it self from my Essence but upon this one ground that God hath created me t is very credible that he created me in some degree or respect after the Similitude and image of himself and that this Similitude wherein the Idea of God is included may be understood by me by the operation or information of the same Faculty by which I am impower'd to understand my self i. e. that when I convert the eye of my Soul my reason inwards upon my self I doe not only clearly perceive my self to be an Entity incompleat dependent on some Superior principle and indefinitely aspiring â—o greater and better things but at the same instant I understand also that Superior Principle upon which I depend to possess all those greater accomplishments not indefinitely and in potentia only but even infinitely and actually and so to be God And so all the nerves of the Argument may be twisted together Article 14. An abstract or Anacephalaeosis of the whole demonstration into this short though never-to-be-bâ—oken Cord that I cannot but acknowledge it an absolute impossibility that I should exist being of such a nature as I am i. e. having the Idea of God imprinted upon my mind unless God also did really exist that very God I mean whose Idea is in me i. e. an infinite essence actually possessing all perfections which though I cannot comprehend yet in some degree I can with humility and veneration speculate through the perspective of profound and abstracted Cogitation SECT III. NOw in consideration that many of those Metaphysical Terms and singular expressions which I have been forced to make use of in the precedent demonstration of the Existence of God may be conceived either too difficult for the unriper sort of heads or at least ambiguous and therefore subject to perversion as not being sufficiently adequate and restrained to those notions to which I have applied them I have thought it requisite to subjoyn the particular Explanation or proper definition of each that I could beleive subject to obscurity or exception In the word Cogitation I comprehend whatsoever is so contained in us that we are immediately conscious thereof Thus all Article 1. The importance of the term Cogitation the operations of the Will Intellect Imagination and Senses fall under this one notion of Cogitations and the particle immediately I have annexed to exclude all those things that are consequent to these operations as motion voluntary hath Cogitation for its original but is it self plainly distinct from cogitation â—y an Idea I understand that forme of any Cogitation by the immediate perception whereof I come to be fully conscious Article 2. Of an Idea of that particular cogitation so that I can express no one thing in words when I understand what I speak but from thence it is made evident unto me that I have in me the particular Idea of that thing which I signifie by those words And so I doe not call only those Images depicted or engraven on my Pharisie Ideas yea in this discourse I doe not allow them to be Ideas as they are depicted in my Phansy corporeal i. e. in any parcel of my brain but only as they serve as certain characters to informe my minde when converted upon that part of my brain where my phansie is seated By the objective reality of an Idea I intend the Entity of that thing represented by that Idea And according to the same intention Article 3. Of the objective reality of an Idea we may say the Perfection objective or Artisice objective c. For whatever things we perceive as in the objects of Ideas the same things in every particular are objectively included in the Ideas of those objects The same things are said to be Formally in the objects of Ideas Article 4. Of the Formal and eminent being of Attributes in the objects of of Ideas when they are truly such in them as we perceive them to be or when our Ideas expresly respond to their nature and Eminently when they are not indeed Talia but Tanta equivalent insomuch that they may be their convenient substitutes or serve in their rooms A Substance signifies any thing wherein as in subjecto is immediately Article 5. Of a substance inherent any Quality or Attribute whose Idea is in us or
thus That the Celestiall orbs and all their radiant Furniture the stars are wheeld about by a constant and even circumgyration that they veer perpetually towards that point of the World unto which they first inclin'd and never change either the way or tenor of their Circumvolutions that they observe the same distance each from other which they obtained at the instant of their Formation nor sink down upon and so crowd or enterfeire each the other that the Eclipses of the two great Luminaries necessarily succeed upon the conjunction of the same Causes in our days as in the infancy of Nature and may therefore with so much facility as certainty be prognosticated and predicted by the rules of Astronomy in brief that such and such determinate effects arise from the Concurrence and coefficiencies of such and such particular Causes c. all these we are not to referre to any other Principle or Efficient but that Fortune whereby they were so and so disposed in the first Casual Emergency of the World nor are those constant and setled operations produced by any other necessity then what fell to their Efficients at the primitive segregation concourse disposition coadunation of those Atoms whereof their bodies are compacted That before the constitution of the Universe there was an infinite Chaos of Atoms of various figures and magnitudes in an infinite space floating hither and thither hurried up and down on all sides crowding impelling and justling each other by reason of the Tendency resulting from their own innate Gravity That after a long long afflux reflux conflux elevation depression coagmentation and other various and successive agitations and molitions of these Atoms when each order had chanced to confront and meet with others most consimilar and convenient then at last they all conspired acquiesced and fixed in this regular position and situation which constitutes the Forme of the Universe as Lucretius who was deplorably infected with this accurst contagion of Epicurus hath briesly exprest it Quae quia multa modis multis vexata per omne Ex infinito vexantur percita plagis Omne genus motus coetus experiundo Tandem deveniunt iu tales disposituras Qualibus haec rebus consist it summa creata c. The Worlds Materials having first been tost An infinite Time within an infinite Roome From this to that uncircumscribed coast And made by their own Tendency to roame In various Motions did at last quiesce In these Positions which they now possess That upon the Diacrisis or segregation of heterogeneal Atoms succeeding upon a circumvolution gyration or vertiginous eddy of them in the confusion of their eternal Chaos the more gross and ponderous tended towards the Center or downwards and in their descent expressed the more gracile and lighter and impelled them upwards which convening all together in the circumference of the immense vortex wedged in each other into the form of an integument or cortex called Coelum or heaven but the more gross and weighty crowding to the centrals were there compacted and coagmentated into a solid mass the Earth and the remaining matter of a midle nature upon the concurse of its insensible particles assumed to it self the form of a Humid substance and part thereof being afterward circumagitated uncessantly and so both tornated and calefacted was graduated into many orbs of Light the Sun Moon and Stars the residue being reserved for the compaction of other bodies c. And this if my memory hath proved a faithfull Steward of my readings is the marrow of Leucippus Empedocles Epicurus and Democritus their doctrine concerning the spontaneous configuration of the Universe T is proverbial amongst Scholars and long since applyed by an Author of good repute Aneponymus in lib. de substant physic Article 4. A Digression winnowing the Chasse from the Wheat concealed in the former theory of Epicurus by the corollary of some castigations restrictions and additions declaring the great advantages that this Hypothesis of Atoms hath beyond any other concerning the Material Principle of all Bodies as yet excogitated to this particular Case Nullam esse tam falsam opinionem quae non habeat aliquid veri admistum sed tamen illud admistione cujusdam falsi â—bscurari that no opinion hath so much of falshood as not to contain some sprinkling of truth though that spark of truth be so obscured by the cloud of prejudice arising from the discovery of the falsity admixt that it may require the subtile and decisive judgement of an Oedipus for its discernment and sequestration And in this heap of dross lies raked up so much pure and rich metall as if by the chymistry of an industrious hand extracted may more then fully compensate the patient Lecture of a short Digression In this old Romance of the spontaneous result of the World from a Casual segregation and disposition of that Abysse of Atoms which rowled up and down to and fro by an impetuous and continual inquietude estuation or civil war caused by their ingenite propensity to motion in the range of the infinite space some things sound so harsh and discordant to meer Reason as they are justly to be abominated others carry the smooth face of so much Verisimility as they deserve to be admitted at least diligently and impartially examined The Positions we are to reject are these 1. that the Chaos of Atoms was non-principiate or as antient as Eternity 2. that they were not created ex nihilo ab aliqua beata simul ac immortali Causa by God 3. that they were not becalmd separated ranged and disposed into their proper stations in that serene order and figure which they are now of inevitable necessity bound to observe in every single concretion or individual Entity by the artifice of any other Cause but the blind Ordination or improvident disposure of Fortune All which smells so strong of the Fable and strikes the nosethrills as wel of the meer Natural man as the Pious with such infectious stench that nothing but the opportunity of confutation can excuse my coming so neer it And yet notwithstanding I have never yet found out any justifiable ground why Atoms may not be reputed Mundi materies the Material Principle of the Universe provided that we allow that God created that first Matter out of Nothing that his Wisdome modelled and cast them into that excellent composure or figure which the visible World now holds and that ever since by reason of the impulsion of their native Tendency or primitive impression they strictly conform to the laws of his beneplacuits and punctually execute those several functions which his almighty Will then charged upon their determinate and specifical Concretions For with the advantage of these restrictions the Atoms of Epicurus have more of probability and hold rational through most of those operations which occurr to the curiosity of the Philosopher with more familiarity to our conceptions and less variation or apostasie from the first Hypothesis then the
impossible Materia Prima of Aristotle then the Substantial Principle of Plato the Hyle of the Stoicks or indeed then any other imaginable Praeexistent in the immense space And after a mature confronting collation and comparative perpension of the most general conveniences and congruities of all we have found that from the ground-work of Atoms we are able to make out what is Material what Corporeal what Great what Little what Rare Dense c. but from the others we could never deduce the formal attributes of a body or substance while the original of all things is determined absolutely devoyd both of Quantity and Quality Actual and amounts to no higher a degree of reality then a meer Privation which a righteous enquiry will soon reduce to nothing Nor is that affrighting Dissiculty in the Theory of Atoms which the eye of every Pedantick Sophister first glances upon at the very mention thereof more then this shadow of a scruple viz. how so vast a mass as this Giant the Universe could be made up of such minute particles as Atoms which every man understands to be much below the perception of sense and never to be fathomed but by the subtile arms of the Intellect For I dare entrust the solution of it to any moderate judgement that shall take the pleasure to conceive this Analytick Scale or degradation of Magnitude Let us grant the globe of Earth which seems to contain most of corporeity to be but one part of the Universe composed of many such masses congested and the law of consequence will compell us to concede that the globe of the earth may be coagmentated of many smaller masses piled one upon another or of mountains as Atlas Caucasus c. cemented together that those Mountains may result from an aggregation of rocks those rocks from an accumulation of stones those stones from a conflux and ferrumination of grains of sand that sand from a lesser assembly of dust that dust from a minor collection of Atoms This granted let us have recourse to that famous Demonstration of the glorious Archimed in Aren whereby it is evicted that twenty five Cyphers or Arithmetical notes set in successive order 100000 c. do exhibite the full number of those Granules of sand which suffice to make up the vast bulk of the World according to the vulgarly received magnitude thereof though each of those granules be determined so exiguous that one grain of Popie seed may contain ten thousand of them I say according to the Magnitude vulgarly received for if with Aristarchus whose opinion Copernicus in the last age revived you shall goe higher and enlarge the extension of the world yet according to the Algebra of Archimed will no more then sixty four Cyphers be required to calculate the number of grains of sand of the same dimensions with the former which equal the almost incredible vastity of the Universe Now if you please to goe lower in the quantity of those minute grains and sink them down even to the tenuity of an Atom imagine that each of those small particles is composed of ten hundred thousand Atoms and advance this number by multiplying it into 64 and even then will the number of those particles be exprest by no more then 70. Lower yet if you think your last division went not so far as insectility dichotomize those minute particles each into ten hundred millions and then upon a just Multiplication made the number provenient shall not exceed the reach of 76 Cyphers Nay drive the matter so far that your thoughts may even lose themselves in the pursuit and you shall still deprehend how easily you may be supplyed with Cyphers enough to fulfill the number of all those Atoms which are necessary to the amassment of a bulk equal to this of the World There is yet a fourth incongruity in this doctrine of Epicurus worthy our explosion viz. That Atoms had from all eternity a faculty of Motion or impetuous tendency inherent in them and received not the same from any forreign principle or impression extradvenient But yet can I meet with no impediment that may hinder me from conceiving that Atoms are perpetually active and moveable by the agitation of that internal tendency or virtual impression which the Father of Nature conferred upon them in the first moment of their miraculous production ex nihilo And truly thus refined the Hypothesis of Atoms is less guilty of either inconvenience or incertitude then any other concerning the fâ—rst material principle nay it hath thus much more of congruity and satisfaction then all the rest that it fitly declares the radical Cause of all Motion activity or energie in second Causes or natures once removed from the Primus Motor God which can by no means be commonstrated from any other supposition with the like constancy correspondence and perspicuity especially if we look upon that Form which the Schools commonly conclude on as the main spring in all motion or efficient of all activity For whatever of real Entity they allow to be therein they desume from no other origine but the simple and naked Matter and yet by unpardonable incircumspection or forgetfulness they make that Matter absolutely idle and devoid of all Motive or active virtue Nor did Plato himself miss this consideration but seems to have held the lamp to posterity in this particular for though he restrains not his notion to the word Atoms yet from his description of an Exiguity Quam intellectus non sensus capiat and from the immediate subjunction of De multitudine illarum déque motionibus alii sque facultatibus congruum prorsus erat Deum providere quatenus natura necessitati obediens ultrò obsecundaret c. in Timaeo t is a lawful conjecture that he pointed directly upon the sense These short Animadversions premised that we may as well supply the Defects as correct the depravities of this opinion of Epicurus suppose we in short that God in the first act of his Wisdome and Power out of the Tohu or nothing created such a proportionate congeries or just mass of Atoms as was necessary to the constitution of the Universe suppose we also that all those Atoms in the instant of their creation received immediately from God a faculty of self-motion and consequently of concurring crowding justling repelling resilition exsilition and reciprocal complectence concatenation revinction c. according to the respective preordination in the Divine Intellect and then will all the subsequent operations of nature remain so clear and easie that a meer Ethnick by the guidance of those two lamps Sense and Ratiocination may progress to a physical theory of them and thereby salve all the Phaenomena's with less apostasie from first Principles proposed then by any other hypothesis yet excogitated A meer Ethnick I say for we who have devolved unto us the inestimable blessing of Moses history of the Creation have far other thoughts of that method or order wherein the World was founded and finished
