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	nature_n	power_n	1,617	5	4.8157	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60941	Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock's book, entituled A vindication of the holy and ever-blessed Trinity, &c, together with a more necessary vindication of that sacred and prime article of the Christian faith from his new notions, and false explications of it / humbly offered to his admirers, and to himself the chief of them, by a divine of the Church of England.	South, Robert, 1634-1716.	1693 (1693)	Wing S4731; ESTC R10418	260,169	412

is an act of Intellection and so must issue from an Intellective Faculty which the Body is not endued with and therefore cannot act by and withal every act of the Will is only an Intelligible and not a sensible Object and consequently cannot be otherwise apprehended and perceived than intellectually And as for the Commands of it a Command operates and moves only by way of moral Causation viz. by being first known by the Thing or Agent which it is directed to which thereupon by such a Knowledge of it is induced to move or Act accordingly But now the Will does not thus Act upon the Body the Body having no Principle whereby to know or understand what it Commands And therefore when we say That the Will Commands the Body in strictness of Truth it is only a Metaphorical Expression For the Will or Soul exerting an Act of Volition moves the Body not by Command but by Physical Impulse That is to say It does by its native Force Energy and Activity first move and impell the Spirits and by the instrumental Mediation of them so moved and impelled it moves and impells the Body and this by as real an Impulse as when I push or thrust a thing with my hand For though indeed a material Thing cannot actively or efficiently move or work upon an Immaterial yet Philosophers grant that an Immaterial as being of the nobler and more active Nature can move impell or work upon a Material and if we cannot form in our Minds an Idea of the Mechanism of this Motion it is because neither can we form in our Minds an Idea of a Spirit But nevertheless Reason and Discourse will Evince That the Thing must be so PARADOX He tells us That the Human Nature of Christ may be Ignorant of some things notwithstanding its personal Union to the Divine Word because it is an Inferiour and Subject Nature Page 270. Line 12 13 14. Answer These Words also are both absurd and false And First They are Absurd because no Rules of Speaking or Arguing permit us to say of any Thing or Person That it may be so or so when necessarily it is and must be so For the Term may imports an Indifference or at least a possibility to both sides of the Contradiction So that when a Man says That a Thing may be thus or thus he does by consequence say also That it may not be thus or thus And therefore to say That the Human Nature of Christ notwithstanding its personal Union to the Word may be ignorant of some Things when it cannot but be ignorant of some nay of very many Things is Absurd And in the next place also To make the Subjection of the Human Nature to the Divine the proper Cause of this Ignorance is false and the Assignation of a non causa pro causâ It being all one as if I should say That such an one cannot be a good Disputant because he has a blemish in his Eye For it is not this Subjection of it to the Divine Nature that makes it ignorant of many Things known by that Nature but the vast disparity that is between these Two Natures viz. That one of them is Infinite the other Finite which makes it impossible for the Infinite to communicate its whole Knowledge to the Finite Forasmuch as such a Knowledge exceeds its Capacity and cannot be received into it so as to exist or abide in it any more than Omnipotence or Omnipresence or any other Infinite Divine Perfection can be lodged in a Finite Being And besides this this very Author in the immediately foregoing Page had not only allowed but affirmed That the Body which certainly is both united to the Soul and of a Nature Subject and Inferiour to it was yet conscious to the Dictates and Commands of the Soul Wherefore where Two Natures are united the bare Subjection of one to the other is not the proper Cause that the Nature which is Subject is ignorant of what is known by the Nature which it is subject to For if Subjection were the sole and proper Cause of this Ignorance the Inferiour Nature would be equally ignorant of every Thing known by the Superiour which yet according to this Man 's own Doctrine of the Consciousness of the Body to the Soul is not so This Consideration I alledge only as an Argument ad hominem having already by the former Argument sufficiently proved the falseness of his Assertion But I shall detain my Reader no longer upon this Subject though I must assure him that I have given him but a Modicum and as it were an handful or two out of that full heap which I had before me and from which I had actually collected several more Particulars which I have not here presented him with being unwilling to swell my Work to too great a Bulk Nevertheless I look upon this Head of Discourse as so very useful to place this Author in a true Light that if I might be so bold with my Reader I could wish that he would vouchsafe this Chapter of all the rest a second Perusal upon which I dare undertake that it will leave in him