must allow therefore that Bodies were endowed with the same affections and tendencies then as ever since and that if an Ax-head be supposed to float upon water which is specifically much lighter than it it had been supernatural at that time as well as in the days of Elisha And this is all that I desire him to acknowledge at present So that he may admit of those Arguments as valid and conclusive against his Hypothesis that are fairly drawn from the present powers of Matter and the visible constitution of the World Now that we may come to the point All Matter is either Fluid or Solid in a large acceptation of the words that they may comprehend even all the middle degrees between extreme Fixedness and Coherency and the most rapid intestine motion of the Particles of Bodies Now the most cavilling Atheist must allow that a solid inanimate Body while it remains in that state where there is none or a very small and inconsiderable change of Texture is wholly incapable of a vital production So that the first Humane Body without Parents and without Creator if such an one ever was must have naturally been produced in and constituted by a Fluid And because this Atheist goes mechanically to work the universal Laws of Fluids must have been rigidly observed during the whole process of the Formation Now this is a Catholick Rule of Staticks That if any Body be bulk for bulk heavier than a Fluid it will sink to the bottom of that Fluid and if lighter it will float upon it having part of it self extant and part immersed to such a determinate depth as that so much of the Fluid as is equal in Bulk to the immersed part be equal in Gravity to the whole And consequently if several portions of one and the same Fluid have a different specifick gravity the heavier will always in a free vessel be gradually the lower unless violently shaken and blended together by external concussion But that cannot be in our present case For I am unwilling to affront this Atheist so much as to suppose him to believe that the first organical Body might possibly be effected in some Fluid portion of Matter while its Heterogeneous parts were jumbled and confounded together by a Storm or Hurricane or Earthquake To be sure he will rather have the primitive Man to be produced by a long process in a kind of digesting Balneum where all the heavier Lees may have time to subside and a due Aequilibrium be maintain'd not disturb'd by any such rude and violent shocks that would ruffle and break all the little Stamina of the Embryon if it were a making before Now because all the parts of an undisturb'd Fluid are either of equal Gravity or gradually placed and storied according to the differences of it any concretion that can be supposed to be naturally and mechanically made in such a Fluid must have a like structure of its several parts that is either be all over of a similar Gravity or have the more ponderous parts nearer to its Basis. But there need no more concessions than this to extinguish these supposed First-born of Nature in their very formation For suppose a Humane Body to be a forming in such a Fluid in any imaginable posture it will never be reconcileable to this Hydrostatical Law There will be always something lighter beneath and something heavier above because Bone or what is then the Stuff and Rudiments of Bone the heaviest in specie will be ever in the midst Now what can make the heavier particles of Bone ascend above the lighter ones of Flesh or depress these below those against the tendency of their own Nature This would be wholly as miraculous as the swimming of Iron in Water at the command of Elisha and as impossible to be as that the Lead of an Edifice should naturally and spontaneously mount up to the Roof while lighter materials employ themselves beneath it or that a Statue like that in Nebuchadnezzar's Vision whose Head was of fine and most ponderous Gold and his Feet of lighter materials Iron and Clay should mechanically erect it self upon them for its Basis. Secondly Because this Atheist goes mechanically to work he will not offer to affirm That all the parts of the Embryon could according to his explication be formed at a time This would be a supernatural thing and an effectual refutation of his own Principles For the Corpuscles of Matter having no consciousness of one anothers acting at least before or during the Formation as will be allowed by that very Atheist that attributes Reason and Perception to them when the Formation is finished they could not consent and make a compact together to carry on the work in several places at once and one party of them be forming the Brain while another is modelling the Heart and a third delineating the Veins No there must be according to Mechanism a successive and gradual operation Some few Particles must first be united together and so by apposition and mutual connexion still more and more by degrees till the whole System be completed and a Fermentation must be excited in some assignable place which may expand it self by its Elastical power and break through where it meets with the weakest resistance and so by that so simple and mechanical action may excavate all the various Ducts and Ventricles of the Body This is the only general account as mean as it appears to be that this Machin of an Atheist can give of that fearfull and wonderfull Production Now to confute these Pretences First There is that visible Harmony and Symmetry in a Humane Body such a mutual communication of every vessel and member of it as gives an internal evidence that it was not formed successively and patch'd up by piece-meal So uniform and orderly a system with innumerable Motions and Functions all so placed and constituted as never to interfere and clash one with another and disturb the Oeconomy of the whole must needs be ascribed to an Intelligent Artist and to such an Artist as did not begin the matter unprepared and at a venture and when he was put to a stand paused and hesitated which way he should proceed but he had first in his comprehensive Intellect a complete Idea and Model of the whole Organical Body before he enter'd upon the Work But Secondly if they affirm That mere Matter by its mechanical Affections without any design or direction could form the Body by steps and degrees what member then do they pitch upon for the foundation and cause of all the rest Let them shew us the beginning of this Circle and the first Wheel of this Perpetual Motion Did the Blood first exist antecedent to the formation of the Heart But that is to set the Effect before the Cause because all the Blood that we know of is made in and by the Heart having the quite different form and qualities of Chyle before it comes thither Must
purposes in creating vegetable and sensitive and rational Creatures It was therefore the contrivance and choice of a Wise and Good Being that the Central Sun should be a Lucid Body to communicate warmth and light and life to the Planets around him II. We have shewed in our Last that the concentric Revolutions of the Planets about the Sun proceed from a compound Motion a Gravitation toward the Sun which is a constant Energy infused into Matter by the Author of all things and a projected transverse Impulfe in Tangents to their several Orbs that was impress'd at first by the Divine Arm and will carry them around till the end of the World But now admitting that Gravity may be essential to Matter and that a transverse Impulse might be acquired too by Natural Causes yet to make all the Planets move about the Sun in circular Orbs there must be given to each a determinate Impulse these present particular degrees of Velocity which they now have in proportion to their Distances from the Sun and to the quantity of the Solar Matter For had the Velocities of the several Planets been greater or less than they are now at the same distances from the Sun or had their Distances from the Sun or the quantity of the Sun's Matter and consequently his Attractive Power been greater or less than they are now with the same Velocities they would not have revolved in concentric Circles as they do but have moved in Hyperbola's or Parabola's or in Ellipses very Eccentric The same may be said of the Velocities of the Secondary Planets with respect to their Distances from the Centers of Their Orbs and to the Quantities of the Matter of those Central Bodies Now that all these Distances and Motions and Quantities of Matter should be so accurately and harmoniously adjusted in this great Variety of our System is above the fortuitous Hits of blind material Causes and must certainly flow from that eternal Fountain of Wisdom the Creator of Heaven and Earth who always acts Geometrically by just and adequate numbers and weights and measures And let us examin it further by our Critical Rule Are the present Revolutions in circular Orbs more beneficial than the other would be If the Planets had moved in those Lines above named sometimes they would have approached to the Sun as near as the Orb of Mercury and sometimes have exorbitated beyond the distance of Saturn and some have quite left the Sun without ever returning Now the very constitution of a Planet would be corrupted and destroyed by such a change of the Interval between it and the Sun no living thing could have endured such unspeakable excesses of Heat and Cold all the Animals of our Earth must inevitably have perished or rather never have been So that as sure as it is good very good that Humane Nature should exist so certain it is that the circular Revolutions of the Earth and Planets rather than those other Motions which might as possibly have been do declare not only the Power of God but his Wisdom and Goodness III. It is manifest by our last Discourse that the Aethereal Spaces are perfectly fluid they neither assist nor retard neither guide nor divert the Revolutions of the Planets which rowl through those Regions as free and unresisted as if they moved in a vacuum So that any of them might as possibly have moved in opposite Courses to the present and in Planes crossing the Plane of the Ecliptick in any kind of Angles Now if the System had been fortuitously formed by the convening Matter of a Chaos how is it conceivable that all the Planets both Primary and Secondary should revolve the same Way from the West to the East and that in the same Plane too without any considerable variation No natural and necessary Cause could so determin their motions and 't is millions of millions odds to an unit in such a Cast of a Chance Such an apt and regular Harmony such an admirable Order and Beauty must deservedly be ascribed to Divine Art and Conduct Especially if we consider that the smallest Planets are situated nearest the Sun and each other whereas Iupiter and Saturn that are vastly greater than the rest and have many Satellites about them are wisely removed to the extreme Regions of the System and placed at an immense Distance one from the other For even now at this