of the Scriptures depends The Second Proposition in the Article is That there is but one God As to this the common Argument by which it is proved is the order of the World from whence it is inferred That there cannot be more Gods than one since where there are more than one there must happen diversity and confusion This is by some thought to be no good reason for if there are more Gods that is more Beings infinitely perfect they will always think the same thing and be knit together with an intire love It is true in things of a Moral Nature this must so happen For Beings infinitely perfect must ever agree But in Physical things capable of no Morality as in creating the World sooner or later and the different Systems of Beings with a thousand other things that have no Moral Goodness in them different Beings infinitely perfect might have different Thoughts So this Argument seems still of great force to prove the Unity of the Deity The other Argument from Reason to prove the Unity of God is from the Notion of a Being infinitely perfect For a Superiority over all other Beings comes so naturally into the Idea of infinite Perfection that we cannot separate it from it A Being therefore that has not all other Beings inferior and subordinate to it cannot be infinitely perfect whence it is evident That there is but one God But besides all this the Unity of God seems to be so frequently and so plainly asserted in the Scripture that we see it was the chief Design of the whole Old Testament both of Moses and the Prophets to establish it in opposition to the false opinions of the Heathen concerning a diversity of Gods This is often repeated in the most solemn Words as Hear O Israel 6. Deut 4. the Lord our God is one God It is the First of the Ten Commandments Thou shalt have no other Gods but me And all things in Heaven and Earth are often said to be made by this one God Negative words are also often used 44. Isa. 6 8. There is none other God but one besides me there is none else and I know no other the going after other Gods is reckon'd the highest and the most unpardonable act of Idolatry The New Testament goes on in the same strain Christ speaks of the only true God and that he alone ought to be worshipped and served 17. Joh 3 4. Mat. 10. 1 Cor. 8.5 6. all the Apostles do frequently affirm the same thing They make the believing of one God in opposition to the many Gods of the Heathens the chief Article of the Christian Religion and they lay down this as the chief ground of our Obligation to mutual Love and Union among our selves 4. Eph. 4.5 6. That there is one God one Lord one Faith one Baptism Now since we are sure that there is but one Messias and one Doctrine delivered by him it will clearly follow that there must be but one God So the Unity of the Divine Essence is clearly proved both from the Order and Government of the World from the Idea of Infinite Perfection and from those express Declarations that are made concerning it in the Scriptures which last is a full proof to all such as own and submit to them The Third Head in this Article is that which is negatively expressed That God is without Body Parts or Passions In general all these are so plainly contrary to the Ideas of Infinite Perfection and they appear so evidently to be Imperfections that this part of the Article will need little Explanation We do plainly perceive that our Bodies are clogs to our Minds And all the use that even the purest sort of Body in an Estate conceived to be glorified can be of to a Mind is to be an Instrument of local Motion or to be a repository of Ideas for Memory and Imagination But God who is every where and is one pure and simple Act can have no such use for a Body A Mind dwelling in a Body is in many respects superior to it yet in some respects is under it We who feel how an Act of our Mind can so direct the Motions of our Body that a thought sets our Limbs and Joints a-going can from thence conceive how that the whole extent of Matter should receive such Motions as the Acts of the Supreme Mind give it But yet not as a Body united to it or that the Deity either needs such a Body or can receive any trouble from it Thus far the apprehension of the thing is very plainly made out to us Our thoughts put some parts of our Body in a present Motion when the Organization is regular and all the parts are exact and when there is no Obstruction in those Vessels or Passages through which that heat and those Spirits do pass that cause the motion We do in this perceive that a thought does command matter but our Minds are limited to our Bodies and these do not obey them but as they are in an exact disposition and a fitness to be so moved Now these are plain Imperfections but removing them from God we can from hence apprehend that all the Matter in the Universe may be so intirely subject to the Divine Mind that it shall move and be whatsoever and wheresoever he will have it to be This is that which all men do agree in But many of the Philosophers thought that Matter though it was moved and moulded by God at his pleasure yet was not made by him but was self-existent and was a Passive Principle but coexistent to the Deity which they thought was