such Impressions concerning this Man's fitness to Write about the Trinity as will not wear out of his Mind in haste And yet after all this I will not presume to derogate from this Author's Abilities how insolently soever he has trampled upon other Mens but content my self that I have fairly laid that before the Reader by which he may take a just and true measure of them And so I shall conclude this Chapter with an Observation which I have upon several occasions had cause to make viz. That Divinity and Philosophy are certainly the worst Things in the World for any One to be Magisterial in who does not understand them CHAP. X. In which the Author 's Grammatical and such like Mistakes as they are found here and there in his Writings are set down and remarked upon COuld this Author have carried himself with any or dinary degree of Candor and Civility towards those whom he wrote against he had never had the least Trouble given him by me upon this Head of Discourse But when I find him treating Learned Men with so much Disdain and Insolence and much liker a rough ill-bred School-Master domineering over his Boys than a fair Opponent entring the Lists with an Ingenuous Antagonist I must confess I cannot think my self obliged to treat him upon such Terms as I would an Adversary of a contrary Temper and Behaviour One Man and a very Learned one too he flirts at as if he could not distinguish between Conjunctive and Disjunctive Particles Vindication of his Case of Allegiance pag. 76. the Two last Lines Another he Scoffs or rather Spits at as neither understanding Greek nor Latine Vindic. Trin. Pag. 95. Line 25. and thereby I suppose would bear himself to the World as no small Critick in both As for the Socinians of which number this latter is

Earth in gentle Showres c. for it must be granted That it is much easier to change like the Weather than to understand it and moreover though he is pleased to say That he who thinks he understands these matters would make a Man question Whether he has any sense at all which is his usual Complement to most whom he deals with yet all this confident Talk will neither clear him from the Absurdity and Paradox of the forementioned General Position laid down by him nor convince such as are conversant in the experimental part of Natural Philosophy but that a very true rational and satisfactory Account may be given of all the fore-mentioned Phaenomena in Nature which this Man with so much Confidence or rather Insolence says No Man of unquestion'd Sence will pretend to give the Reason or Philosophy of Accordingly I will direct him to some who took the boldness to give a Philosophical Account of his Unresolvable Problems As for instance That of the congealing of Water by Cold into such a solid Body as Ice he will find excellently and rationally accounted for by the Learned Mr. Boyl in his Treatise of Cold containing new Experiments and Observations touching it and an Experimental History of it begun Likewise a reason of the same given by those Learned French-men the Authors of the Philosophia Vetus Nova commonly called the Colbertine Philosophy in the 2 Vol. p. 213 214 215 216. And then for the Descent of heavy Bodies or Stones falling to the Ground he will find the cause of it assigned by Galileo in his Systema Cosmicum Collat. 1. 2. And since by Gassendus in his Accurate Tract de motu impresso à motore translato As also an Account of the Gravitation or Descent of such Bodies judiciously given by Claudius Berigardus Professor of Philosophy first in Pisa and then in Padua in his Circulus Pisanus 3d part and the 6 Dial. p. 291 292. in the Person of Aristaeus And last of all in the Causes of Gravitation briefly but ingeniously given by Isaac Vossius in his Observationes variae p. 201 c. In like manner he will find a Philosophical and Historical Account of Winds by that great Man the Lord Bacon in his Treatise upon that Subject which I am sure is as difficult an one as any mentioned by this Author And as for what he here says of the Ascent of Vapours which is easily accounted for from the Sun and other Celestial Bodies and their Descent again in Showres which might easily be stated upon their own Gravity being combined into bigger Bodies as is lively exemplified in an Alembick this Author in this seems to give us some Philosophical Account of Rain and consequently for presuming so to do ought to bear his share in the same Reproach which upon the like account he hath so insolently fastned upon others But as touching Rain and Vapours Snow and Frost and innumerable more such Subjects there is not a Natural Philosopher whether Peripatetick Gassendian or Cartesian of any note but professeth to give a Philosophical Reason of the Nature of them both as to what they are and how and by what means they are caused Concerning all which Learned Men who have avowedly travelled and imployed themselves in such Studies and that with great Applause of all the Learned World I desire his Haughtiness to speak out and declare freely whether he taketh them to have been such Persons as a Man would question Whether they had any Sense or no For as these famous Men were far from denying their Senses in Complement to their Understanding so they were as far from passing such a Complement upon their Senses as to own That their Understanding could look no farther and that where Sense had started the Game Reason