lines pages sheets should attain to that admirable Form which they now hold by a meer fortuitous assembly and not by the certain and predestinate ordination of some supremely-intelligent Cause These reasons though not woven into that strict method which Article 8. The conclusion of this section or the aequipondium of the precedeÌ„t reasons if perpended in the mass and conjunctively to the most perfect demonstration is required to fulfill the web of perfect demonstrations doe yet seem strong enough in their single inferences undeniably to conclude the Creation of the Vniverse out of no praeexistence by the sole and immediate Fiat of the same Essence and if judiciously twisted together into one Syndrome or complex Argument must oblige as firmly since they clearly evince the first Article of the Christians Creed as an uncontrollable verity which none but such degenerate miscreants in whom the Light of Nature is wholly extinct or such as are desperatly resolved to shut the eye of their minde against the splendor of that infallible Criterion can longer doubt of And therefore having determined neither to scandal the intellectuals of my Reader either by indubitating his facile perception of the force of those proofs already urged or multiplying others in order to the illustration of that truth to which he hath formerly submitted his plenary assent nor unfruitfully to spend that time and paper which I have devoted to the explanation and ratification of other necessary points on a work of supererogation I shall onely fringe this exercise with that pertinent and emphatical passage of Lactantius De Opif. Dei cap. 6. Tanta ergo qui videat talia potest existimare nulla effecta esse consilio nulla providentia nulla ratione divina sed ex Atomis subtilibus exiguis concreta esse tanta miracula nonne prodigio simile est aut natum esse hominem qui haec diceret ut Leucippum aut extitisse qui crederet ut Democritum qui auditor ejus fuit vel Epicurum in quem vanitas omnis de Leucippi sonte prostuxit and so proceed to the satisfaction of two collateral Scruples SECT IV. Scruple 1. THe Curiosity of some whether more insolent or vain is Article 1. That Antique absurd expostulation what Instruments Auxiliants materials predisposd God made use of in his act of Fabrication of the Universe copâ—ously satisfied and the energie of the divine Will commonstrated superior to the indigence of either hard to determine hath been so audacious as to adventure upon this Quere If God made the world pray what instruments tools mechanick engines what assistants did he make use of in the work The Satisfaction This is no green impiety unless it hath lately budded forth again amongst those Human-devils the Ranters the report of whose prodigious blasphemies hath sometimes transported me to a hatred at least a contempt of my self for being in the same rank of reatures and made me wish for a second deluge but almost half as old as Time and may be traced as high as the Epoche of the Grecian learning witness those many secret convulsions of it by Plato both in his Parmenides and Tâ—mâ—us while he frequently affirmes the divine Nature to be Inorganical and the immediate operations of the universal cause to be above the necessity of Corporeal means witness also Cicero most of whose streams came out of the Grecian fountain who in 1. De Nat. Deor. introducing the Atheist Vellejus disputing against Plato and the Stoicks who held the divine essence to be the Author of the Universe proposeth the scruple at large in these Words Quibus enim oculis intueri potuit vester Plato fabrâ—cam illam tanti operis qua construi à Deo at que aedificari muâ—dum facit quae molitio quae ferramenta qui vectes quae machinae qui ministri tanti muneris fuerunt c. That boldness is the daughter of ignorance is herein plainly verified for had these unhappy Pagans understood any thing of the majestick essence of divinity or but apprehended the vast disparity between the efficiency of the Highest and that of all other Subordinate causes t is more then probable they had not been so sawcy with his imperial Attribute Omnipotence nor run into that common mistake of flesh and bloud of measuring the ways of God by the ways of man True t is that man hath need of instruments to the performance of any peice of Art nor can the Geometrician draw his lines without a rule or describe a circle without the help of his compass the Carpenter work without his Axe Saw and other tools the Smith without his fire hammer anvill c. all which the wit of man sharpned by necessity hath invented to compensate the insufficiency of his naked hands made by nature either too soft too weak or too obtuse for those difficult uses But yet what can impede our assurance of the eternal existence of a more Noble Essicient whose Will is infinite Power and that Power infinite Activity whose single Let it be done is both Cause and Means and whose simple act of Volition not onely the Efficient but also the Instrument Do not we observe that I may extract an Argument from the evidence of sense how in the twinckling of a lovers eye that comely Arch of colours the Rain-bow is painted on the clouds and yet without either hand compass or pencill doe we not behold whole mountains of ponderous Clouds piled one upon another and yet neither vessels to lave up nor engines to sustain that sea of water And cannot these familiar observations instruct us with more knowledge then to doubt the fabrication of the world without corporeal organs Why is our reason so immodest as to inquire into the ability of the First cause when alas it is not large enough to comprehend the efficacy of the weakest Secondary if the meanest and most ordinary effect of Nature imports so much stupendious industry as transcends the narrow capacity of man what audacious ignorance is it in him to question the eâ—ergie of that Principle that made Nature her self and prescribed her rules to act by from which she cannot vary without a miraculous dispensation We are willing forsooth to profess that we cannot understand by what artifice the delicate body of a Pismire is configurated animated and impowered for the noble actions of sense and voluntary motion nay for ought we know to the contrary for that more noble and elaborate office of discourse also and yet when we come to contemplate the more magnificent form of the Vniverse shall we degenerate into such impertinent Ideots as to debate the Mathematick energie of its Creator and demand how he could operate without Engines to transport adfer and winde up the materials with scaffolds to advance the roof or servants to assist in several offices requisite Assuredly as the frame of that slender Animal doth confess a certain Faculty by which it was modelled delineated and compacted though the reason
to stand in the front of those Sententiae ratae which he dared Scepticity withall Nor did his sedulous Commentator Lucretius recede an inch from the same text but fondly commensurating the power of an Infinite wisdome by the narrow capacity of his own finite reason preached to the world that to ascribe the government of sublunary affairs to the Gods was impiety in the inference and must implicitly destroy the fundamentals of their Divinity which is made up of Beatitude and Immortality neither of which can consist with the perpetual disquiet and impetuous anxiety of mind which the Administration of so vast and tumultuous a Common-wealth as this of the World must introduce For when he would impose that the shoulders of Divinity though a real Atlas are too weak to sustain so great a weight as that of Rector General under a pretext of tender zeal forsooth he insimulates those of prophanation Qui summum illud quicquid est tam tristi atque multiplici ministerio polluunt as Pliny expresses it and therefore exclaims Nam proh Sancta Deûm tranquilla pectora pace Quae placidum degunt aevum vitamque serenam Quis regere immensi summam Quis habere profundi Indu-manu validas potis est moderanter habenas Quis pariter Coelos omneis convertere omneis Ignibus aethereis terras suffire feraceis Omnibus inque locis esse omni tempore praestò Nubibus ut faciat tenebras coelique serena Concutiat sonitu tum fulmina mittat aedeis Saepe suas disturbet in diversa recedens Saeviat exercens telum quod saepe nocenteis Praeterit exanimatque indignos inque merenteis c. lib. 2. Ah! since the happy and immortal Powers In câ—lme content melt their eternal houres Feasting on self-enjoyment who can keep The rains of Nature Who command the Deep To wind about the ponderous Sphears what arme Hath strength enough what Influence can warme The fruitfull earth with Fires aetherial who Can fill all places and all actions doe To veil the face of Light with sable clouds And wrap the lucid sky in sulph'ry shrouds Whose Coruscations split the fluid aer Convell the feet of Rocks and with despair Affect poor Mortals into Quick silver then turn And with Granadoes his own Temples burn Then dart his flames at Innocence and wound Virtue while guilty Vice continues sound Their other Argument is extracted from the conceived Vncertainty and irregularity of Contingencies and the unaequal Article 5. Their second Argument and its convenient dissection into two parts viz. dispensation of good and evill all things seeming to fall out according to the giddy lottery of Chance and as confusedly as if there were no Providence at all This may be collected as well from that speech of Epicurus charged upon him by that heroick Champian of Divine Monarchy Lactantius Nulla dispositio est 1. The irregularity of contingencies and multa enim facta sunt aliter quà m fieri debuerunt as from the context of his Physiology wherein having made it his Hypothesis that all bodies both coelestial and sublunary were at first configurated by Fortune i. e. arose to such and such particular figures by the casual segregation convention and complexion of the General matter divided into several masses and that by the inclination of their convenient Figures they were adliged to such and such peculiar Motions and accommodated to the necessary causation of determinate viciffitudes he proceeds to reduce all succeeding events in the World to that primitive series of Causes which made their own spontaneous eruption out of the Chaos and attained to the certain rules of their future activity at the same time they attained to their distinctions and single essences denominating that chain of causalities Nature and holding her to be her own Directress and by the law of innate tendency obliged to a perpetual continuation of the same motions begun in the first minute of the worlds composure according to that exclamation of Pontanus Lib. 1. de Stellis Quid vexare Deos frustr à juvat ordine certo Fert Natura vices labuntur ordine certo Sydera tam varios rerum patientia casus Illa suos peragunt motus servant que tenorem Sorte datum c. What boot's it man with fruitless praiers to fret The Ears o' th Gods when Natures Laws are set Beyond Repeal or Alteration The radiant Lamps of heaven still move on In their old tracks nor can the Planets stray In all their wandrings from their native way Or change that Tenor which at first they got Consign'd unto them by their proper Lot The result of all which is that Epicurus would perswade that the Universe is a Commonwealth wherein every single member is by the signature and necessity of its particular constitution instructed in and impelled upon the praecise performance of its peculiar office so as not to want the direction of any Superintendent or to conform to the directions of a General Councel and seems to allow this only difference between the universal Politie of the World and the particular Republique of mankind that in this men frequently make deflexions from the general scope by reason of the seductions of their unstable and irregular judgments but in that all individuals punctually keep to their primitive assignations and so conspire to the satisfaction of the common interest by reason of the constancy of their natures and unalterable necessity of their forms And this Abridgement of his doctrine Plutarch de Fato hath prepared to our hands when personating Epicurus he thus argues Nulla est opus sapientia ordinis instruendi in exercitu si militum quivis sua sponte noverit locum ordinem stationem quam accipere debet tueri neque etiam opus olitoribus Fabrisve murariis si aqua illeic ultrò afsluat indigentibus irratione plantis heic lateres ligna lapidesque eas natura duce motiones at que inclinationes subeant quibus in sua loca inque expetitam concinnitatem coeant c. Now for the other part of the Argument viz. the unequal 2. The unequal or injust distribution of good and evill distribution of Good and Evill and the ordinary intervention of many effects inconsistent with the justice and righteous administration of Divinity this is clearly hinted by Lucretius who makes it the main scope of his sixth Canto to alienate mens minds from the beleif of an Vniversal moderator by several instances of events that seem to hold too visible an affinity to Temerity and Inconsideration to have any relation at all to the judicious method requisite to Providence and particularly towers himself over that one example of the Thunder-bolt as if his reason had slown to a pitch above all possibility of contradiction when yet the summary of all that bold discourse abstracted by an impartial hand amounts to no more then this Since we observe the Thunder-bolt 1. To be for the most part discharged on the heads of the
assertors of Providence is manifest from that saying of Cotta reproving Balbus an eminent Stoick apud Cicer. de natur Deor. 3. At enim minora dii neque agellos singulorum nec viticulas prosequuntur nec si uredo aut grando quidpiam nocuit id Iovi animadvertendum fuit nec in regnis quidem reges omnia minima curant sic enim dicitis c. And lastly that the Academicks and Scepticks were of the 5. The Academicks and Scepticks same perswasion however being carried against the stream of all Affirmative learning by the contrary tide of their own Negative humor and obliged to fall foul upon all truths in defence of their own affected Nescience they have been observed to have had some light skirmishes with the Champians of Providence Nor need we acquiesce in the bare affirmation hereof while to any man that shall with equanimity and attention compare their tender arguments against the opinion of general Providence with those more sinewy and vehement reasons of their profest neutrality in many other notions there will offer it self a fair ground for more then conjecture that they purposely contrived them soft gentle and dissoluble that so they might seem neither to quit their habit of contradiction nor yet to dare the subversion of that catholick position to which all men those few of the black guard of Hell whom we lately nominated excepted had subscribed and which the dictates of their own domestick oracle Reason had confirmed as sacred and uncontrollable To which we may annex the testimony of Gassendus who in Animadvers in lib. 10. Diogen Laert. de Physiologia Epicuri pag. 731. speaking conjunctively of both those sects saies thus ut argument atisunt adversus Providentiam sic opinioni de providentia suam probabilitatem fecerunt neque saltem ea fronte fuerunt ut esse providentiam absolutè inficiarentur Now to take the just dimensions of this Argument let us allow it like Janus to have two faces and then survey the aspect Article 4. A review of the induction and the Argument found to be Apodictical on one side and on the other only perswasive of each a part On one hand it looks Absolute and Apodictical on the other only Perswasive Apodictical since the universality of any beleif such especially as hath ever been attested even by those who have made the profoundest search into its fundamentals and streyned every nerve in the whole body of reason to demolish it is no obscure proof that it must be one of those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Implantate Notions which the same hand that made our nature hath engraven on the table of our minds and lest it not in the power of our depraved Wills totally to obliterate That there are some Implantate Notions no man who hath but learned the Alphabet of his own Nature will dispute Nor is it less certain that all Philosophers have decreed Anticipation which Aristotle in 1. Poster 1. calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 praeexistentem cognitionem and Cicero hath interpreted 1 de Nat. Deor. notionem menti insitam anteceptam quandam in animo informationem to be the Touch-stone of verity nay Empiricus himself forgot his custome of Scepticisme when he came to this point and grew positive advers Gramm advers Ethic. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that no man could so much as enquire or doubt of any thing without Praenotion And that the Notion of the worlds regiment by universal Providence is one of those propositions Quae sunt in nobis adeo antiquae ut iis ex quo esse sentire coepimus evaserimus informati which like letters carved on the bark of a young plant are impressed upon our very Intellect and grow up together with us is already proved collaterally and upon induction in our Demonstration of the Existence of God for therein it is cleared that the excellent Idea which we have of the Supreme Beeing contains all Perfections whatever and among the rest that noble Attribute Creator which to him that shall attentively consider the nature of Duration must sound one and the same thing with Conservator or Governour Only perswasive since humane Auctority considered perse is but an inartificial Argument and binds not but when consorted with others more rational into one syndrome or multiplex demonstration not is the concentration of all mens minds in one and the same assertion an infallible Criterion of its verity For the judgement of man in generall lyes open to the encroachments of Error and the common infirmity of humane nature is not only discoverable in the gross and visible delusions of vulgar heads whose business is to beleive not examine but hath frequently broken out upon the soundest brains and confest it self Epidemical in the absurd mistakes of the greatest Criticks of Truth especially in the promotion and transmission of opinions haereditary and traditional SECT III. LEt us not therefore entrust the supportation of so weighty a Truth to that fragile reed of Auctority but give our selves Article 1. Gods General Providence demonstrated by the Idea of his Nature reflected on our thoughts liberty to imagine that no man ever beleived or asserted an universal Providence and having thus devested our minds of all Praesumption or Anticipation expose them as tables newly derased to receive the pure impressions or sincere documents of the Light of Nature converting our contemplations First upon the Nature of God and thence upon the most exact order and confederacy of all secondary causes in the world First I say let us set our reason a work upon the nature of the First Cause or Eternal Being and order our cogitations thus The same demonstration whereby the mind of man is convicted of the Existence of God doth also at the same time violently but naturally conclude his nature to be so accomplisht in all Perfections as to be above all Access or Addition For manifest it is that by the terme God every man doth understand something to which no perfection is wanting and should it be granted possible that the mind of man could conceive any perfection more then what is comprehended in the idea which it holds of the nature of God yet still would that thing to which it could ascribe that perfection be God Since t is impossible to cogitate any perfection which is not the essential propriety of some Nature and to think any Nature more perfect then the Divine plainly absurd because we conceive that to be most perfect or else we do not conceive it to be God God and Absolute Perfection being one and the same thing and ordinarily conceived as one notion Now to be so insinitely Wise Potent and Good as to order all things in the world to the best to regulate and predetermine the operations of all second Causes to keep Nature her self sober and in tune and so prevent those discords which otherwise would in a moment succeed to the reduction of all to a greater confusion
