before disproved In point of efficiency we grant that he is as the Soul of Souls effecting more than Souls do for their Bodies but not in point of Constitution He is much more than the Soul of the world but is not formally its Soul But 2. Those men that will think so must acknowledge that as they take the Horse and the Rider to be both parts of God and the Child and the Father and the Subject and the Prince and the Malefactor and the Judge and the flagitious wretch and the best of men so it is no other membership than what consisteth with the difference of moral good and evil of wise and foolish of Governours and Subjects of Rewards and Punishments of Happiness and Misery which are the things that I am seeking after But so few lay this claim to Deity that I need no further mind them § 3. My Parents were not the first cause of my being what I am As each Individual cannot be the first Cause of it self so neither can their Parents for they do not so much as know my frame and nature nor the order and temperature of my parts nor how or when they were set together nor their use or the reason of their location And certainly he that made me knew what he did and why he did it in each particular My Parents could not choose my sex nor shape nor strength nor qualifications § 4. The world which I see and live in did not make it self As Men and Beasts and Trees and Stones did not make themselves so neither did they joyn as concauses or assistants in the making of the whole nor did any one of them make the rest nor did any of the more simple substances called Elements make themselves neither the passive Elements or the active the Earth the Water the Air or the Fire For we know past doubt that nothing hath no power or action and before they were they were not and therefore could not make themselves Nor can they be the first cause of mixt bodies because there is that exceeding wisdom most apparent in the generation production nature and operations of these Bodies which these Elements have not § 5. The visible world is not an uncaused independent Being For all the generated parts we see do oriri interire they have a beginning progress decay and end And the inanimate parts having less of natural excellency than the living cannot infinitely exceed them in the excellency of Deity as uncaused and independent And we see that they are all dependent in their operations They shew in the order of their beings and action that incomprehensible wisdom which is not in themselves the Earth the Sea the Air and Winds are all ordered exactly by a Wisdom and a Will which they themselves are void of Besides they are many and various but their order and agreement sheweth that it is some One universal Wisdom and Will which ruleth them all and if they are dependent in operation they are certainly dependent in being And had they that excellency to be uncaused and independent they would have had therewith all other perfections which we see they want and they would not have been many but one in that perfection § 6. The first universal Matter is not an uncaused independent being If such there be its inactivity and passiveness sheweth it to want the excellency of independency and the ordination of it into its several beings and the disposals of it there is done by a principle of infinite power activity and wisdom on which having this dependence in its ordination and use it must be dependent also in its being § 7. If it were doubtful whether the world were eternal and whether it were the Body of God as the informing Soul yet it would be past doubt that it is not uncaused or independent but caused by God That the world is not eternal we want not natural evidence for saith Lullius then there would be two Eternals the Cause and its Effects and then all things would be caused by natural necessity and not by free will and consequently always alike and then there hath been Evil eternally and both the caused Good and the Evil would in all other aggravations be answerable to Eternity and the Evil would be as soon as great as durable as the good The same world which is finite in good and evil and other respects would be infinite in Eternity and the evil would have an infiniteness in point of Eternity and this necessitated by the eternity of the world And seeing no individuals are eternal the supposed eternity of the world must be but of some common matter or only intentional and not real The corporeal part having quantity is finite as to extension and therefore cannot be infinite in duration In Eternity then there is no time no prius posterius but in the world there is Much more is said by many but this is not my present task I shall say more of it afterward But if it were doubtful whether the world were not eternally the Body of God yet would it be undoubted still that he caused it And that there were the difference of a cause and an effect in order of nature though not in duration As if a Tree or a mans body were supposed eternal yet the root and spirits of the Tree and the principal parts and spirits in mans body would be the causal parts on which the rest depend § 8. It remaineth therefore most certain that something is a first Cause to all things else and that he is the Creator of all things For if the world be not uncaused and independent it hath a Cause and if it have a Cause it hath a Creator For when there was nothing but himself he must make all things of Himself or of Nothing not of Himself for He is not Material and they are not parts of God who is indivisible He that thinks otherwise should not kill a Flea or a Toad nor blame any man that beateth or robbeth or wrongeth him nor eat any creature because he doth kill and blame and eat a part of God who is unblameable and can injure none and is to be more reverenced § 9. If there were any doubt whether the Sun or Fire or passive matter had a first Cause there can be no doubt at all concerning MAN which is the thing which I am enquiring into at the present For every one seeth that Man hath his beginning and confesseth that it is but as yesterday since he was not and therefore hath a Cause which must be uncaused or have a Cause it self if the latter then that Cause again is uncaused or hath a Cause it self And so we must needs come at last to some uncaused cause § 10. If any second Cause had made Man or the World yet if it did it but as a caused Cause it self would lead us up to an uncaused Cause which is the first Cause of
fiery nature of the semen of the Sun and of the calor naturalis telluris are generally the same and by their agreeableness do meet in co-operation for generation 8. Herein all three as conjunct are the cause of Life as Life the Sun the seed and the calor telluris communicating conjunctly what in their natures they all contain that is an active nature having a power by motion light and heat to cause vegetation and its conjunct effects But the calor motus solis and the calor telluris are but universal causes of life as life but the virtus seminalis is both a cause of life in genere and a specifying cause of this or that sort of Plants in specie the reason why e. g. an Oak an Elm a Rose-tree and every plant is what it is in specie being to be fetch'd from the seed alone and the Creator's will 9. Though the seed be the chief or only specifying cause why this is Adeantum and that Betonica and that Calendula c. yet the Sun and Earth the universal causes do contribute much more to the life as life than the seed it self 10. This fiery or solar active nature is so pure and above the full knowledge of mortals that we have no certainty at all whether in all this generative influx it communicate to vegetatives from it self a pre-existent matter and so draw it back to it self again by circulation or whether it do only by the substantial contact of its active streams cherish and actuate and perfect the substance which it findeth in semine materiâ passivâ or whether per influxum virtutis it operate only by that which is commonly called Quality without any communication or contact of substance 11. In all this operation of the Solar or fiery nature in generation it is quid medium between the passive matter and the animal nature and is plainly an image of the animal nature and its operations so like it that it hath tempted many to ascribe all animal operations only to the Solar or fiery nature and hath caused wise men to doubt whether this nature be to be numbred with things corporeal or incorporeal and to place it between both as participating in several respects of both 12. If the sensitive nature be really above or specifically different from the fiery we may in what is said conjecture much at the order of the generation of things sensitive viz. by a three-fold cause co-operating one specifying and two universal and cherishing The specifying is the virtus seminalis maris foeminae conjunct and of neither alone the same God which bless'd the single seed of a plant with the gift of multiplication bless'd only the conjunct seeds of male and female animals with that gift The superiour universal cause is either some anima universalis ejusdem naturae or God immediately By an Anima universalis I mean not an anima totius mundi but of that superiour vortex or part which this earth belongs to Either this is the Sun or some invisible soul If it be the Sun it is not by its simple fiery nature before mentioned because sensation seemeth to be somewhat totâ specie different from motion light and heat and then it must prove that the Sun is compound and hath a superiour form and nature which either formaliter or eminenter is sensitive and that by this it is that it animateth inferiour sensitives But of this we mortals have no certainty It seemeth very improbable that a worm or flie should have a nature superiour to any that the Sun hath but probabilities are not certainties there are things highest and things lowest in their several kinds But remember that if it should be the Sun it is by that nature superiour to fire by which it doth it The maternal universal Cause of the sensitive life is the Mother Whether the spirits of a sensitive Creature have more in them than the spirits of a Plant and do more by nutrition than cause Vegetation whether they nourish sensitive Life as such is doubtfull But if they do so they be but an universal and not a specifying Cause that is the Cause of Life as Life but not of the vita bovis equi canis felis aquilae qua talis And therefore if the late-discovered trick of passing all the blood of one animal into another be prosecuted to the utmost tryal possibly it may do much to the advantage of Life and Sense as such but never to the alteration of the species to turn a Dog into a Swine or any other sort of Animal 13. Whether the sensitive nature be most refined-corporeal or totally incorporeal is past the reach of man to be assured of 14. The foresaid difficulty is greater here than in the Vegetative Generation viz. Whether in the multiplication of sensitive souls there be an addition of substance communicated from the Universal Causes or a greater quantity or degree of matter physical or metaphysical propagated and produced into existence by generation than there was before It seemeth hard to say that a pair of Animals in Noahs Ark had as much matter or substance in their souls as the millions since proceeding from them But whether such souls have quantitive degrees or by what terms of gradation the souls of millions are distinct from one besides the number or whether God in the blessing of multiplication hath enabled them to increase the quantity of matter which shall serve for so many more forms are things which we cannot fully understand 15. In the like manner we may rise up and conceive of the Generation of Mankind We are sure that he hath an intelligent nature much nobler than the sensitive And we know that homo generat hominem And we know that in his Generation there is an Vniversal Cause and a specifying Cause for though there be but one species of men yet there are more of Intelligences and that one may have an Vniversal Cause producing that and other effects and an Univocal special Cause We know that because he is Generated the specifying Cause is the fecundity or propagating power of the Parent generating a separable seed which seed in conjunction as aforesaid suppositis supponendis is semen hominis and is man seminally and virtually but not actually that is Hath both Passive and Active Power and virtue by reception of the influx of the universal Cause to become a man The universal inferior or feminine Cause is the Mothers Body and Soul or the whole Mother in whom the Infant is generated and cherished I call it Vniversal For it is only the semen that specifieth And therefore by a false or bruitish semen a woman may produce a Monster The Vniversal Paternal Cause is certainly GOD ut prima and it is probable also ut sola For he made Mans Soul at first by that immediate communication which is called Breathing it into him And the Intellectual nature though specified into Angels and Men is the
self-sufficient and be the highest excellency it must have an infiniteness and need no help from any other But my Soul is conscious of imperfection in knowledge its ignorance is its burden and dishonour it knoweth not so much as is here asserted of it self it knoweth no such perfections or operations it knoweth little comparatively of the Universe or of any particular thing in it If it were an eternal uncaused independent Being it need not all the helps of evidence and argument in this dispute Moreover it is conscious of imperfection in Goodness and defilement of Evil it is defective in governing this flesh which could never be able to make me a sinner or culpable if it were animated with an uncaused independent being Moreover I am conscious of impotency in every thing that I go about a thousand difficulties pose and stall me a thousand things I would do and cannot and as many I would have and cannot whereas an uncaused independent mind should necessarily have an uncaused independent power and wisdom and goodness and so should at least partake of infiniteness in all And if my Soul did thus fabricate my Body then what needed it pre-existent Matter to make it of And why did it not make it sooner seeing it hath such an inclination to it Can an independent Mind be ignorant what it was and what it did it self from all eternity before it entred into this flesh And why doth it not amend the infirmities of this Body or why did it not make it self a Body more excellent more comely more sound more clean and more durable Could it choose no better can it not heal and perfect this can it not prevent the dissolution of it Seeing I find it so much in love with it and so unwilling to be separated from it if it were an independent mind and caused it at the first it would not be unwillingly taken from it and leave it to rottenness and dust And if my Soul did thus independently make my Body did all other Souls do so by their Bodies or not If they did not then they had a superiour Cause if they did then it seems that every Worm and Fly and Toad hath a Soul that is an eternal uncaused independent being But why then have they no knowledge no reason no speech why did they not choose a more honourable dwelling why do they all stoop to the service of man if they are equally excellent And then it would follow that there are as many eternal independent beings as there are Souls or living Wights in all the world And so instead of one true perfect God there would be innumerable demi-gods which all had the perfection of independencies and none of them had a perfection of being and sufficiency which would put us upon the further enquiries whether they do all their business independently or by a general council and consent and how they all do to agree and not fall into perpetual wars how the soul of an ideot or a wicked man or of a Toad or Serpent came to be so self-denying as to be contented with that part when the Soul of Aristotle and Seneca and Paul were so much better provided for And if all this were so who made the things inanimate that have no souls of their own to make them For my part I made them not And my Soul is conscious that it is a dependent being that cannot illuminate it self nor know what it would know nor be what it would be nor do what it would do nor can support its body or it self an hour It looketh dependently to something higher for help and protection and supply and mercy and is past all doubt that it is no God If it be said that all Souls are but one even parts of the universal Soul of the World and that individuation is by Matter only and that so though my Soul be not the whole first cause and being it is a part of it I answer 1. I note by the way that this hypothesis acknowledgeth that which I am searching after viz. that there is a God and it asserteth higher things of man than I am proving viz. That he hath not only an immortal Soul but a Soul that is part of God himself 2. And according to this the Soul of every Heliogabalus Sardanapalus Ideot or Toad should be part of God 3. And then all souls should be alike if all be God the Soul of a murderer and of him that is murdered of a Nero and a Saint yea of Caesar and of his Dog And how then cometh there so much enmity between them and so great disparity why is one wise and another foolish or bruitish and one the Ruler of the other The Soul of a Bird or Horse seemeth to be lodged in as good a kind of matter as Mans or at least the Soul of a Nero in as good a matter as the Soul of Paul or at least the Soul of one that turneth to villany from virtue hath the same matter which it had before And certainly it is not matter that principally individuateth but forms Nor is the difference between good men and bad and between Men and Serpents or Beasts so much in Matter as in the Soul Moreover Nature teacheth all men to seek felicity and fear infelicity and calamity which they need not do nor could not do if they were all parts of God God cannot be miserable but Man can as to his Soul as well as his Body and the misery of his Body is little to that of the Soul even in this life God cannot be evil but the Soul may be vitiated and evil as experience teacheth God may not be punished or afflicted but a wicked man may be punished and afflicted even in his mind or Soul and a Magistrate will not think when he hangeth a thief that he either punished bare flesh or that he punished God Moreover God can wrong no man but one man may wrong another God need not fear doing any thing amiss but the Soul of man must fear it No part of God can be so unhappy as to choose to be a Toad or a wicked or miserable man God hath no Body but so have these Souls else when men eat a plant or bird or any flesh they eat part of the Body of God Moreover I find that it is Bodies only that are Quantitative or Extensive and so divisible into parts many parts of one Body may be animated by one Soul but not by many parts of that one Soul except the Soul be material it self But why may some object may I not hold that all the Orbs being one world or one Body of one informing Soul which is God and so that really those which you call individuals are but parts of this one animated world Answ This is confuted by what is said Whether the world be animated by one universal Soul we are not now enquiring But that God is not this informing Soul is