wide interval they are observed in their Conjunctions to disturb one anothers motions a little by their gravitating Powers but if such vast Masses of Matter had been situated much nearer to the Sun or to each other as they might as easily have been for any mechanical or fortuitous Agent they must necessarily have caused a considerable disturbance and disorder in the whole System IV. But let us consider the particular Situation of our Earth and its distance from the Sun It is now placed so conveniently that Plants thrive and flourish in it and Animals live this is matter of fact and beyond all dispute But how came it to pass at the beginning that the Earth moved in its present Orb We have shown before that if Gravity and a Projected Motion be fitly proportion'd any Planet would freely revolve at any assignable distance within the Space of the whole System Was it mere Chance then or Divine Counsel and Choice that constituted the Earth in its present Situation To know this we will enquire if this particular Distance from the Sun be better for our Earth and its Creatures than a greater or less would have been We may be mathematically certain That the Heat of the Sun is according to the density of the Sun beams and is reciprocally proportional to the square of the distance from the Body of the Sun Now by this Calculation suppose the Earth should be removed and placed nearer to the Sun and revolve for instance in the Orbit of Mercury there the whole Ocean would even boil with extremity of Heat and be all exhaled into Vapors all Plants and Animals would be scorched and consumed in that fiery Furnace But suppose the Earth should be carried to the great Distance of Saturn there the whole Globe would be one Frigid Zone the deepest Seas under the very Equator would be frozen to the bottom there would be no Life no Germination nor any thing that comes now under our knowledge or senses It was much better therefore that the Earth should move where it does than in a much greater or less Interval from the Body of the Sun And if you place it at any other Distance either less or more than Saturn or Mercury you will still alter it for the worse proportionally to the Change It was situated therefore where it is by the Wisdom of some voluntary Agent and not by the blind motions of Fortune or Fate If any one shall think with himself How then can any Animal at all live in Mercury and Saturn in such intense degrees of Heat and
observed because every Point was agreeable to the notions of the greater Party But when they heard of the Resurrection of the Dead the interruption and clamour became universal so that here the Apostle was obliged to break off and depart from among them What could be the reason of this general dissent from the notion of the Resurrection since almost all of them believed the Immortality of the Soul St. Chrysostom hath a conceit that the Athenians took 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the original word for Resurrection to be preached to them as a Goddess and in this fancy he is follow'd by some of the Moderns The ground of the conjecture is the 18th verse of this Chapter where some said What will this Babler say other some He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange Gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 strange Deities which comprehends both Sexes because he preached unto them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Iesus and the Resurrection Now say they it could not be said Deities in the plural number unless it be supposed that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a Goddess as well as Iesus a God But we know such a permutation of Number is frequent in all Languages We have another example of it in the very Text As certain also of your own Poets have said For we are also his Off-spring And yet the Apostle meant only one Aratus the Cilician his Countryman in whose Astronomical Poem this passage is now extant So that although he preached to the Athenians Jesus alone yet by a common mode of speech he might be called a setter forth of strange Gods 'T is my opinion that the general distaste and clamour proceeded from a mistake about the nature of the Christian Resurrection The word Resurrection 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was well enough known amongst the Athenians as appears at this time from Homer Aeschylus and Sophocles they could hardly then possibly imagin it to signifie a Goddess But then it always denoted a returning from the State of the Dead to this present World to eat and drink and converse upon Earth and so after another period of Life to die again as before And Festus a Roman seems to have had the same apprehensions about it For when he declares the case of St. Paul his Prisoner to King Agrippa he tells him That the Accusation was only about certain questions of the Jewish Superstition and of one Iesus which was dead whom Paul affirmed to be alive So that when the Athenians heard him mention the Resurrection of the Dead which according to their acceptation of the word was a contradiction to common Sense and to the Experience of all Places and Ages they had no patience to give any longer attention His words seemed to them as idle tales as the first news of our Saviour's Resurrection did to the Apostles themselves All interrupted and mocked him except a few that seem to have understood him aright which said they would hear him again of this matter Just as when our Saviour said in an Allegorical and Mystical sense Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood ye have no life in you the Hearers understood him literally and grosly The Iews therefore strove among themselves saying How can this man give us his Flesh to eat this is a hard saying who can hear it And from that time many of his Disciples went back and walked no more with him I have now gone through this excellent Discourse of the Apostle in which many most important Truths are clearly and succinctly deliver'd such as the Existence the Spirituality and All sufficiency of God the Creation of the World the Origination of Mankind from one common stock according to the History of Moses the Divine Providence in over-ruling all Nations and People the new Doctrine of Repentance by the preaching of the Gospel the Resurrection of the Dead and the appointed Day of an universal Judgment To all which particulars by God's Permission and Assistance I shall say something in due time But at present I have confined my self to that near and internal and convincing Argument of the Being of God which we have from Humane Nature it self and which appears to be principally here recommended by St. Paul in the words of the Text That they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us For in him that is by his power we live and move and have our being The Proposition which I shall speak to from this Text is this That the very Life and Vital Motion and the Formal Essence and Nature of Man is wholly owing to the power of God and that the consideration of our Selves of our own Souls and Bodies doth directly and nearly conduct us to the acknowledgment of his Existence And 1. I shall prove That there is an immaterial Substance in us which we call Soul and Spirit essentially distinct from our Bodies and that this Spirit doth necessarily evince the Existence of a Supreme and Spiritual Being And 2. That the Organical Structure of Humane Bodies whereby they are fitted to live and move and be vitally informed by the Soul is unquestionably the workmanship of a most wise and powerfull and beneficent Maker But I will reserve this latter part for the next opportunity and my present undertaking shall be this To evince the Being of God from the consideration of Humane Souls 1. And first I say there is an immaterial Substance in us which we call Soul essentially distinct from our Bodies I shall lay it down as self-evident That there is something in our Composition that thinks and apprehends and reflects and deliberates that determines and doubts consents and denies that wills and demurrs and resolves and chooses and rejects that receives various sensations and impressions from external objects and produces voluntary motions of several parts of our Bodies This every man is conscious of neither can any one be so Sceptical as to doubt of or deny it that very doubting or denying being part of what I would suppose and including several of the rest in their Idea's and Notions And in the next place 't is as self-evident that these Faculties and Operations of Thinking and Willing and Perceiving must proceed from something or other as their efficient Cause meer Nothing being never able to produce any thing at all So that if these powers of Cogitation and Volition and Sensation are neither inherent in Matter as such nor producible in Matter by any motion and modification of it it necessarily follows that they proceed from some cogitative Substance some incorporeal Inhabitant within us which we call Spirit and Soul 1. But first these Faculties of Sensation and Perception are not inherent in Matter as such For if it were so what monstrous absurdities would follow Every Stock and Stone would be a percipient
and supinely though altogether as reasonably resolve the whole Business into the unaccountable shuffles and tumults of Matter which they call Chance and Accident But at present I shall only take an account of the supposed Production of Humane Bodies by Mechanism and Necessity The Mechanical or Corpuscular Philosophy though peradventure the oldest as well as the best in the world had lain buried for many Ages in contempt and oblivion till it was happily restor'd and cultivated anew by some excellent Wits of the present Age. But it principally owes its re-establishment and lustre to Mr. Boyle that Honourable Person of ever Blessed Memory who hath not only shewn its usefulness in Physiology above the vulgar Doctrines of Real Qualities and Substantial Forms but likewise its great serviceableness to Religion it self And I think it hath been competently prov'd in a former Discourse how friendly it is to the Immateriality of Humane Souls and consequently to the Existence of a Supreme Spiritual Being And I may have occasion hereafter to shew further that all the Powers of Mechanism are intirely dependent on the Deity and do afford a solid Argument for the Reality of his Nature So far am I from the apprehension of any great feats that this Mechanical Atheist can do against Religion For if we consider the Phaenomena of the Material World with a due and serious attention we shall plainly perceive that its present frame and constitution and the established Laws of Nature are constituted and preserved by Gravitation alone That is the powerfull cement which holds together this magnificent structure of the world Which stretcheth the North over the empty space and hangeth the Earth upon Nothing if we may transfer the words of Iob from the first and