the Active Principle From whence some have thought that the belief of two Gods one good and another bad did spring Though others imagine that the belief of a bad God did arise from the corruption of that Tradition concerning fallen Angels as was before suggested The Philosophers could not apprehend that things could be made out of nothing and therefore they believed that Matter was co-eternal with God But it is as hard to apprehend how a Mind by its Thought should give Motion to Matter as how it should give it Being A Being not made by God is not so easily conceivable to be under the acts of his Mind as that which is made by him This conceit plainly destroys infinite Perfection which cannot be in God if all Beings are not from him and under his Authority besides that successive duration has been already proved inconsistent with Eternity This Opinion of the World 's being a Body to God as the Mind that dwells in it and actuates it is the foundation of Atheism For if it be once thought that God can do nothing without such a Body then as this destroys the Idea of Infinite Perfection so it makes way to this conceit That since Matter is Visible and God Invisible there is no other God but the vast extent of the Universe It is true God has
Frame of Nature must go out of the Channel into which God did at first put it The Order of Things on this Earth takes a great Turn from the Wind both as to the Fruitfulness of the Earth and to the Operations on the Sea and has likewise a great Influence on the Purity of the Air and by consequence on mens good or ill Health and the Wind or the Agitation of the Air turns so often and so quick that it seems to be the great Instrument of Providence upon which an unconceivable variety of things does naturally depend I do not deny but that it may be said that all those Changes in the Air arise from Certain and Mechanical though to us unknown Causes which may be supported from this That between the Tropicks where the Influence of the Heavenly Bodies is stronger the Wind and Weather are more Regular though even that admits of great Exceptions Yet it has been the common Sense of Mankind That besides the Natural Causes of the Alterations in the Air they are under a particular Influence and Direction of Providence And it is in it self highly probable to say no more of it This may either be managed immediately by the Acts of the Divine Mind to which Nature readily obeys or by some subaltern Mind or Angel which may have as Natural an Efficiency over an Extent of Matter proportioned to its Capacity as a Man has over his own Body and over that compass of Matter that is within his reach Which way soever God governs the World and what Influence soever he has over Mens Minds we are sure that the governing and preserving his own Workmanship is so plainly a Perfection that it must belong to a Being infinitely perfect And there is such a Chain in things those of the greatest consequence arising often from small and inconsiderable ones that we cannot imagine a Providence unless we believe every thing to be within its Care and View The only difficulty that has been made in apprehending this has arisen from the Narrowness of Mens Minds who have measured God rather by their own Measure and Capacity than by that of Infinite Perfection which as soon as it is considered will put an end to all further doubtings about it When we perceive that a vast Number of Objects enter in at our Eye by a very small Passage and yet are so little jumbled in that Crowd that they open themselves regularly though there is no great space for that neither and that they give us a distinct apprehension of many Objects that lye before us some even at a vast distance from us both of their Nature Colour and Size and by a secret Geometry from the Angles that they make in our Eye we judge of the distance of all Objects both from us and from one another If to this we add the vast Number of Figures that we receive and retain long and with great order in our Brains which we easily fetch up either in our Thoughts or in our Discourses we shall find it less difficult to apprehend how an Infinite Mind should have the Universal View of all things ever present before it It is true we do not so easily conceive how Free Minds are under this Providence as how Natural Agents should always move at its direction But we perceive that one Mind can work upon another A man raises a sound of Words which carry such signs of his inward Thoughts that by this Motion in the Air another Man's Ear is so struck upon that thereby an impression is made upon his Brain by which he not only conceives what the other Man's Thought was but is very powerfully inclined to consent to it and to concur with it All this is a great way about and could not be easily apprehended by us if we had not a clear and constant Perception of it Now since all this is brought about by a Motion upon our Brains according to the force with which we are more or less affected it is very reasonable for us to apprehend that the Supreme Mind can besides many other ways to us less known put such Motions in our Brain as may give us all such Thoughts as it intends to impress upon us in as strong and effectual