esse which was dependent in fieri which are Contradictions 2. The effects in the admirable frame and nature and motions of the Creation declare that the Creator is infinitely wise The smallest insect is so curiously made and so admirably fitted and instructed to its proper end and uses The smallest Plants in wonderfull variety of shapes and colours and smells and qualities uses and operations and beautifull flowers so marvellously constituted and animated by an unseen form and propagated by unsearchable seminal vertue The smallest Birds and Beasts and creeping things so adorned in their kinds and so admirably furnished for their proper ends especially the propagation of their species in love and sagacity and diligence to their young by instinct equaling in those particulars the reasonable creature The admirable composure of all the parts of the body of Man and of the vilest Beast and Vermine The quality and operation of all the Organs humours and spirits The operations of the Minde of man and the constitution of Societies and over-ruling all the matters of the World with innumerable instances in the creature do all concurr to proclaim that man as mad as madness can possibly make him in that particular who thinketh that any lower cause than incomprehensible wisdom did principally produce all this And that by any bruitish or natural motion or confluence of Atomes or any other matter it could be thus ordered continued and maintained without the infinite wisdome and power of a first Cause superiour to meer natural matter and motion What then should we say if we had a sight into the inwards of all the Earth of the nature and cause of Minerals and of the forms of all things If we saw the reason of the motions of the Seas and all other appearances of Nature which are now beyond our reach Yea if we had a sight of all the Orbs both fixed Starrs and Planets and of their matter and form and order and relation to each other and their communications and influences on each other and the cause of all their wonderous motions If we saw not only the nature of the Elements especially the active Element Fire but also the constitution magnitude and use of all those thousand Suns and lesser Worlds which constitute the universal World And if they be inhabited if we knew the Inhabitants of each Did we know all the Intelligences blessed Angels and holy Spirits which possess the nobler parts of Nature and the unhappy degenerate Spirits that have departed from light and joy into darkness and horrour by departing from God yea if we could see all these comprehensively at one view what thoughts should we have of the wisdom of the Creator And what should we think of the Atheist that denyeth it We should think Bedlam too honourable a place for that man that could believe or durst say that any accidental motion of subtile matter or fortuitous concourse of Atomes or any thing below a Wisdom and Power infinitely transcending all that with Man is called by that name was the first Cause and is the chief continuer of such an incomprehensible frame § 18. The first Cause must needs be infinitely Good By Goodness I mean all essential Excellency which is known to us by its fruits and appearances in the Creature which as it hath a Goodness natural and moral so is it the Index of that transcendent Goodness which is the first cause of both This goodness is incomparably beyond that which consisteth in a usefulness to the creatures good or Goodness of Benignity as relative to Man And it is known better by the meer name as expressing that which Nature hath an intrinsick sense and notion of than by definitions As sensible qualities light colour sound odour sweet bitter c. are known by the name best which lead to the sensitive memory which informeth the Intellect what they are As the mention of things sensible entereth the definition of sense and the mention of sense doth enter the definition of things sensible and yet the object is in order of nature before the act And as Truth must enter the definition of Intellection and Intellection the definition of Truth and yet Truth is in order before Intellection and contemporary with the Intellect so is it between Goodness and the Will But if we speak of uncreated Good and of a created Will then Good is infinitely antecedent to that Will But the Will which is created hath a nature suited to it and so the notion of Excellency and Goodness is naturally in our estimative faculty and the relish of it or complacency in it is naturally in the Will so far as it is not corrupted and depraved As if I knew a man that had the wisdom and virtue of an Angel my estimation calleth him Excellent and Good and my Will doth complacentially cleave to him though I should never look to be the better for him my self or if I onely heard of him and never saw him or were personally beholden to him That God is thus infinitely Excellent and Good the Goodness of his Creatures proveth for all the goodness that is in Men and Angels Earth and Heaven proceedeth from him If there be any Natural Goodness in the whole Creation there must be more in the Creator If there be any Moral Goodness in Men and Angels there must be more in eminency in him For he can make nothing better than himself nor give to creatures what he hath not § 19. The Goodness of the first Being consisting in this infinite Perfection or Excellency containeth his Happiness his Holiness and his Love or Benignity § 20. The HAPPINESS of the first Being consisteth 1. In his BEING HIMSELF 2. In his KNOWING HIMSELF 3. In his LOVING and ENJOYING HIMSELF The most perfect Being must needs be the most Happy and that in Being what he is his own Perfection being his Happiness And as Knowledge in the Creature is both his Perfection and Delight so the transcendent Omniscience of the Creator must needs be both part of his Perfection as distinguished by our narrow minds and such felicity as may be called Eminently his Delight though what God's Delight is we know not formally And as Love or Complacency is the perfective operation of the Will and so of the Humane Nature in Man and is his highest final and enjoying acts of which all Goodness is the object so there must be something in the Perfection of the first Cause though not formally the same with Love in Man yet eminently so called as knowable to us by no other name And this complacency must needs be principally in Himself because He himself is the Infinite and onely Primitive Good and as there was primitively no Good but Himself to Love so now there is no Good but derived from Him and dependent on Him And as his Creature of which anon is obliged to love Him most so he must needs be most amiable to Himself Self-love and self-esteem in
be made to be governed by Laws as was proved before then he is certainly governed accordingly or else his nature and reason were given him in vain which could not be by the most wise Creator Obj. God governeth the world as the Soul governeth the Body which is rationally ex parte animae but not by giving reason or laws to the Body but despotically by the natural power of the Will Answ The flesh is not capable of Laws as having no Reason and therefore no proper Laws can be given to it in it self by the Soul But the Soul is capable of Reason and made to be moved by proposed Reasons in a Law and not only by natural force as the flesh The Government must be agreeable to the capacity of the Subject Though the Rider rule the Horse by a bridle and spur and not by a Law it followeth not that the King must not rule the Rider so The Soul and Body constitute one Suppositum or Man and therefore the Body is governed by a Law because the Soul is so which despotically moveth it Laws are for distinct individuals and not for one part of an individual to give to another part Obj. If God be the constitutive Soul of the world then he need not give it Laws Answ Because it is most certain de facto that he doth give us Laws therefore it is certain that he is not the constitutive Soul of the world as is also further proved before though he be much more to it than a Soul § 14. XI If man act per media propter finem and loth discerned by reason then he must be ruled by a Law But the Antecedent is sure Ergo c. For the End is ever something apprehended sub ratione boni and the ultimate end sub ratione optimi possibilis and the Means are chosen and used sub ratione conducibilis as apt to attain the End This Means and End are not to be discerned onely by sense and imagination as in bruits every object is apprehended but by reason this Reason is defectible and liable to error and therefore the rational evidences must be proposed to it and that conveniently For he that knoweth not Reason why he should chuse refuse or act cannot do it Rationally And the Will being as apt to be seduced by the sense hath need of due motives to determine it Therefore there is need of the Regulation of a Law containing the direction of a superiour wisdom with authority and motives of consequential Good or Evil proposed by one that can accomplish it But the whole world doth so universally consent that there is a difference between Right and Wrong Duty and Crimes Good and Evil and so a necessity of some Government humane at least and that man is not like the beasts where strength is the only title and good and evil is but natural called jucundum utile with their contraries that I need not plead that part of the cause any further universal consent not only making it unnecessary but also being a valid argument against it as proving that it is against the common reason of Mankind and light of Nature § 15. XII If God be not the universal Governour of the world then error malice and tyranny and selfishness will make injustice finally prosperous and oppressed innocency remediless But that cannot be as shall hereafter be fullier made appear There must be some infallible Judge to pass the final sentence and hear all Causes as it were over again and some perfect righteous Judge to set straight all that mens unrighteousness made crooked or else unrighteousness will finally prevail And this must be God who being the fountain of all Government is also the end of all § 16. XIII If God be not the Supreme Vniversal Governour there can be no unity and harmony in the moral Order and Government of the World As all the Corporations in the Kingdom would be in continual discord with one another if they were not all united in one King so would all the Kingdoms of the World much worse than they are if they were not under the Government of one God § 17. XIV The last argument shall be à Jure aptitudine If Man be made a Creature to be morally Governed and the undoubted Right and Aptitude for supream Government be in God alone then God is actually the supream Governour of the the World But the antecedent is true therefore the consequent 1. That God only is Able is undenyable Men can govern but their particular Provinces or Empires and none of them is capable of Governing all the World for want of Omnipresence Omnipotency and Omniscience And therefore the Pope that claimeth the Government of all the World if all turn Christians doth thereby pretend to a kinde of Deity And if Angels were proved able to govern the Earth it can be but as Officers and not in absolute supremacy For who then shall be the Governour of them Their being is meerly derivative and dependent and therefore so must be their power God only is all sufficient omnipresent omnipotent omniscient and most good Sufficient to give perfect Laws to all to execute righteous Judgement upon all and to protect the World as his Dominion when Princes cannot protect one Kingdom nor themselves And Gods title and right is as undoubted as his Power For he is Absolute Owner of the World And who should claim Soveraignty over him or without him where he is sole Proprietor He hath undoubted right to rule his own Obj. Propriety among men is no title to Government Answ Absolute Propriety in a Governable creature is a plenary title But no man hath absolute Propriety in another Yet Parents and the Masters of Slaves who come neerest it have an answerable Power of Governing them But mans fullest Propriety is in Bruits and Inanimates which are not Creatures capable of Government § 18. The Relation then of Soveraign King or Rector in God to man is founded in the forenamed Relation of a Proprietor supposing the Aptitude of the Subject and the Owner Having proved that God is the Vniversal King I come to shew his title to his Kingdom â—itulus est fundamentum juris Soveraignty or summa potestas is Jus supremi Regiminis Where this Right is founded great ignorance hath made a great controversie the thing to men that are of competent understandings in such subjects being most easie and past controversie God having made man is immediately his Owner because his maker Having made him a Rational free Agent and so to be Governed he hath the Jus Regendi by Immediate Resultancy from his Absolute Propriety supposing the Nature of the Creature and the Perfection of the Creator alone which so qualifie one to be a Subject and the other to be the Governour that they are as it were the remoter fundamentum Relationis From the being of Man Hoc aliquid à Deo creatum resulteth the propriety of God
consideration The Eternity of the future state I have not here gone about to prove because I reserve it for a fitter place and need the help of more than natural light for such a task But that it shall be of so much weight and duration as shall suffice to the full execution of Justice and to set all streight that seemed crooked in Gods present Government this Nature it self doth fully testifie Three sorts of men will read what I have written 1. Some few and but very few of those whose Consciences are so bloody in the guilt of their debauchery that they take it for their interest to hope that there is no life but this 2. Those whose Faith and Holiness hath made the World to come to be their interest happiness hope desire and only joy 3. Those that only understand in generall that it is the highest interest of humane Nature that there be a full felicity hereafter and see it a most desireable thing though they know not whether it be to be expected or not The first sort I may fear are under such a Curse of God as that he may leave their Wills to master their Belief as their Lusts have mastered their Wills and lest they be forsaken of God to think that true which their wicked hearts desire were true and that the Haters of God and a holy Life should be left to dream that there is no God nor future Happy Life The second sort have both Light Experience and Desire and therefore will easily believe The third sort are they whose Necessities are great and yet conjunct with hope of some success Though bare interest should command no mans understanding because a thing may be desireable which is neither certain nor possible yet I must needs say that Reason and self-love should make any man that is not resolved in wickedness exceeding glad to hear of any hopes much more of certainty of a life of Angelical Happiness and Joy to be possess'd when this is ended And therefore the enquiry should be exceeding willingly and studiously endeavoured I shall conclude this point with a few serious Questions to those that deny a future Life of Retribution Qu. 1. Whether he that taketh a man to be but an ingenuous kinde of Beast can take it ill to be esteemed as a Beast May I not expect that he should live like a Beast who thinketh that he shall die like a Beast Is such a man fit to be trusted any further in humane converse than his present fleshly interest obligeth him May I not justly suppose that he liveth in the practice of fornication adultery lying perjury hypocrisie murder treachery theft deceit or any other villany as oft as his interest tells him he should do it What is a sufficient or likely motive to restrain that man or make him just who believes not any life after this It seemeth to me a wrong to him in his own Profession to call him an Honest man 2. If you think your selves but ingenuous Beasts why should you not be content to be used as Beasts A Beast is not capable of true Propriety Right or Wrong He that can master him doth him no wrong if he work him or fleece him or take away his life Why may not they that can master you use you like Pack-horses or Slaves and beat you and take away your lives 3. Would you be only your selves of this mind or would you have all others of it If your selves only why envy you the Truth as you suppose to others If all others what security shall Kings have of their lives or Subjects of their lives of liberties What trust can you put in Wife or Child or Servant or any man that you converse with Will you not quickly feel the effect of their opinions Had you not rather that the enemy who would murder you the thief who would rob you the lyar that would deceive you did believe a Judgement and life of Retribution than not 4. If there be no Life after this what business have you for your Reason and all your noble faculties and time that is worthy of a man or that is not like Childrens games or Poppet-playes What have you to do in the World that hath any weight in the tryal any content or comfort in the review or will give solid comfort to a dying man Were it not better lie down and sleep out our days than waste them all in dreaming waking O what a silly Worm were Man what should he find to do with his understanding Take off the poise of his ultimate End and all his Rational Motions must stand still and only the bruitish motion must go on and Reason must drudge in the Captivity of its service But these Questions and more such I put more home in my Book called A Saint or a Bruit If conscience tell you that you can put no trust in your friend your wife your servant or your neighbour if they believe that there is no life but this surely the same conscience may tell you that then the thing is true and that the God of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness hath better means enough than deceits and lies to rule the world by Hear what the conscience of the Epicure saith in Cicero Academ Quaest l. 4. p. mihi 44. Quis enim potest cum existimet à Deo se curari non dies noctes divinum numen horrere c. it s true of the guilty But what greater joy to the upright godly faithful Soul CHAP. XV. Of the intrinsick Evil of Sin and of the perpetual Punishment due to the Sinner by the undoubted Law of Nature § 1. IT seemed good to the most wise Creator to give Man with Reason a Liberty of Will by which he is a kind of first cause of its own determination in comparative moral acts though he hold the power in full dependance upon God and perform each act as an act in genere by the influx of his Maker and do all under his perfect government And these great Principles in his Nature his Power his Reason and his free self-determining Will are the Image of God in which as Man he was created which advanced by the perfections of Fortitude Wisdom and Moral Goodness are also in Holiness the Image of God's Perfections When a man deliberateth whether he shall do this sin or not as lie or murder he cannot act in general without God but that he chooseth this act rather than another may be without any more of God than his giving and maintaining his free-choosing power and his universal influx before mentioned and his setting him among such objects as he acteth upon Neither do those objects nor any Physical efficient motion of God or any creature besides himself determine his will effectually to choose the evil and refuse the good It is not true that nothing undetermined can determine it self to act this is but to deny God's