real Cause to the secondary Agent Without Gravity the whole Universe if we suppose an undetermin'd power of Motion infused into Matter would have been a confused-Chaos without beauty or order and never stable and permanent in any condition Now it may be prov'd in its due place that this Gravity the great Basis of all Mechanism is not it self Mechanical but the immediate Fiat and Finger of God and the Execution of the Divine Law and that Bodies have not the power of tending towards a Centre either from other Bodies or from themselves which at once if it be proved will undermine and ruine all the Towers and Batteries that the Atheists have raised against Heaven For if no Compound Body in the visible world can subsist and continue without Gravity and if Gravity do immediately flow from a Divine Power and Energy it will avail them nothing though they should be able to explain all the particular Effects even the Origination of Animals by mechanical principles But however at present I will forbear to urge this against the Atheist For though I should allow him that this Catholick Principle of Gravitation is essential to Matter without introducing a God yet I will defie him to shew how a Humane Body could be at first produced naturally according to the present System of things and the mechanical affections of Matter And because this Atheist professeth to believe as much as we that the first production of Mankind was in a quite different manner from the present and ordinary method of Nature and yet affirms nevertheless that That was Natural too which seems at the first sight to be little less than a contradiction It should lie upon him to make out how matter by undirected Motion could at first necessarily fall without ever Erring or Miscarrying into such a curious formation of Humane Bodies a thing that by his own confession it was never able to do since or at least hath not done for some thousands of years he should declare to us what shape and contexture Matter then had which it cannot have now how it came to be altered by long course of time so that living Men can no longer be produced out of putrefaction in the primary way and yet the species of Mankind that now consists of and is nourished by Matter so altered should continue to be the same as it was from the beginning He should undertake to explain to us the first steps and the whole progress of such a formation at least by way of Hypothesis how it naturally might have been tho' he affirm not that it was actually so Whether he hath a new Notion peculiar to himself about that Production or takes up with some old one that is ready at hand whether that most witty Conceit of Anaximander That the first Men and all Animals were bred in some warm moisture inclosed in crustaceous skins as if they were various kinds of Crab-fish and Lobsters and so continued till they arrived at perfect age when their shelly Prisons growing dry and breaking made way for their liberty or the no less ingenious opinion of the great Empedocles That Mother Earth first brought forth vast numbers of Legs and Arms and Heads and the other members of the Body scatter'd and distinct and all at their full growth which coming together and cementing as the pieces of Snakes and Lizards are said to do if one cuts them asunder and so configuring themselves into Humane shape made lusty proper Men of thirty years age in an instant or rather the divine Doctrine of Epicurus and the Aegyptians That there first grew up a sort of Wombs that had their Roots in the Earth and attracted thence a kind of Milk for the nourishment of the inclosed Foetus which at the time of maturity broke through those Membranes and shifted for themselves I say he ought to acquaint us which of these he is for or bring a new explication of his own and not require Us to prove the Negative That a Spontaneous production of Mankind neither warranted by example nor defended by reason nevertheless may not possibly have been true This is a very unreasonable demand and we might justly put him off with such an answer as this That there are several things which all men in their wits do disbelieve and yet none but mad-men will go about to disprove But to shew him how much we endeavour to satisfie and oblige him I will venture once for his sake to incurr the censure of some persons for being elaborately trifling For with respect to the most of Mankind such wretched absurdities are more wisely contemn'd than confuted and to give them a serious answer may only make them look more considerable First then I take it for granted by him That there were the same Laws of Motion and the like general Fabrick of the Earth Sea and Atmosphere at the beginning of Mankind as there are at this day For if any Laws at first were once settled and constituted like those of the Medes and Persians they are never to be reversed To violate and infringe them is the same as what we call Miracle and doth not sound very Philosophically out of the mouth of an Atheist He
as we have shewn cannot be inherent in It but are the Sensations of some other Substance without it It cannot be the Brain then which imagins those qualities to be in it self But they may say 't is not the Gross Substance of the Brain that causes Perception but the Animal Spirits that have their residence there which are void of sensible qualities because they never fall under our Senses by reason of their minuteness But we conceive by our Reason though we cannot see them with our Eyes that every one of these also hath a determinate figure they are Spheres or Cubes or Pyramids or Cones or of some shape or other that is irregular and nameless and all these are but Modes and Affections of Magnitude and the Idea's of such Modes can no more be subsistent in the Atoms so modified than the Idea of Redness was just now found to be inherent in the Blood or that of Whiteness in the Brain And what relation or affinity is there between a minute Body and Cogitation any more than the greatest Is a small drop of Rain any wiser than the Ocean or do we grind inanimate Corn into living and rational Meal my very Nails or my Hair or the Horns and Hoofs of a Beast may bid as fair for Understanding and Sense as the finest Animal Spirits of the Brain 3. But Thirdly they will say 't is not the Bulk and Substance of the Animal Spirits but their Motion and Agility that produces Cogitation and Sense If then Motion in general or any degree of its velocity can beget Cogitation surely a Ship under sail must be a most intelligent Creature though while she lies at Anchor those Faculties be asleep some cold Water or Ice may be phlegmatick and senseless but when it boils in a Kettle it has wonderfull Heats of Thinking and Ebullitions of Fancy Nay the whole corporeal Mass all the brute and stupid Matter of the Universe must upon these terms be allowed to have Life and Understanding since there is nothing that we know of in a state of absolute Rest. Those things that seem to be at rest upon the surface of the Earth are daily wheel'd about its Axis and yearly about the Sun with a prodigious swiftness 4. But Fourthly they will say 't is not Motion in general that can do these feats of Sensation and Perception but a particular sort of it in an Organized Body through the determinate Roads and Channels of Muscles and Nerves But I pray among all the kinds of Motion whether straight or circular or parabolical or in what curve they please what pretence can one make to Thinking and Liberty of Will more than another Why do not these persons make a Diagram of these cogitative Lines and Angles and demonstrate their Properties of Perception and Appetite as plainly as we know the other properties of Triangles and Circles But how little can any Motion either circular or other contribute to the production of Thought No such circular Motion of an Atom can be all of it existent at once it must needs be made gradually and successively both as to place and time for Body cannot at the same instant be in more places than one So that at any instant of time the moving Atom is but in one single point of the Line Therefore all its Motion but in that one point is either future or past and no other parts are coexistent or contemporary with it Now what is not present is nothing at all and can be the efficient of nothing If Motion then be the cause of Thought Thought must be produced by one single Point of Motion a Point with relation to time as well as to place And such a Point to our Conceptions is almost equivalent to Permanency and Rest or at least to any other Point of any Motion whatsoever What then is become of the privilege of that organical Motion of the Animal Spirits above any other Again we have shewn that this circular and other Motion is but the successive Flux of an Atom and is never existent together and indeed is a pure Ens Rationis an operation of the Soul which considering past motion and future and recollecting the whole by the Memory and Fancy calls this by one denomination and that by another How then can that Motion be the efficient of Thought which is evidently the Effect and the Product of it 5. But Fifthly they will say farther which is their last refuge that 't is not Motion alone or under this or that Denomination that produceth Cogitation but when it falls out that numerous Particles of Matter aptly disposed and directed do interfere in their Motions and strike and knock one another this is it which begets our Sensation All the active power and vigour of the Mind our Faculties of Reason Imagination and Will are the wonderfull result of this mutual Occurse this Pulsion and Repercussion of Atoms Just as we experience it in the Flint and the Steel you may move them apart as long as you please to very little purpose but 't is the Hitting and Collision of them that must make them strike Fire You may remember I have proved before that Light and Heat and the rest of those Qualities are not such Idea's in the Bodies as we perceive in our Selves So that this smiting of the Steel with the Flint doth only make a Comminution and a very rapid Whirling and Melting of some Particles but that Idea of Flame is wholly in Us. But what a strange and miraculous thing should we count it if the Flint and the Steel instead of a few Sparks should chance to strike out Definitions and Syllogisms And yet it 's altogether as reasonable as this sottish opinion of the Atheists That dead senseless Atoms can ever justle and knock one another into Life and Understanding All that can be effected by such encounters of Atoms is either the imparting or receiving of Motion or a new determination and direction of its Course Matter when it acts upon Matter can communicate nothing but Motion and that we have shew'd before to be utterly unable to produce those Sensations And again how can that Concussion of Atoms be capable of begetting those internal and vital Affections that Self-consciousness and other Powers and Energies that we feel in our Minds seeing they only strike upon the outward Surfaces they cannot inwardly pervade one another they cannot have any penetration of Dimensions and Conjunction of Substance But it may be these Atoms of theirs may have Sense and Perception in them but they are refractary and sullen and therefore like Men of the same Tempers must be bang'd and buffeted into Reason And indeed that way of Argumentation would be most proper and effectual upon these Atheistical Atomists themselves 'T is a vigorous Execution of good Laws and not rational Discourses only either neglected or not understood that must reclaim the profaneness of those perverse and unreasonable Men. For what can be said