Voluntary motion and yet are forced by an host of difficulties to retire and suspend their hopes of perfecting their designe were contrived by Fortune and not by the skill of an Artist infinite in Science and Power How familiar is this Logick to every mans understanding the Figures of all things in the adspectable World are exactly Geometrical their actions and uses respectively accommodate their motions constant and regular at all times their effects certain and the laws of every distinct species immutable as to themselves ergo those Figures Actions Vses Motions and Laws were delineated appointed assigned begun and enacted by an Omniscient and omnipotent Providence And this I conceive sufficient to demonstrate the truth of our First assertion viz. that that constant Tenor or establisht method according to which all Natural causes operate was instituted and is perpetuated by an Infinite Wisdome For the support of our Third Thesis that though the actions of all Second causes are impulsive and necessary yet those of the First Article 6. The verity of the third Position demonstrated Cause are Elective and Arbitrary though God hath by the severe laws of Nature bound up the hands of his Creatures limited their activities and punctually consigned them their several provinces yet he hath reserved his own free and as an absolute Monarch can at pleasure alter transcend or pervert those Statutes and give a new Commission to his Ministers to work by a new way in order to the causation of any extraordinary effect which his providence hath decreed of universal or particular benefit we need erect no other pillar of argument but that one firme and immoveable basis the importance of the word Creator For since to be able to produce all things out of nothing by the single efficacy of his word or the energetical blast of his will to endow each distinct species with faculties exactly proportionate and meridional to their distinct destinations and to entail upon them to the expiration of Times own lease that estate in which he enfcoffed them at their creation doth necessarily imply a greater perfection of power then meerly to vary or innovate their efficiencies according to the expedients emergencies or occasional designes of his Providence it remains indisputable upon consequence that to allow him the Greater and yet deny him the less to beleive him to be the Author of that mighty and difficult miracle the Creation and yet doubt the supremacy of his Power by conceiving that he cannot turn Natural Agents out of their common road and order their digressions to the effecting of smaller and easier Rarities must be a manifest Contradiction and an Absurdity that stabbs it self However that we may not seem to entrust so noble and sacred a Article 7. A farther confirmation of the same by an Argument from the miraculous operations of God in praeterito Truth to the protection of one single Reason it becomes our care to superadd for the more security this defence also If God hath frequently manifested his Supremacy by working effects as well above as against the establisht and customary power of natural Agents in times past then doubtless is not his arme shortned nor the fountain of his energy dryed up and he can do the like in the future but he frequently hath ergo c. The Major I am sure no man will boggle at who shall consider that t is the proper privilege of Divinity to be still the same that that virtue which is extreme and so above all addition must necessarily also be above all decay or diminution and therefore he that conceives God subject to Mutability Aâ—â—erity or Deslux blasphemes the Simplicity Purity and Eternity of his Essence and holds but a false Idea of his Nature Nor can the Minor require more proof then its bare Prolation unless the unbeleif of any man shall be so inslexible as not to bowe at the Convulsion of a truth which the Records of all Nations Times and Religions lye open to attest For that there have been observed Prodigious and miraculous accidents such as the most obstinate Idolaters of Nature and those who grew gray in the study of her laws customes and secret magnalias and kept a list of her forces were surprized with aftonishment at the consideration of and after a vain and tedious scrutiny into their abstruse Causalities were forced to refer to the immediate arme of a Supernatural efficient the indisputable monuments of faithfull Antiquity bear witness And he who hath not heard of those Three grand Examples to omit the enumeration of any other that are not universally beleived by men of all interests and perswasions of the superiority of Gods power to that of his servant Nature viz. The Vniversal deluge the Cessation of Oracles and the total Eclipse of the Sun at the passion of our Redeemer can give but weak testimony that he is either Iew Mahometan or Christian The First being reputed not onely true but sacred and thereforeheld Article 8. That there was an universal Deluge as point of faith in common by all three Religions nay countenanced even by Pagan stories and more their setled account of time they computing the second space or intervall of Time the First being little better to them then Prolepticall or as the Heathen called it Adelon immanifest and obscure was dated from the beginning of the World to Ogyges Floud which was about 530 yeers after Noahs from the Floud to the first Olympiad which answers to the year of the World 3174. and comes within about 20 years before the foundation of Rome The Second being imbraced and made authentical by the general consent of Christians upon the forced acknowledgment of Article 9. The Cessation of Satans Oracles after the advent of the Word of Truth proved anthentiquely those whose interest obliged them to invalidate it and those not only Pagans surrounded with the horrid darknesse of idolatry and expecting no day-break from the glorious Sun of Righteousness but even of the Devil himself who though the Father of lies and his honour so highly concerned in the intercision of his impostures and delusions could not yet dissemble this verity but at four severall times and in as many severall places publickly proclaimed it First when from his famous Oracle at Delphos he confest himself to be tongue-tied his fallacious predictions countermanded and his so solemnly pretended Divinity expired being able to return no other answer to the great Augustus whose errand was to have his fortune told him but this Me Puer Hebraeus Divos Deus ipse gubernans Cedere sede jubet tristemque redire sub Orcum Aris ergo dehinc tacitus discedito nostris An Hebrew Child that God whose power 's above All other Gods commands me to remove Hence to the Court of sorrow wherefore goe My Altars quit in silence and nere moe Of Future things from me expect to know A second time when Legion howled out the hideous dirge of their black
of that large Tohu Vacuum Coacervatum or Nothing which must then have bin introduced from the surface of the Waters up to the midle region which Nature could never endure nor had God any necessity to enforce if Aer condensed into Water shrinks into a space or Continent 400. times less then what it possest before condensation for since Water weighs 400. times heavier then Aer as the subtile Galilaeo Dialog 1. del moviment pag. 81. examining the proportions of Gravity betwixt those two bodies demonstratively discovered it must necessarily carry the same proportion also to Space or Locality then assuredly when we shall have calculated the perpendicular height of the Atmosphear or lower region of the Aer and reduced it to the 400 th part we shall soon be satisfied that the Addition which the Aer Aquaefied could bring to the waters of the Sea effused upon the bosome of the earth cannot suffice to swell the Deluge so high as the semialtitude of many lofty mountains such as Slotus in Norway which Franc. Patricius out of Fr. Bacon and Scaliger hath accounted the highest on the earth Athos in Macedonia Tenariff Caucasus Atlas c. whose tops make large encroachments on the midle region and seem to invade the Firmament Again to charge this immense Accumulation of Waters upon 40. days rain though we should conced that rain to be neither Sea evaporated nor Aer condensed is not to undo but entangle the miracle For taking the Altitude of the mountains according to the calculation of the most moderate Geometry and then soberly perpending what aggravation to the Waters of the Sea now converted upon the earth the most violent natural rain of 40. days and nights could probably make which the most hyperbolical conceit cannot advance higher then 40. fathom we shall easily detect the difficulty And secondly as Nature could not afford the Material Cause of this general Inundation the Waters so neither the Mighty Essicient or Impulsive that should with such prodigious impetuosity hoyse up so huge a mass of Sea contrary to the strong renitency or depressure of its Gravity drive it from its native easy Currents in the declining veins and cavities of the earth upon an absolute 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Acclivity on the elevated surface thereof and make it fall in Cataracts up-hill For 1 though the Waters desire to stand above the mountains as the Divine Hebrew Poet hath pleased to phrase it Psalm 104. vers 9. yet they but desire it and by their own inherent and essential Tendency are renderd uncapable to satisfy that elemental ambition for water permitted to its own propensity or inclination immediaiely tendeth downward and therfore he that can conceive a river to desert its declive chanel and climb a precipice without the violence of a Miracle hath a strong Phansy but a weak judgement nor need any man despair to perswade his credulity that Helmonts ridiculous Romance of the Cause of Earthquaks viz. that an Angel or minister of Divine revenge descends into the Centrals of the Earth and there with a great Clapper or Sledge giving a mighty Thump against the feet of Rocks makes a hoarse or grave kind of Bom which enlarging its sound rends the foundations thereof and puts the percussed mass into a rigor or shaking fit of an Ague is a solid and philosophical Verity And thirdly as the Waters could not elevate themselves so neither could the Attractive Virtue of those Celestial Magnets the Sun Moon and Stars work them out of their depths by rarefying them into vapours which mounted up to the midle region of the Aer and there encountred by intense Cold should be reduced to clouds and those again dissolved in Cataracts For should we grant what the Arabian Astrologers returned in answer to the Aegyptian Caliph who had set them to unty this knot viz. that there was a great Conjunction of ♄ and ♃ not long before the floud and the malignant influence of that confederacy much aggravated by another fatal Convention of all the Planets in the watery signe of Pisces immediately preceding it as Sepher Juchasin fol. 148. hath delivered which the learned Mirandula hath sufficiently disproved and smiled at yet must the greatness of the Effect manifestly confute the possibility of that for a Cause First because Nature hath frequently shewed to the world the like Conjunctions but never the like event and again because those Luminaries are not commissioned with so unlimited a power and in their strongest conspiracies of insluence can at most but weakly incline or dispose not at all compell or necessitare nor are their destinations to ruine but conserve the world If therfore Nature uniting all her divisions of Waters below the Moon into one great heap or Abyss must yet fall very much short of that immane proportion requisite to furnish out the Deluge and though her stock had bin large enough yet could she not without apparent destruction of her self i. e. infringing those fundamental Constitutions or Elementary Laws whose constant Tenor only defines her to be Nature assist to their eruption out of their proper Receptaries and their preposterous Ascension up hill truely I am yet to learn what can be conceived to remain but this that those Decumani Fluctus those immens Cataracts had both their supply and motion immediatly from that high hand to which nothing that he wills can be difficult With this Problem I confess I have more then once impuzled my reason yet doth the difficulty sometimes enflame my Curiosity to enquire out the pervestigable part of the miracle viz. Whence Omnipotence summoned this mighty Syndrome or Conflux of Waters to appear at so short a warning upon the face of the Earth or in what part of the Universe they were quartered before and by what wayes and means they were drawn off again and voyded after the Floud That eminent Master of the Opticks and excellent Mathematician Christoph Scheinerus in Rosa Vrsina pag. 693. discoursing against those who have asserted the Incorruptibility of the Heavens quoad partes totum introduceth Ferdinand Quirinus de Salazar a Jesuit in his Comment upon 27. vers of the 8. chap. of the Proverbs of Salomon delivering his opinion derived from others together with reasons to support it that there must be a Tehom Rabba or Abyss of Waters above the Firmament or betwixt the 8 th sphear and the Shecinah or dwelling place of God The Texts of Scripture upon which this opinion is supported are 1 the 7. vers of the 1. Chap. of Genes where the Author of that book describing the several piles or stories of this great building saith thus and God made the Firmament and divided the Waters which were under the Firmament from the waters which were above the firmament c. 2 that of David Psalm 33. vers 7. he layd up the depth in storehouses 3 that of the Angel to Esdras 2. ch 4. vers 7. proposing questions to puzle weak but proud
disprove all that ever he sayd before How dissimilar to Reason that he who durst adventure upon the highest falshood in the world to make himself God should so far forget the maximes of his black Art as of his own accord to confess himself to be the basest of Entities a Devil How remote from all the ways of perswasion that he who had boasted himself Vbiquitary usurped by a counterfeit title the Monarchy of the World and given out that the Prescience of Future Events was not only the natural annex of his Omniscience but the Preordination and disposal of them the adjunct of his Providence should without the impulsion of a superior betray himself chained to utter darknesse to be but a Slave that there was a setled law of Fate above his comptroll as in his excuse to Croesus ruined by his Amphibologie and that his Providence was at best but Praesagition from the concurrent inclinations of second Causes nor his Predictions of things to come other then artificial Conjectures To conclude no man I suppose will be able to remember any other Instance of the Devils Fidelity and Veracity those Confessions of Christs Divinity and that in the presence of Truth it self that he came from compassing the earth in quest of whom he might devour mentioned in holy Writ excepted or produce one sentence of truth ever spoken by him to his own disadvantage besides this one that he was commanded to shut up his Oracles by a Power which he could never contradict And therefore the Second Proposition must be true and evident viz. that his Oracles were silenced by the immediate hand of that Cause whose Activity is so far above the Power of either Satan or Nature taken either singly or combined together for the Former is but a languid Agent if you deny him the auxiliatory concurrence of the Latter as Infinitude is above Limitation Almightiness above Impotency or Omniscience above Ignorance Now to me this process of Argumentation seems so smooth familiar and customary and the whole series of Inductions so obvious to a dialectical consideration that when I reflect upon the facility of their occurence to our thoughts I cannot but extremely wonder how so many profound and circumspect Philosophers and those whose threads of life were unraveld in the eager pursuit of knowledge could referre the cessation of Oracles to Natural necessities and acquiesce in a confidence of those weak remote inconsistent impertinent and so contemptible reasons urged by Plutarch c. to salve the difficulty of this accident and serve as a specious Asylum for their puzled curiosities to retreat to Lastly that that generally confest Eclipse of the Sun and indeed the only one this great Luminary did ever suffer since Article 13. That the Eclips of the Sun at the death of Christ was purely Metaphysical irrefutably demonstrated we may with more propriety call all others but Partial Interceptions of his light by the lesser body of the Moon interposed in a straight line to some part of the Terrestrial Globe which happened at the Death of Christ was above nay against the fundamental constitutions of Nature is manifest from hence that on the third of April or Feria sexta being the Passion day in the year Aerae Christi nati 33. which is synchronical to the 78. of the Julian account the Sun and Moon were then in opposition diametrical and the Moon her self totally eclipsed in Libra to the Antipodes of Jerusalem as may be certified to any man that can read the Celestial Ephemerides backward i. e. recalculate the periodical Conjunctions and Oppositions of those two great Lights of heaven by the Tables of Astronomy For those Characters of time being punctually restrained to set certain periods the Astronomer may as easily attain to the minute of any eclipse in praeterito as to the prescience of any in futuro provided that his Hypothesis be sound and his Schemes erected with exactness correspondent nay such is the certitude of this rule as to the strict decision of time that though the Astronomer may chance to learn of the Historian that there hath bin an eclipse yet for the determination of its precise time place history must go to school to Astronomy as Scaliger de Emendat tempor hath observed to our hands Thus when Eusebius and Dio had recorded an Eclipse of the Sun to have falne out a little before the death of Augustus and so to have been a kind of prodigy portending the fall of so bright a Star the Astronomers coming after to examine the synchronisme by their retrograde calculations found the Historians in a double error that Eclipse being not of the Sun but the Moon and not preceding but succeeding his funerals To assure the miracle yet nearer let us look back to the Elements of Astronomy The Eclipse of the Moon is caused by the Intervention for so t is according to the most probable Hypothesis of Copernicus of the opac body of the earth between her and the original of her light the Sun and the Eclipse of the Sun by the interposition of the Moon betwixt him and the earth and therefore the Sun cannot be eclipsed but when he is in Conjunction with the Moon nor the Moon but when she is in opposition to the Sun Yet notwithstanding doth not every monthly conjunction and opposition of these two lights produce an eclipse to one of the two but only that Conjunction and Opposition which is Diametrical i. e. when the Central point of the Sun faceth the Central point of the Moon and that again confronteth the centre of the earth so directly that an arrow shot in a streight line from the circumference of the Sun through its Centre would also perpendicularly transfix the Centers of the other two orbs And this falls out only when the Moons Eccentrick transecteth the Suns in that line which is for that reason called the Ecliptick nor this in more then two points called by Ptolemy the Nodi or knots and by the Arabians the Head and Taile of the Dragon Again these Intersections are not constant to one certain point or place but circumgyrated by a slow motion make a circle of 18 years complete and therefore every 18 th year the Moon must be eclipsed in the same degree of the same signe in the Zodiack infallibly to the end of the world which is the rule by which every common Almanack maker doth calculate his predictions of Lunar Eclipses Now this being excogitated and the eclipses retrived back as high as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or foot of the Julian compute by revolving the leaves of the Celestial Volume we discover that the Moon indeed was naturally eclipsed on the self same day whereon the Sun prodigiously suffered together with its Author in the 2 deg of Libra the opacity beginning to the horizon of Jerusalem some few minutes before six in the evening so that the Sun was no sooner set in the West but the Moon