with the strong because he hath poured out his soul unto death and he was numbred with the transgressors and he bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors Isa 9.6 For unto us a Child is born unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulders and his Name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor The mighty God The Everlasting Father the Prince of Peace of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end upon the Throne of David and upon his Kingdom to order it and to stablish it with judgement and with justice from henceforth even for ever The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this Isa 7.14 Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and shall call his name Immanuel Dan. 9.24 c. Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy City to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness and to seal up the Vision and Prophecy and to annoint the most Holy Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks the street shall be built and the wall even in troublous times And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off but not for himself And the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy the City and the Sanctuary and the end thereof shall be with a floud and unto the end of the war desolations are determined And he shall confirm the Covenant with many for one week and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease and for the over-spreading of abomination he shall make it desolate even until the consummation and that determined be poured upon the desolate Mal. 3.1 2 3. Behold I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before me and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his Temple even the Messenger of the Covenant whom ye delight in behold he shall come saith the Lord of hosts But who may abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appeareth For he is like a Refiners fire and like Fullers sope and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver c. I omit the rest to avoid prolixity There is scarce any passage of the Birth Life Sufferings Death Resurrection Ascension or Glory of our Saviour which are not particularly prophesied of in the Old Testament but nothing so copiously as his Righteousness and his Kingdom The Prophesie of Isaiah is full of such and is but a Prophetical Gospel To these must be adjoyned the Prophetical Types even the typical Persons and the typical Ordinances and Actions It would be too long to open how his sufferings from the malignant world was typified in the Death of Abel and the attempted oblation of Isaac and the selling of Joseph And his work of Salvation in Noah and his preserved Ark and Family And his Paternity as to Believers in Abraham And his Kingly conduct and deliverance of the Church by Moses and his deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt and conduct of them in the Wilderness and by Joshua's victorious bringing them into the Land of Promise His Reign and Kingdom by David and his building of the Church by Solomon and his Priesthood by Aaron and his Successors c. And it would take up a just volume to open all the typical Ordinances and Actions which prefigured Christ from the institution of Circumcision and the Passover or Paschal Lamb to the end of all the Mosaical Ceremonies Christ is the signification and the end of all I will only crave your consideration of the custom of Sacrificing in the general it came into the world immediately upon mans sin we find Cain and Abel the two first persons born into the world employed in it From thence to this day it hath continued in doctrin though the practice be restrained with the Jews it was no peculiar Ceremony of their Law but hath been commonly exercised by almost all Nations through the world both Greeks Romans and Barbarians And it yet continueth in most countries of the Heathens where the Doctrin of Christ hath not abolished it as it hath done both with the Christians and Mahometans For the Mahometans borrow the confession of one God and the rejection of Idols and Sacrifices originally from the Christians Now I must confess that I am not able to satisfie my self of the original and universality of the custom of Sacrificing upon any reasons but those of the Christians either it was a prophetical promissory institution of God himself to lapsed Adam to point him to a Saviour the second Adam or else it must be from the Law of Nature or else it is from some other positive Institution or else it must be an universal Errour There can no fifth way that is probable be imagined And 1. I am not able to see that the meer Light or Law of Nature should be the original cause for then it would be all mens duty still and what reason can Nature give us to judge that God is delighted in the bloud and pain of the innocent bruits or that the killing and offering of them should be any satisfaction to his justice for our sins or any rational means to avert his judgments or procure our forgiveness If it be said that It was but a ceremonial confession that we our selves deserve death as that creature suffered it I answer Confession is indeed due from us by the Law of Nature but the question is of the killing of the poor beasts and offering them in sacrifice If the exercise of our own penitence by confession were all that might be done as well without the creatures bloud and death What is it that this addeth to a penitent confession and why was the oblation to God contained in the Sacrifice If you say that the life of bruits is not so regardable but that we take it away for our daily food I answer It s true that it is allowed us for the maintenance of our lives but yet it is not to be cast away in vain nor is God to be represented as one that doth delight in bloud And the common sense of all the world in their sacrificing hath been that besides the confession of their own desert there is somewhat in it to appease God's displeasure and none that I ever read of did take it for a meer confessing sign or action If it be said that they did it to signifie their homage to God I answer Why then did they not offer him only the living creature rather than the dead all took it to be a propitiatory action And if there had been an aptitude in this sign to betoken our penitent confession only yet when God knoweth
pars inteligibilis of a being as without the form But that is not the common acception of it nor is it then fit for the place assigned it in ordine praedicamentali From all this I am not about to injure any mans understanding by building my Conclusions upon any questionable grounds I do but right your understandings so far as to remove all uncertain foundations though they be such as seem to be most for the advantage of my Cause and are by most made the great reasons of the Souls Immortality And it is not my purpose to deny that as Angels are compounded ex genere differentiâ so the generical nature of Angels greatly differeth from the nature of Corporeal things As God can make multitudes of corporeal Creatures formally or specifically different of the matter of one simple Element only as Air or Fire without material mixture so he can either make an Element of Souls either existent of it self of which he will make Individuals yea species formally divers or else existent only in the species and individuals as he please But then we must say that as fire and air and water do differ formally as several Elements so the spiritual Element or general Nature hath a formal difference from the Corporeal called the Material But hence it will follow 1. That Angels and humane Souls have a double form as some use to call it that is Generical as Spirits which is presupposed as the aptitude of their Metaphysical matter by which they differ from bodies and specifical by which they are constituted what they are and differ among themselves unless you deny all such formal difference among them and difference them only by individuation and accidents as several drops or bottles of water taken out of the same Sea 2. And it will seem plain that our differencing characters or properties between Spirits and Bodies must be sought for in their different forms which must be found in the noble operations which flow from the forms and not from uncertain Accidents Therefore my design in all this is but to intimate to you how lubricous and uncertain and beyond the reach of mans understanding the ordinary characters from such Accidents are and that its better fetch the difference from the Operations Saith Georg. Ritschel Contempl. Metap c. 6. pag. 40 43. Difficile est rebus materialibus immersis substantiam immaterialem concipere Et licet pro certo non constet an Menti Angelicae omnis simpliciter Materialitas repugnet certum tamen est elementarem nostram ab illis abesse atque Divinam Essentiam ab omni esse materia secretam aeterna ejus immutabilis habitudo convincit nisi per materialitatem fortè substantiam intelligas § 15. Dubium quidem nullum est immaterialem Mundum essentiarum varietate Intelligibilium aequè admirabilem augustum esse atque Mundum corporeum videmus sed in quo illa consistat diversitas bonis indicio certo non percipitur Nimirum si praeter te lumbricum atque scarabaeum animal aliud nullum vidisses audires autem esse alia innumera genera diversitate naturae forma penitus discrepantia tum vagas quidem confusasque de diversitate volvere cogitationes posses non posses autem illas tot bestiarum piscium reptilium avium species suo vultu coloribus signare Ita quid spiritus sit immaterialis ex te capere qui Mentem immaterialem habes qualemcunque notitiam potes non potes autem in te perspicere in quo precise illa varietas consistat To come neerer to the application of what is said to the present Objection 1. The Souls of Men and Bruits we see do not differ in genere entis nor in genere substantiae nor in genere principii vitalis nor in genere sentientis 2. The matter of both whether it differ as Metaphysical and Physical or how is much beyond our knowledge 3. The great diversity of Operations doth shew the great diversity of their Powers and forms and inclinations 4. This sheweth the diversity of their uses and ends for which they were created 5. It is certain that no substantial Principle in either of them is annihilated at death The Souls of Bruits have the same nature after death as they had before and the Souls of men have the same nature as before They are not transformed into other things 6. Therefore about both of them there is nothing left of doubt or controversie but only 1. About the perpetuated Individuation 2. The future Operations and so the habits viz. 1. Whether the Souls of men or bruits or both do lose their individuation and fall into some Vniversal Element of their kinde 2. Whether they operate after death as now There is nothing else about their Immortality that common Reason can make a question of And for the Souls of Bruits whether they remain Individuate or return to a common Element of their kinde is a thing unknown to us because unrevealed and unrevealed because it is of no use and concernment to us Our own case concerneth us more and therefore is more made known to us by God As will further appear in that which followeth OBJECTION III. HVmane souls are but forms and forms are but the qualities or modes of substances and therefore accidents and therefore perish when separated from the bodies Answ The world of learned men do find themselves too much work and trouble others with controversies about names and words and especially by confounding words and things and not discerning when a controversie is only de nomine and when it is de re And they have done so about forms as much as any thing The word form is usually liable to this ambiguity In compounded beings it is sometime taken for the active predominant part or principle and sometimes for the state which resulteth from the contemperation of all the parts Which is the fittest to be called the form is but a question de nomine Gassendus himself confesseth this ambiguity of the word and having pleaded that all forms except man's intellectual soul are but modes or qualities of bodies and accidents He addeth § 1. l. 6. c. 1. Si formae nomine spiritum quendam quasi florem materiae intellexeris cujusmodifere concipimus animam in equo tum forma dici potest substantia immo corpus tenuissimum quod crassius pervadat perficiat regat At si formae nomine intelligatur dispositio ac modus quo tam substantia illa spirituosior quam crassior reliqua se habet ad quam facultates actionesque naturales consequuntur tum posse Qualitatem conseri ac dici Whether the souls of bruits be only the spirits or the flos materiae or not it is granted by him and by almost all men that in mixt bodies there is one part more subtil than the rest which is the most active powerful predominant part and which doth corpus
neerest to GOD that we have any knowledge of And therefore Reason will not teach us to look to any intermediate universal or superiour Cause because there is no created superiour Nature to the Intellectual And it 's absurd to goe to the Inferior to be the Cause of the superior If any will needs think that under God there is some Vniversal Intellect not of the whole Universe for that 's plainly improbable but of our Systeme or Vortex they must take it to be some Angelical Intelligence as Aristotle or the Sun No man can prove either of these to have any such office And for the Sun it is certain that it is not possible unless it self be an Intelligence And though to humane Reason it seem very likely that so glorious a corporeal Nature as the Sun should not be destitute of as noble a form as a lump of Clay a humane body doth possess that so there may be a proportion in Gods works between the nobility of matter and form yet all this to man is utterly uncertain nor doth any man know whether the Luminaries are animated with either sentient or intelligent Souls or not He that most confidently asserteth either and scorneth the Contradicter doth but tell you that he is ignorant of his ignorance But if it should prove true as many of the Fathers thought and Mammertus ubi supra asserteth that Angels have fiery Bodies which they animate and so that the Sun is animated with an Intelligence it would not follow that as fiery or as sensitive but only as intellective it were a subordinate universal Cause of compleat humane Generations and that Sol Homo generant hominem save only quoad Corpus which is but secundum quid But that God is the Vniversal Cause is unquestionable whether there be any subordinate or not 16. And here it is no wonder if the doubts arise which were in the cases of the forementioned Generations Whether God as the universal cause produce new-metaphysical matter for new forms Whether millions of Souls since generated have not more such metaphysical matter than the soul of Adam and Eve alone How Souls may be said to have more or less such matter or substance Whether he educe all Souls è virtute foecunditate primarum by giving them a power without any division or diminution of themselves to bring forth others by multiplication and so cause his Creature to participate of his own foecundity or power of causing Entities c. But such difficulties as these which arise not from uncertainties in Theology but are the meer consequents of the imperfection of humane Intellects and the remoteness depth and unrevealedness of these mysterious works of God should turn no man from the holding of other plain revealed truths As that man generateth man that God is the chief specifying Cause by his first making of man and giving him the power and blessing of propagation which he still maintaineth and with which he doth concurre That Man is the second specifying Cause in the exercise of that power of Generation which God gave him That God is the chief universal Cause and to the production of an Intellectual nature as such doth unspeakably more than man That the mother as cherishing the semen utriusque Parentis is the maternal universal Cause c. We know not fully how it is that one Light causeth a thousand without division or diminution of it self and what it is that is caused de novo It is easie to say that it is but the motion of one part of the atomes or materia subtilis moving another which was all pre-existent But few men that can see through a smoke or dust of atomes will believe that the Sun and other fiery bodies which shew themselves so wonderfully to us by Motion Light and Heat have no peculiar Nature Power or Virtues to cause all this but meer magnitude