more to such persons that are either so disingenuous or so stupid as to profess to believe That all the natural Powers and acquired Habits of the Mind that penetrating Understanding and accurate Judgment that strength of Memory and readiness of Wit that Liberality and Justice and Prudence and Magnanimity that Charity and Beneficence to Mankind that ingenuous fear and awfull Love of God that comprehensive Knowledge of the Histories and Languages of so many Nations that experienced Insight into the works and wonders of Nature that rich Vein of Poetry and inexhausted Fountain of Eloquence those lofty flights of Thought and almost intuitive Perception of abstruse Notions those exalted Discoveries of Mathematical Theorems and Divine Contemplations all these admirable Endowments and Capacities of humane Nature which we sometimes see actually existent in one and the same Person can proceed from the blind shuffling and casual clashing of Atoms I could as easily take up with that senseless assertion of the Stoicks That Vertues and Vices and Sciences and Arts and Fancies and Passions and Appetites are all of them real Bodies and distinct Animals as with this of the Atheist That they can all be derived from the Power of meer Bodies 'T is utterly incredible and impossible and we cannot without indignation go about to refute such an absurd imagination such a gross contradiction to unprejudiced Reason And yet if the Atheists had not been driven from all their posts and their subterfuges if we had not pursued their Atoms through all their turnings and windings their cells and recesses their interferings and justlings they would boast that they could not be answer'd and make a mighty flutter and triumph Nay though they are so miserably confounded and baffled and can offer no further explication of the Cause and the Manner yet they will Sixthly urge matter of Fact and Experience that meer Body may produce Cogitation and Sense For say they do but observe the actions of some Brutes how nearly they approach to humane Reason and visibly discover some glimpses of Understanding and if that be performed by the pure Mechanism of their Bodies as many do allow who yet believe the Being of God and an immaterial Spirit in Man then 't is but raising our Conceptions and supposing Mankind to be Engines of a finer Make and Contexture and the business is done I must confess that the Cartesians and some others men that have given no occasion to be suspected of Irreligion have asserted that Brutes are meer Machins and Automata I cannot now engage in the Controversie neither is there any necessity to do so for Religion is not endanger'd by either opinion If Brutes be said to have Sense and Immaterial Souls what need we be concern'd whether those Souls shall be immortal or annihilated at the time of Death This objection supposes the Being of God and He will do all things for the wisest and best ends Or if Brutes be supposed to be bare Engins and Machins I admire and adore the divine Artifice and Skill in such a wonderfull contrivance But I shall deny then that they have any Reason or Sense if they be nothing but Matter Omnipotence it self cannot create cogitative Body And 't is not any imperfection in the power of God but an incapacity in the Subject The Idea's of Matter and Thought are absolutely incompatible And this the Cartesians themselves do allow Do but convince Them that Brutes have the least participation of Thought or Will or Appetite or Sensation or Fancy and they 'll readily retract their Opinion For none but besotted Atheists do joyn the two Notions together and believe Brutes to be rational or sensitive Machins They are either the one or the other either endued with Sense and some glimmering Rays of Reason from a higher Principle than Matter or as the Cartesians say they are purely Body void of all Sensation and Life and like the Idols of the Gentiles they have eyes and see not ears and hear not noses and smell not they eat without hunger and drink without thirst and howl without pain They perform the outward material actions but they have no inward Self-consciousness nor any more Perception of what they do or suffer than a Looking Glass has of the Objects it reflects or the Index of a Watch of the Hour it points to And as one of those Watches when it was first presented to the Emperour of China was taken there for an Animal so on the contrary our Cartesians take brute Animals for a sort of Watches For considering the infinite distance betwixt the poor mortal Artist and the Almighty Opificer the few Wheels and Motions of a Watch and the innumerable Springs and Organs in the Bodies of Brutes they may affirm as they think without either absurdity or impiety that they are nothing but moving Automata as the fabulous Statues of Daedalus bereaved of all true life and vital Sensation which never act spontaneously and freely but as Watches must be wound up to set them a going so their Motions also are excited and inhibited are moderated and managed by the Objects without them 2. And now that I have gone through the six parts that I proposed and sufficiently shewn that Sense and Perception can never be the product of any kind of Matter and Motion it remains therefore that it must necessarily proceed from some Incorporeal Substance within us And though we cannot conceive the manner of the Soul's Action and Passion nor what hold it can lay on the Body when it voluntarily moves it yet we are as certain that it doth so as of any Mathematical Truth whatsoever or at least of such as are proved from the Impossibility or Absurdity of the Contrary a way of Proof that is allowed for infallible Demonstration Why one motion of the Body begets an Idea of Pleasure in the Mind another an Idea of Pain why such a disposition of the Body induces Sleep another disturbs all the operations of the Soul and occasions a Lethargy or Frenzy this Knowledge exceeds our narrow Faculties and is out of the reach of our discovery I discern some excellent Final causes of such a vital Conjunction of Body and Soul but the instrumental I know not nor what invisible Bands and Fetters unite them together I resolve all that into the sole Pleasure and Fiat of our Omnipotent Creator whose Existence which is my last Point is so plainly and nearly deducible from the established proof of an Immaterial Soul that no wonder the resolved Atheists do so labour and bestir themselves to fetch Sense and Perception out of the Power of Matter I will dispatch it in three words For since we have shewn that there is an Incorporeal Substance within us whence did that proceed and how came it into Being It did not exist from all Eternity that 's too absurd to be supposed nor could it come out of nothing into Being without an Efficient Cause Something therefore must have created our
well adapted and accommodated to their particular Functions The Eye is very proper and meet for seeing the Tongue for tasting and speaking the Hand for holding and lifting and ten thousand Operations beside and so for the inward Parts the Lungs are suitable for Respiration the Stomach for Concoction the Lacteous Vessels for the Reception of the Chyle the Heart for the Distribution of the Blood to all the parts of the Body This is matter of Fact and beyond all dispute and in effect is no more than to say that Animals are Animals for if they were deprived of these Qualifications they could not be so This therefore is not the matter in Question between us and the Atheists But the Controversie is here We when we consider so many constituent parts in the Bodies of Men all admirably compacted into so noble an Engine in each of the very Fingers for example there are Bones and Gristles and Ligaments and Membranes and Muscles and Tendons and Nerves and Arteries and Veins and Skin and Cuticle and Nail together with Marrow and Fat and Blood and other Nutricious Juices and all those solid Parts of a determinate Size and Figure and Texture and Situation and each of them made up of Myriads of little Fibres and Filaments not discoverable by the naked Eye I say when we consider how innumerable parts must constitute so small a member as the Finger we cannot look upon It or the whole Body wherein appears so much Fitness and Use and Subserviency to infinite Functions any otherwise than as the effect of Contrivance and Skill and consequently the Workmanship of a most Intelligent and Beneficent Being And though now the Propagation of Mankind be in a settled method of Nature which is the instrument of God yet we affirm that the first Production of Mankind was by the immediate Power of the Almighty Author of Nature and that all succeeding Generations of Men are the Progeny of one primitive Couple This is a Religious Man's account of the Frame and Origination of himself Now the Atheists agree with us as to the Fitness of Man's Body and its several Parts to their various Operations and Functions for that is visible and past all contradiction but they vehemently oppose and horribly dread the Thought That this Usefulness of the Parts and the Whole should first arise from Wisdom and Design So that here will be the point in debate and the subject of our present Undertaking Whether this acknowledged Fitness of Humane Bodies must be attributed as we say to a wise and good God or as the Atheist averr to dead senseless Matter They have contrived several tricks and methods of Deceit one repugnant to another to evade if possible this most cogent Proof of a Deity All which I will propose and refute and I hope to make it appear that here as indeed every where but here certainly in the great Dramatick Poem of Nature is dignus Deo vindice Nodus a necessity of introducing a God And first I will answer what Exceptions they can have against Our account and secondly I will confute all the Reasons and Explications they can give of their Own 1. First I will answer what Exceptions they can have against Our account of the Production of Mankind And they may object That the Body it self though pretty good in its kind and upon their Hypothesis nevertheless doth not look like the Workmanship of so great a Master as is pretended by Us that infinite Wisdom and Goodness and Power would have bestowed upon us more Senses than five or at least these five in a much