prepare thy soul for temptation the concernment of which every man understands to be this The more righteous the more afflicted Here also is a convenient place for their opinion who affirme the Book of Job to have bin intended as no history though they conced him to have bin no faigned person from Ezek. 14. 14. and James 5. 2. but a real example of both Fortunes in an exceeding measure but a grave Treatise concerning this subject viz. the prosperity of the impious and constant adversity of the pious comprehending the arguments of both the Opponent and Defendant of Divine Providence Which is grounded upon strong probability since as S t. Ierom hath observed and attested in the original Hebrew from the beginning of the book to the 3 verse of the 3 chapter where the complaint of Iob begins all is written in Prose and thenceforward during the whole dispute to the 6 th verse of the last chapter all in Hexameter verse where the composer again let loose his pen into prose whereby it is manifest that the Prose was destined for a Prologue and an Epilogue to the contest in verse Now every man knows the sorrows and sickness of Iob to have bin too intense and urgent to endure the calme and leasure requiring humor of Poetry either in himself or his friends and therefore must the book be composed by some Person not molested with either of those two impediments but of serene thoughts and acquainted with the antient custome of disposing their Moral Philosophy into verse And there are instances enough to illustrate both the contumacy and large diffusion of this objection I might have sayd more then enough the strongest and most military Faith among us though assisted by the most evident and firm reason being hardly able justly to boast an absolute conquest of and constant immunity from the sharpe clandestine assaults of the same scruple and so no man needing other example to evince the frequent prevalency of it but what his retired meditations may find alleaged in the inventory of his own frailties lapses and temptations all which are punctually and orderly registred by that recorder of his soul which the Divine call's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Conscience especially in these evil times wherein Piety Wisedom Iustice Temperance Fortitude Innocence and all other Graces and Virtues are deposed and onely their Contrarics advanced in a word wherein nothing can make a man temporally miserable but the severe profession of Goodness SECT II. THat God extends the right hand of his Providence upon the Article 1. That man is the sole object of Gods special Providence aâ—gued from hence that he is the principal object of his â—xtrinsâ—cal 〈◊〉 and that inferred â—â—om hence 1 that God hath impressed upon the mind of man a greater knowledg of his Divinity then upon any other Creature Angels only excluded 2 that man is only qualisied to speculate admire and laud the pulchritude of Nature head of man the Heir of all his blessings though the youngest of his Creatures ordering the occurrences of his life nay the manner and moment of his death by a paternal and special care more excellent then that whereby he is pleased to regulate and dispose the operations of all other Entities in the Republique of the World is amply manifest from hence Quod majorem sui hominibus quam caeteris rebus not itiam impressit that he hath impressed upon the mind of man a knowledg of his Divinity more cleare and distinct then upon any created natures beside Angelical and intuitively intellectual spirits only excepted For though all the works of God carry in the front of their distinct Forms some certain Signatures or Characters that undeniably attest their Creation by an Efficient infinite in Power and Wisedom and in that respect may be properly enough said to shew forth the glory of their Maker and though all Animals do by a kind of tacit homage confess their origination from and constant dependence on one Eternal and Omnipotent Cause yet are they induced excited or rather impelled thereunto instinctu solum quodam caeco only by a blind and confused instinct of which themselves have no possible notion But as for the Favorite man he holds a clear and distinct idea of the Nature of God as hath formerly bin demonstrated and hath therefore a Logical assured and express cognition of his Creator and Conservator and that so radically united or identified to his essence that it can be no Paradox to averr that this science is part of his soul though that be a simple pure homogeneal and so indivisible substance nay some modern Enquirers into the nature of the soul have described it to be Actus simplex Cognitionis omnium quae cognosci possint a simple Act or present Cognition of all things intelligible i. e. of God and consequently t is not in the power of the most desperate and obdurate Atheist to erase this idea out of his mind no more then to change meliorate or adnihilate his essence or prevent the stroke of Death Now what could be the Motive that induced God to ennoble man by the prerogative of this excellent Idea or representation of himself other then the reflex act of his own infinite Goodness which in the language of mortality is Free Love that flowed in a fuller and richer stream upon man then upon all the World beside And what can be the End of this implantate and coessential Knowledg in man other then this that he should constantly contemplate admire and laud the Perfections of the Donor thereof and more particularly that concerned Attribute which moved him to the free Donation namely his immense Beneficence This being conceded it remains a plain and perpendicular Inference that since between God and man there is a greater relation or Communion so the learned Gassendus calls it in Animadvers in lib. 10. Diogen Laert de physiolog Epicuri pag. 744. then betwixt God and any other of his Creatures therefore also must there be a greater measure of Providence in God for man then for any other it being necessary that the Providence of God should hold exact proportion and be aequilibrated to his Love This necessity of a parity or aequipondium betwixt Love and Providence Divine may be conveniently exemplified in our selves for by how much the more we love our Friends Wives or Children by so much the more carefull and provident are we for their conservation and welfare Again our own Experience is both argument and testimony sufficient that the perscrutation of the mysteries of Nature and the contemplation of sublime and celestial objects is proper only to man no other Animal being constituted in a capacity to rival him in those noble operations And if so undoubtedly he must violently stisle tho conviction of his experience in this particular who dares deny that those heavenly beauties and all the peices of Nature beside were created principally for the use of man insomuch as
man was created principally to declare the Glory of the Creator Ad quid enim tantus decor universi nisi esset homo qui consideraret ipsâ—que perspecto hymnum Authori caneret T is an Axiome of constant Verity that Nature makes nothing in vain and this rule doubtless she learned from that Wisdome which determineth all its actions to certain adequate and proper Ends now we must grant either that God adorned the Universe with such exquisite pulchritude and admirable imbellishment of Art to no purpose at all and so was more vain and improvident then his instrument Nature or else that he conferred that elegancy and amiable decorament upon it to this end that the curious Cogitations of man might be entertained exercised and delighted in the speculation and admiration thereof and through that maze of pleasant wonder be conducted to the true Elyzium the contemplation of the Fountain of Pulchritude and entelechia of Excellencies God For there is no medium between these two Contraries nor any hope of evading the rigour of this Dilemma upon pretence of neutrality since God had no other end wherefore he beautified the World but his own Glory in chief and the excitement of the Admiration and Magnificat of man as subservient thereunto nor doth the World contain any other Nature but Man that is qualified with Faculties requisite to the satisfaction of that end Quis enim aliquam aliam unquam invenit naturam quae aedificium hoc tantum conspiciens in Architecti sapientissimi admirationem perinde rapiatur We well know that Relatives secundum esse positively necessitate the existence each of other and therefore to allow what cannot be disallowed but by incurring a more dangerous absurdity that God made and exhibited the Beauty of the World tanquam admirandum spectaculum as a spectacle that cannot but excite Admiration in the speculator and yet to deny that he provided a fit and respective spectator such whose Sense should transmit the idea of that Pulchritude to the judicature of a higher Faculty and that again be thereby impregnated with Admiration which is nothing but our Reasons being at a stand at the novelty or excellence of an object occurring to our sense for what is either frequent or manifest to our cognition we never admire and that 's the cause why this Affection of the mind as it is the first of Passions so it is the only one that wants a Contrary as the unimitable Des Cartes hath discovered to us in lib. de passion part 1. articl 54. is not only an impious derogation to the wisdome of God but also a manifest Contradiction to our own reason which from the existence of the Relatum a spectacle immediately concludes the necessary existence of the Correlatnm a spectator And that this Spectator can be no other Animal but man is too bright a truth to need any other illustration but what is reflected from it self To which Argument of the Creators adopting man to be his Darling and intimate Favorite the Logick of every man may superadd many others of equivalent importance drawn from the consideration of those Praeeminences and Praerogatives wherewith his Munificence hath bin pleased to ennoble his nature and exalt him to a neerer Cognation or Affinity to his own glorious Essence then any other Creature in the Universe as the excellent contexture and majestique Figure of his Body the semi-divine Faculties of his Soul his Monarchy domination or royalty over all other sublunary natures Omnia enim sibi submittit dum omnia quae in mundo sunt vel ad usus vitae necessarios refert vel ad varia genera voluptatum and lastly that inestimable propriety the Immortality of his Soul Now to direct all this to the mark since God hath thus proclaimed Man to be next to his own Glory which is the last of Ends as his Will is the first of Causes the grand and principal scope of his mighty work of Creation and that he made all things in order to his accommodation and well-being in this life and allurement nay manuduction or conduct to immarcescible beatitude after Death and since his Act of Providence or the constant Conservation of all things in the primitive perfection distinction and order of their Natures is nothing but his act of Creation prolonged or spun out through all the independent Atoms or successive particles of time as hath bin more then once intimated beyond all dispute the Product must be the same with our Thesis viz. That Man is the object of Gods special Providence and by consequence that all occurrences of his life are punctually predetermined ordered and brought to pass by the same As every man brings into the World with him a certain Prolepticall or Anticipated Cognition of a Deity or First Cause Article 2. That the soul of man contains a proleptical notion of Gods special Providence of all things deeply and indelebly stamp'd upon his mind as hath bin formerly demonstrated so also holds he as an Adjunct or rather a part thereof a coessentiall Prenotion that this First Cause or Supreme Nature is the Fountain from whence those two different streams of Happiness and Misery or Good and Evil the former by Condonation the other by Permission are constantly derived and upon consequence that all Occurrences of his life are the just and prudent Designations of its special Providence That every man in whom the Light of Nature is not damp't by Fatuity either native and temperamental or casually supervenient hath this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or impress of an especial Providence decreeing and disposing all events that have do or shall befall him is manifest from hence that no man though educated in the wildest ignorance or highest barbarisme imaginable but was naturally and by the advisoes of his intestine Dictator inclined either to conceive or imbrace some kind of Religion as an homage or fealty due from him to that Supreme Power in whose hands he apprehended the rains of Good and Evil to be held and whose favour and benigne aspect he thought procurable and anger attoneable by the seasonable addresses of Invocation and Sacrifice And in truth to him whose meditations shall sink deep enough it will soon appear that this Anticipation is the very root of Article 3. That this proleptical notion is the basis of Religion Religion for though man stood fully perswaded of the Existence of God yet would not that alone be argument sufficient to convince him into the necessity of a devout Adoration of him unless his mind were also possessed with a firme beleif of this proper Attribute of his Nature which so neerly concerns his felicity or infelicity viz. his special Providence which regulates all the affaires and appoints all the Contingencies of every individual mans life For t is the sense of our own Defects Imperfections and Dependency that first leads us to the knowledg of his All sufficiency Perfections and Self-subsistence the apprehension of our
be so immoveably prefixt by the Decrees of Divine Providence as that neither temperance or care on mans part can extend nor the violence of second Causes situate without the oâ—b of his moâ—eration accelerate it Necessary it is that we seriously examine and search into the marrow of two things conductive to the right stating and consequently the right understanding of the Question 1 What we are to understand by the Term of Life 2 In what sense we are to understand this Term to be sixt or moveable What we are to understand by the Term of Life Concerning the First obvious it is that all things or causes inservient both to the Conservation of life and the adduction of Article 3. The necessary relation of all Causes both of life and death to three Generall heads viz. Necessary Fortuitous Supernatural supports the discrimination of the Term of life into Supernatural Natural Accidentary the impertinency of the consideration of the Supernatural Term to the present scope its period Death fall under the contents of three General heads for either they must refer to those that are Necessary or such as by the ordinary course of Nature no man can subsist without to which classis belong our Aliment Aer sleep c. or 2 Non necessary or Fortuitous which no way conduce to the Fomentation or fewel of our Vital Flame but point blank to the Extinction of it and therefore the instinct of nature perswades every man to avoyd them such are Shipwracks stabbs shots precipices halters c. causes of immature suddain and violent deaths or 3 Meerely Supernatural or the Will of God which as it is impossible without Special Divine Revelation for us to foreknow so also to alter or prevent Upon these three pillars was it that Laurentius Joubertus erected his triple Difference of the Term of mans life making one Supernatural such as the Breath of our nostrils was pleased to assign to most of the Antediluvian Patriarchs or Seminaries of Humanity either in order to the more expedite multiplication of mankind to the more advantageous invention and propagation of Arts and Sciences or for some other considerable respect at which our ignorance can only squint by conjecture which being long since cancelled Art sits down in a contented despaire to renovate nor can the records of the world afford us the story of any impudence that durst rant so high as to promise it except that of a certain Mountebanck Greek derided by Galen and our late Nugipolyloquides Paracelsus both which experimentally confuted their own unpardonable Arrogance before their sands had run out 50 years Another Natural which Physiologie defines by that space of time during which our radical Balsam or the oleaginous Fewel of our vital Lamp maintains the innâ—te Heate or Flame of life untill the total exhaustion of the one causeth a total privation of the other or more plainly that circle of time which comprehends the seven Segments or Ages of man which though prestitute and limited by the Governour of Nature according to the compute of the Psalmist to 80. years of Plato to 81. of the Aegyptians to 100. Caelius Rodiginus 19. antiq Lect. cap. 21. Ioh. Langius lib. 1. Epist Medicinal 79. of the best of the Sibylls to a 100. as is exprest in those 2. verses corrected by the incomparable Salmasius Pliniarum observat pag. 77. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And of the ancient Jews to 120. Ioseph Antiq. Iudaic. lib. 1. is yet left to some considerable latitude and hath more or less of Duration respective to the more or less durability of the Principles of life i. e. the Eucrasy or Dyscrasy of the body in every individual provided that neither the oyle be inquinated by crude or putrid Supplies nor prodigally depredated by immoderate intension of its consumer the Flame nor that immaturely either suffocated or wasted by Diseases or suddainly extinguished by violent Accidents which make the third Difference or Accidentary Term of life But as for the first branch of this Ternary the Metaphysical or Supernatural Term of mans life dependent on the Divine Will immediately since according to the doctrine of Nicholaus Florentinus in Serm. the Conciliator in different Medicis and Joubertus in Errorib popular it concerns only the first Age of the World this place may very conveniently want any farther consideration thereof nor can it much avail to the atchievement of our design to insist upon more then the two last By the Term of life therefore we ought to understand either Article 4. The proper import of the Natural Term of mans life and also of the Accidental 1 that period of every individual mans days which is caused by a sensible decay and total dissolution of the ligaments which chain the Soul to the Body or more expresly by an extinction of his Vital Flame naturally succeeding upon a consumption of its Pabulum or fewel the Radical Moysture when both those Principles of life are permitted to their natural and proper tenor i. e. when no Preternatural Cause intervenes and by Corruption anticipates the dissolution of that Disposition or Temperament of the Elements of the body upon which the subsistence of life doth necessarily depend or 2 the end of every mans life in general whensoever and by what means soever either Diseases or violent and unexpected Accidents introduced without any respect to the gradual and successive declination and consequent cessation of the Natural Temperament in the marasmus of old age Now from the acceptation of the Term of Life in the First signification there genuinly emerge Two Questions First Whether this Term of life which is circumscribed per Article 5. The result of our acceptation of the Term of life in the first signification ipsius temperamenti defluxum decursum by the natural Deflux or wearing out of the requisite Temperament of the body and which we may without impropriety call a kind of mature easy and spontaneous falling asunder of the Ligaments of life be absolutely and definitely fixt so that God hath constituted to leave the nature of every Individual to its own moderation nor by any means to interrupt or alter its course prescribed i. e. not by any means to procure that this Deflux of the Temperament should have more or less duration then what may naturally be expected from the more or less durability thereof dependent on the more or less perfect proportion that the Passive and Active Principles hold each to other or more plainly that the Renitency or Resistence of the Oyle holds to the depredatory and consumptive Activity of the Flame Secondly if this Term of life be thus Fixt and that God indeed hath decreed not to intend or prolong that Deflux of the Temperament beyond the point of its natural Durability whether yet notwithstanding without alteration of his Decree of committing Nature to its own establish'â— course he may not being thereunto moved by our