and figure And that those Corpuscles which have so many hundred degrees of magnitude and figures should not fall into as many hundred such Bodies as we call Elements rather than into two or four Suppose which we may ad verum exquirendum that there were no more Fire in the Universe than one Candle It having the same nature as now it hath that Candle would turn Cities and all combustible matter into Fire But of the Generation of man quoad animam I referre the Reader to Sennertus his Hypomnemata to omit all others And now I would know what there is in Generation that should be against the Immortality of the Soul will you say it is because the Soul hath a Beginning I have answered before that so have all Creatures Is it because it proveth the Soul material 1. If it did I have shewed that you your selves hold a perpetuity of matter 2. But it doth not so If you say that Incorporeal Spirits generate not I answer That is but a naked unproved assertion If you say that Angels do not I answer that 1. that is not because they are unable or unapt if God thought it fittest for them nor 2. can any man prove de facto whether they do or not Christ saith They marry not but he saith not whether they at all propagate their species or not I know the negative is taken for certain and I say not that it is not true but that it is not certain not at all known and therefore an unfit supposition to argue from against the Immortality of the Soul And I must confess that for my part as I have oft read Formae se multiplicant and that the Fire can more multiply or encrease it self than Earth and as I know that the more noble any Nature is the more like it is to God and therefore more potent more active more fecund and productive so I should farr rather think that the Angelical Nature can propagate it self than the Humane if God had not told me the later and said nothing pro or contra of the former And therefore make no doubt but if it do not which no man knoweth it is not because things material are more able but for other reasons unknown to us Whether because God will have this lower World to be the Nidus vel Matrix Coelorum and the Seminary of Heaven and all multiplication to be here or what it is we know not But if it be on the other side concluded that the whole substance of a Soul doth proceed directly and immediately from God it doth make no great alteration in this case or any of the coincident cases about humane propagation if you consider 1. That it is impossible that there should be any substance which is not totally from God either immediately or mediately And that what is said to be mediately from Him hath in it as much of his Causation as if there were no medium For God is not a partial Cause but a total in suo genere and he is as neer to the effect as if there were no
is such a thing as Justice due from man to man for the preservation of these Rights and Order and it 's injustice to violate them This is confessed by all the World that look for Justice from others And if it be not maintained the world will be as in a continual Warre or Robbery But better grounds and proofs of it will be mentioned anon § 8. Therefore there is a difference between good and evil as respecting the benefit or hurt of others beside that which respecteth men as to themselves Those that think they are bound to avoid hurting no man but themselves or for themselves nor to do good to any but themselves or for themselves have so far obliterated the Laws of Humanity and so openly renounce the benefits of Society and bid defiance to Mankinde that I suppose them so few that I need not dispute against them Nor have I ever met with any defender of so inhumane a Cause whatever may be in their hearts and practice § 9. Nature teacheth Parents to educate their children in sobriety obedience justice and charity and to restrain their contraries Did Parents make no difference between their Childrens temperance and gluttony drunkenness and unchastity between their obedience and disobedience and contempt of their own authority between actions of Justice and Charity and actions of falshood robbery cruelty and inhumanity what a degenerate thing would Mankinde prove even Cannibals exercise some government over their Children § 10. The means which Nature teacheth all the World to suppress iniquity and promote well-doing is by Punishments and Benefits that it may turn to the hurt of the evil-doer himself and to the benefit of the Well-doer Thus Parents do by Children yea Men by Beasts on the account of Prudence though not of Justice Without Punishments and Rewards or Benefits Laws are ridiculous or deceits and Government is nothing § 11. For the just and effectual performance of this nature teacheth the World to set up Governments that by setled Laws and righteous Judgement it may be rightly done Though better principles should acquaint men with the nature and necessity of Government yet these are so obvious to all the world that for their own preservation together with some natural sense of justice the most barbarous Nations that are nearest unto bruits are for some Civil Government besides Oeconomical Government which none but mad-men ever question'd § 12. By this Government the Liberty Estates and Lives of offenders are destroyed for the ends of the Government viz. for Justice and the common good That this is so de facto is so undeniable that even those Heathens the supposed relicts of the Pythagoreans who will not kill a harmless beast will yet kill those men who deserve to die And if Government had not the power over the Liberties Estates and Lives of offenders it could not preserve the Liberties Estates and Lives of the innocent § 13. The combination of the Power Wisdom and Goodness of the Individuals and the Eminency of these in the Governours is the cause of the order strength and safety of these humane societies All the parts are in the combination to contribute to the good of the whole and that according to the nature of the parts it is not a heap of stones nor a forest of trees nor a heard of cattle which we are speaking of but an association of men which must be promoted and blessed by the worth and duty of the individuals and this consisteth in the perfections and right exercise of their Power Intellects and Wills But as the place of the Governour requireth more of the exercise of these than is requisite in any individual else so doth it therefore require that these be in him in greater eminency and excellency than in others viz. that in himself he excel in wisdom and goodness and by his interest in the people that he excel in power or strength Take away power and Societies are indefensible exposed to the will of enemies and unable to execute their Laws upon their own offenders and so to attain the ends of their association and government Take away wisdom and they are a rout of Ideots or mad-men and government can be none at all Take away goodness and they are as a company of Devils or confederacy of Robbers or pernicious enemies who can neither trust one another nor promote the common good but are fit to destroy and be destroyed § 14. By all this it is manifest that MAN is not only a living Wight having Power Intellect and Will and Dominion over inferiour things as their Owner Ruler and End but also is a sociable Wight or fitted for society where Government is exercised by Power Wisdom and Goodness which are his perfections I have looked thus long at the things that are seen as nearest me and most discernable before I proceed to the Cause which is unseen CHAP. IV. Of Man and other things as produced by their first Cause § 1. I Was not always what I am It is not yet sixty years since I was no man I had a late beginning and though I now enquire not of what duration my soul is my present composition is not from eternity the same I see of others that are born men who were lately none and so of all things that are here generated § 2. I did not make my self at least as an independent uncaused being I could not as I am make my self what I am for so my self as the cause should be before my self as the effect which is a contradiction unless the word self be used equivocally When I was not I acted not If it be said by any that the Soul did fabricate a Body to it self and so one part of me made the other I answer 1. My soul did not make the matter of that Body for if it did it made it of something or of nothing if of something either it made that something or not if not then it made not the first matter of the Body If it made it of nothing it must be Omnipotent but it is conscious of impotency 2. My soul did not make it self for then it must be before it self which is impossible And if I made neither form nor matter I did not make my self If it be said that my Soul is an eternal uncaused being and so did fabricate this Body as a dwelling for it self I answer 1. As to the supposed fabrication it is conscious it self of no such thing And if my Soul made my body either it was as a causa subministra vel instrumentalis by the direction and power of a superiour cause or else of and by it self as the prime cause If the first then it is a caused and dependent being it self and so leadeth us to a higher cause If the second be affirmed and so my Soul an eternal uncaused independent being then 1. That which is without beginning cause and dependency must needs be
be more evident to reason than that something must be Eternal without beginning nothing being more evident than that Nothing hath no power no action no effects and so can make nothing And therefore if ever there had been a time when Nothing was Nothing could ever have been imagine that there were Nothing now and it is certain there never would be any thing Obj. Something may oriri de novo without any Cause as well as God be eternally without any Cause Answ It s impossible For he that is eternally hath all perfection eternally in himself and needeth no Cause being still in being and being the Cause of Causes But Nothing hath no perfection or being and therefore needeth an Omnipotent Cause to give it a being Obj. If the world may be created of nothing materially it may be what it is without any thing efficiently Answ Impossible Pre-existent matter is not necessary to the first created matter for Matter may be caused of Nothing by an Omnipotent Efficient as well as the wonderful frame of all things be made out of Matter But without an Efficient no Being can arise de novo So that it is most evident seeing any thing now is there hath been something eternally And if something it must needs be the first Cause which is chief in excellency and first in order of production and therefore of existence § 10. The first Cause must needs be independent in being perfections and operations and so be absolutely self-sufficient For it were not the first if there were any before it and being caused by nothing else it was eternally sufficient in and for it self otherwise that which it were beholden to would have the place of a Cause to it And if it caused not all or needed the help of any other it is not absolutely the first Cause to all others nor perfect in it self That which could be eternally without a cause and it self cause all things is self-sufficient and independent § 11. The first Cause must needs be free from all imperfection of Corporeity or Materiality Composition Passibility corruptibility Mutability and Mortality and all other imperfections of defendent beings There is such a thing as a Living Principle and a pure spiritual Nature in the created world and the Maker of it must be life and Spirit in a higher purer sense than it and therefore must be free from all its imperfections and having no cause hath no defect and having no beginning can have no end All this Reason doth certainly apprehend § 12. This perfect first Cause must be Immense or Infinite in Being Not by corporeal extension as if God as a Body were in a place and being more extensive than all place were called Immense But in the perfect Essence of an eternall Life and Spirit and Mind he is every where without Locality and all things live and move and be in him The thought of space is but a Metaphorical help to our conception of his Immensity § 13. Therefore he must needs be Omnipresent Not by extension quantitative but in a sort transcendent and more excellent according to the transcendent way of his Existence For if we must have conceived of him as no better than a Body and of Magnitude as an Excellency we might well have concluded that he hath made nothing greater than himself Nemo dat quod non habet and therefore he must be more extensive than all the world and consequently absent from no part of it Much more when his Being which surpasseth corporeity directeth us to acknowledge a more noble kind of Omnipresence than Extensive § 14. Therefore is he Incomprehensible as to humane understanding or any other created intellect Of our own incomprehension experience sufficiently convinceth us here and Reason evinceth the same of all created Intellects for the less cannot comprehend the greater and between finite and infinite there is no proportion We know nothing purely-intelligible so easily and certainly as that God is But there is nothing that we are so far from comprehending As we see nothing more easily and certainly than the Sun which yet we see not with a comprehensive but a partial and defective sight § 15. This Infinite Being can be but One. For if there were many they could not be Infinite and so indeed there would be none nor would there be any one first Cause of all things For if one caused one part of the World and another another part no one were the first Cause of all And if they joyned in causing all together they would all conjunctly make but one first cause and each one several be but part of the Cause If there be no one that is sufficient to make and govern all the World there is no perfect Being nor no God but the effect sheweth the sufficiency and the unity of the World the Orbs being one frame the unity of the first cause Perfection consisteth more in the unity of one all sufficient Being than in a voluntary concurrence of many Beings The most learned Heathens who thought there were many to be named Gods did mean but subordinate particular Gods that were under the one universal God whom the Stoicks and Academicks took to be the universal Soul and the subordinate Gods the Souls of the particular Orbs and Planets § 16. The Power of this God must needs be Omnipotency He that hath given so great Power to the creatures as is exercised by them especially the Sun and fixed Stars in their several Vortices or Orbs and he that could make such a World of nothing and uphold the being and maintain the order and cause and continue the rapid motions of all the Vortices or Orbs which are to us innumerable and each of incomprehensible excellency and magnitude is certainly to be accounted no less than Omnipotent By his Omnipotency I mean that by which in it self considered in primo instanti he can do all things possible that is which belong not to Impotency but to Power And by which in secundo instanti he can do all things which his Infinite Wisdom judgeth congruous and meet to be done And in tertio instanti can do all that he will do and are pleasing to him § 17. The understanding of the first Cause must needs be Omniscient and infinite Wisdom 1. He that hath given so much wisdom to such a Worm as Man must have more than all the men in the World Whatever knowledge is in the whole Creation being given by Him doth prove that formally or eminently he hath more Were it all contracted into one Intelligence it must be less than His that caused it He hath not given more wisdom than he had to give nor so much as he had or is himself For if he should make any thing equal to Himself there would be two Infinites and there would be a perfect self-sufficient being which yet had lately no sufficiency or being and there would be a being independent in facto