higher Perfection that we could never have come out of the Hands of the Almighty so subject to numerous Diseases so obnoxious to violent Deaths and at best of such a short and transitory Life They can no more ascribe so sorry an Effect to an Omniscient Cause than some ordinary piece of Clock-work with a very few motions and uses and those continually out of order and quickly at an end to the best Artist of the Age. But to this we reply First as to the five Senses it would be rash indeed to affirm That God if he had pleased could not have endued us with more But thus much we may averr That though the Power of God be infinite and perfect yet the Capacities of Matter are within limits and bounds Why then doth the Atheist suspect that there may possibly be any more ways of Sensation than what we have already Hath he an Idea or Notion or Discovery of any more So far from that that he cannot make any addition or progress in those very Senses he hath further than they themselves have informed him He cannot imagine one new Colour or Tast or Smell beside those that have actually fallen under his Senses Much less can he that is destitute of an entire Sense have any Idea or Representation of it as one that is born Deaf hath no Notion of Sounds or Blind of Colours and Light If then the Atheist can have no Imagination of more Senses than five why doth he suppose that a Body is capable of more If we had double or triple as many there might still be the same suspicion for a greater number without end and the Objection therefore in both cases is equally unreasonable and groundless Secondly we affirm that our Senses have that degree of Perfection which is most fit and suitable to our Estate and Condition For though the Eye were so piercing as to descry even opake and little Objects some hundreds of Leagues off even that improvement of our sight would do us little service it would be terminated by neighbouring Hills and Woods or in the largest and evenest plain by the very convexity of the Earth unless we could always inhabit the tops of Mountains and Cliffs or had Wings too to fly aloft when we had a mind to take a Prospect And if Mankind had had Wings as perhaps some extravagant Atheist may think us deficient in that all the World must have consented to clip them or else Humane Race had been extinct before this time nothing upon that supposition being safe from Murder and Rapine Or if the Eye were so acute as to rival the finest Microscopes and to discern the smallest Hair upon the leg of a Gnat it would be a curse and not a blessing to us it would make all things appear rugged and deformed the most finely polish'd Chrystal would be uneven and rough The sight of our own selves would affright us The smoothest Skin would be beset all over with ragged Scales and bristly Hairs And beside we could not see at one view above what is now the space of an Inch and it would take a considerable time to survey the then mountainous bulk of our own Bodies Such a Faculty of sight so disproportion'd to our other Senses and to the Objects about us would be very little better than Blindness it self And again God hath furnished us with
him as the Moon doth about the Earth and Iupiter hath four Satellites which by their Interposition between him and us make some hundreds of Eclipses every year Now the whole Tribe of Astrologers that never dream'd of these Planets have always declared that when Iupiter and Saturn come about again to any given Point they exert consider'd singly by themselves the same Influence as before But 't is now manifest that when either of them return to the same point the Planets about them that must make up an united Influence with them have a different situation in respect of us and each other from what they had the time before and consequently the joint Influence must be perpetually varied and never be reducible to any Rules and Observations Or if the Influences be conveyed hither distinct yet sometimes some of the Little Planets will eclipse the Great one at any given point and by that means intercept and obstruct the Influence I cannot now insist on many other Arguments deducible from the late Improvements of Astronomy and the truth of the Copernican System For if the Earth be not the Centre of the Planetary Motions what must become then of the present Astrology which is wholly adapted to that vulgar Hypothesis And yet nevertheless when they lay under such wretched mistakes for many Myriads of Years if we are willing to believe them they would all along as now appeal to Experience and Event for the confirmation of their Doctrines That 's the invincible Demonstration of the Verity of the Science And indeed as to their Predictions I think our Astrologers may assume to themselves that infallible Oracle of Tiresias O Laertiade quicquid dico aut erit aut non There 's but a true and a false in any telling of Fortune and a man that never hits on the right side cannot be called a bad Guesser but must miss out of design and be notably skilfull at lighting on the wrong And were there not formerly as great pretentions to it from the superstitious Observation of the Entrails of Cows of the flying of Vulturs and the pecking of Chickings Nay the old Augurs and Soothsayers had better reason to profess the Art of Divining than the modern Astrological Atheist for they supposed there were some Daemons that directed the Indications So likewise the Chaldean and Aegyptian Astrologers were much more excusable than He. It was the Religion of their Countries to worship the Stars as we know from unquestionable Authority They believed them Intelligent Beings and no other than very Gods and therefore had some Reason to suspect that they might govern Humane Affairs The Influence of the Stars was in their apprehensions no less than Divine Power But an Atheist that believes the Planets to be dark solid and senseless Bodies like the brute Earth he treads on and the Fixt Stars and the Sun to be inanimate Balls of Fire what Reasons can He advance for the Credit of such Influences He acknowledgeth nothing besides Matter and Motion so that all that he can conceive to be transmitted hither from the Stars must needs be perform'd either by Mechanism or Accident either of which is wholly unaccountable and the latter irreconcileable to any Art or System of Science But if both were allowed the Atheist yet as to any production of Mankind they will be again refuted in my following Discourse I can preserve a due esteem for some great Men of the last Age before the Mechanical Philosophy was revived though they were too much addicted to this nugatory Art When Occult Quality and Sympathy and Antipathy were admitted for satisfactory Explications of things even wise and vertuous Men might swallow down any Opinion that was countenanced by Antiquity But at this time of day when all the general powers and capacities of Matter are so clearly understood he must be very ridiculous himself that doth not deride and explode the antiquated Folly But we may see the miserable Shifts that some men are put to when that which was first founded upon and afterward supported by Idolatry is now become the tottering Sanctuary of Atheism If the Stars be no Deities Astrology is groundless and if the Stars be Deities why is the Astrologer an Atheist He may easily be no Christian and 't is difficult indeed to be both at once because as I have said before Idolatry is at the bottom and by submitting Humane Actions and Inclinations to the Influence of the Stars they destroy the very Essence of Moral Virtue and the Efficacy of Divine Grace and therefore Astrology was justly condemn'd by the Ancient Fathers and Christian Emperours An Astrologer I say may very easily be no Christian he may be an Idolater or a Pagan but I could hardly think Astrology to be compatible with rank Atheism if I could suppose any great gifts of Nature to be in that person who is either an Atheist or an Astrologer But let him be what he will he is not able to do much hurt by his Reasons and Example For Religion it self according to his Principles is derived from the Stars And he owns 't is not any just Exceptions he hath taken against Christianity but 't is his Destiny and Fate 't is Saturn in the Ninth House and not Judgment and Deliberation that made him an Atheist A CONFUTATION OF ATHEISM FROM THE Structure and Origin of Humane Bodies PART II. The Fourth SERMON preached Iune 6. 1692. Acts XVII 27. That they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us for in him we Live and Move and have our Being IN the former part of this Enquiry I have examin'd and refuted two Atheistical Notions opposed to the great Doctrine of the Text That we owe our Living and Being to the power of God The one of the Aristotelian Atheists who to avoid the difficulties of the first production of Mankind without the intervention of Almighty Wisdom and Power will have the Race to have thus continued without beginning by an eternal succession of infinite past Generations which Assertion hath been detected to be mere nonsense and contradictory to it self The other of the Astrological undertakers that would raise Men like Vegetables out of some fat and slimy soil well digested by the kindly heat of the Sun and impregnated with the influence of the Stars upon some remarkable and periodical conjunctions Which opinion hath been vamp'd up of late by Cardan and Cesalpinus and other News-mongers from the Skies a Pretence as groundless and silly as the dreaming Oneirocriticks of Artemidorus and Astrampsychus or the modern Chiromancy and Divinations of Gypsies I proceed now to the two remaining Paradoxes of such Sects of Atheists as laying aside Astrology and the unintelligible Influence of Heavenly Bodies except that which proceeds from their Gravity and Heat and Light do either produce Mankind mechanically and necessarily from certain connexions of Natural Causes or more dully
