Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	body_n	matter_n	nature_n	2,049	5	5.3756	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29013	Of the high veneration man's intellect owes to God, peculiarly for his wisedom and power by a Fellow of the Royal Society.	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1685 (1685)	Wing B4009; ESTC R10996	40,294	119

have bounds and so be truely boundless or which is the same thing in other terms infinite And if the World be bounded then those that believe a Deity to whose Nature it belongs to be of infinite Power must not deny that God is and still was able to make other Worlds than this of ours And the Epicureans who admitted no Omnipotent Maker of the World but substituted Chance and Atomes in his Stead taught that by reason the causes sufficient to make a World that is Atomes and Space were not wanting Chance has actually made many Worlds of which ours is but one and the Cartesians must according to their Doctrine of the Indefiniteness of Corporeal Substance admit that our visible World or if they please Vortex by which I mean the greatest extent our eyes can reach to is but a part and comparatively but a very small one too of the whole Vniverse which may extend beyond the utmost Stars we can see incomparably farther than those remotest visible bounds are distant from our Earth Now if we grant with some modern Philosophers that God has made other Worlds besides this of ours it will be highly probable that he has there display'd His manifold Wisedom in productions very differing from those wherein we here admire it And even without supposing any more than one Universe as all that portion of it that is visible to us makes but a part of that vastly extended aggregate of bodies So if we but suppose that some of the Celestial Globes whether visible to us or plac'd beyond the reach of our sight are peculiar Systemes the consideration will not be very different For since the fix'd Stars are many of them incomparably more remote than the Planets 't is not absurd to suppose that as the Sun who is the fix'd Star nearest to us has a whole Systeme of Planets that move about him so some of the other fix'd Stars may be each of them the Centre as it were of another Systeme of Celestial Globes since we see that some Planets themselves that are determined by Astronomers to be much inferiour in bigness to those fix'd Stars I was speaking of have other Globes that do as it were depend on them and move about them as not to mention the Earth that has the Moon for its Attendant nor Saturn that is not altogether unaccompanied 't is plain that Jupiter has no less than four Satellites that run their Courses about Him And 't is not to be pretermitted that none of these lesser and secondary Planets if I may so call them that moves about Saturn and Jupiter is visible to the naked eye and therefore they were all unknown to the Ancient Astronomers who liv'd before the invention of Telescopes Now in case there be other Mundane Systemes if I may so speak besides this visible one of ours I think it may be probably suppos'd that God may have given peculiar and admirable instances of His inexhausted Wisedom in the Contrivance and Government of Systemes that for ought we know may be fram'd and manag'd in a manner quite differing from what is observ'd in that part of the Universe that is known to us For besides that here on Earth the Loadstone is a Mineral so differing in divers affections not onely from all other Stones but from all other bodies that are not Magnetical that this Heteroclite Mineral scarce seems to be Originary of this World of ours but to have come into it by a remove from some other World or Systeme I remember that some of the Navigators that discovered America took notice that at their first coming into some parts of it though they found great store of Animals and Plants yet they met with few of the latter and scarce any of the former of the same Species with the living Creatures of Europe 19. Now in these other Worlds besides that we may suppose that the Original Fabrick or that Frame into which the Omniscient Architect at first contriv'd the parts of their matter was very differing from the structure of our Systeme besides this I say we may conceive that there may be a vast difference betwixt the subsequent Phoenomena and productions observable in one of those Systemes from what regularly happens in ours though we should suppose no more than that two or three Laws of Local Motion may be differing in those unknown Worlds from the Laws that obtain in ours For if we suppose for instance that every entire Body whether simple or compounded great or small retains always a motive Power as Philosophers commonly think that the Soul does when it has mov'd the Humane Body and as the Epicureans and many other Philosophers think all Atomes do after they have impell'd one aonther this power of exciting Motion in another Body without the Movents loosing its own will appear of such moment to those that duely consider that Local Motion is the first and chiefest of the second causes that produce the Phoenomena of Nature that they will easily grant that these Phoenomena must be strangely diversifyed by springing from principal causes so very differingly qualifyed Nor to add another way of varying Motion is it absurd to conceive that God may have created some parts of matter to be of themselves quiescent as the Cartesians and divers other Philosophers suppose all matter to be in its own Nature and determin'd to continue at rest till some outward Agent force it into Motion and yet that He may have endow'd other parts of the matter with a Power like that which the Atomists ascribe to their Principles of restlesly moving themselves without loosing that power by the motion they excite in quiescent bodies And the Laws of this propagation of Motion among bodies may be not the same with those that are established in our World so that but one half or some lesser part as a third of the Motion that is here communicated from a body of such a bulk and velocity to another it finds at rest or slowlier mov'd than it self shall there pass from a Movent to the body it impells though all circumstances except the Laws of Motion be suppos'd to be the same Nor is it so extravagant a thing as at first it may seem to entertain such suspicions as these For in the common Philosophy besides that the Notion and Theory of Local Motion are but very imperfectly propos'd there are Laws or Rules of it well not to say at all establish'd 20. And as for the Cartesian Laws of Motion though I know they are received by many learned Men yet I suspect that it is rather upon the Authority of so famous a Mathematician as Des-Cartes than any convictive evidence that accompanies the Rules themselves since to me for Reasons that belong not to this Discourse some of them appear not to be befriended either by clear experience or any Cogent Reason And for the Rule that is the most usefull namely that which asserts That there is always the same