if God brought them forth for his own Perfection it would follow that he was before imperfect and consequently not God and that his Perfections are mutable and perishing Therefore at least some other cause of these must be found out And as for the similitudes in the objection I answer 1. That the fructifying of a Tree is an act of Generation and the ends of it are partly the use for food to superiour sensitive Creatures especially man and partly the propagation of its species because it is mortall Fructification is indeed its perfection but that is because it is not made for it self but for another Sic vos non vobis may be written upon all But God is neither mortall needing a propagation of the species nor is he subservient to any other and finally for its use And as for the Soul it made not the matter of its own body but found it made though in the formation of it it might be so efficient as domicilium sibi fabricare But God made all matter of nothing and gave the World whatsoever it is or hath And therefore was Perfect himself before For an imperfect being could never have been the cause of such a frame Therefore he needed no domicilium for himself nor as an imperfect Part a form to concurr to the constitution of a whole But he is the efficient dirigent and final cause of the World and all things but not the constituent or essential for then the Creature and Creator were all one and God debased and the Creature deified But he is to them a supra-essential cause even more than a form and soul while he is a total efficient of all 3. If all that is in the Objection had been proved it would not at all shake the main design of my present discourse which is to prove that God is our Grand Benefactor and Chief Good and that he is mans ultimate end For if the World were his Body and he both its Efficient and its Soul he would be the cause of all its Good and the Cause would be more excellent than the Effect And if our Souls that never made the matter of our Bodies are yet the noblest part of us and far more excellent than the Body much more would God that made or caused all the Matter and Order in the World be more excellent than that World which he effected And as the Soul is not for the Body as its ultimate end though it be the Life of the Body and its great Benefactor but the Body is finally more for the Soul though the Soul need not the Body so much as the Body needeth the Soul and as the Horse is finally for the Rider and not the Rider for the Horse though the Horse needeth his Master more than the Master doth the Horse for the Horses life is preserved by the Master when the Master is but accommodated in his Journey by his Horse Even so though the World need God and he needeth not the World and God giveth being and life to the World which can give nothing at all to him yet the World is finally for God and not God for the World The noblest and first Being is still the End And the generated part of the World which is not formally eternal but doth oriri interire is it that our dispute doth most concern which the Objection doth no whit invalidate § 5. The same Will of God which was the free efficient is the End of all his Works ad extra Gods Essence hath no Efficient or final Cause but is the efficient and final cause of all things else They proceeded from his Power his Wisdom and his good-will and they bear the Image of his Power Wisdom and Good-will and he loveth his own Image in them and loveth them as they bear his Image and loveth his Image for Himself So that the act of his Love to Himself is necessary though voluntary and so is the act of his Love to his Image and to all the Goodness of the Creature while it is such But he freely and not necessarily made and continueth the Creature in his Image and needeth not the Glass or Image being self-sufficient so that his Creature is the mediate Object his Image on the Creature is the ultimate created Object his own perfections to which that Image relateth is the objectum simpliciter ultimatum his complacency or love is the Actus ultimus and that very act is the object of his precedent act of Creation or volition of the Creatures But all this is spoken according to the narrow imperfect capacity of man who conceiveth of God as having a prius posterius in his acts which is but respectively and denominatively from the order of the objects In short Gods free-will is the Beginning of his works ad extra and the complacency of that will in his works as Good in relation to his own perfections is the END And therefore he is said to Rest when he saw that all his works were Good § 6. Whatsoever is the fullest expression and Glorifying demonstration of God in the Creature must needs be the chief created excellency Because he loveth Himself first and the Creature for Himself And seeing the Creature hath all from him which is good and amiable in it it must needs follow that those parts are most amiable and best which have most of the impression of the Creators excellencies on them Not that he hath greater Perfections to imprint on one Creature than another but the impression of those Perfections is much greater on one than on another § 7. The Happier therefore God will make any Creature the more will be communicate to it of the Image and demonstration of his own goodness and so will both love it the more for his own Image and cause it to love him the more which is the chief part of his Image § 8. The Goodness of God is conceived of by our narrow mindes in three notions as it were in three degrees of altitude The Highest is The infinite perfections of his Essence as such The second is The infinite perfection of his Will as such which is called His Holiness and the Fountain of Morality The third is that one part of his Wills perfection which is his Benignity to his Creatures which we call his Goodness in a lower notion as relative to our selves because he is inclined by it to Do us good This is his Goodness in condescention § 9. Though all this is but one in God yet because our mindes are fain to receive it as in several parts or notions we may therefore not only distinguish them but compare them as the Objects of our Love § 10. Man usually beginneth at the lowest and loveth God first for his Benignity and Love to us before he riseth to the higher acts And this is not an irregular motion of a lapsed Soul in its return to God so be it we make haste in our
kept it out of the world and saved the Individuals from it will confess that man's interest is not the Measure of God's goodness especially considering what consequents also follow sin both here and hereafter 3. And as to this lower part of the Vniverse how many Nations of the Earth are drown'd in woful ignorance and ungodliness how few are the wise and good and peaceable When God could have sent them Learning and Teachers and Means of Reformation and have blessed all this Means to their deliverance So that the far greater part of this lower world hath not so much good as God could give them and the infirmities of the best do cause their dolorous complaints It is certain that God is infinitely good and that all his works also are good in their degree but withall it is certain that God in himself is the Simple Primitive Good and that created goodness principally consisteth in a conformity to his Will which is the standard and measure of it § 16. God as considered in the Infinite Perfections of his Nature and his Will is most Amiable and the object of our highest love § 17. But he is not known by us in those Perfections as seen in themselves immediately but as demonstrated and glorified expressively in his works in which he shineth to us in his goodness § 18. His works therefore are made for the apt revealing of himself as amiable to the intelligent part of his Creation They are the Book in which he hath appointed us to read and the Glass in which he hath appointed us with admiration to behold the Infinite power Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator and in which we may see that he is not only our Chief Benefactor but the Vltimate Object of our Love and so the End of all our Motions § 19. This third Relation of God to us as our Chief Good efficiently and finally is the highest and most perfective to us but is not separated from the former two but they are all marvelously conjunct and concur in the production of most of the subsequent effects of Gods providence As the Elements are conjuct but not confounded in mixed bodies and in themselves are easily to be distinguished where they are not divided and their effects sometimes also distinct but usually mix'd as are the causes so is it in the case of these three Great Relations though God's Propriety extend further than his Government because Inanimates and Bruites are capable of one and not of the other yet as to the Rational Creatures they are in reality of the same extent God is as to Right the Owner and the Ruler of all the world and also their real Benefactor and quoad debitum their ultimate end But as to consent on their parts none but the godly give up themselves to him in any one of these Relations In order of Nature God is first our Owner and then our Ruler and our chief Good or End His work in the first Relation is Arbitrary Disposal of us his work in the second is to Govern us and in the third Attraction and Felicitating But he so Disposeth of us as never to cross his rules of Government and so governeth us as never to cross his absolute Propriety and attracteth and felicitateth us in concent with his Premiant act of Government and all sweetly and wonderfully conspire the perfection of his works § 20. All these Relations are oft summed up in one name which principally importeth the last which is the persective Relation but truly includeth both the former and that is That GOD is Our FATHER As the Rational Soul doth ever include the Sensitive and Vegetative Faculties so doth God's Fatherly Relation to us include his Dominion and Government A Father is thus a kind of Image of God in this Relation For 1. he hath a certain Propriety in his children 2. He is by nature their rightful Governour 3. He is their Benefactor for they are beholden to him for their being and well-being Nature causeth him to love them and bindeth them again to love him And the Title OVR FATHER which art in Heaven includeth all these Divine Relations to us but specially expresseth the Love and Graciousness of God to us Obj. But I must go against the sense of most of the world if I take God to be infinitely or perfectly good for operari sequitur esse He that is perfectly good will perfectly do good But do we not see and feel what you said before The world is but as a wilderness and the life of man a misery We come into the world in weakness and in a case in which we cannot help our selves but are a pity and trouble to others we are their trouble that breed us and bring us up we are vexed with unsatisfied desires with troubling passions with tormenting pains and languishing weakness and enemies malice with poverty and care with losses and crosses and shame and grief with hard labour and studies with the injuries and spectacles of a Bedlam world and with fears of death and death at last Our enemies are our trouble our friends are our trouble our Rulers are our trouble and our inferiours children and servants are our trouble our possessions are our trouble and so are our wants And is all this the effect of perfect Goodness And the poor Bruits seem more miserable than we they labour and hunger and die at last to serve our will we beat them use them and abuse them at our pleasure And all the Inanimates have no sense of any good and which is worst of all the world is like a Dungeon of ignorance like an Hospital of mad-men for folly and distractedness like a band of Robbers for injury and violence like Tygers for cruelty like snarling Dogs for contention and in a word like Hell for wickedness What else sets the world together by the ears in wars and bloudshed in all generations what maketh peace-makers the most neglected men what maketh vertue and piety the mark of persecution and of common scorn how small a part of the world hath knowledge or piety And you tell us of a Hell for most at last Is all this the fruit of perfect Goodness These thoughts have seriously troubled some Answ He that will ever come to knowledge must begin at the first Fundamental Truths and in his enquiry proceed to lesser Superstructures and reduce uncertainties and difficulties to those points which are sure and plain and not cast away the plainest certain truths because they over-take some difficulties beyond them The true method of enquiry is that we first try whether there be a God that is perfectly Good or not If this be once proved beyond all controversie then all that followeth is certainly reconcilable to it for Truth and Truth is not contradictory Now that God is perfectly Good hath been fully proved before He that giveth to all the world both Heaven and Earth and all the Orbs all that Good whether Natural
leave him under the deserved privation of well-being depriving him of all other Mercies This is undeniable that it is in God's choice whether he will take away his Being it self or only all the Mercies which are necessary to his well-being for he that had nothing before but by free gift may be deprived of any thing which was none of his own if he forfeit it by abuse Nay we live upon such a continued emanation from God as the beams from the Sun that it is but God's stopping of his streams of bounty and we perish without any other taking away of mercies from us § 17. Nature teacheth men to choose a great deal of tollerable pain and misery rather than not be at all even so much as will not utterly weigh down the love of life and of vital operations I say not as some that the greatest torment or misery is more eligible or less odious than annihilation But it is certain that a great deal is We see abundance how ever the Roman and Greek Philosophers scorned it as baseness who are blind or lame or in grievous pains of the Gout and Stone and many that are in miserable poverty begging their bread or toiling from morning to night like horses and yet seldom taste a pleasant bit but joyn distracting cares with labours and yet they are all unwilling to die Custom hath made their misery tollerable and they had rather continue so for ever than be annihilated If then God may annihilate even the innocent supposing he had not promised the contrary then may he lay all that pain and care and labour on them which they would themselves prefer before annihilation For it s no wrong to one that hath his reason and liberty to give him his own choice § 18. It is just with God to lay more misery on a sinner than on one that never deserved ill and to lay more on him for his sin than he would choose himself before annihilation Whether God may without injustice inflict more misery on the innocent than he would himself prefer before annihilation some make a question and deny it For my part I see no great difficulty in the question But it is nothing to that which I am proving it is not God's usage of the innocent but of the guilty which we are speaking of and that he may make them more miserable who deserve it than his bounty made them before any guilt or than a just man would choose to be rather than be annihilated I see no reason at all to doubt Penalty is involuntary and no man ever said that it was unjust to lay more upon a malefactor than he himself was willing of and would choose before a condition which without his fault he might have been put into So then we have already proved 1. That God may punish a man everlastingly 2. And with a greater penalty than annihilation § 19. God may leave a sinner his being and in particular deprive him of his favour and all the joys and blessedness which he refused by his sinning § 20. And he may justly withal deny him those corporal mercies meat drink honour pleasure health ease c. which he over-valued and abused and preferred before God and greater blessings All this I think no man doth deny that acknowledgeth a God § 21. He that is continued in his natural being and is deprived of God's favour and of his future happiness for ever and understandeth what it is that he hath lost and is also deprived of all those natural benefits which he desired must needs be under continual pain of sense as well as of loss for all this want must needs be felt § 22. He that in all this misery of loss and sense doth remember how it was that he came to it and how base a thing he preferred before his God and his felicity and for how vile a price he sold his hopes of the life to come and how odiously he abused God by sin as it is before described cannot choose but have a continual torment of conscience and heart-gnawing repentance in himself § 23. He that is under utter despair of ever coming out of this condition will thereby have his torment yet more encreased All these are natural undeniable consequents § 24. A Body united to so miserable a self-tormenting forsaken Soul cannot have any peace and quietness seeing it is the Soul by which the body liveth and hath its chiefest peace or pains § 25. Thus sin doth both as a Natural and as a Moral Meritorious cause bring on dissatisfaction grief vexation desertion by God and privation of felicity and peace § 26. For as long as a sinner is impenitent and unsanctified that is loveth not God as God nor is recovered from his carnal mind and sin it is both morally and naturally impossible that he should be blessed or enjoy God For as it is only God that efficiently can make happy because nothing worketh but by him and so sin meritoriously undoeth the sinner by making him unfit for favour and making him an object of displicence and justice so it is only God that finally can make happy all things being but Means to him and unfit of themselves to give Rest to the inquisitive seeking mind And God is enjoyed only by Love and the sense of His Love and Goodness therefore the soul that loveth not God and is not suited to the delightful fruition of him can no more enjoy him than a blind man can enjoy the light or an ox can feast with a man § 27. He that is under this punishment and despair will be yet further removed from the love of God and so from all capacity of happiness for he cannot love a God who he knoweth will for ever by penal justice make him miserable He that would not love a God who aboundeth in mercy to him in the day of mercy will never love him when he seeth that he is his enemy and hath shut him for ever out of Mercy and out of Hope § 28. God is not bound to sanctifie the mind and will of such a self-destroying sinner who hath turned away himself from God and Happiness And without a renewed Mind it is morally and unnaturally impossible that he should be happy He that would not use the Mercy that would have saved him in the day of mercy cannot require another life of mercy and trial when this is lost and cast away nor can require the further helps of grace § 29. If sin as sin have all the malignity and demerit before proved much more the aggravated sins of many and most of all a life of wickedness which is spent in enmity against God and Godliness and in a course of sensuality and rebellion with the obstinate impenitent rejecting of all the counsel calls and mercies which would reclaim the sinner and this to the last breath It hath before been manifested that all wilful sin hath this malignity in