prove that Humane Race was neither 1 from Everlasting without beginning nor 2 owes its beginning to the Influence of Heavenly Bodies nor 3 to what they call Nature that is the necessary and mechanical motions of dead senseless Matter I proceed now to examin the fourth and last Plea of the Enemies to Religion and their own Souls That Mankind came accidentally into the World and hath its Life and Motion and Being by mere Chance and Fortune We need not much wonder that this last Opinion should obtain almost universally among the Atheists of these times For whereas the Other require some small stock of Philosophy to understand or maintain them This Account is so easie and compendious that it needs none at all and consequently is the more proper and agreeable to the great Industry and Capacity of the most numerous Party of them For what more easie to say than that all the Bodies of the first Animals and Plants were shuffled into their several Forms and Structures fortuitously that is these Atheists know not how nor will trouble themselves to endeavour to know For that is the meaning of Chance and yet this is all that they say or can say to the great Matter in question And indeed this little is enough in all reason and could they impose on the rest of Mankind as easily as delude themselves with a notion That Chance can effect a thing it would be the most expedite and effectual means to make their Cause victorious over Vertue and Religion For if you once allow them such an acceptation of Chance you have precluded your self they think from any more reasoning and objecting against them The Mechanical Atheist though you grant him his Laws of Mechanism is nevertheless inextricably puzzled and baffled with the first Formation of Animals for he must undertake to determine all the various Motions and Figures and Positions and Combinations of his Atoms and to demonstrate that such a quantity of Motion impressed upon Particles so shaped and situated will necessarily range and dispose them into the Form and Frame of an Organical Body an attempt as difficult and unpromising of success as if he himself should make the Essay to produce some new Kinds of Animals out of such senseless Materials or to rebuild the moving and living Fabrick out of its dust in the grave But the Atheist that we are now to deal with if you do but concede to him that Fortune may be an Agent presumes himself safe and invulnerable secure above the reach of any further disputes For if you proceed to ask questions and bid him assign the proper Causes and determinate Manner of that fortuitous Formation you thereby deny him what you granted before and take away the very Hypothesis and the Nature of Chance which supposeth that no certain Cause or Manner of it can possibly be assigned And as the stupidity of some Libertines that demand a sight of a Spirit or Humane Soul to convince them of its existence hath been frequently and deservedly exposed because whatsoever may be the object of our Sight must not be a Soul or Spirit but an opake Body so this Atheist would tax us of the like Nonsense and Contradiction if after he hath named to us Fortune or Chance we should expect from him any particular and distinct account of the Origin of Mankind Because it is the very essence and notion of his Chance to be wholly unaccountable and if an account could be given of it it would then no longer be Chance but Mechanism or a necessary production of certain Effects from certain Causes according to the Universal Laws of Motion Thus we are to know that if once we admit of Fortune in the Formation of Mankind there is no further enquiry to be made no more Difficulties to be solved and no Account to be demanded And who then can admire if the inviting easiness and compendiousness of this Assertion should so dazle the Eyes of our Atheist that he overlooks those gross Absurdities that are so conspicuous in it 1 For first if this Atheist would have his Chance or Fortune to be a real and substantial Agent as the Vulgar seem to have commonly apprehended some making it a Divinity others they do not conceive what he is doubly more stupid and more supinely ignorant than those Vulgar in that he assumes such a notion of Fortune as besides its being erroneous is inconsistent with his Atheism For since according to the Atheists the whole Universe is Corpus mane Body and nothing else this Chance if it do really and physically effect any thing must it self be Body also And what a numerous train of Absurdities do attend such an assertion too visible and obvious to deserve to be here insisted on For indeed it is no less than flat contradiction to it self For if this Chance be supposed to be a Body it must then be a part of the common Mass of Matter and consequently be subject to the universal and necessary Laws of Motion and therefore it cannot be Chance but true Mechanism and Nature 2 But secondly if he forbear to call Chance a real Agent and is content to have it only a Result or Event since all Matter or some portion of it may be naturally exempt from these supposed Mechanical Laws and be endowed with a power of spontaneous or fortuitous Motion which power when it is exerted must produce an Effect properly Casual and therefore might constitute the first Animate Bodies accidentally against the supposed natural tendency of the Particles of those Bodies even this second Assertion is contrary to common Sense as well as common Observation For how can he conceive that any parcel of dead Matter can spontaneonsly divert and decline it self from the line of its motion without a new impulse from external Bodies If it can intrinsically stir it self and either commence its Motion or alter its course it must have a principle of self-activity which is Life and Sense But Sense I have proved formerly to be incompatible with mere Bodies even those of the most compound and elaborate textures much more with single Atoms or solid Particles of Matter that having no intestine motion of Parts are destitute of the first foundation and capacity of Life And moreover though these Particles should be supposed to have this internal principle of Sense it would still be repugnant to the notion of Chance because their Motions would not then be Casual but Voluntary not by Chance but Choice and Design And Again we appeal to Observation whether any Bodies have such a power of Fortuitous Motion we should surely have experiment of it in the effects of Nature and Art No Body would retain the same constant and uniform Weight according to its Bulk and Substance but would vary perpetually as that spontaneous power of Motion should determin its present tendency All the various Machins and Utensils would now and then play odd Pranks and Capricio's quite contrary to
Chance when there is so many Millions odds against any assignable Experiment 't is in vain to expect it should ever succeed even in endless Duration But though we should concede it to be simply possible that the Matter of Chaos might convene into great Masses like Planets yet it 's absolutely impossible that those Masses should acquire such revolutions about the Sun Let us suppose any one of those Masses to be the Present Earth Now the annual Revolution of the Earth must proceed in this Hypothesis either from the Summ and Result of the several motions of all the Particles that formed the Earth or from a new Impulse from some external Matter after it was formed The former is apparently absurd because the Particles that form'd the round Earth must needs convene from all points and quarters toward the middle and would generally tend toward its Center which would make the whole Compound to rest in a Poise or at least that overplus of Motion which the Particles of one Hemisphere could have above the other would be very small and inconsiderable too feeble and languid to propell so vast and ponderous a Body with that prodigious velocity And secondly 't is impossible that any external Matter should impell that compound Mass after it was formed 'T is manifest that nothing else could impell it unless the Aethereal Matter be supposed to be carried about the Sun like a Vortex or Whirlpool as a Vehicle to convey it and the rest of the Planets But this is refuted from what we have shewn above that those Spaces of the Aether may be reckon'd a mere Void the whole Quantity of their Matter scarce amounting to the weight of a Grain 'T is refuted also from Matter of Fact in the Motion of Comets which as often as they are visible to Us are in the Region of our Planets and there are observed to move some in quite contrary courses to Theirs and some in cross and oblique ones in Planes inclined to the Plane of the Ecliptick in all kinds of Angles which firmly evinces that the Regions of the Aether are empty and free and neither resist nor assist the Revolutions of Planets But moreover there could not possibly arise in the Chaos any Vortices or Whirlpools at all either to form the Globes of the Planets or to revolve them when formed 'T is acknowledged by all that inanimate unactive Matter moves always in a streight Line nor ever reflects in an Angle nor bends in a Circle which is a continual reflexion unless either by some external Impulse that may divert it from the direct motion or by an intrinseck Principle of Gravity or Attraction that may make it describe a curve line about the attracting Body But this latter Cause is not now supposed and the former could never beget Whirlpools in a Chaos of so great a Laxity and Thinness For 't is matter of certain experience and universally allowed that all Bodies moved circularly have a perpetual endeavour to recede from the Center and every moment would fly out in right Lines if they were not violently restrain'd and kept in by contiguous Matter But there is no such restraint in the supposed Chaos no want of empty room there no possibility of effecting one single Revolution in way of a Vortex which necessarily requires if Attraction be not supposed either an absolute Fulness of Matter or a pretty close Constipation and mutual Contact of its Particles And for the same reason 't is evident that the Planets could not continue their Revolutions about the Sun though they could possibly acquire them For to drive and carry the Planets in such Orbs as they now describe that Aethereal Matter must be compact and dense as dense as the very Planets themselves otherwise they would certainly fly out in Spiral Lines to the very circumference of the Vortex But we have often inculcated that the wide Tracts of the Aether may be reputed as a mere extended Void So that there is nothing in this Hypothesis that can retain and bind the Planets in their Orbs for one single moment but they would immediately desert them and the neighbourhood of the Sun and vanish away in Tangents to their several Circles into the Abyss of Mundane Space II. Secondly we affirn that mutual Gravitation or spontaneous Attraction cannot possibly be innate and essential to Matter By Attraction we do not here understand what is improperly though vulgarly called so in the operations of drawing sucking pumping c. which is really Pulsion and Trusion and belongs to that Common Motion which we have already shewn to be insufficient for the formation of a World But we now mean as we have explain'd it before such a power and quality whereby all parcels of Matter would mutually attract or mutually tend and press to all others so that for instance two distant Atoms in vacuo would spontaneously convene together without the impulse of external Bodies Now fiirst we say if our Atheists suppose this power to be inherent and essential to Matter they overthrow their own Hypothesis there could never be a Chaos at all upon these terms but the present form of our System must have continued from all Eternity against their own Supposition and what we have proved in our Last For if they affirm that there might be a Chaos notwithstanding innate Gravity then let them assign any Period though never so remote when the diffused Matter might convene They must confess that before that assigned Period Matter had existed eternally inseparably endued with this principle of Attraction and yet had never attracted nor convened before in that infinite duration which is so monstrous an absurdity as even They will blush to be charged with But some perhaps may imagin that a former System might be dissolved and reduced to a Chaos from which the present System might have its Original as that Former had from another and so on new Systems having grown out of old ones in infinite Vicissitudes from all past eternity But we say that in the Supposition of innate Gravity no System at all could be dissolved For how is it possible that the Matter of solid Masses like Earth and Planets and Stars should fly up from their Centers against its inherent principle of mutual Attraction and diffuse it self in a Chaos This is absurder than the other That only supposed innate Gravity not to be exerted This makes it to be defeated and to act contrary to its own Nature So that upon all accounts this essential power of Gravitation or Attraction is irreconcilable wirh the Atheist's own Doctrine of a Chaos And secondly 't is repugnant to Common Sense and Reason 'T is utterly unconceivable that inanimate brute Matter without the mediation of some Immaterial Being should operate upon and affect other Matter without mutual Contact that distant Bodies should act upon each other through a Vacuum without the intervention of something else by and through which the action may