a manner as may fully answer all its purposes The great Objection that lies against the Power and the Goodness of Providence from all that Evil that is in the World which God is either not willing or not able to hinder will be more properly considered in another place at present it is enough in general to observe That God's Providence must carry on every thing according to its Nature and since he has made some Free Beings capable of Thought and of Good and Evil we must believe That as the Course of Nature is not oft put out of its Channel unless when some extraordinary thing is to be done in order to some great End so in the Government of free Agents they must be generally left to their liberty and not put too oft off of their Biass This is a hint to resolve that difficulty by concerning all the Moral Evil which is generally speaking the occasion of most of the Physical Evil that is in the World A Providence thus setled that extends it self to all things both natural and free is necessary to preserve Religion to engage us to Prayers Praises and to a dependence on it and a submission to it Some have thought it was necessary to carry this further and so they make God to be the first and immediate cause of every Action or Motion This some Modern Writers have taken from the Schools and have drest it in new Phrases of General Laws Particular Wills and Occasional Causes and so they express or explain God's producing every Motion that is in Matter and his raising every Sensation and by the same parity of Reason every Cogitation in Minds This they think arises out of the Idea of Infinite Perfection and fully answers these words of the Scriptures That in God we live move and have our being To others all this seems first unnecessary for if God has made Matter capable of Motion and capable of receiving it from the Stroke or Impulse that another piece of Matter gives it This comes as truly from God as if he did immediately give every Motion by an act of his own Will It seems more suitable to the Beauty of his Workmanship to think that he has so framed things that they hold on in that course in which he has put them than to make him perpetually produce every new Motion And the bringing God immediately into every thing may by an Odd Reverse of Effects make the World think that every thing is done as much without him as others are apt to imagine that every thing is done by him And though it is true that we cannot distinctly apprehend how a Motion in our Brain should raise such a Thought as Answers to it in our Minds
the manner of a Spirit without Extension or the filling of Space so that the Space which the Appearances possess is still a Vacuum or only filled by the Accidents For a Body without Extension as they suppose Christ's Body to be can never fill up an Extension Christ's Body in the Sacrament is denominated One yet still as the Species are broken and divided so many new Bodies are divided from one another every crumb of Bread and drop of Wine that is separated from the whole is a new Body and yet without a new Miracle all being done in consequence of the first great One that was all at once wrought The Body of Christ continues in this State as long as the Accidents remain in theirs but how it should alter is not easy to apprehend The corruption of all other Accidents arises from a change in the common Substance out of which new Accidents do arise while the old ones vanish but Accidents without a Subject may seem more fixed and stable Yet they are not so but are as subject to Corruption as other Accidents are Howsoever as long as the Alteration is not total though the Bread should be both musty and mouldy and the Wine both dead and sour yet as long as the Bread and Wine are still so far preserved or rather that their Appearances subsist so long the Body of Christ remains But when they are so far altered that they seem to be no more Bread and Wine and that they are corrupted either in part or in whole Christ's Body is withdrawn either in part or in whole It is a great Miracle to make the Accidents of Bread and Wine subsist without a Subject yet the new Accidents that arise upon these Accidents such as mouldiness or sourness come on without a Miracle but they do not know how When the main Accidents are destroyed then the Presence of Christ ceases And a new Miracle must be supposed to produce new Matter for the filling up of that space which the Substance of Bread and Wine did formerly fill And which was all this while possessed by the Accidents So much of the Matter of this Sacrament The Form of it is in the Words of Consecration which though they sound declarative as if the thing were already done This is my body and This is my blood Yet they believe them to be productive But whereas the common Notion of the Form of a Sacrament is that it sanctifies and applies the Matter here the former Matter is so far from being consecrated by it that it is annihilated and new Matter is not sanctified but brought thither or produced And whereas whensoever we say of any thing this is we suppose that the thing is as we say it is before we say it yet here all the while that this is a saying till the last Syllable is pronounced it is