Wisdom of the Soul produced by his Light and Wisdom by which we know the difference between Good and Evil and our Reason is restored to its dominion over fleshly sense It is the Goodness of the Soul by which it is made suitable to the Eternal Good and fit to know him love him praise him serve him and enjoy him And therefore nothing lower than his Goodness can be its principal Cause 2. It subserveth the Interest of God in the World And recovereth the apostate Soul to himself It disposeth it to honour him love him and obey him It delivereth up the whole man to him as his own It casteth down all that rebelleth against him It casteth out all which was preferred before him It rejecteth all which standeth up against him and would seduce and tempt us from him And therefore it is certainly his work 3. Whose else should it be Would Satan or any evil cause produce so excellent an effect would the worst of beings do the best of works It is the best that is done in this lower world Would any enemy of God so much honour him and promote his interest and restore him his own would any enemy of mankind thus advance us and bring us up to a life of the highest honour and delights that we are capable of on earth and give us the hopes of life eternal And if any good Angel or other Cause should do it all reason will confess that they do it but as the Messengers or Instruments of God and as second causes and not as the first Cause for otherwise we should make them gods For my own part my Soul perceiveth that it is God himself that hath imprinted this his Image on me and hath hereby as it were written upon me his Name and Mark even HOLINESS TO THE LORD and I bear about me continually a Witness of Himself his Son and holy Spirit a Witness within me which is the Seal of God and the pledge of his love and the earnest of my heavenly inheritance And if our Sanctification be thus of GOD it is certainly his attestation to the truth of Christ and to his Gospel for 1. No man that knoweth the perfections of God will ever believe that he would bless a deceiver and a lie to be the means of the most holy and excellent work that ever was done in the world If Christ were a Deceiver his crime would be so execrable as would engage the Justice of God against him as he is the righteous Governour of the world And therefore he would not so highly honour him to be his chiefest instrument for the worlds Renovation He is not impotent to need such instruments he is not ignorant that he should so mistake in the choice of instruments he is not bad that he should love and use such Instruments and comply with their deceits These things are all so clear and sure that I cannot doubt of them 2. No man that knoweth the mercifulness of God and the Justice of his Government can believe that he would give up Mankind so remedilesly to seduction yea and be the principal causer of it himself For if besides Prophecie and a holy Doctrine and a multitude of famous Miracles a Deceiver might also be the great Renewer and Sanctifier of the world to bring man back to the obedience of God and to repair his Image on Mankind what possibility were there of our discovery of that deceit Or rather should we not say he were a blessed Deceiver that had deceived us from our sin and misery and brought back our straying souls to God 3. Nay when Christ fore-told men that he would send his Spirit to do all this work and would renew men for eternal life and thus be with us to the end of the world and when I see all this done I must needs believe that he that can send down a Sanctifying Spirit a Spirit of Life a Spirit of Power Light and Love to make his Doctrine in the mouths of his Ministers effectual to mens Regeneration and Sanctification is no less himself than God or certainly no less than his certain Administrator 4. What need I more to prove the Cause than the adequate effect When I find that Christ doth actually save me shall I question whether he be my Saviour When I find that he saveth thousands about me and offereth the same to others shall I doubt whether he be the Saviour of the world Sure he that healeth us all and that so wonderfully and so cheaply may well be called our Physician If he had promised only to save us I might have doubted whether he would perform it and consequently whether he be indeed the Saviour But when he performeth it on my self and performeth it on thousands round about me to doubt yet whether he be the Saviour when he actually saveth us is to be ignorant in despite of Reason and Experience I conclude therefore that the Spirit of Sanctification is the infallible Witness of the Verity of the Gospel and the Veracity of Jesus Christ 5. And I entreat all that read this further to observe the great use and advantage of this testimony above others in that it is continued from Generation to Generation and not as the gift and testimony of Miracles which continued plentifully but one Age and with diminution somewhat after this is Christ's witness to the end of the world in every Country and to every Soul yea and continually dwelling in them For if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his Rom. 8.9 He that is not able to examine the History which reporteth the Miracles to him may be able to find upon his Soul the Image of God imprinted by the Gospel and to know that the Gospel hath that Image in it self which it imprinteth upon others and that it cometh from God which leadeth men so directly unto God and that it is certainly his own means which he blesseth to so great and excellent ends 6. Note also that part of the work of the Spirit of God in succeeding the Doctrine of Jesus Christ doth consist in the effectual production of Faith it self for though the work be wrought by the Reasons of the Gospel and the Evidences of Truth yet is it also wrought by the Spirit of God concurring with that evidence and as the internal Efficient exciting the sluggish faculties to do their office and illustrating the understanding and fitting the will to entertain the truth for the difficulties are so great and the temptations to unbelief so subtil and violent and our own indisposedness through corruption the greatest impediment of all that the bare Word alone would not produce a belief of that lively vigorous nature as is necessary to its noble effects and ends without the internal co-operation of the Spirit So that Christ doth not only teach us the Christian Faith and Religion but doth give it us and work it in us by his Spirit And he that can do
so doth prove the Divine approbation of his Doctrine without which he could not have the command of mens Souls 7. Note also that the Gospel proposeth to the Soul of man both Truth and Goodness and the Truth is in order to the Good and subservient to it That Christ is indeed the Saviour and his Word infallibly true is believed that we may be made partakers of his Salvation and of the Grace and Glory promised And when the Spirit by the Gospel hath regenerated and renewed any Soul he hath given him part of that grace in possession and hath procreated in him the habitual love of God and of holiness with a love to that Saviour and holy Word which brought him to it So that this Love is now become as a new Nature to the Soul and this being done the Soul cleaveth now as fast to Christ and the Gospel by Love as by Belief not that love becometh an irrational causless love nor continueth without the continuance of Belief or Belief without the Reasons and Evidence of Verity and Credibility But Love now by concurrence greatly assisteth Faith it self and is the faster hold of the two so that the Soul that is very weak in its Reasoning faculty and may oft lose the sight of these Evidences of truth which it did once perceive may still hold fast by this holy Love As the man that by reasoning hath been convinced that hony is sweet will easilier change his mind than he that hath tasted it so Love is the Souls taste which causeth its fastest adherence to God and to the Gospel If a caviller dispute with a loving child or parent or friend to alienate their hearts from one another and would perswade them that it is but dissembled love that is professed to them by their relations and friends Love will do more here to hinder the belief of such a slander than Reason alone can do and where Reason is not strong enough to answer all that the caviller can say yet Love may be strong enough to reject it And here I must observe how oft I have noted the great mercy of God to abundance of poor people whose reasoning faculty would have failed them in temptations to Atheism and Infidelity if they had not had a stronger hold than that and their Faith had not been radicated in the Will by Love I have known a great number of women who never read a Treatise that pleaded the Cause of the Christian Religion nor were able to answer a crafty Infidel that yet in the very decaying time of Nature at fourscore years of age and upward have lived in that sense of the Love of God and in such Love to him and to their Saviour as that they have longed to die and be with Christ and lived in all humility charity and piety such blameless exemplary heavenly Lives in the joyfull expectation of their Change as hath shewed the firmness of their Faith and the Love and Experience which was in them would have rejected a temptation to Atheism and Unbelief more effectually than the strongest Reason alone could ever do Yet none have cause to reproach such and say Their Wills lead their Vnderstandings and they customarily and obstinately believe they know not why for they have known sufficient reason to believe and their understandings have been illuminated to see the truth of true Religion and it was this knowledge of Faith which bred their Love and Experience but when that is done as Love is the more noble and perfect operation of the Soul having the most excellent object so it will act more powerfully and prevailingly and hath the strongest hold Nor are all they without Light and Reason for their belief who cannot form it into arguments and answer all that is said against it Obj. But may not all this which you call Regeneration and the Image of God be the meer power of fantasie and affectation and may not all these people force themselves like melancholy persons to conceit that they have that which indeed they have not Answ 1. They are not melancholly persons that I speak of but those that are as capable as any others to know their own minds and what is upon their own hearts 2. It is not one or two but millions 3. Nature hath given man so great acquaintance with himself by a power of perceiving his own operations that his own cogitations and desires are the first thing that naturally he can know and therefore if he cannot know them he can know nothing If I cannot know what I think and what I love and hate I can know nothing at all 4. That they are really minded and affected as they seem and have in them that love to God and Heaven and Holiness which they profess they shew to all the world by the effects 1. In that it ruleth the main course of their lives and disposeth of them in the world 2. In that these apprehensions and affections over-rule all their worldly fleshly interest and cause them to deny the pleasures of the flesh and the profits and honours of the world 3. In that they are constant in it to the death and have no other mind in their distress when as Seneca saith Nothing feigned is of long continuance for all forc'd things are bending back to their natural state 4. In that they will lay down their lives and forsake all the world for the hopes which faith in Christ begetteth in them And if the objectors mean that all this is true and yet it is but upon delusion or mistake that they raise these hopes and raise these affections I answer This is the thing that I am disproving 1. The love of God and a holy mind and life is not a dream of the Soul or a deliration I have proved from Natural reason in the first Book that it is the end and use and perfection of man's faculties that if God be God and man be man we are to love him above all and to obey him as our absolute Sovereign and to live as devoted to him and to delight in his love Man were more ignoble or miserable than a beast if this were not his work And is that a dream or a delusion which causeth a man to live as a man to the ends that he was made for and according to the nature and use of his reason and all his faculties 2. While the proofs of the excellency and necessity of a holy life are so fully before laid down from natural and supernatural revelation the Objector doth but refuse to see in the open light when he satisfieth himself with a bare assertion that all this is no sufficient ground for a holy life but that it is taken up upon mistake 3. All the world is convinced at one time or other that on the contrary it is the unholy fleshly worldly life which is the dream and dotage and is caused by the grossest error and deceit Object But how
shall I know that there is indeed such holiness in Christians as you mention and that it is not dissembled and counterfeit Answ I have told you in the fore-going answer 1. If you were truly Christians you might know it by possession in your selves as you know that you love your friend or a learned man knoweth that he hath learning 2. If you have it not your selves you may see that others do not dissemble when you see them as afore-said make it the drift of all their lives and prefer it before their worldly interest and their lives and hold on constantly in it to the death When you see a holy life what reason have you to question a holy heart especially among so great a number you may well know that if some be dissemblers all the rest are not so Obj. But I see no Christians that are really so holy I see nothing in the best of them above civility but only self-conceit and affectation and strictness in their several forms and modes of Worship Answ 1. If you are no better than such your self it is the greatest shame and plague of heart that you could have confessed and it must needs be because you have been false to the very light of Nature and of Grace 2. If you know no Christians that are truly holy it must needs be either because you are unacquainted with them or because your malice will not give you leave to see any good in these that you dislike And if you have acquainted your self with no Christians that were truly holy what could it be but malice or sensuality that turned you away from their acquaintance when there have been so many round about you If you have been intimate with them and known their secret and open conversation and yet have not seen any holiness in them it can be no better than wilful malice that hath blinded you And because a negative witness that knoweth not whether it be so or not is not to be regarded against an affirming witness who knoweth what he saith I will here leave my testimony as in the presence of God the searcher of hearts and the revenger of a lie yea even of lies pretended for his glory I have considered of the characters of a Christian in the twenty particulars before expressed in this Chapter § 10. and I have examined my soul concerning them all and as far as I am able to know my self I must profess in humble thankfulness to my Redeemer that there is none of them which I find not in me And seeing God hath given me his testimony within me to the truth of the Gospel of his Son I take it to be my duty in the profession of it to give my testimony of it to unbelievers And I must as solemnly profess that I have had acquaintance with hundreds if not thousands on whom I have seen such evidences of a holy heavenly mind which nothing but uncharitable and unrighteous censure could deny And I have had special intimate familiarity with very many in all whom I have discerned the Image of God in such innocency charity justice holiness contempt of the world mortification self-denial humility patience and heavenly mindedness in such a measure that I have seen no cause to question their sincerity but great cause to love and honour them as the Saints of God yea I bless the Lord that most of my converse in the world since the 22d year of my age hath been with such and much of it six years sooner Therefore for my own part I cannot be ignorant that Christ hath a sanctified people upon earth Object But how can one man know another's heart to be sincere Answ I pretend not to know by an infallible certainty the heart of any single individual person But 1. I have in such a course of effects as is mentioned before great reason to be very confident of it and no reason to deny it concerning very many A child cannot be infallibly certain that his father or mother loveth him because he knoweth not the heart But when he considereth of the ordinariness of natural affection and hath always found such usage as dearest love doth use to cause he hath much reason to be confident of it and none to deny it 2. There may be a certainty that all conjunctly do not counterfeit when you have no certainty of any single individual As I can be sure that all the mothers in the world do not counterfeit love to their children though I cannot be certain of it in any individual Object But it is not all Christians nor most that are thus holy Answ It is all that are Christians in deed and truth Christ is so far from owning any other that he will condemn them the more for abusing his Name to the covering of their sins All are not Christians who have the name of Christians in all professions the vulgar rabble of the ignorant and ungodly do use to joyn with the party that is uppermost and seem to be of the Religion which is most for their worldly ends be it right or wrong when indeed they are of none at all Hypocrites are no true Christians but the persons that Christ is most displeased with Judge but by his precepts and example and you will see who they are that are Christians indeed Object But what if the preaching or writings of a Minister do convert and sanctifie men it doth not follow that they are Saviours of the world Answ What ever they do they do it as the Ministers and Messengers of Christ by his Doctrine and not by any of their own by his Commission and in his Name and by his Power or Spirit Therefore it witnesseth to his truth and honour who is indeed the Saviour which they never affirmed of themselves Object What if Pythagoras Socrates Plato the Japonian Bonzii the Indian Bramenes c. do bring any souls to a holy state as its like they did it will not follow that they were all Saviours of the world Answ 1. They have but an imperfect Doctrine and consequently make on the minds of men but a lame defective change and that change but upon few and that but for a few Ages and then another Sect succeedeth them So that they have no such attestation and approbation of God as Christ hath in the renovation of so many thousands all abroad the world and that for so many ages together 2. They did not affirm themselves to be the Sons of God and the Saviours of the world if they had God would not have annexed such a testimony to their word as he doth to Christs 3. The mercy of God is over all his works He hath compassion upon all Nations and setteth up some candles where the Sun is not yet risen The Light and Law of Nature are his as well as the Light and Law of Supernatural Revelation and accordingly he hath his instruments for the communication of them to