Impulse of external Matter that could beget such a Motion For Gravity alone must have carried them downwards to the Vicinity of the Sun And that the ambient Aether is too liquid and empty to impell them horizontally with that prodigious celerity we have sufficiently proved before Or were they made in some higher regions of the Heavens and from thence descended by their essential Gravity till they all arrived at their respective Orbs each with its present degree of Velocity acquired by the fall But then why did they not continue their descent till they were contiguous to the Sun whither both Mutual Attraction and Impetus carried them What natural Agent could turn them aside could impell them so strongly with a transverse Side-blow against that tremendous Weight and Rapidity when whole Planets were a falling But if we should suppose that by some cross attraction or other they might acquire an obliquity of descent so as to miss the body of the Sun and to fall on one side of it then indeed the force of their Fall would carry them quite beyond it and so they might fetch a compass about it and then return and ascend by the same steps and degrees of Motion and Velocity with which they descended before Such an eccentric Motion as this much after the manner that Comets revolve about the Sun they might possibly acquire by their innate principle of Gravity but circular Revolutions in concentric Orbs about the Sun or other central Body could in no-wise be attain'd without the power of the Divine Arm. For the Case of the Planetary Motions is this Let us conceive all the Planets to be formed or constituted with their Centers in their several Orbs and at once to be impress'd on them this Gravitating Energy toward all other Matter and a transverse Impulse of a just quantity in each projecting them directly in Tangents to those Orbs. The Compound Motion which arises from this Gravitation and Projection together describes the present Revolutions of the Primary Planets about the Sun and of the Secondary about Those the Gravity prohibiting that they cannot recede from the Centers of their Motions and the transverse Impulse with-holding that they cannot approach to them Now although Gravity could be innate which we have prov'd that it cannot be yet certainly this projected this transverse and violent Motion can only be ascribed to the Right hand of the most high God Creator of Heaven and Earth But finally if we should grant them that these Circular Revolutions could be naturally attained or if they will that this very individual World in its present posture and motion was actually formed out of Chaos by Mechanical Causes yet it requires a Divine Power and Providence to have preserved it so long in the present state and condition For what are the Causes that preserve the System of our Sun and his Planets so that the Planets continue to move in the same Orbs neither receding from the Sun nor approaching nearer to him We have shewn that a Transverse Impulse impress'd upon the Planets retains them in their several Orbs that they are not drawn down toward the Sun And again their Gravitating Powers so incline them towards the Sun that they are not carried upwards beyond their due distance from him These two great Agents a Transverse Impulse and Gravity are the Secondary Causes under God that maintain the System of Sun and Planets Gravity we understand to be a constant Energy or Faculty perpetually acting by certain Measures and naturally inviolable Laws we say a Faculty and Power for we cannot conceive that the Act of Gravitation of this present Moment can propagate it self or produce that of the next But the Transverse Impulse we conceive to have been one single Act. For by reason of the Inactivity of Matter and its inability to change its present State either of Moving or Resting that Transverse Motion would from one single Impulse continue for ever equal and uniform unless changed by the resistance of occurring Bodies or by a Gravitating Power So that the Planets since they move Horizontally whereby Gravity doth not alter their swiftness and through the liquid and unresisting Spaces of the Heavens where either no Bodies at all or inconsiderable ones do occur may preserve the same Velocity which the first Impulse imprest upon them not only for five or six thousand years but many Millions of Millions It appears then that if there was but One Vast Sun in the Universe and all the rest were Planets revolving around him in Concentric Orbs at convenient Distances such a System as that would very long endure could it but naturally have a Principle of Mutual Attraction and be once actually put into Circular Motions But the Frame of the present World hath a quite different structure here 's an innumerable multitude of Fixt Stars or Suns all which being made up of the same common Matter must be supposed to be equally endued with a Power of Gravitation For if All have not such a power what is it that could make that difference between Bodies of the same sort Nothing surely but a Deity could have so arbitrarily indued our Sun and Planets with a Power of Gravity not essential to Matter while all the Fixt Stars that are so many Suns have nothing of that Power If the Fixt Stars then are supposed to have no Power of Gravitation 't is a plain proof of a Divine Being And 't is as plain a proof of a Divine Being if they have the Power of Gravitation For since they are neither revolved about a common Center nor have any Transverse Impulse what is there else to restrain them from approaching toward each other as their Gravitating Power incites them What Natural Cause can overcome Nature it self What is it that holds and keeps them in fixed Stations and Intervals against an incessant and inherent Tendency to desert them Nothing could hinder but that the Outward Stars with their Systems of Planets must necessarily have descended toward the middlemost System of the Universe whither all would be the most strongly attracted from all parts of a Finite Space It is evident therefore that the present Frame of Sun and Fixt Stars could not possibly subsist without the Providence of that Almighty Deity who spake the word and they were made who commanded and they were created who hath made them fast for ever and ever and hath given them a Law which shall not be broken 2. And secondly in the Supposition of an infinite Chaos 't is hard indeed to determin what would follow in this imaginary Case from an innate Principle of Gravity But to hasten to a conclusion we will grant for the present that the diffused Matter might convene into an infinite Number of great Masses at great distances from one another like the Stars and Planets of this visible part of the World But then it is impossible that the Planets should naturally attain these circular Revolutions either by
of the four Seasons of the Year and the Variation in length of Days If we take away the Inclination it would absolutely undo these Northern Nations the Sun would never come nearer us than he doth now on the tenth of March or the twelfth of September But would we rather part with the Parallelism Let us suppose then that the Axis of the Earth keeps always the same Inclination toward the body of the Sun this indeed would cause a variety of Days and Nights and Seasons on the Earth but then every particular Country would have always the same diversity of Day and Night and the same constitution of Season without any alteration some would always have long Nights and short Days others again perpetually long Days and short Nights one Climate would be scorched and swelter'd with everlasting Dog-days while an eternal December blasted another This surely is not quite so good as the present Order of Seasons But shall the Axis rather observe no constant inclination to any thing but vary and waver at uncertain times and places This would be a happy Constitution indeed There could be no health no life nor subsistence in such an irregular System by those surprizing Nods of the Pole we might be tossed backward or forward in a moment from Ianuary to Iune nay possibly from the Ianuary of Greenland to the Iune of Abessinia It is better therefore upon all accounts that the Axis should be continued in its present posture and direction so that this also is a signal Character of Divine Wisdom and Goodness But because several have imagin'd that this skue posture of the Axis is a most unfortunate and pernicious thing that if the Poles had been erect to the Plane of the Ecliptic all mankind would have enjoyed a very Paradise upon Earth a perpetual Spring an eternal Calm and Serenity and the Longaevity of Methuselah without pains or diseases we are obliged to consider it a little further And first as to the Universal and Perpetual Spring 't is a mere Poetical Fancy and bating the equality of Days and Nights which is a thing of small value as to the other properties of a Spring it is naturally impossible being repugnant to the very form of the Globe For to those People that dwell under or near the Aequator this Spring would be a most pestilent and insupportable Summer and as for those Countries that are nearer the Poles in which number are our own and the most considerable Nations of the World a Perpetual Spring will not do their business they must have longer Days a nearer approach of the Sun and a less Obliquity of his Rayes they must have a Summer and a Harvest-time too to ripen