might not follow it and by a diligent and sagacious pursuit at length overtake it The Things treated of by these mighty Searchers into Nature I acknowledge to be very difficult but every thing that is difficult is not therefore impossible even to him that thinks it so And therefore as to the ignorance of such like matters let our Author in God's Name and others like him pronounce each Man for himself and not undertake for others For there may be several things which one Man may not know and yet others may As for instance It may sometimes so fall out That a Man may not know himself and yet others may know him very well Which is an Observation I conceive not unworthy of this Author's Remark But to go on Whereas he is very positive and decretory That the Essences of things cannot be known I very much question and allow him if he pleases to question my Sense also for so doing whether this be absolutely true For a thing may be known more ways than one and if it be perfectly known any one way according to the utmost extent of that way it cannot be truly said not to be known Now if by knowing he means the knowledge of a thing by a direct Apprehension and Intuition of it so as to have an exact Idea or resemblance of it thereby imprinted upon the mind I pretend not that the Essences of things are by any Human Intellect so known But then this is still but one way of knowledge and what is not known one way may for all that be very well known another But if on the other side by knowing a thing be meant the knowing it to be of such or such a Nature by such peculiar Properties such peculiar Effects and Operations as discriminate it from other things and that to know it thus be truly to know it Then I affirm That the Natures or Essences of things may be truly and one way at least perfectly known And accordingly I think it a very good Account of the Essence of any thing to say That it is such a thing as always and necessarily has such Properties such Operations and produces such Effects For this is an Answer not only to that Question that enquires Whether there be such a thing or Essence or no But also and much more properly to the Question that enquires What kind of Nature or Essence such a thing is of For when that is askt to say in reply to it That the Essence or Nature of that thing is a certain Principle always attended with such Properties and always or generally operating in such a manner and producing such effects is a full and satisfactory Answer to that Question If now this Author replys here that he grants That the Properties of things may be known I Answer That sometimes indeed he grants it and sometimes again he positively denies it as I have shewn But if in the issue he will stand by the Concession of it then he must stand by the Consequence of that Concession too and grant That Properties are declaratory of the Quality of the Essence they flow from and belong to For I hope he will grant that the

Infinite Mind that is Infinite Wisdom Power and Goodness the Essence of God though considered but as one Numerical Person is as perfectly unintelligible to us as the one Numerical Essence or Substance of three Divine Persons in the ever-blessed Trinity In which words I think this Author guilty of a double Absurdity One That he supposes a Mind not to be an Essence or Substance and it is manifest that he does so since he finds fault with Substance and puts Mind in the room of it Whereas a Mind is really a Substance or Nothing not that there is nothing in the World besides Substance but nothing else which a Mind can be properly said to be His other Absurdity is his supposing Mind Wisdom Power and Goodness to be the same whereas Wisdom and Goodness are not properly a Mind but the Affections or Attributes of a Mind And here let not our Author tell me That they are all one and the same thing in God For that is no News yet nevertheless Mind Wisdom Power Goodness c. are formally distinct from one another and so not affirmable of one another And in speaking of things the formal differences of them must still be attended to God's Iustice and his Mercy are one pure simple Act in Him but he that says His Iustice is his Mercy speaks absurdly for all that And he who says That a Mind is Wisdom or Goodness or Power c. speaks just at the same rate But again in Page 70. It is this gross and material imagination says he about the Essence and Substance of the Deity which occasions all the difficulties about the Notion of one God as well as of a Trinity in Unity For we cannot imagine how any Substance should be without a beginning how it should be present in all places without parts and without extension how Substance Essence Existence and all Divine Attributes and Powers which are distinct things in Created Spirits should be all the same and one simple Act in God c. From all which we are according to this Author to conclude That the Terms Substance Essence and Existence ought to be laid aside in all Discourses of the Deity as serving for nothing but to cause in us those false Notions of it Nor are those only excepted against but also all Divine Attributes and Powers for in his last words newly quoted he equally joyns and puts them all together And what monstrous work this must needs make in our Conceptions and Discourses of God shall I hope in the process of this Dispute be made to appear In order to which I do here first