inevitabili necessitate by the absolute and never-failing power of their Essential Qualities or inherent endowments but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quatenus fieri licuit or according to the possibility of their Concingency and therefore though he confesseth that all Events are foreknown and preordained in the eternal Councel of God yet he stands assured as well upon the ground of Reason as Faith that the precise and opportune contingency of every individual Event proceeds from the insluence of this Providence which disposeth and conjoyneth some certain convenient Causes to the production of this or that determinate Effect in some sort respecting the last of Ends his own Glory To conclude the Stoick hath clip't the immense and towering wings of mans Will and allows it no wider range then what the line of Fate affords while the sublimer Christian scornes to stoop to the Lure of any Necessity besides the special Decrees of the Divine Councel not conceiving his will subject to the inclination much less the compulsion of any force below that of him who conferred that infinite liberty upon it For he indeed holds the rains of our Wills and can bend them yet non coactione violenta sed leni suavique influxu not by violent Coaction but gentle and sweet Invitation as the School-men distinguish Now if we consider Fate in the notion of the Stoicks 't will Article 13. A list of the execrable Absurdities impendent on the opinion of Ablute Fatality so accepted as the Stoick proposeth it be no easy wonder if any man though his reason be never so much hoodwinckt with the veile of Prejudice shall not at first glance discover it to be an opinion Blasphemous in respect to God insomuch as it strikes at no less then the cardinal and inseparable Attribute of his Nature Omnipotence by coercing his infinite and arbitrary Activity with the definite laws of second Causes and denying him the prerogative of absolute superiority to his mechanique Vicegerent or rather Instrument Nature and inrespect of man intolerably Absurd since it subverts the Liberty of all humane actions and leaves nothing in the power of mans Will either to elect or avoide For whoever conced's that the mind of man is subject to the compulsive regiment of Fatal Necessity and so that all the actions of our lives are but the accomplishments of so many ineluctable immoveable and inevitable Decrees from the birth of time enrolled in the Ephimerides of Destiny must also concede upon clear inference that our Creator endowed us with the Semi-divine Faculty of Rationality either to no purpose at all or at best to facilitate our betraying our selves into the snares of ruine and misery beyond possibility of reparation or redemption Must induce that the Will being deposed from her arbitrary throne the judgement seate of Reason must fall to the ground nor can there be any room left for Consultation to sit and determine the debates of the Soul concerning the good or Evil of her objects since notwithstanding all our most profound serious and prudent Deliberation the success of our actions as well as the results of our councels would then be no other but what hath bin resolved on and predecreed by Fate and then to conceive our selves obnoxious to punishment for incurring those sins which are imposed upon our wills by a necessity beyond our controll is an open derogation to the equity and Justice of the Divine Nature and to ascribe our Evil to that which is by essence superlatively Good That Prudence is miserable Folly the study of Wisdome laborious Vanity and all our ancient Lawmakers either ridiculous Fools or detestable Tyrants since they prescribe and enjoyne those things which either we must have done had not they injoyned them or are restrained from doing in spite of our own conformable inclinations by the contrary impulsion or seduction of Destiny And finally that all Divine and Human Exhortation to Good and Dehortation from evil are unnecessary and supersluous Thus shall Virtue and Vice vanish into meer and empty notions and Religion become what Libertines would have it a mysterious and well contrived invention to support temporall Greatness and fright vulgar minds into a tame submission to the arbitrary dictates of their imperious Lords nor shall there be a Heaven to compensate suffering Piety or a Hell for the punition of Villainy because as the Good man could not but live honestly and religiously whether he would or no so must it not be in the power of the Wicked man to abstain from doing Evil. Thus shall Love and Hatred the two most usefull Affections of our Souls be robbed of their proper Objects Amiable and Detestable nor shall Justice find convenient subjects whereon to place Laudation and Vituperation since Praise only belongs to those who have chosen to do Good when 't was in their power to have done Evil and Dispraise is the due guerdon of those who choose to do Evil when t was in their power to have done Good And thus shall all our Prayers be fruitless our vowes hopeless our Sacrifices unprofitable and all other acts of Devotion desperate Vanity The least of which and of a myriade of other equivalent Absurdities Incongruities and oblique or appendent and inferrible Blasphemies shooting up from this one poysonous root of Absolute Fatality is more then enough inconsistent to the fundamentals both of Reason and Religion to deterr even Heathens from approaching much more embracing and defending it But as for Theological Fate or Predestination if accepted in the legitimate sense of the Primitive Church and not in that rigorous and inflexible notion of the German Calvinist I conceive it fully concordant not only to many Texts of Sacred writ but even conciliable to mans Free will notwithstanding the apparent repugnancy betwixt them as I shall endevour to prove singularly in an ensuing chapter SECT III. AS for the Second Opinion viz. that the Term of mans Life Article 1. The Authors adhesion to the Second opinion justified by two important reasons is not fixt beyond possibility of either Anticipation or Postposition this I profess my judgement inclines me to prefer as that which seem's to be drawn in the directest line from the point of Truth and that for two mighty Reasons First because there are very few places or testimonies of Scripture which may be thought to advantage the doctrine 1. of Absolute Fatality but on the contrary very many allegable in defence of this Secondly because those Texts which make for this have 2. their importance so perpendicular that nothing but a violent perversion can wrest so perspicuous that nothing but obscure interpretations can darken so soft and easy that nothing but over nice and unnatural Exceptions can harden it And Justice will frown on that stupid partiality that shall prefer paucity to multitude obscurity to clarity and difficult to genuine and familiar solutions To explain and justify this by Instance the Hercules or Article 2. The great
truth God cannot foreknow the future actions of man or the effects of remedies administred otherwise then because of their necessary Futurity Since if we take a way the Futurition of events we necessarily destroy the Prenotion of God Which Abstrusity that we may the better comprehend let us begg the liberty to suppose some Momenta rationis or successive minutes in Eternity which though in reality impossible Eternity being one permanent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or instance as uncapable of division as cessation may yet serve as an excellent Perspective to our weak-sighted reason in its inspection of many sublime Phaenomena in Theology and humbly conceive that in the First Moment of Eternity God saw and only saw without any relation at all to his future decrees all things to come as well ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or such whose futurity is necessary from the condition of their Nature or impuls of their proper Causes as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Futura Contingentia which hang suspended in aequilibrio upon the Free Will of their Efficients so that they may or may not succeed whether they be Absolute or Conditionate in which First moment had God acquiesced and proceeded no farther then only to foresee the Necessity and Possibility of their Futurition then nothing should have bin to come That in the Second Moment God saw and only saw that this or that event was in Possibility of Futurition in the life of this or that particular man if such or such things were done in this or that time with this or that Temperament of body and other respective Circumstances but yet did neither determine any thing to absolute Necessity of Futurition and therefore nothing could be said to depend upon the Praeordination of God though all things should come to pass in the same manner as he foresaw them whensoever the Fiat of his Will should bring them into actual existence or educe them extra suas causas nor did he see that they would so and no otherwise come to pass from hence that he would they should so and no otherwise come to pass since this Praevision anteceds all Volition That therefore in the Third Moment of Eternity God decreed that he would make Future not all those Possible Effects whether Absolute or Conditionate but only some particulars as for example that he would make Alexander or Plato of this or that individual temperament of body in this or that climate and country of this or that particular cours of life with all conspiring Circumstances to whom all things should happen according to the possibility of their Futurition wherein God beheld them before the conception or pronunciation of his Decree so that by this influence of God's definitive Will those Events are no more then deduced into actual existence which formerly were only in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or in the womb of their Causes Now upon this Hypothesis our understanding is advanced to this manifest Conclusion That the Prescience of God doth nothing conduce adrem existentem nor to the Actions or Passions thereof since it is not the cause of their Inference nor doe his Decrees that are subsequent unto and in a manner grounded upon his Prevision work any the least mutation at all in the natures of his Creatures or by violence pervert their Virtues to the production of any Effects to which by their primitive Constitution and individuation they were not precisely adapted and accommodated Since in so doing he must take away from his Creatures those peculiar Faculties which he at their creation freely conferred upon their severall natures and innovate the fundamental laws of Nature Now this dark shadow of that darker mystery of Predestination Article 3. The diametâ—al Disparlty between that Divine Praenotion which is antecedent to Divine Praeordination and that which is subsequent amply declared how obscurely soever presented doth yet sufficiently commonstrate how vast and diametral a disparity is between that Divine Prenotion which is Antecedent and that which is subsequent to Divine Praeordination For that Praescience which hath for its object a thing to come without any praevious and praedeterminant Decree supposeth that particular thing to come together with the whole series or concatenation of its proper Causes and method or manner of its Futurition the Modus Futuritionis being as the Schoolemen well define Id quod futurum est sive quod ad rei quae futura praescitur futuritionem quolibet modo pertinet This that Rabbin Isac bar Sesat quoted by Menasseth Ben Israel de termino vitae pag. 226. seems well to have understood when he said Deus ab aterno disposuit totius mundi negotia divina sua sapientia ac perspicacia vidit omnes effectus qui in tempore futuri essent qui licet pendeant loquor enim de actionibus humanis a libero hominis arbitrio ut fiant aut non siant nihilominus tamen Deus certò infallibiliter eos praevidit ac praescivit Neque tamen ideoquicquam in tempore facit homo quia Deus ca facturum praescivit sed è contrà quia homo in tempore hoc vel illud facit aut operatur ideo Deus ab aeterno illud scivit But on the Contrary that Praescience which follows upon the Praedetermination of the Divine Will hath indeed for its object a thing to come and also presupposeth it as fully as the former but so that it comprehends the order and manner of its futurition as sixt and immutable being so constituted by virtue of the antecedent Praedestination For the further inculcation of this Distinction let us make use of an Example most familiar and pertinent to the difficulty in hand That Divine Praescience which hath no dependence on a praedeterminant Article 4. A second illustration of the same difference by a pertinent Instance or exâ—mplification decree let us suppose it to be a Praescience of the life and death of the health and sickness of the good or evil use of the Free will of Peter John and every individual man in the world and is twofold First Conditionate if Peter or John being born of a sound and durable constitution shall choose such a course of life as that he shall observe the wholsome Aphorismes of Temperance in his use of the Six nonnaturals shall opportunely in all distempers introduced by the inclemency of the aer the malignant impressions of the Stars epidemick contagions or other undeclinable Accidents recur to the use of such convenient remedies as both reason and experience prescribe for the preservation or restauration of health then I foreknow that he shall live healthy and long but if on the contrary then I foreknow that he shall be infested with frequent diseases and die immaturely Second Absolute I foreknow that Peter or John shall choose a prudent course of life convenient both to his Genius and temperament shall sedulously endevour the preservation of his health by moderation in diet and other