another life and is made only to be happy in that knowledge love and fruition of God which the Gospel most effectually leads you to Cond 21. Mark well the prophesies of Christ himself both of the destruction of Jerusalem and the successes of his Apostles in the world c. and mark how exactly they are all fulfilled Cond 22. Let no pretence of humility tempt you to debase humane nature below its proper excellency lest thence you be tempted to think it uncapable of the everlasting sight and fruition of God The devils way of destroying is oftentimes by over-doing The proud devil will help you to be very humble and help you to deny the excellency of reason and natural free-will and all supernatural inclinations when he can make use of it to perswade you that man is but a subtil sort of bruit and hath a soul but gradually different from sensitives and so is not made for another life Cond 23. Yet come to Christ as humble learners and not as arrogant self-conceited censurers and think not that you are capable of understanding every thing as soon as you hear it Cond 24. Judge not of the main cause of Christianity or of particular texts or points by sudden hasty thoughts and glances as if it were a business to be cursorily done but allow it your most deliberate sober studies your most diligent labour and such time and patience as reason may tell you are necessary to a learner in so great a cause Cond 25. Call not so great a matter to the trial in a case of melancholy and natural incapacity but stay till you are fitter to perform the search It is one of the common cheats of Satan to perswade poor weak and melancholy persons that have but half the use of their understandings to go then to try the Christian Religion when they can scarce cast up an intricate account nor are fit to judge of any great and difficult thing And then he hath an advantage to confound them and fill them with blasphemous and unbelieving thoughts and if not to shake their habitual faith yet greatly to perplex them and disturb their peace The soundest wit and most composed is fittest for so great a task Cond 26. When upon sober trial you have discerned the evidences of the Christian verity record what you have found true and judge not the next time against those evidences till you have equal opportunity for a full consideration of them In this case the Tempter much abuseth many injudicious souls when by good advice and soberest meditation they have seen the evidence of truth in satisfying clearness he will after surprise them when their minds are darker or their thoughts more scattered or the former evidence is out of mind and push them on suddenly then to judge of the matters of immortality and of the Christian cause that what he cannot get by truth of argument he may get by the incapacity of the disputant As if a man that once saw a mountain some miles distant from him in a clear day should be tempted to believe that he was deceived because he seeth it not in a misty day or when he is in a valley or within the house Or as if a man that in many days hard study hath cast up an intricate large account and set it right under his hand should be called suddenly to give up the same account anew without looking on that which he before cast up when as if his first account be lost he must have equal time and helps and fitness before he can set it as right again Take it not therefore as any disparagement to the Christian truth if you cannot on a sudden give your selves so satisfactory an account of it as formerly in more clearness and by greater studies you have done Cond 27. Gratifie not Satan so much as to question well resolved points as oft as he will move you to it Though you must prove all things till as learning you come to understand them in their proper evidence time and order yet you must record and hold fast that which you have proved and not suffer the devil to put you to the answer of one and the same question over and over as often as he please this is to give him our time and to admit him to debate his cause with us by temptation as frequently as he will which you would not allow to a ruffian to the debauching of your wife or servants and you provoke God to give you up to errour when no resolution will serve your turn After just resolution the tempter is to be rejected and not disputed with as a troublesome fellow that would interrupt us in our work Cond 28. Where you find your own understandings insufficient have recourse for help to some truly wise judicious Divine Not to every weak Christian nor unskilful Minister who is not well grounded in his own Religion but to those that have throughly studied it themselves you may meet with many difficulties in Theology and in the Text which you think can never be well solved which are nothing to them that understand the thing No Novice in the study of Logick Astronomy Geometry or any Art or Science will think that every difficulty that he meeteth with doth prove that his Author was deceived unless he be able to resolve it of himself but he will ask his Tutor or some one versed in those matters to resolve it and then he will see that his ignorance was the cause of all his doubts Cond 29. Labour faithfully to receive all holy truths with a practical intent and to work them on your hearts according to their nature weight and use For the doctrine of Christianity is scientia affectiva practica a doctrine for Head Heart and Life And if that which is made for the Heart be not admitted to the Heart and rooted there it is half rejected while it seemeth received and is not in its proper place and soil If you are yet in doubt of any of the supernatural Verities admit those truths to your hearts which you are convinced of else you are false to them and to your selves and forfeit all further helps of grace Object This is but a trick of deceit to engage the affections when you want arguments to convince the judgment Perit omne judicium cum res transit in affectum Answ When the affection is inordinate and over-runs the judgment this saying hath some truth but it is most false as of ordinate affections which follow sound judgment For by suscitation of the faculties such affections greatly help the judgment and judgment is but the eye of the soul to guide the man and it is but the passage to the will where humane acts are more compleat If your wife be taught that conjugal love is due to her husband and your child that filial love and reverence is due to his father such affections will not blind their judgments but contrarily they do
they have done fair though afterwards they consider not that interest of his in all operations which their own concessions necessarily infer 10. Lastly I perceive that they proceed not methodically in their collections but confound all by mixing certainties with uncertainties Whereas the first the great the most discernable truths should be first congested as CERTAINTIES by themselves and the uncertainties should not be pleaded against them nor suffered to stand in contest with them Perceiving all these general Reasons to distrust this sort of Philosophers above others though I resolve to be impartial I cannot willingly be so foolish as to over-look their disadvantage in the present cause II. The particular reasons which disswade me from believing the Epicurean sufficiency of Matter and Motion are these following 1. They all with whom I have now to do are constrained to confess an incorporeal intellectual substance even that there is a God and that GOD is such Epicurus himself doth not deny it yea seemeth to speak magnificently of God and in honour to him would excuse his providence from the minding of inferiour things For 1. They know that matter did not make it self and motion is but its mode and therefore matter cannot be made by its own motion It s being is in order of nature before its motion And matter is in it self so dull a thing and by the adversaries stripped of all forms which are not caused by motion that if it were said to be from eternity in its duration they will confess it could be but as an eternal effect of some nobler cause So that at the first word they grant that matter hath an incorporeal cause 2. And motion as it is found in matter could not cause it self though it be but of the mode of matter it is such a mode as must have a cause And the passive matter yet unmoved is supposed by themselves to be void of all antecedent moving power So that they are all fain to say that God made the matter and gave it the first push And so all matter and motion is reduced to a first efficient who is incorporeal And therefore an incorporeal being is acknowledged 2. I meet with none of them who dare deny this God to be an intellectual free Agent so that though it be granted them that intelligere velle be not in God the same thing formally as it is in man yet is it something which eminently must be so called man having no fitter conception or expression of it than from these acts of his own soul Epicurus will not make God defectively ignorant impotent or bad When themselves divide all things into such as have understanding and such as have none of which part do they suppose GOD to stand Things that are void of understanding formally or eminently are below the dignity of things that have understanding So that they confess there is existent an incorporeal intelligent free Agent 3. As they confess that this intellectual Agent is the first cause both of matter and motion so they cannot deny that he still causeth both by his continued influx or causing efficacy For there can be no effect without a cause and therefore when the cause ceaseth the effect must cease The material part of a moral cause may cease and yet the effect continue But that moral causation continueth which is proportioned to the effect The Parent may die while the child surviveth but there is a continued cause of the life of the child proportioned to the effect Matter is not an independent being To say that God hath made it self-sufficient and independent is to say that he hath made it a God Suppose but a total cessation of the Divine emanation influx and causation and you must needs suppose also the cessation of all Beings If you say that when God hath once given it a Being it will continue of it self till his power annihilate it I answer if it continue without a continuing causation it must continue as an independent self-sufficient being But this is a contradiction because it is a creature GOD is no effect and therefore needeth no cause of subsistence but the creature is an effect and cannot subsist a moment without a continued cause As the beams or communicated light cannot continue an instant if there were a total cessation of the emanation of the luminary because their being is meerly dependent and they need no other positive annihilation besides the cessation of the causation which did continue them It was from one of your own Poets that Paul cited In him we live and move and have our being for we are his off-spring And nothing is more abhorrent to all common reason than that this stone or dirt which was nothing as yesterday should be a God to it self even one independent self-sufficient being as soon as it is created and so that God made as many demy-gods as atoms We see past doubt that one creature cannot subsist or move without another on which it is dependent how much less can any creature subsist or move without its continued reception of its Creator's influx If you could suppose that for one moment there were no God you must suppose there would be nothing If I thought any would deny this besides those inflated vertiginous brains that are not to be disputed with I would say more for the illustration of it Object But though matter subsist not without a continued divine causation or emanation or efficacious volition yet motion may continue when all divine causation of it ceaseth Because when God hath given it one push that causeth a motion which causeth another motion and that another and so in infinitum if there were no stop Answ 1. If this were so it must be on supposition of a vis motiva communicata vel impressa for if there had been no such the first motion would have not been or all have presently ceased for want of a continued cause As there is no motion sine vi motiva so none can be communicated but by the communication of that force Action is not nothing nor will be caused by nothing As the delapsus gravium would presently cease if we could cause the pondus or gravity to cease so is it in all other motions If there be no vis or strength communicated along with the motion there would be nothing in that motion to cause another motion nor in that to cause another And if it were by way of traction if the cause cease which is the prima trahens all the motion ceaseth and so also if it be by way of pulsion So that in every motion there is something more than matter and motion 2. All motion of things below within our reach hath many impediments and therefore would cease if the first cause continued not his powerful efficacy It is tedious and needless to enumerate instances 3. The moving power of the noblest creatures is not purely active but partly passive and partly
are nothing but a Cursus motuum as of water that by running in a certain Channell is inclined to run that way again I answer They are certainly something that remain when the action ceaseth and therefore are an Inclination ad agendum as well as a cursus actionum And they are something that are active Principles and not only so many Channels which the Spirits have made themselves in the brains and nerves Otherwise the numberless variety of objects would so furrow and channel the brain that they would consume it as gutta cavat lapidem c. 6. And do you know what you oblige your selves to when you undertake to solve all phaenomena by matter and motion only and how have you satisfied the studious and impartial World herein I hope you will not put off all questions that are put to you with these same two general words only when we ask you what causeth the descensus gravium do not tell us It is matter and motion but tell us the differences in the motion or matter which cause this effect as different from others What is the reason in motion that Fire ascendeth what is the reason that the motus projectorum doth continue why doth the Ant take one course and the Bee another and the Fly another c. what different motions are they that are the cause what motion is it that causeth the Hen to sit on her Eggs in fasting and patience and to know her Chickens and to cherish them till they are mature and then beat them away And so almost of all other Birds and Beasts What is the difference in motion that causeth one Creature to love this food and another that that one eateth Grass and another Flesh that every seed doth bring forth only its proper species what are the differences in motion which cause the difference in odour and taste and virtue and shape of leaves and flowers and fruits c. between all the Plants that cover the Earth that all that come of one seed have an agreement in leaf and flower and fruit and odour and taste and virtue e.g. Germander Betony Peony c. what are the different motions that cause all these differences even in the very seeds themselves To tell us only in general that the difference is all made by motion is to put an end to learning and studies and to give one answer to all the questions in the world and one description of all beings in the world You may as well tell us that you salve all the Phaenomena to tell us that all things are Entities and made and moved by God It is a fair advancement of Knowledge indeed to cast away and deny all the noblest parts of the world and to tell us that all the rest is matter of various magnitude and figure variously moved and placed This is short Philosophy And the particular specifying differences you do not you cannot tell us according to your Principles Gassendus § 1. l. 3. c. 2. denyeth the transmutation of Elements Others of the Atomists tell us that every Hour changeth the Elements and that continual motion is continually turning one into another And that Fire e.g. is but that part of matter which falleth under such or such a motion And that the same matter which is Fire this moment while it moveth is something else the next when that motion ceaseth And that whatever matter falleth under the same motion be it Stone or Earth or any thing it is presently by that motion turn'd to Fire as Fire may be into Stone or Earth But that which we expect from them is to tell us what motion it is that maketh the different Elements and what doth constitute them and what transmuteth them and not to put us off with two general words when they boast of solving all the Phaenomena We expect also to hear from them how Density and Solidity come to be the effects of motion And how the Cohesion of the particles of Gold or Marble or Glew is caused by the meer magnitude and figure of Matter or by the motion of it without any other material properties And they must give us a better account than they have yet done of the true cause of sense in matter and motion They know our argument but I could never yet understand how they answer it We say that Nihil dat quod non habet vel formaliter vel eminenter All the objections against this Maxim they may find answered besides others in Campanella de sensu rerum Atoms as matter have no sense they smart not they see not they feel no delight c. Formaliter you will not imagine that they have sense and they cannot have it eminenter being not above it but below it and shewing us nothing that doth transcend it or is like it And motion is no substance but a mode of matter and therefore hath it self no sense Object Doth not Campanella Telesius c. argue that all things have sense Answ 1. Their fanaticisms are no part of our Physical Creed 2. They mean when all is done but this much that there is some Image or Participation of Life in Inanimates of Sense in Vegetatives of Reason in Sensitives and of Angelical Intellection in Rationals 3. As it is said in the Mystic Aegypt Chald. Philos ascribed to Aristotle Et si quibusdam videtur quod elementa habent Animam illa est aliena adventitiaque eis Cumque sint viva vita illis est accidentaria non naturalis alioquin forent inalterabilia l. 12. c. 11. So the Sticks deifi'd the fire and made it Intellectual but it was not as it is matter but as they supposed it animated with an intellectual form So many of the ancients thought that the Angels were compounded of an intellectual form or soul and of a fiery or aethereal body But it is only the body that we are now enquiring of Have atoms sense doth matter feel or see as such Object We say not that all matter or atoms have sense but only some part of it which by motion is subtilized Answ Still nihil dat quod non habet you grant then that matter as such hath no sense at all Else the argument would hold ad omnem And if it have none as matter motion can give it none as meer motion for motion hath not sense to give Let motion attenuate the matter and subtilize it it is but matter still and it can be no less than atoms Therefore shew us how materia subtilis or atoms should feel or see because of the subtility or parvity and by its magnitude or grossness lose that sense Tell us how and why the change of meer magnitude and figure should make a thing feel that felt not before If you difference not matter by some natural difference of forms or properties and virtues you will never speak sense in proving sense to be in matter by meer atomizing it or moving it The alkohol of