not that which it is said to be but in the Minute in which the last Syllable is uttered then the change is made And of this they are so firmly persuaded that they do presently pay all that Adoration to it that they would pay to the Person of Jesus Christ if he were visibly present Tho' the whole Vertue of the Consecration depends on the Intention of a Priest So that he with a cross Intention hinders all this Series of Miracles as he fetches it all on by letting his Intention go along with it If it may be said of some Doctrines that the bare exposing them is a most effectual Confutation of them certainly that is more Applicable to this than to any other that can be imagined For though I have in stating it considered some of the most important Difficulties which are seen and confessed by the School-men themselves who have poised all these with much exactness and subtilty yet I have passed over a great many more with which those that deal in School-divinity will find enough to exercise both their Thoughts and their Patience They run out in many Subtilties concerning the Accidents both primary and secondary Concerning the Ubication the Production and Reproduction of Bodies concerning the Penetrability of Matter and the Organization of a Penetrable Body concerning the Way of the Destruction of the Species concerning the Words of Consecration concerning the Water that is mixed with the Wine whether it is first changed by natural Causes into Wine and since nothing but Wine is transubstantiated what becomes of such Particles of Water that are not turned into Wine What is the Grace produced by the Sacrament what is the Effect of the Presence of Christ so long as he is in the Body of the Communicant what is got by his Presence and what is lost by his Absence In a word let a Man read the shortest Body of School-divinity that he can find and he will see in it a â—ast Number of other difficulties in this Matter of which their own Authors are aware which I have quite past over For when this Doctrine fell into the Hands of nice and exact Men they were soon sensible of all the Consequences that must needs follow upon it and have pursued all these with a closeness far beyond any thing that is to be found among the Writers of our side But that they might have a Salvo for every difficulty they framed a new Model of Philosophy new Theories were invented of Substances and Accidents of Matter and of Spirits of Extension Ubication and Impenetrability and by the new Definitions and Maxims to which they accustomed Men in the Study of Philosophy they prepared them to swallow down all this more easily when they should come to the Study of Divinity The Infallibility of the Church that had expresly defined it was to bear a great part of the Burden If the Church was Infallible and if they were that Church then it could be no longer doubted of In dark Ages Miracles and Visions came in abundantly to support it In Ages of more Light the infinite Power of God the Words of the Institution it being the Testament of our Saviour then dying and soon after confirmed with his Blood were things of great Pomp and such as were apt to strike Men that could not distinguish between the shews and the strength of Arguments But when all our Senses all our Ideas of things rise up so strongly against every part of this Chain of Wonders we ought at least to expect Proofs suitable to the difficulty of believing such a flat Contradiction to our Reasons as well as to our Senses We have no other Notion of Accidents but that they are the different Shapes or Modes of Matter and that they have no Being distinct from the Body in which they appear We have no other Notion of a Body but that it is an extended Substance made up of Impenetrable Parts one without another every one of which fills its proper space We have no other Notion of a Body's being in a Place but that it fills it and is so in it
to what was set out in its proper Place And although we set a due value upon some of the Apocryphal Books yet others are of a lower Character The First Book of Maccabees is a very grave History writ with much exactness and a true Judgment but the Second is the Work of a mean Writer He was an Abridger of a larger Work and as he has the Modesty to ask his Readers Pardon for his Defects so it is very plain to every one that reads him that he needs often many grains of allowance So that this Book is one of the least valuable Pieces of the Apocrypha and there are very probable Reasons to question the Truth of that Relation concerning those who were thus prayed for But because that would occasion too long a Digression we are to make a difference between the Story that he relates and the Author 's own Reflections upon it for as we ought not to make any great Account of his Reflections these being only his private Thoughts who might probably have imbibed some of the Principles of the Greek Philosophy as some of the Iews had done or he might have believed that Notion which is now very generally received by the Iews that every Iew shall have a share in the World to come but that such as have lived ill must be purged before they arrive at it It is of much more importance to consider what Iudas Maccabeus did 2 Maccab. 