of all in opposition to what this Author has Asserted about Substance and Matter lay down this Proposition viz. That Substance in the proper Nature and Notion of it includes no Communication with or respect to Matter at all And this I prove to him by one plain Argument before I proceed to any thing that is Metaphysical viz. That there was Substance in the World before ever there was Matter and therefore the Notion of the former does not essentially include in it the Notion of the latter For surely if the Being of one might be without the Being of the other the Notion of the one may be no less without the Notion of the other too Now that there was Substance in the World before Matter I prove from this That there was a Being existing by it self in the World before Matter and therefore there was Substance For this is the very definition of Substance That it is a Being existing by it self and consequently they must reciprocally infer one another as the definition and the thing defined by it always do And then that there was a Being thus existing by it self before Matter is proved from hence That there was a Being which produced Matter which nothing but a Being existing by it self could do And now I would fain know of our Author Whether we may not have a clear and distinct Conception of such a Being without so much as thinking of Matter And if we may as I see nothing to hinder us then it is false that the Notion of Substance does necessarily engage our thoughts in or confound them with the Idea of Matter Besides all the World does and must allow that we may have a full and perfect Conception of a Genus or Generical Nature of a thing without considering any of its Species And withal that it is impossible that such a Generical Nature should include in it any one of the Specifick Differences of the things which it is Communicable to and which are contained under it for if so then one Species would include in it the Specifick difference of the other opposite Species forasmuch as including in it the Generical Nature it must include all that is included in that Nature too Which would be infinitely absurd But now Substance is a Generical Nature equally communicable both to Material and Immaterial Substances as to two distinct Species and consequently in its Precise Conception implys nothing of Materiality in it and for that cause may be conceived and known and distinctly represented to our minds without it Nay and to shew further the difference between Substance and Matter in the proper Notions of each This Proposition Substance is not Matter is certainly true true I say particularly though not universally that is with reference to all those Substances the Nature of which excludes all Matter as the Nature of Angels and of the Souls of Men confessedly does But now if the general Nature of Substance essentially implyed in it Matter it could not be truly said of any one particular Substance in the World That it is not Matter Mr. Hobbs I know makes Substance and Matter Commensurate or rather the same But methinks though some have lately wrote after him in his lewd Politicks no Divine should venture to fall in with him in his Natural Philosophy too for fear of some certain Consequences which it is too well known must follow from it In a word the first thing to be conceived in God is That he is a Being the next That he is a Being existing by it self that is in other words He is a Substance And therefore I hope we may both form an Idea of Substance and afterwards apply it to God without plunging our selves into the gross Imaginations of Matter And so far do all other Divines and Philosophers differ from this Man that they affirm the word Substance much more properly and really applicable to God than to any of the Creatures which certainly it could never be if it implyed any such essential cognation to Matter either in the Nature or Notion of it It is evident therefore That there is no necessity from the thing it self to justifie this Author's Objection And as for those gross and Material Imaginations of Substance taken up and borrowed from Material Corporeal things nothing can be inferred from thence to his purpose For is it good arguing to

conclude That because a thing is actually thus or thus it cannot possibly be otherwise Do not some form to themselves gross and absurd Imaginations of God the Father from that Expression of the Ancient of Days Dan. 7. 9. representing Him to their thoughts as an Old Man sitting in Heaven But may not others therefore who are wiser conceive more worthily of him without laying aside that Scripture-expression If it be a good Argument as it is all our Author brings that Terms which may occasion gross and Material Imaginations in the Minds of Men ought not to be applyed to God then I hope it is as much an Argument in one thing as in another And accordingly I desire to know of him Whether the Terms Begetting and being begot Father and Son are not very fitly applyed to and used about the Divine Persons And if so Whether they are not altogether as hard to be abstracted from material Imaginations as the Notions of Essence or Substance are or rather indeed much harder I believe all thinking Men will conclude they are Nay and I shall venture to tell him further That these two words partly through their Corporeal signification and partly through the weakness of Men's Minds have occasioned