their Grain and Fruits and Vines or else they must bid an eternal adieu to the very best of their sustenance It is plain that the Center of the Earth must move all along in the Orbis Magnus whether we suppose a Perpetual Aequinox or an oblique Position of the Axis So that the whole Globe would continue in the same Distance from the Sun and receive the same quantity of Heat from him in a Year or any assignable time in either Hypothesis Though the Axis then had been perpendicular yet take the whole Year about and the Earth would have had the same measure of Heat that it has now So that here lies the question Whether is more beneficial that the Inhabitants of the Earth should have the Yearly quantity of Heat distributed equally every day or so disposed as it is a greater share of it in Summer and in Winter a less It must needs be allowed that the Temperate Zones have no Heat to spare in Summer 't is very well if it be sufficient for the maturation of Fruits Now this being granted 't is as certain and manifest that an even distribution of the Yearly Heat would never have brought those Fruits to maturity as this is a known and familiar experiment That such a quantity of Fewel all kindled at once will cause Water to boil which being lighted gradually and successively will never be able to do it It is clear therefore that in the constitution of a Perpetual Aequinox the best part of the Globe would be desolate and useless and as to that little that could be inhabited there is no reason to expect that it would constantly enjoy that admired Calm and Serenity If the assertion were true yet some perhaps may think that such a Felicity as would make Navigation impossible is not much to be envied But it 's altogether precarious and has no necessary foundation neither upon Reason nor Experience For the Winds and Rains and other affections of the Atmosphere do not solely depend as that assertion supposeth upon the course of the Sun but partly and perhaps most frequently upon Steams and Exhalations from subterraneous Heat upon the Positions of the Moon the Situations of Seas or Mountains or Lakes or Woods and many other unknown or uncertain Causes So that though the Course of the Sun should be invariable and never swerve from the Equator yet the temperament of the Air would be mutable nevertheless according to the absence or presence or various mixture of the other Causes The ancient Philosophers for many ages together unanimously taught that the Torrid Zone was not habitable The reasons that they went upon were very specious and probable till the experience of these latter ages evinced them to be erroneous They argued from coelestial Causes only the constant Vicinity of the Sun and the directness of his Rayes never suspecting that the Body of the Earth had so great an efficiency in the changes of the Air and that then could be the coldest and rainiest season the Winter of the Year when the Sun was the nearest of all and steer'd directly over mens heads Which is warning sufficient to deterr any man from expecting such eternal Serenity and Halcyon-days from so incompetent and partial a Cause as the constant Course of the Sun in the Aequinoctial Circle What general condition and temperament of Air would follow upon that Supposition we cannot possibly define for 't is not caused by certain and regular Motions nor subject to Mathematical Calculations But if we may make a conjecture from the present Constitution we shall hardly wish for a Perpetual Aequinox to save the charges of Weather glasses for 't is very well known that the Months of March and September the two Aequinoxes of Our year are the most windy and tempestuous the most unsettled and unequable of Seasons in most Countries of the World Now if this notion of an uniform Calm and Serenity be false or precarious then even the last supposed advantage the constant Health and Longaevity of Men must be given up also as a groundless conceit for this according to the Assertors themselves doth solely as an effect of Nature depend upon the other Nay further though we should allow them their Perpetual Calm and Aequability of Heat they
be conveyed from one to the other We will not obscure and perplex with multitude of words what is so clear and evident by its own light and must needs be allowed by all that have competent use of Thinking and are initiated into I do not say the Mysteries but the plainest Principles of Philosophy Now mutual Gravitation or Attraction in our present acception of the Words is the same thing with This 't is an operation or virtue or influence of distant Bodies upon each other through an empty Interval without any Effluvia or Exhalations or other corporeal Medium to convey and transmit it This Power therefore cannot be innate and essential to Matter And if it be not essential it is consequently most manifest since it doth not depend upon Motion or Rest or Figure or Position of Parts which are all the ways that Matter can diversify it self that it could never supervene to it unless impress'd and infus'd into it by an immaterial and divine Power We have proved that a Power of mutual Gravitation without contact or impulse can in no-wise be attributed to mere Matter or if it could we shall presently shew that it would be wholly unable to form the World out of Chaos What then if it be made appear that there is really such a Power of Gravity which cannot be ascribed to mere Matter perpetually acting in the constitution of the present System This would be a new and invincible Argument for the Being of God being a direct and positive proof that an immaterial living Mind doth inform and actuate the dead Matter and support the Frame of the World I will lay before you some certain Phaenomena of Nature and leave it to your consideration from what Principle they can proceed 'T is demonstrated That the Sun Moon and all the Planets do reciprocally gravitate one toward another that the Gravitating power of each of them is exactly proportional to their Matter and arises from the several Gravitations or Attractions of all the individual Particles that compose the whole Mass that all Matter near the Surface of the Earth and so in all the Planets doth not only gravitate downwards but upwards also and side-ways and toward all imaginable Points though the Tendency downward be praedominant and alone discernible because of the Greatness and Nearness of the attracting Body the Earth that every Particle of the whole System doth attract and is attracted by all the rest All operating upon All that this Universal Attraction or Gravitation is an incessant regular and uniform Action by certain and establish'd Laws according to Quantity of Matter and Longitude of Distance that it cannot be destroyd nor impaired nor augmented by any thing neither by Motion or Rest nor Situation nor Posture nor alteration of Form nor diversity of Medium that it is not a Magnetical Power nor the effect of a Vortical Motion those common attempts toward the Explication of Gravity These things I say are fully demonstrated as matters of Fact by that very ingenious Author whom we cited before Now how is it possible that these things should be effected by any Material and Mechanical Agent We have evinced that mere Matter cannot operate upon Matter without mutual Contact It remains then that these Phaenomena are produced either by the intervention of Air or Aether or other such medium that communicates the Impulse from one Body to another or by Effluvia and Spirits that are emitted from the one and pervene to the other We can conceive no other way of performing them Mechanically But what impulse or agitation can be propagated through the Aether from one Particle entombed and wedged in the very Center of the Earth to another in the Center of Saturn Yet even those two Particles do reciprocally affect each other with the same force and vigour as they would do at the same distance in any other Situation imaginable And because the Impulse from this Particle is not directed to That only but to all the rest in the Universe to all quarters and regions at once invariably and incessantly to do this mechanically the same physical Point of Matter must move all manner of ways equally and constantly in the same instant and moment which is flatly impossible But if this Particle cannot propagate such Motion much less can it send out Effluvia to all points without intermission or variation such multitudes of Effluvia as to lay hold on every Atom in the Universe without missing of one Nay every single Particle of the very Effluvia since they also attract and gravitate must in this Supposition emit other secondary Effluvia all the World over and those others still emit more and so in infinitum Now if these things be repugnant to Humane Reason we have great reason to affirm That Universal Gravitation a thing certainly existent in Nature is above all Mechanism and material Causes and proceeds from a higher principle a Divine energy and impression III. Thirdly we affirm That though we shouldallow that reciprocal Attraction is essential to Matter yet the Atoms of a Chaos could never so convene by it as to form the present System or if they could form it yet it could neither acquire these Revolutions nor subsist in the present condition without the Conservation and Providence of a Divine Being 1. For first if the Matter of the Universe and consequently the Space through which it 's diffused be supposed to be Finite and I think it might be demonstrated to be so but that we have already exceeded the just measures of a Sermon then since every single Particle hath an innate Gravitation toward all others proportionated by Matter and Distance it evidently appears that the outward Atoms of the Chaos would necessarily tend inwards and descend from all quarters toward the Middle of the whole Space for in respect to every Atom there would lie through the Middle the greatest quantity of Matter and the most vigorous Attraction and those Atoms would there form and constitute one huge sphaerical Mass which would be the only Body in the Universe It is plain therefore that upon this Supposition the Matter of the Chaos could never compose such divided and different Masses as the Stars and Planets of the present World But allowing our Adversaries that the Planets might be composed yet however they could not possibly acquire such Revolutions in Circular Orbs or which is all one to our present purpose in Ellipses very little Eccentric For let them assign any place where the Planets were formed Was it nearer to the Sun than the present distances are But that is notoriously absurd for then they must have ascended from the place of their Formation against the essential property of mutual Attraction Or were each formed in the same Orbs in which they now move But then they must have moved from the Point of Rest in an horizontal Line without any inclination or descent Now there is no natural Cause neither Innate Gravity nor