12.40 which even by that Relation seems to be no more than this That he finding some things Consecrated to the Idols of the Iamnites about the Bodies of those who were killed concluded that to have been the cause of their Death And upon this he and all his Men betook themselves to Prayer and besought God that the Sin might be wholly put out of remembrance He exhorted his People to keep themselves by that Example from the like Sin and he made a Collection of a Sum of Money and sent it to Ierusalem to offer a Sin-offering before the Lord. So far the matter agrees well enough with the Iewish Dispensation It had appeared in the days of Ioshua how much guilt the Sin of Achan though but one Person had brought upon the whole Congregation and their Law had upon another Occasion prescribed a Sin-offering for the whole Congregation to expiate Blood that was shed when the Murderer could not be discovered That so the Judgments of God might not come upon them by reason of the cry of that Blood And by a parity of Reason Iudas might have ordered such an Offering to free himself and his Men from the guilt which the Idolatry of a few might have brought upon greater Numbers such a Sacrifice as this might according to the nature of that Law have been offered But to offer a Sin-offering for the Dead was a new thing without ground or any intimation of any thing like it in their Law So there is no reason to doubt but that if the Story is true Iudas offered this Sin-offering for the Living and not for the Dead If they had been alive then by their Law no Sin-offering could have been made for them for Idolatry was to be punished by cutting off and not to be expiated by Sacrifice What then could not have been done for them if alive could much less be done for them after their death So we have reason to conclude that Iudas offered this Sacrifice only for the Living And we are not much concerned in the Opinion which so slight a Writer as the Author of that Book had concerning it But whatever might be his Opinion it was far from that of the Roman Church By this Instance of the Maccabees Men who died in a State of mortal Sin and that of the highest nature had Sacrifices offered for them Whereas according to the Doctrine of the Church of Rome Hell and not Purgatory is to be the Portion of all such So this will prove too much if any thing at all that Sacrifices are to be offered for the Damned The design of Iudas his sending to make an Offering for them as that Writer states it was that their Sins might be forgiven and that they might have a happy Resurrection Here is nothing of Redeeming them out of Misery or of shortening or alleviating their Torment So that the Author of that Book seems to have been possessed with that Opinion received commonly among the Iews That no Iew could finally perish as we find S. Ierom expressing himself with the like partiality for all Christians But whatever the Author's Opinion was as that Book is of no Authority it is highly probable that Iudas's design in that Oblation was misunderstood by the Historian and we are sure that even his sense of it differs totally from that of the Church of Rome A Passage in the New Testament is brought as a full proof of the Fire of Purgatory 1 Cor. 3. from V. 10. to 16. When St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians is reflecting on the Divisions that were among them and on that diversity of Teachers that formed Men into different Principles and Parties he compares them to different Builders Some raised upon a Rock an Edifice like the Temple at Ierusalem of Gold and Silver and noble Stones called precious Stones whereas others upon the same Rock raised a mean Hovel of Wood Hay and Stubble of both he says every man's work shall be made manifest For the day shall reveal it because it shall be revealed by fire for the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is And he adds If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon he shall receive a reward and if any man's work shall be burnt he shall suffer loss but he himself shall be saved yet so as by fire From the first view of these words it will not be thought strange if some of the Ancients who were too apt to Expound places of Scripture according to their first appearences might fancy that at the last day all were to pass through a great Fire and to suffer more or less in it But it is visible that that Opinion is far enough from the Doctrine of Purgatory These words relate to a Fire that was soon to appear and that was to try every Man's work It was to be revealed and in it every Man's work was to be made manifest So this can have no relation to a secret Purgatory Fire The meaning of it can be no other but that whereas some with the Apostles were building up the Church not only upon the Foundation of Jesus Christ and the Belief of his Doctrine but were teaching Men Doctrines and Rules that were Vertuous Good and Great Others at the same time were daubing with a profane mixture both of Judaism and Gentilism joining these with some of the Precepts of Christianity a day would soon appear which probably is meant of the destruction of Ierusalem and of the Iewish Nation or