professors of Christianity have drank too liberally even to the infatuation of their reason I must confess I conceived them to have bin derived from two different fountains or interests as irreconcileable as Light to Darkness but when I had by the continued travail of my thoughts traced them up to their original I found them to be effused from one and the same vein viz. the propensity of Human nature depraved to attempt by all means imaginable the Excusation or Extenuation of the Guilt of its defections from its proper object real good by charging it wholly or in part upon some external influence praevalent over mans Will For man having from the Light of Nature learned this as an Axiome that the Justice of Reprehension and Punition is radically consistent in the intire Freedome of the Delinquents Will or more plainly in this that the Delinquent chose to do ill when 't was absolutely in his power to have done well not in this that either his Will was enforced by a Necessity that admits of no repugnancy first to the Volition and after to the actual prosecution of that ill or that he was onely a meer illiberal incogitant fortuitous Agent 't was obvious for him to conclude that if he could incriminate either upon an ineluctable Necessity oâ— simple and meer Chance then he might with aequal facility discharge himself of the Culpability or Guilt and consequently of the punishment due thereunto Now though our pen hath drop't on the praecedent leaves Article 3. The Authors Inâ—iâ—ments here to enquire profoundly into the Natures of Free-will Fortune and Fate frequent and cursary Detections of the gross and ruinous Absurdities of both these subterfuges so that a rational consideration may from those transient glances or hints collect Arguments more then enough for the total Demolition of them yet since those notions of Fate Fortune and Free-will are subject to Aequivocation some men understanding them as positive Causes others as Modi agendi Causarum certain manners of Causes operating and others as Vana Nomina meer Terms which in Logical verity respond by way of adaequation to no real Entities and since the difficulty of the subject encouraged us to promise a full Reconciliation of all their apparent Antipathies or Inconsistencies and also a perfect Accommodation of them all to the Special Providence of God the onely cause of their continuity and connexion to the present clue of our thoughts we esteemed it not onely a pardonable but a laudable design to attempt by a singular discourse the manifestation of their particular Natures or more plainly what we are to understand by Fate what by Fortune and what by Free Will Which that we may atchieve with the more familiarity to common Apprehension both method and perspicuity command us to consider the last in the first place By the Liberty or Freedome of mans Will that we may maturely praevent all Logomachy or Sophistical contention Article 4. What is intended properly by the Liberty of mans Will impendent from the ambiguous sense of that term we intend not that Freedome which being called by the Graecian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 defined by Cicero Potestas vivendi ut velit quilibet and by the Civil Law 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Power of leading the life of a Freeman is the contrary to Servitude since that concernes onely the Civil or Political state of Man but that which by a proper elegancy the Graecian defines 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Latines Id quod in nobis seu penes nos nostróve in arbitrio potestatéque situm est and the Divines commonly name Liberum Arbitrium an Absolute power of electing what objects we please Good or Evil whereon to fix our Affections since that concernes only the natural state of man and is that alone which can justify the Equity of the reward of Piety or Virtue and the punishment of Impiety or Vice by God or Man For morethen one respect did the Ancients select and fix on Article 5. The several subordinate Actions of the Mind exercised about its objects and the respective scholastick Terms by which Philosophers have adaequately expressed them this word Arbitrium For whether we would intimate that Action of the Rational Faculty whereby man gives judgement in any matter that seemed dubious as we use to say that for the Decision of any case whose obscure aequity either our own imprudence or interest makes us unfit to determine we ought to referre our selves to the Arbitration of some judicious and impartial person who is thence most accommodately called an Arbiter or the Rational Faculty it self existent within us from which the action of Judication or Arbitration it selfe doth proceed the word signifying the Action being transferred upon the Agent we can hardly be furnished with a more adaequate and significant Appellation But to trace the thoughts of the first Imponents up to the original in respect the rational faculty being the same with the Mind or Intellect is conversant and exercised about not onely things that belong meerly to speculation but also such as are reducible into Action or Practise therefore doth the term Arbitrium seem to be appropriated to the Faculty chiefly in respect of things to be done inasmuch as it is occupied in the expension or dijudication of the consequent good of those actions and sits as it were an absolute Arbiter to determine whether they shall be done or no. And hence is it that when the rational faculty having perpended the convenience and inconvenience or good and evil of its objects and ended its act of Deliberation adhaeres unto or fixes upon one as more convenient then the others this second act or Adhaesion may be in the general i. e. in respect of things both speculable and practical called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Assent or Approbation but in particular i. e. in respect only to those things that fall under action 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Election or Choice since it supposeth the praelation of that particular thing to be put in execution to all others objected And in this distinct relation was it that Aristotle Ethicor. 3. cap. 3. in fine styles the object elected 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 id quod caeteris propositis postpositis amplectendum nobis proponimus or id quod sub delectum cadit This the Latines most frequently render Consilium as in those phrases capere consilium sequi rationis consilium nescire quid sit alicujus consilium c. and Propositum as in those adhaerere stare manere in proposito à proposito revocare propositi esse tenacem c. and we translate into Resolution or Determination Again so soon as the Mind its act of Consultation or Deliberation being finished hath praeferred one thing to all others in the praesent and determined it for the greater good or more convenient then immediately supervenoth the function of the Appetite whereby the mind is carried
which otherwise would not have come to pass doth or some other Cause interposeth which besides its proper destination and the unpraemeditated concurse of certain other things effecteth that some even◠which otherwise would doth not come to pass or that some event which otherwise would not doth come to pass hence is it manifest that this Posterior kind of Contingency is in the general that w ch men call Chance and if it be especially in Man besides or beyond whose intention any Effect eveneth then is it what they call Fortune unless that somtimes they confound both these and then 't is indifferent whether the event be referred either to Fortune or Chance However we perceive reflecting upon the former Example since the Double Effect viz. the digging of the earth and the invention of the treasure had but one single Cause viz. the man that digged that for this reason the Digger may justly enough be sayd to be Causa per se in respect of the one and per accidens in respect of the other To which we may add this that since in Effects meerly Natural one and the same thing may be both Fortune and Nature or a Natural Cause therefore Gassendus had very good reason to justifie Epicurus in this particular that he made Fortune and Nature no more then synonoma's signifying one and the same thing in Reality Now though common Enquirie may goe away satisfied with Article 3. Their Anatomy of her Nature desicient a more perfect one praesented this pausible Adumbration of Fortune yet cannot a profound and more ocular Scrutiny be terminated therein for the Example introduced to explain it comes largely short of a requisite Adaequation insomuch as no rational man can appositely enough accept either him that digged or his Action of digging for all that 's comprehended under that obscure notion of Fortune Wherefore omitting the consideration of Res Fortuita or the Event which is most frequently apprehended for Fortune it self or the cause of that insperate event let us understand Fortune to be such a concurse of various Causes made without all mutual consultation or praecogitate conspiracy betwixt them as that from thence doth follow an Event or fortuitous Effect which neither all the Causes concurrent nor some of them nor especialy he to whom the Event happens ever in the least measure intended or could expect Now according to the tenor of this Defifinition in regard to the fortuitous Invention of a treasure is required not only the Person who digg's and finds it but also he who first digg'd and hid it it is no obscure nor controvertible truth that Fortune or the Cause by Accident of the invention of the treasure is the Concurse both of the Occultation and Effossion thereof in that particular place We sayd without mutual Consultation and besides the intention of any or all the Causes concurrent thereby intimating that though one or more of the Causes may have haply intended that event yet nevertheless t is properly and absolutely Fortune in relation to that Cause which intended it not Thus if any man who foreknowes or at least conjectures that such a Person will come and digg in such a place doth there hide treasure to the end that the other may find it in this case in respect to him that hid it the Invention of the treasure is not a Fortuitous Effect but in respect to him who unexpectedly finds it it is Thus was it not altogether Fortuitous in respect of Nitocris what hapned at the Violation of his Tomb in regard he praesumed that in process of time there would be some King or other who invited by this promising Inscription If any of my Successors the Kings of Babylon shall want mony let him break open this Sepulchre and thence take what may supply his wants but on no condition unless his wants be real let him attempt it for it shall redound to his no swale detriment would open it but yet in respect to Darius that instead of mony he therein found this deriding Engravement Had'st not thou bin insatiable with riches and covetous of sordid lucre thou wouldst not have thus prophaned the Ashes of thy Praedecessors and ransack't the sacred Dormitory of the Dead this was meerly Fortuitous And thus also though Democritus hath pleaded hard to free Fortune from having any hand in the incomparable Death of good old Aeschylus why because his bald pate being mistaken by a volant Eagle for a white stone in the field was the cause why the Eagle drop't a Tortois perpendicular thereupon yet had we bin of the Jury we should have found her guilty of the Murder 1 in respect of the Poet since that sad event was besides his intention he at the same time having withdrawn himself from the Town for fear of being destroyed according to the tenor of the Astrologers praediction by the fall of an house nor could he possibly foresee that prodigious mischance impendent 2 in respect of the Eagle who drop't not the Tortois with purpose to brain the Poet but to break its shell that so he might come at his prey the flesh thereof However we are willing because in truth we ought to acknowledge that if we regard the height or punctilio of her Propriety Fortune is chiefly when among all those several Causes which concurr no one either principally or collaterally intends or aimes at that Event which unexpectedly succeeds upon that their concurse of which we have a most illustrious and competent Example in the Dilatation of the death of Socrates a day beyond the time praefixt by his Judges for the Execution of their Sentence upon him as Plutarch de Fato hath praecisely observed We have it from the pen of that oraculous Secretary of Nature Article 4. Fortune nothing but a meer Negation of all Praenotion in a Concurse of natural Causes respective to a fortuitous Event D r Harvey that he never dissected any Animal but he always discoverd somthing or other more then he expected nay then ever he thought on before so useful infinite in variety is the Magna Charta of Nature and perhaps some of our Readers may here have occasion to say as much of this our Dissection of Fortune for while we have exercised our thoughts in the exploration of her Nature we have unexpectedly found that if considered per se reverà she hath no nature at all i. e. that in Reality she is nothing For when we have abstracted all those Causes in the Concurse which act per se or by natural virtue there remains no more but a meer Privation or Negation of all Praenotion in the concurrent Causes of that particular Concurse and also of the intention and expectation of the subsequent Event nor can that unpraemeditate Concurse of Causes be rightly accounted the Cause of the Fortuitous Event by any neerer relation then that which Philosophers have termed Conditio sine qua non Since as the Admotion of any
that that supposed action could not but follow upon those other actions subalternately praecedent and consequently that it must be as Democritus would have it Fatal or Necessary Which opinion Aristotle ardently impugneth in lib. de Interpre cap. 8. when discussing the verity and necessity of Propositions He contends to evince that though of two opposite singular propositions which concern a thing either Praeterite or Praesent one must be true the other false yet the Canon holds not in two Contrary singular propositions which concern a thing Future the Verity of the one not necessitating the Falsity of the other For as He there argues if every Affirmation or Negation concerning a thing to come were true or false ex Necessitate then would the Futurity of any thing include a Necessity of its Futurition i. e. whatever is Future would be Necessary and on the contrary whatever is not Future would be Not-necessary and upon just inference nothing could remain either Fortuitous or Arbitrary which to admit is an Incongruity so manifest that the repugnancy of every mans Experience detects it an Incommodity so intolerable that it not only disparageth but confuteth it self And this if there be any Fidelity in the records of our Memory is the Summary of their Theory who have apprehended and asserted Fate to be a meer Natural Constitution of Causes subalternately connected as not dependent on any thing Divine nor any Eternal Decree so not capable of any mutation or interruption by the intervention of any Impediment purely Fortuitous or Counter-activity of any Arbitrary Agent SECT III. Article 1. The Principal of the Second Sect Aristotle and Epicurus IN the other Division of Philosophers who also conceded Fate to be a meer Natural Constitution of Causes subalternately dependent c. but yet denied the inevitable or necessary insequution of all Effects upon that concatenation allowing the possibility of its mutation or interruption by either Chance or mans Free will the Principal are Aristotle and Article 2. The Grounds of the Authors imputing the opinion both of Fates Identity with Nature and the possibility of its Mutation Declination by either Fortuitous or Arbitrary Antagonists to Aristotle Epicurus First as for Aristotle that He held Fate or fatal Necessity to be nothing but very Nature or if you like it better every particular Cause acting secundum suam naturam naturalémve ductum according to its proper or natural Virtue is manifest from his own words in sundry places of his Writings To particular 1 He sayth in 2. phys cap. 6. Eas generationes acoretiones alterationes quae violentae sunt ut dum ex arte ob delicias cogimus plantas aliquas praematurè pubescere adolesceréque esse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non Fatales hoc est non Naturales making Fatal Effects to be meeâ—ly Natural And 2 He sayth 1 Meteorol cap. ultim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fatalibus temporibus magnas quasdam hyemes imbriúmque excessus quibus creentur diluvia contingere eo modo quo contingit hyems statis anni temporibus which rightly paraphrased imports thus much that as Winter the Sun receding from our climate at some certain period of the yeer according to the Ecliptick progress consigned unto it by Nature is the regular effect of the Suns remove to larger distance even so are hard Winters and immoderate rains the regular effects of some periodal Conjunctions of the Planets proceeding in their motions according to the setled Constitutions of Nature From whence we have an advantage to observe that though Stobaeus Ecl. Phys tells us Aristotelem non tam existimasse Fatum esse Causam quà m modum Causae advenientem rebus ex necessitate statutis that Arist conceived not Fate to be so much a Cause as the manner of a Cause advenient to things determined by Necessity yet nevertheless are we so to comment upon this his nice descant as that we understand Fate not to be any new kind of Cause but Nature her self which in respect to her Agency is called a Cause and in respect to the certain proper and necessary manner or way of her acting is called Fate And that He impugned the former Error viz. that all Agents included in this Universal Subalternation act ex inevitabili necessitate or cannot but doe what they doe is not obscurely intimated in this that He defined Fate to be pure Nature Since the Works of Nature are not effected of inoppugnable necessity as may be boldly concluded from the frequent Experiments not only in Generation which is commonly impeded by the intervention of any indisposition or impatibility of Matter and other resisting Accidents but also in Generous and virtuous Minds which easily subdue and countermand those strong inclinations or propensities to Avarice Luxury Audacity Incontinency c. which may not unjustly be esteemed the genuine Effects of their very constitutive Principles and branches that shoot up from the root of their Corporeal Temperament Upon which reason we may conjecture that Arist reflected when He sayd of Socrates praeter naturam ac fatum suum continens evasit He acquired an Habit of Continency even in spite of the contrary sollicitation of his individual Nature and particular Fate Secondly as for Epicurus that his thoughts made an Unison Article 3. Epicurus unanimous to Arist in the point of Physical and Eluctable Necessity with those of Aristotle in the key of a Non-ineluctable Fate is sufficiently constant from hence that having admitted a certain Necessity Natural in this sentence Naturam à rebus ipsarúmve serie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doceri cogique sive necessitate agi in Epist ad Herodotum He yet denied the Inevitability or Absoluteness thereof in another Fragment of his revived by Stobaetis in Ecl. Phys where He delivers as a general Canon Omnia sieri trium modorum aliquo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Necessitate Consilio Fortuna For in that he makes Fortune and Consultation or mans Free will equal competitors in the empire of the world with Necessity Natural He manifestly excludes it from being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sole Despot or Monarch and reserves to the two others an equal dominion Which assurance may duely be augmented by the superaddition of this also that Cicero de Fato introducing Epicurus disputing about the verity of Future Events makes him deny with Aristotle that of two contrary singular Enunciations about a thing to come the one must be true and the other false subnecting this reason Nulla est in natura talis Necessitas And certainly as He stood equal with Aristotle in the denial so hath He outdone him by many degrees in his endevours Article 4. The scope of Epicurus his Figment of the Declination of Atoms in the human Soul and his Accommodation thereof to the tuition of mans Liberty epitomized for the Refutation of this unsound opinion of an Absolute Necessity insomuch as he excogitated his Hypothesis of the Declination of Atoms illustrated