more difficulties about the Notion of a Deity and a Trinity too than ever the words Essence or Substance did or perhaps could do And yet for all that the Spirit of God has thought sit to make use of them to express so sacred a Mystery by But this Man should have remembred That how gross and Material soever the Representations of things are which our senses first make to us there is a Iudicium Correctivum in Reason as the superiour faculty which is to consider and separate what is gross and Material in them from what is otherwise till at length by rejecting some Notions and retaining others it finds out something even in the most Material things which may truly properly and becomingly be applyed to the purest and most Immaterial But to give a fuller Account of this matter we must observe That the Idea of Substance may be said to be taken from Matter two ways 1. Remotely and Occasionally as the Observation of Material Things may first set Reason to work which in the strength of its own Discourse may draw from thence the knowledge of Immaterials as the Apostle tells us in Rom. 1. 20. That the Invisible things of God from the Creation were clearly seen and understood from the things that are made viz. Such visible sensible Objects as Men daily converse with And if so then surely these do not necessarily dispose the Mind of Man to gross and Material Imaginations of the things so apprehended by it But 2. The Idea of Substance may be said to be taken from Matter immediately and exemplarily as when the Imagination does as it were transcribe and copy one from the other and take one for the representation of the other and this I confess must needs imprint a very gross Idea of Substance upon the Imagination And to this way may be referred all those gross and Material Ideas of Substance which this Author so much exclaims against But then all this is from the neglect of the Person in not imploying his Reason to correct and refine the first reports of Sence as he might and ought to have done and if from hence we conclude an utter Incapacity in the thing it self to be improved and heightened into Immaterial Representations and thereupon to be conceived and spoken of agreeably to them we must even expect a Teacher to be sent down from Heaven to furnish us with a new Language or we must shut up our Mouths and put up our Pens and not speak or write of Divine Matters at all And therefore whereas this Author further adds in Page 70. That we cannot imagine how any substance should be without a Beginning and how it should be Present in all places I tell him This is not the Point in Controversie Whether we can imagine it or no But I tell him withal That it is as easie for the Mind of Man to conceive all this of Substance as of any thing else whatsoever For Why not a Substance without Beginning as well as Truth or Wisdom or Goodness without a Beginning I say Let him shew me some solid Reason why In the mean time I can tell him That of the two it should seem less difficult to imagine the Eternal Existence of Substance than of Truth since Substance is in order of Nature before it as the Subject must needs be before that which affects it Though in very deed the main difficulty here is not so much to find out which of those Perfections may be the most easily conceived to have been without a Beginning as it is to bring the mind to a full and clear Conception How any thing at all is so While it finds it self wholly at a loss in running up its thoughts still higher and higher without any bound or stint to determine them And this it is and not the particular Nature of Essence or Substance that nonplusses and confounds our Reason in these unlimited Speculations And whereas he goes on in the next words and tells us That we cannot imagine How Substance Existence and all the Divine Attributes and Powers should be all one and the same simple Act in God I Answer What if we cannot Must nothing be applyed to God but what shall let us into the full knowledge of all that is difficult and mysterious in the Divine Nature Or will this Man say That the Application of the Terms Essence and Substance to God is the true cause and reason why we cannot apprehend How Substance and Existence and all the Divine Attributes and Powers are one and the same simple Act in God For this is the thing that he has been professedly driving at and therefore ought to prove And besides as what he has here alledged is nothing to his purpose without the proof of that so it is all but a meer fallacy a fallacy of the Accident For albeit we cannot apprehend how all these Attributes are one and the same simple Act in God yet surely it will not follow hence that we cannot apprehend them singly and severally by themselves and as we so apprehend them apply them properly and fitly to God And here I cannot but take notice of a way of Arguing usual with this Author as I cannot conceive and I cannot understand and I cannot imagine c. After which as if he had laid down irrefragable Premises he concludes That the thing it self is not to be conceived understood or imagined But for my part I must be excused that I cannot allow this Man's single Judgment or prejudice rather for the universal Standard or measure of humane Reason or that such a way of discoursing proves any thing but the assuming humour of him who uses it and one strangely full of Himself instead of better things In