all Sublunary Agents and more especially upon Man as the most analogous Recipient by the inoppugnable Influence of Celestial Bodies respective to their Motions Positions Connexions Aspects T is no wonder we confess that the Chaldaeans a Mercurial Article 2. The gross Vanity thereof concealed from many Philosophers only by the cloud of Transcriptive Adbaesion to Antique Traditions and volatile Nation generally infatuated with Astral Idolatry were the Inventors of this Planetary Destiny since they Deified all they understood not and advanced their observations of the circumvolutions of the Sphears together with their Orbs of light to such a height of insolence that they fancied the Hebrew Alphabet represented in the Figures of the Asterisms and praetending to the skill of reading the Celestial Ephimerides by spelling those Characters which the Planets in their Conjunctions Oppositions and other Apparitions seemed to make into words and sentences perfectly signifying to the exact and intelligent observer the intent of God concerning not only the subversion of Monarchies mutation of States religions c. general Events but also the prosperity or adversity the health or sickness life or death of particular persons as Rabbiben Ezra and out of him Gassarel without the concealment of his strong inclination to the same superstitious Arrogance hath observed and by several experiments alleaged endevour'd to patronize in the 13. Chap. of his Vnheard of Curiosities Nor is it a wonder that the Hebrew and after them the Graecian Astrologers with great ostentation of transcendent knowledge and no less then privacy with the three Fatal Sisters sedulously promoted the same splendid Error of ascribing the Empire of the world to a Heptarchy of Erratique Starrs since upon the testimony of the greatest Antiquaries * Rabbi ben Ezra in ductore dubiorum we may justly assirme that the Hebrews added to the vanities and absurdities of the Chaldaean and the Graecians to the wild Romances of the Hebrew Astrology the stream thereof by long running in the channel of time contracting more and greater Impurities Which is a chief reason why we inhaerite so dark and imperfect a knowledge of the great Astronomical Sagacity of the more simple and upright times of Abraham and Moses Though this be no wonder we say yet t is a considerable one that even many Physiologists who praetended the indagation and tradition of nothing but Verity of verisimility at least have liberally contributed towards the diffusion and propagation of the same Delusion Witness that peremptory speech of Pliny 1 nat Histor singulis sydera tributa sunt clara divitibus minora pauperibus obscura defunctis procujusque sorte lucentia ad munera mortalibus Nor can we conjecture what should occasion the Deception of so many and so great judgements in this easy particular unless that grand Cause of Popular mistakes viz. Transcriptive Adhaerence to all that seems praesented in the reverend habit of Antiquity especially if guilded over with the Estimation of Rare and Sublime the Wit of man being naturally prone to Affect and Admire rather then Indubitate and Examine those Transmissions which concern the remotest Difficulties in Nature and above all the Energy and Configurations of Celestial Bodies Prodigia cum narrantur excipi solent favore mirantium quanquam non ad verum exacti sint postquam semel Scriptorem invenerunt pluribus placent veneratione crescunt vetustate commendantur was Nicopompus his saying in Joh. Barclaii Argenis lib. 2. For had they devested their minds of all traditional Praejudice and but reflected their thoughts either upon the Hypothetical Necessity of the Matter or Subject whereon the Starrs are supposed to discharge and six their uncontrollable influence or upon the extremely different Fortunes of Twins conceived and borne under the same Constellation or upon the double Impiety of ascribing to remote weak and perhaps unconcerned Causes those Effects which proclaim their designment by an Infinite Wisedome and their Praeordination to Ends above the sagacity of Human Providence and of charging all the most nefarious Villanies of sinfull man upon the innocuous and exceeding both usefull and comfortable Creatures of God had they we say but pondered any one of these Reasons that sufficiently demonstrate the Absurdity of Planetary Necessity doubtless they had soon reclaimed their belief from this dishonorable seduction and would no longer have abused themselves with an opinion that all the Occurrences of every Individuall mans life together with the time and manner of his death are the inevitable Effects of those Starrs which were Lords of the Horoscope either at his Conception or Nativity or both The First Reason whereby this Chaldaean Fate may be demonstratively Article 3. The Absurdity of Sydereal Necessity evicted 1 by an Argument desumed from the Hypothetical Necessity of the Matter on which Celestial Impressions are to operate redargued of extreme vanity we desumed from the Hypothetical Necessity of the Matter whereon the Planets exercise their power For according to their own Concession Omnis receptio est ad modum recipientis All bodies ought to be Analogous i. e. praedisposed to admit either the benigne or maligne influences of the Heavens for Alteration is of necessity praevious to Production and before a body be configurate necessary it is that the Matter whereof it is composed be altered and variously praepared and praepared it is by Second Causes but perfected by First Thus the Geniture of the Male though perfect and prolisical in its self must yet be frustrated of its end unless it meet with convenient and patible Materials whereon to actuate its Plastick virtue viz. the Blood and seminal infusion of the Femal proportioned both in quantity and quality to its Efficiency Thus the Aer of Aegypt because Nilus being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth yeeld no Evaporations sufficient to the generation of Clouds continues still serene and unobnubilated notwithstanding the potent Attraction of the Sun Moon and other Sydereal Magnets and though all the Planets should convene in the watery signe of Pisces as before the catholique Deluge Respice pag. 143. and threaten an Apertio portarum to that Climate yet because the material Cause of rain Evaporations is there wanting must their conspiracies be defeated and their Influences become languid and ineffectual And theresore by equal reason unless the Planet which is Lord of the Geniture shall find a Subject qualified in all points for the admission and promotion of this Celestial Fate which our effronted Genethliacks have conceived it to immit into Embryons and Births all its magnified Influx must miscarry and be lost in an invalidity as absolute as the labour of that Statuary who should attempt to melt Marble with Fire or mould sand into an Image without a convenient Cement If this be as it must be true that the Praeparation of the Matter on which the Impressions of Superlunary Bodies are to operate doth depend upon Sublunary and determinate Causes then may we with more honour recurr
Reader with the prolix Recitation Article 1. The intent of the chapter and necessary Explanation of the Ancients opinions concerning Fate and the residue of our province is to gratify him with the concise Declarement of our own both concerning the legitimate Admission of this notion of Fate and the Conciliation thereof to mans Free-will Fortune and Providence Divine which we have formerly invited him to expect as the grand scope at which all our praevious Meditations were directed and the point in which all these lines of this small matter of Book are concentred First we are to abominate the execrable Opinion of Democritus Article 2. Democritus Fate inconsistent both to the Fundamentals of Religion and the Liberty of mans Will and therefore detested not only because it is uncapable of due Consistence with the sacred and indubitable Principles of Religious Faith which ascertain that the Creation Molition Conservation and constant Administration of all things are impossible rightly to be ascribed to any Cause but the Supreme Being alone but also because it is è diametro repugnant to the evidence of that infallible Criterion the Light of Nature which demonstrateth the Soul of man to be an Arbitrary and uncoacted Agent For that man hath in himself a power of inhibiting or suspending his Assent unto and Approbation of any object the Verity of whose Species is not sufficiently clear and distinct but Dubious is a perfect Demonstration of the Indifferency or Liberty of his Intellect and so also of its charge the Will or Faculty Elective as Cartesius excellently observes in Princip Philosoph part 1. sect 6. Secondly that opinion of Aristotle and Epicurus may indeed Article 3. Aristotle and Epicurus their Fate admitted in that it is Idenâ—ical to Nature but abominaâ—ed in that it clasheth with the Certitude of Divine Praescience be defended so far forth as it makes Fate and Nature or the Concatenation of natural Causes to be one and the same thing in reality though expressed by different Terms but ought to be exploded insomuch as it not only denies the Verity of Future Events and so substracts from God the proper Attribute of his most perfect Essence Omniscience by not conceding to him an infallible Science of all things to come but also supposeth no Creation of natural Causes no disposition no moderation of their Efficiencies by Providence Divine And thirdly as for that more specious opinion of the Platonist Article 4. The Platonick and Stoick Fate embraced so far as it is conceded to be a Constitution of the Divine wisdome but abandoned in that it detracts from Divine Omnipotence and Stoick we can discover no danger in our adhaesion to it so far as it affirmes the primitive Constitution and continual Gubernation of all things in the Universe by God by defining Fate to be that Method series or systeme of Causes which the Divine Nature at first constituted and established in order to the praecise and opportune effecting all things praedecreed by his infinite Wisdome But yet we must cautiously abandon it in this that it not only blasphemously invades the cardinal Praerogative of Divinity Omnipotence by denying him a reserved power of infringing or altering any one of those Laws which Himself ordained and enacted and chaining up his armes in the adamantine fetters of Destiny but also in great part excludes the mind of man from acting any voluntary part on the theatre of the world and leaves no room for the intervention of Contingents Article 5. In what qualified sense Christianisme may tolerate the use of the term Fate Nor is there any substantial reason to deterr the most scrupulous Christian from admitting the use of this term Fate in a rectified sense i. e. provided that He thereby understand not any blind and unpraemeditate Necessity but a provident and well ordered Concatenation of Causes which like the Magnetick Chain where all the inferior links are dependent on the impraegnating or invigorating Emanations of the First was constituted by the Fiat of the Eternal Wisdome and may be varied or inverted by the occasional Determinations of the same and this without incurring the Imperfection either of Inconstancy or Improvision For our warrant in this we have no less a Praecedent then S t. Austin whose words are these Qui omnium connexionem seriemque Causarum quâ fit omne quod fit Fati nomine appellant non multum cum iis de verbi controversia certandum est quandoquidem ipsum causarum ordinem quandam connexionem summi Dei tribuunt Voluntati ac proinde Fati voce qui voluerit uti sententiam teneat linguam corrigat in 5. de Civit. Dei cap. 8. ¶ SECT II. NOw as for the Abolition of the seeming Enmitie between Article 1. Fate and Fortune conciliated in the point of Providence Divine Fate and Fortune t is not obscure that the Concession of the one is very far from adnihilating the other For if we admit Fate to be a Law by the Divine Will imposed upon Natural Causes according to the tenor whereof all things are done that are done and Fortune to be an Event resulting from a concurse of Natural Causes besides above or contrary to the expectation conjecture and forecast of man though praecisely praeordained by the Providence of God and connexed to the series of Causes or Chain of Fate we cannot but soon perceive their Convention Concentration and Identity in the point of Providence Divine nor is there any veil of Discrepancy betwixt them in their naked and simple Realities but that light and thin one which either the Ignorance or Sophistry of man hath rudely and perhaps profanely drawn When a Prince dispatcheth two Posts to the same place by several waies neither knowing of the others mission and they meet each other in one moment at their journeys end though we may rightly call it Fortune in respect to them who nevet thought of that Convention yet still is it providence in respect to the Prince who sent them and limited their time of travell to such an houre And undoubtedly by the authority of no less reason are we bound to acknowledge that though many Events hourly occurring to us which the highest Human Prudence could never so much as suspect may without derogation to the sacred Monarchy of God be styled meerly Fortuitous in relation to our Improvision yet still are they the wise and convenient Praedeterminations of his Special Providence Our Memory may rehearse that the Terme Fortune hath a double importance 1 a Concurse of Causes 2 mans praevious Ignoration of the Event resulting from that Concurse and our Reason cannot bur hence inferr that according to the First Fortune may be admitted in respect to man though not of God and according to the Last nothing can interdict our assertion that Fortune is a part not only of Fate but also of Providence Divine which as hath bin profusely demonstrated comprehends all occurrences as well those which are
as those which are not praevised by Man And in this sense only are we to interpret that sentence of Plato Epist 6. Deum apparare Fortunam as also that other in 4. de Legibus Deum cum Deo Fortunam humana omnia gubernare This duely considered we cannot but conclude that Fortune is consistent with Fate by the same interest that a Species doth consist with its Genus for that the Analogie is consimilar is manifest from what immediately praecedes Plutarch when descanting upon Plato his Distinction of Article 2. Fluâ—archs ingenious Assimilation of Fate to the Civil Law and his design therein Providence into Supreme Planetary and Sublunary judiciously interpreteth the supreme to be Intelligentia benefica Dei voluntas the Intelligence and benefical Will of God and this for two respects 1 that He might with greater reason enunciate that Fate is to be reputed subordinate to the Divine Will 2 that He might with greater auctority contradict that proverbial error Omnia Fato fieri though he conceded Omnia Fato complecti that all things are comprehended in Fate We say All things not only meerly Fortuitous and more General Contingents but also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such whose Event is ambiguous and suspended on the Election or Aversation of Mans Free-will And the scope at which He aimed this Distinction was to insinuate and commend the Analogie betwixt Fate and the Civil Law For sayth He as all actions are not Legitimate i. e. are not done according â—o the rule of the Law which are under the comprehension of the Law for the Law comprehends Prodition Desertion and many offences of the same kind which yet no man can justify to be Legitimate since that only is Legitimate which is praescribed by the Law and therefore He who kills a Tyrant doth not a Lawfull though a Commendable at least not a punishable Act but only those which are enjoyned and expresly praescribed by the Law even so though Fate doth comprehend all Events yet are not all Events therein comprehended Fatal or the Designations and Effects of Fate but only those which follow upon Causes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Divine Disposition Antecedent or Necessary such as are the motions of the Planets upon which their Rising and Setting follow of Necessity SECT III. ANd finally concerning the Enodation of that more then Article 1. Fate concenâ—â—icâ—l to mans Elective Liberty in the point of Praedestination Gordian Knot about which many Ancient Philosophers have broken the teeth of their Reason and as many Christian Theologists bin driven to make use of the sword of Faith to cut it asunder viz. the Conciliation of Fate to its apparent Contrary Mans Free-will we conceive the most hopefull way of dissolving the mighty Difficulty to be with the most penetrating Thom. Aquinas to understand Fate in respect to man to be no more but that part of Providence Divine which Theologists intend by the Term Praedestination For the vulgarly conceived Antipraxis between Providence Divine and Liberty Human being once removed the Repugnancy between Fate and Liberty will also vanish of consequence This that we have in the 4. Sect. of our Chapter concerning the Mobility of the Term of mans life to more then a small part performed the Memory of our Reader is a sufficient record However that we may leave no stone unturned under which any the most minute particle of Truth to whose Explanation the concernment of our praesent Theme doth adlige us may be thought to lye neglected we shall with permission from and due submission unto the Censure of the Church from whose Fundamentals we humbly beseech the God of Truth we may never recede in the least make a second attempt to expound the mysterious Riddle of Praedestination that so we may with more perspicuity evidence the Conciliability thereof to mans Arbitrary Agency In order hereunto we are to observe that as Theology holds it for Article 2. The Concord betwixt Theology and Philosophy in their admission of 2. orders of Causes natural viz. Necessary and Free the ground of the Affinity both betwixt the Difficulties and and Solutions on either part as to the Abolition of the seeming Repugnancy between Fate and mans Free-will a maxime that God created two distinct orders of Causes in the General viz. Necessary and Free and that both of these constantly and faithfully execute the commission of their Natures respectively i. e. the Necessary operate by Necessity and the Free by Liberty so also doth Philosophy admit it for Canonical that both the Necessary and Free aequally acknowledge God for their Author and are so comprehended in the episcopacy of Fate that the Necessary operate Necessarily or Fatally and the Free not Fatally but Freely And from this Consent comes it to pass that as the Difficulties which perplex both Divines and Philosophers are of great Affinity if not Identical in the main so also are the Responses thereto of aequal moment Wherefore it must commend our studies to select only those Two Cardinal Doubts to which all others may in some relation either direct or collateral be referred and to the perspicuous solution of each accommodate such praegnant Reasons as may be of correspondent extent in their importance The Former being desumed from Divine Praenotion is by the Theologist proposed thus Either God knew definitely and Article 3. The First câ—pâ—tal Difficulty desumed from Divine Praescience as stated by Divines certainly that Peter would deny Christ or He did not know it That he did not know it cannot be affirmed first because He praecisely praedicted his Abnegation secondly because Truth it self cannot lye and if He had not known it He not bin Omniscient and consequently not God Therefore He knew it definitely and certainly and upon inference it was impossible to Peter not to deny For had it bin left to his Election and he using that Liberty had not denyed then might the Praenotion of God have bin argued of Fallacity and his Praediction of Falsity But if it was not in Peters power not to have denyed 't is manifest that he wanted the Liberty of Election And by the Philosophers thus Either the Gods have a definite Article 4. The same as stated by Philosophers and infallible praescience of the future events of Contingents i. e. whether of 2. contrary Events in possibility shall be deduced extra Causas or actually succeed or they have no knowledge at all of future things or they have an indefinite and only conjectural cognition such as even Man may justly praetend to but neither the 2. nor 3. proposition can be endured without the joynt toleration of most horrid Absurdities and inevitable praecipitation upon that dangerous rock the Commensuration of the Infinite Science of the Gods by the Finite extent of mans capacity and therefore the First remains only to be asserted If therefore the Gods have a certain Praenotion which of 2. Contraries whose Event is equally possible as
Infinite beyond Finite Omniscience beyond Nescience in a word as the inscrutable Counsels of Divinity are above the comprehension of narrow crass and frail Humanity Had they sayd no more then He who being assaulted with the same consternating Scruple returned in short Fata volentem ducunt Nolentem trahunt they had contracted but increased the weight of their Speculations For that rich and emphatick Sentence comprehends the substance of all their larger Evasions and yet for all that the summe there of ariseth to no more then this Though man hath a power of Non-resistance yet he hath no power of Resistance i. e. though man hath such a Liberty that he may be drawn Not-unwillingly yet not such as that he may not be drawn Vnwillingly or more plainly that man hath a Freedome of Assent but not of Dissent for who hath resisted the Will of God Nor could it have proved any Disparagement but contrarywise Article 13. A Dehortation from immoderate Curiosity in Divine Mysteries and concise Adhortation to conform unto and calmly acquiesce in the Revealed Will of God the highest Honour to which the circumscribed Intellectuals of dark Mortality have any reason to aspire here to have confessed a Ne ultra and humbly acquiesced in a becoming despair of other satisfaction then this Deus ab aeterno Fati syntaxin causarúmve naturalium seriem subalternatim sic ordinavit sanxit quia sic ordinavit sanxit i. e. quia imperscrutabili ejus sapientiae sic visum est When the Wit of man wanting the Ballast of Piety bears too much sail it cannot escape oversetting especially when it adventures upon the immens vertiginous and bottomless ocean os Providence Divine where All that is discoverable is darkness and horror What greater Prudence did the great Plato ever shew which might consecrate his Memory to the venerable esteem of inferior Ages then that in his introduction of Socrates praeparing his Auditors when He was to dispute about some things which concerned the Attributes of the Divine Nature with this excellent Allay or suppressive of immoderate scrutiny in such reserved mysteries Aequum est nos meminisse me qui disseram vos qui judicabitis Homines esse meet it is for us to remember that both I who am to discourse and you who are to judge are but Men. The Arcana of Gods Decrees are like the meridian Sun on which the more we gaze the less we perceive and all we can gain by our audacious inspection will be only Blindness and too late Repentance When the most Learned and Acute whose monuments of Perspicacity are the most refulgent Gemms in the embroidered coate of Fame have found their Disquisitions terminated in the sensible Mellifice of Bees the contexture of Spiders the spinstry of Silkworms not to advance to those Giant Problems of the reciprocal Afflux and Reflux of the Sea the sensible torrent of the Aer from West to East under the Tropicks the Cause of Earthquaks the motions and distances of Celestial or Quintessential bodies the Circumference and Diametre of the Globe Terraqueous and its Libration or suspension upon Nothing the verticity and Alliciency of the Loadstone the nature of the Soul c. we say when the most Eagle-eyed Indagators have found themselves discouraged and at a loss in these minute Mechanicks of Nature what a distracted Insolency is it for us to Attach those infinitely more inexplorable Abstrusities of the Divine Praeordination which are too intense for the stronger Opticks of Cherubins What did grave and modest Antiquity design by their erecting of the statue of that Monster Sphinx over the doores of their Temples only this by the commination of imminent Destruction to deterr the Curious from prying into the recluse and abscondite Sanctum Sanctorum of the Deity This the profound Euclid more then glanced at when being interrogated by some Philopragmonist who hoped to confound the Mathematicks with the Metaphysicks concerning the Nature and Politie of the Gods He made this incomparable answer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as for other things concerning the Gods I know nought but this I know full well that they detest and abominate the profanely Curious And this that reverend Father also reflected on when He sayd Vt multò faciliùs invenit syderum Conditorem humilis Pietas quà m syderum ordinem superba Curiositas ita firma stabilique fide sciamus omne Dei judicium justum esse ubi investigare non poteris quare ita judicaret sufficiet scire quis judicaret Since therefore it is impossible for us to make our selves privy to the Concealed Will of our Creator all that remains on our part is to endevour with all humility and serenity to conforme and cooperate to his Revealed assuring our selves that He who is All Wisdome and Goodness can will nothing but what is Good nay infinitely better for us then what our imperfect and deceptible understanding can instruct our Will to desire for our selves This was the noblest resolve of the noble Epictetus Semper magis volo quod Deus vult quà m quod Ego adjungar illi velut minister assecla cum illo appeto cum illo desidero quod Deus vult volo And in truth this is the only true Halcyon that can calme all the distracting tempests of our Cares the imperturbed Haven wherein the Weather-beaten vessels of our Minds may safely Anchor and bid defiance to all the impetuous Gusts of Adversity and Temptations the Magisterial Elixir of all virtue and so of all real Delight nay Heaven anticipated and the Term wherein both my Cogitations and Pen shall acquiesce All Glory be to God on high on earth Peace and Good Will towards men FINIS
hand of Prudence are the rankest Plants and most apt to run up to the highest impieties hath digested the challenge into verse thus Quidve novi potuit tanto post ante quietos Inlicere ut cuperent vitam mut are priorem Nam gaudere novis rebus debere videtur Quoi veteres obsunt sed quoi nil accidit aegri Tempore in anteacto cum pulchre degeret aevum Quid potuit novitatis amorem accendere tai An credo in tenebris vita ac moerore jacebat Donec diluxit rerum genitalis origo c. in lib. 5. After so long Content what new delight Could th' happy Gods to this great change invite To affect Innovation doth confess The present state obnoxious to distress He only can t' enjoy new things desire Whom the deficience of the old doth tire What therefore could Divinity perswade To leave his antient quiet for a trade Of Architecture Can I think till then Him cloysterd in a dark and narrow Den c. The Refutation T is an Apophthegme fathered and that not unjustly upon Epicurus Facere sapientem omnia sui caussa that a wiseman Article 3. The satisfactory refutation thereof and Gods glory manifested to have been his prime and principal end in all his actions doth principally regard himself And could not this learn his Scholars more discretion then to doubt whether or no God the Elixir of wisdome in this weighty operation had an eye upon himself or reflected upon his own concernment The Word God to a metaphysical consideration contains reasons more then enough to decide this idle controversie excited only by a predominion of sensuality For when there was nothing existent besides himself t is plain that he could gratifie nothing besides himself and as he not only derived the power of operating from himself alone but also was the exemplar to himself so also must he be the principal End of his operation The End I say non utilitatis as if his Essence were capable of melioration his Beatitude so remiss as to admit of Augmentation his Condition so imperfect as to be improved by Alteration sed gloriae which as he could not want so was there no reason why he should want Such was the Freedom of his Will that no necessity could constrain him to the production of any thing such the Bounty that none could restrain him from the voluntary profusion of his goodness When t was indifferent to him or to constitute a World or to continue alone he yet was pleased to follow the propensity of his own infinity Benignity and to create insomuch as he judged it better that there should be other natures beside his own to which he might impart the overflowings of his goodness then not Better I say not for himself for as the perpetual Emanation or diffusion of his Goodness upon the creature since time the Image of eternity as Plato in Timaeo describes it began hath not diminished so could not the Concentration or Confinement of it to the orb of his own essence have lessened his Felicity which hath Plenitude and Constancy for its supporters and is therefore raised above the imperfections of Access or Change And upon this perswasion I cannot forget to speak after the manner of men he vouchsafed to constitute all other natures that are besides his own and more especially Man not that he might receive any emolument from them since himself is all goodness and by consequence all glory but that conferring respective endowments upon them he might have convenient subjects whereon to exercise his immense liberality and make known his magnificence That since the creation he expects from man the retribution of Reverence Adoration and Obedience ariseth not ex indigentia from any need he stands in of or benefit that redounds to him by the unfruitfull homage of man but ne homines sint erga ipsum ingrati from his own free Love to prevent mans being hurried into that misery of Ingratitude I say Misery of Ingratitude for that forlorn hope of hell having once taken possession of the minde of man instantly brings in a whole host of perturbations subverts its government destroys its tranquillity and so layes it open to the devastation of Infelicity And whereas they demand Why God if he take any delight in these experiments of his wisedome Power and munificence would so long endure the privation or rather defect of that delight The solution is obvious that this kinde of delectation is no more then Accidentary to him and can adfer infinitely less of addition to that fulness of Beatitude formally radicated in his Essence then one smal drop of water superaffused to the immensity of a million of Oceans For sibi sufficientissimus All to himself is his peculiar Motto since he hath the source of all that 's Amiable and Delectable arising from and perpetually flowing round his own most perfect nature nor can he be affected with the unequal oblation of humane Doxologie otherwise then by reflecting upon his own Goodness which freely ordained formed and disposed man to that honourable and beatifical duety and therefore that sentence of the School Divine Quicquid agit praeter scipsum ad alterius commodum spectat deserves our gratefull assent for all his Extrinsecall or Emanative operations look directly upon the benefit of that Creature whom he hath adopted to be the object of his Love which is Man obliquely upon the convenience or accommodation of all other Creatures necessary or adjuvant to the well being of that Favorite and by reflexion upon his own munificence And hence is it manifest that he adorned the Universe with asterisms and beautified the heavens with radiant lamps not that he might better his own habitation which is impossible he being a mansion to himself and his eternal condition being extreme felicity but provide a more commodious place of residence for men for whose sake principally after that of his own Glory he intended the Creation He doubtless could want the illumination of neither Sun nor Moon whose dwelling is in light inaccessible nor be enriched by the faint splendor of the Stars whose glory is so refulgent that we hyperbolize the lustre of the Meridian Sun when we define it to be the shadow of its Creator and since those shining orbs are but pale tapours kindled at his more splendid abyss of light how infinitely more lucent must his essence be who is described by some to be Supersubstantialis Lux Athanas Kircher in metaphysic Lucis umbrae Epichiremate 5. Nor can we say less of that admirable variety of forms wherewith we observe both stories of the World to be adorned for if they appear so full of Elegance and beauty how incomparably more fair and amiable must their Maker be who is the Soul of Pulchritude and by the Analogy which they hold to the comely ideas in his intellect all things are determined to perfection For that mighty Cause which can give being to so many various
perfections must of necessity possess all those perfections modo eminentiori in a transcendent manner Wherefore the excellencies of his own nature did before he was pleased to create others so amply suffice to the Accompletion of his beatitude that they now at this day wholly suffice to the same nor is he capable of having his Felicity encreased by the contributions of any thing without himself And since all things created are nought but certain Emissions or as it were deradiations which he pleased to diffuse from himself t is perspicuous that before that Diffusion he comprehended all natures in his own as in their Fountain and therefore could not have his being meliorated by their production as also that he may at pleasure adnihilate all again with no more detriment to his glory then the Sun can want those beams which yesterday it emitted upon my hand SECT II. Neque Hominum gratiâ THis second Position he likewise insinuates by the fame imposture of ensnaring the minde in a complex series of Quaestions Article 1. Their second Argument that God had no especial regard to the benefit of Man and the after this manner If all things were constituted by God for the sake of Man onely as you affirme then either for the peculiar interest of Wise men or Fools if for the sole behoof of Wise men then a far less provision might have served the turn for no age could ever glory in the production of many such at once and if all that ever were or shall be met together into one colonie a very smal Island might be both large and rich enough to accommodate them with necessaries and so the greatest part of the creation must be confest supersluous as to the principal destination thereof But if for Fools only then you entangle your selves in a two fold Incongruity First you entrench upon the Justice of the Creator since thereby you implicitely confess that he was partial in conferring so great a benefit upon those who must so ill deserve as not to know rightly how to use it Secondly you insringe his Providence by making him not to have had a foresight of the unfruitfulness of his chief design which must miscarry and be quite lost in a contrary event Fools being without any dispute most miserable in that they are Fools for what can be reputed a more absolute misery then Fatuity And if for the conjunctive interest or promiscuous concernment of both then do you offer violence to the goodness of the Archietect in regard that during life there unavoidably occur so many bitter discommodities that wise men cannot sweeten them with the compensation of Commodities and Fools neither avoid them as they approach nor endure them when they come c. Nor was Velleius singular in this error for Lactantius Lib. 7. cap. 5. hath accused Epicurus also of words to the same effect which according to the record of his indictment run thus Quid enim Deo cultus hominis confert beato nulla re indigenti vel si tantum honoris homini habuit ut ipsius causâ mundum fabricaret ut instrueret cum sapientia ut dominum viventium faceret eúmque diligeret tanquam filium cur mortalem fragilemque constituit cur omnibus malis quem diligebat objecit Cum oprteret beatum esse hominem tanquam conjunctum proximum Deo perpetuum sicut est ipse ad quâ—m colendum contemplandum figuratus est What advantage can the barren veneration of man yeeld to God who is perfectly happy and knows no indigency or if he deigned to bestow so high honour upon man as to create the whole world for his use to endue him with wisdome to inagurate him Lord royall of all living creatures and love him with as much affection and indulgence as a Son why did he yet make him mortal and so fatally subject to fragility why expose him whom he adopted to a filial love to the invasion of all kinds of evill when on the contrary in all reason man also ought to have been both compleatly happy as being allied to God by a very neer assinity and immortal as God himself to the worship and contemplation of whom he was configurated Lucretius also would not be exempted from acting a part in this tragical scene but scorning to come behind the most adventurous Fortification thereof by 8 reasons Bravo that had bid defiance to Divinity or be out-done by any in the feaâ—s of Atheisme he not only sucks all the venome in the former Arguments but adds much of his own also and distills it together through his quill into 8 reasons 1. That God reaps no benefit by the fealty and doxologies of man Quid enim immortalibus at que beatis gratia nostra queat largirier emolumenti ut nostra quidquam causa gerere aggrederentur 2. That in case man had never had existence it could not have been unpleasant not to have been at all Qui nunqam blandum vitae gustavit amorem nec fuit in numero quid obest non esse beatum What never knew existence can nere know the want of bliss Nothing can feel no woe 3. That the greatest moity of the Earth is wholly barren and unprofitable to man Principio quantum Coeli tegit impetus ingens Inde avidam partem montes sylvaeque ferarum Possedère tonent rupes vastaeque paludes Et mare quod late terrarum distinet oras Inde duas porro prope partes fervidus ardor Assiduusque geli casus mortalibus aufert c. 4. That even from those narrow cantons of the earth which are inhabited men reap no other harvest but what themselves have sown with uncessant toyle nor doe they find any ground fruitfull but what they have manured with their own industry and enriched with the salt dew of their own laborious brows Quod superest arvi tamen id natura sua vi Sentibus obducat ni vis humana resistat c. 5. That even those fruits of the earth which they have so dearly earned with the profusion of so many showers of sweat frequently miscarry and become abortive the hopes of the husband-man being often frustrated by the unexpected intervention of cross seasons Ustilagos or Blites Mildewes Sulphureous Metâ—ors late Frosts high Winds c. 6. That if neither the world nor men had ever been existent their Ideas had never falne under the conception of the divine intellect 7 That poor weak and fragil man is obnoxious to destruction by a thousand divers contingencies the ravenous appetite of wild Beasts the deleterious punctures of Serpents the conflagration of Lightning the contusion of Thunderbolts the eruption of Earth-quakes the arsenical eructations of Minerals the epidemick contagion of Pesâ—ilential Diseases kindled either by Anomalous seasons Tempests or malignant impressions in the aâ—r the invasion of intestine infirmities upon the civil war often breaking out between the Heterogeneities of his bloud or a mutiny of his Elements and