Marble feeleth no more than the solid stone nor the air than the earth for any proof that we have of it The boys that whip their tops and the women that turn their wheels so swiftly that the motion shall not be discerned yet put no feeling into either though the motion be swifter than that of the heart or lungs or blood What the learned Dr. Ward hath said of this against Mr. Hobs I refer you to peruse and excuse me for transcribing it Scaliger Sennertus and many others have heretofore challenged these Philosophers to shew the world how atoms by motion or elements by mixture can get that sense which neither matter motion nor mixture have but we can meet with no account of it yet worth the reading not by Cartesius not by Regius or Berigardus not by Gassendus nor any other that we can get and read How unsatisfactory is it to tell us that facultas sentiendi movendi quae anima sensitiva vulgo dicitur est partium animalis in spiritus nervos alia sensoria c. talis attemperatio conformatio qua animal ab objectis variis motibus affici potest as Regius l. 4. c. 3. p. 267. This is an easie solving of the Phaenomena indeed But qualis est illa contemperatio quomodo potest contemperantia insensibilium sensibile constituere Nonne dat ista contemperatio quod non habet Perhaps you will say with him in Cicer. de Nat. Deor. that by this argument God must be a Fidler because he maketh men that are such Answ By this argument no fidler nor any other man hath more wisdom than God or can do that which God cannot do but because God is above him in his skill doth it follow that the names which signifie humane imperfection must be put on God Can God enable a man to that which he is not able to do himself and can he give that which he hath not to give Object None of the parts of a clock can tell the hour of the day and yet all set together can and none of the letters of a book are Philosophy and yet the whole may be a learned system and no atoms in a Lute can make melody as the whole can do Answ This is but to play with words In all these instances the whole hath nothing of a higher kind in nature than the several parts but only a composition by the contribution of each part The clock telleth you nothing but per modum signi and that signum is only in the sound or order of motion And sound and motion belongeth to the whole by vertue or contribution of the parts and is not another thing above them And that the motion is so ordered and that man can by it collect the time of the day is from the power of our understandings and not from the matter of the engine at all So the book is no otherwise Philosophy at all but per modum signi which signum is related to mans understanding both as the cause and orderer and as the receiver and apprehender So that the letters do nothing at all but passively serve the mind of man And so it is in the other instance the strings do but move the air and cause the sound which is in the ear that this is melody is caused only by the mind of man who first frameth and then orderly moveth them and then suo modo receiveth the sound and maketh melody by the aptitude of his apprehension If you had proved that Clock or Book or Lute do make themselves and order and use themselves and know the time or understand or delight in themselves you had done something But by the deceitful names of Philosophy and Melody to confound the bare natural sound and sign with that ordering and that reception which is the priviledge of a mind is unfit for a Philosopher Moreover I expect from Matter and Motion an account of motions great concomitants that is of Light and Heat Mistake me not I am not undervaluing the effects of motion I take it for a most noble and observable cause of most that is done or existent in the corporeal world but must it therefore be the solitary cause I have long observed amongst wranglers and erroneous zealots in Divinity that most of their error and misdoing lieth in setting the necessary co-ordinate causes or parts of things as inconsistent in opposition to one another It would make one ashamed to hear one plead that Scripture must be proved by it self and another that it must be proved by reason and another that it must be by miracles and another by the Church and another by general History and Tradition c. As if every one of these were not necessary concurrent parts in the proof Such work have we among poor deluded women and ignorant men while the Romanists say that they are the true Church and the Greeks say it is they and the Lutherans say it is they and the Anabaptists say it is they as if my neighbours and I should contend which of our houses it is that is the Town And so do these Philosophers about the Principles and Elements The Intellectual nature which is the Image of God hath notoriously three faculties Vnderstanding Will and Executive Power and men think that they cannot understand the one without denying the other two and the fiery nature which constituteth the Sun and other Luminaries and is the image of the vital nature hath three notorious powers or properties Light Heat and Motion and they cannot understand Motion without making nothing of Light and Heat or greatly obscuring and abusing them Cull out into one and set together but what Patricius hath said of Light and what Telesius hath said of Heat and Campanella after him and what Gassendus and Cartesius have said of Motion and cut off all their superfluities and you will have a better entrance into sound Philosophy than any one book that I know doth afford you I confess that as wisdom must lead the will and determine its acts quoad specificationem and the will must set a work the same intellect and determine its acts quoad exercitium and the active power doth partly work ad intra in the operations of both these and ad extra is excited by the imperium of the will so that these three faculties as Schibler Alsted and many others truly number them are marvellously conjunct and co operative Even so it is in the Motion Light and Heat of the active element or fiery or aethereal nature I know motion contributeth to light and heat but it 's as true that light and heat have their proper coequal and co-ordinate properties and effects and that heat contributeth as much to motion at least as motion doth to heat indeed in one essence they are three coequal vertues or faculties the Vis Motiva Illuminativa Calefactiva And so vain is their labour who only from matter
intellectus seu mens atque adeo incorporea non elicere actiones nisi intellectuales seu mentales incorporeas Et quum est sentiens vegetans praeditaque vi corporum motrice atque adeo corporea est elicere actiones corporeas c. And of Angels and Devils he saith That it is known by faith only that they are incorporeal and perhaps God gave them extraordinary bodies when he would have them move or act on bodies To this I answer 1. Who gave those atoms their ingenite mobility and how You say that captum omnem fugit ut quippiam aliud moveat si in seipso immotum maneat If so then it seemeth that either God was moved when he moved atoms or that he never moved them How then came they to be moved first But you confess that God put into them their mobility You say De Deo alia ratio est quoniam infinitae virtutis cum sit vâ—ique praesens non ullo sâ—i motu sed nutu solo agere movere quidlibet potest If you think not as you speak it is unworthy of a Philosopher if you do then it is strange that you should overthrow your own reasoning and excuse it no better than thus If the reason why incorporeal spirits cannot move bodies be that which you alledge because only a body can be applied to a body to make impression on it then God can less move a body than man's soul can because his purest essence is more distant from corporeal grossness than our souls are At least the reason would be the same And to say that God is every where and of infinite vertues maketh him nevertheless a Spirit and created spirits if that be enough may have power or vertue enough for such an effect Doubtless if God move bodies the spirituality of an agent hindereth not the motion 2. But why should it captum omnem superare that a nobler and more potent nature can do that which a more ignoble can do Because I cannot know how a spirit by contact can apply it self to matter shall I dream that therefore it is uncapable of moving bodies Clean contrary I see that matter of it self is an unactive thing and were it not that the noble active element of fire which as a lower soul to the passive matter and a thing almost middle between a spirit and a body did move things here below I could discern no motion in the world but that which spirits cause except only that of the parts to the whole the aggregative motion which tendeth to rest The difference of understandings is very strange it is much easier to me to apprehend that almost all motion should come from the purest powerful active vital natures than that they should be all unable to stir a straw or move the air or any body OBJECTION VI. THe soul is in our sleep either unactive as when we do not so much as dream or acteth irregularly and irrationally according to the fortuitous motion of the spirits Ergo it is no incorporeal immortal substance Answ 1. I suppose the soul is never totally unactive I never awaked since I had the use of memory but I found my self coming out of a dream And I suppose they that think they dream not think so because they forget their dreams 2. Many a time my reason hath acted for a time as regularly and much more forcibly than it doth when I am awake which sheweth what it can do though it be not ordinary 3. This reason is no better than that before answered where I told you that it argueth not that I am a horse or no wiser than my horse because I ride but according to his pace when he halteth or is tired Nor doth it prove that when I alight I cannot go on foot He is hard of understanding that believeth that all the glorious parts of the world above us have no nobler intellectual natures than man Suppose there be Angels and suppose one of them should be united to a body as our souls are we cannot imagine but that he would actuate it and operate in it according to its nature as I write amiss when my pen is bad The same I say of persons Lethargick Apoplectick Delirant c. OBJECTION VII REason is no proof of the soul's immateriality because sense is a clearer and more excellent way of apprehension than Reason is and the bruits have sense Answ 1. I have said enough to the case of Bruits before 2. The soul understandeth bodily things by the inlet of the bodily senses Things incorporeal as I shall shew more anon it otherwise understandeth When it understandeth by the help of sense it is not the sense that understandeth any thing If Bruits themselves had not an Imagination which is an Image of Reason their sense would be of little use to them We see when by business or other thoughts the minde is diverted and alienated how little sense it self doth for us when we can hear as if we never heard and see and not observe what we see yet it 's true that the more sense helpeth us in the apprehending of things sensible which are then objects the better and surely râ—w perceive them by the understanding As the second and third Concoction will not be well made if there be a failing in the first so the second and third perception â—n the Phantasie and Intellect will be ill made if the first deceive or fail them But this proveth not either that the first Concoction or Perception is more noble than the third or that Sensitives without Reason have any true understanding at all or that Sense Phantasie and Reason are not better than Sense alone But these things need not much disputing If Sense be nobler than Reason let the Horse ride the man and let the Woman give her milk to her Cow and let Bruits labour men and feed upon them and let Beasts be your Tutors and Kings and Judges commit to them the noblest works and give them the preeminence if you think they have the noblest faculties OBJECTION VIII SEnsation and Intellection are both but Reception The passiveness therefore of the Soul doth shew its materiality Answ A short answer may satisfie to this Objection 1. All created Powers are partly passive how active soever they be For being in esse operari dependant on and subordinate to the first Cause they must needs receive his influence as well as exercise their own powers As the second wheel in the Clock must receive the moving force of the first before it can move the third 2. It is an enormous error about the operations of the Soul to think that Intellection yea or Sensation either is meer Reception and that the sensitive and intellective power are but Passive The active Soul of Man yea of Bruits receiveth not its object as the mark or butt receiveth the arrow that is shot at it It receiveth it by a similitude of
Light be not still the same till all the passive matter be consumed is more than you know So also if you argue from the Vegetative life of a Tree Whether the same Principle of Vegetation enlarging it self continue not to the end to individuate the Tree though all the passive Elements Earth Water and Air may be in fluxu and a transient state It is certain that some fixed Principle of Individuation there is from whence it must be denominated the same The water of the hasty River would not be called the same River if the Channel which it runs in were not the same Nor your Candle be called the same Candle if some of the first Wick or Oyl at least did not remain or the same fire continue it or the same Candlestick hold it And what is it in the Tree which is still the same or what in the Bird that flyeth about which is still the same when you have searched all you will finde nothing so likely as the vital Principle and yet that something there must be 2. But doth not the light of Nature and the concurrent sense and practice of all the World confute you and tell you that if you cannot understand what the Individuating Principle is yet that certainly some such there is and doth continue Why else will you love and provide for your own Children if they be not at all the same that you begat nor the same this year as you had the last Why will you be revenged on the Man that did beat you or hang the Thief that robbed you or do Justice on any Murderer or Male-factor seeing that it is not the same man that did the deed If he transpire as much as Sanctorius saith and his substance diminish as much in a day as Opicius saith certainly a few dayes leave him not the same as to those transitory parts Surely therefore there is something which is still the same Else you would deny the King his title and disoblige your selves from your subjection by saying that he is not at all the same man that you swore Allegiance to or that was born Heir of the Crown And you would by the same reason forfeit your own Inheritance Why should uncertain Philosophical whimsies befool men into those speculations which the light and practice of all the world doth condemn as madness But arguing ab ignotis will have no better success Of the individuation of Bodies in the Resurrection I spake before OBJECTION XVII IF the Soul be a substance we must confess it not annihilated But it is most like to proceed from some Element of Souls or Vniversal Soul either the Anima Mundi or rather the Anima Solis vel hujus systematis And so to be reduced to it again and lose its individuation and consequently to be uncapable of Retribution Answ 1. That the Soul which we speak of is a substance is past all controversie For though as I have shewed there is truely an order or temperament of the parts which he that listeth may call the form the life the soul or what he please yet no man denyeth but that there is also some one part which is more subtile pure active potent and regnant than the rest and this is it whatever it is which I call the Soul We are agreed of the Thing let them wrangle de nomine who have nothing else to doe 2. That this substance no substance else is not annihilated as I have said is past dispute 3. Therefore there is nothing indeed in all this business which is liable to Controversie but this point of Individuation which this Objection mentioneth and that of action and operation following And I must confess that this is the only particular in which hereabouts I have found the temptation to error to be much considerable They that see how all waters come from the Sea and how Earth Water Air and Fire have a potent inclination of union and when the parts are separated have a motus aggregativus may be tempted to think it a probable thing that all Souls come from and return unto a Universal Soul or Element of which they are but particles But concerning this I recommend to the sober Reader these following Considerations 1. There is in Nature more than a probability that the Vniverse hath no Vniversal Soul whatever particular Systems or Globes may have For we finde that Perfection lyeth so much in Vnity and as all things are from One so as they go out from One they go into Multiplicity that we have great cause to think that it is the Divine Prerogative to be Vnicus Vniversalis He is the Vnicus Vniversalis in Entity Life Intelligence c. As he hath made no one Monarch of all the Universe no nor of all the Earth nor no one Head of all the Church that is not God whatever the Roman Vice-god say nor hath given any one a sufficiency hereto whatever a self-Idolizer may imagine of himself so he hath not given away or communicated that Prerogative which seemeth proper to the Deity to be an Vniversal Minde and consequently an Vniversal Parent and King yea more to be Omnia in Vno Having no sort of proof that there is any such thing finding it so high and Divine a Prerogative we have little reason to believe that there is any such thing at all in being 2. If you mean therefore no more than an Vniversal Soul to a particular Systeme or Vortex in the World that Vniversal will be it self a particular Soul Individuated and distinct from other Individuals And indeed those very Elements that tempt you might do much to undeceive you There is of Fire a specifical Unity by which it differeth from other Elements but there is no universal aggregation of all the parts of Fire The Sun which seemeth most likely to contend for it will yet acknowledge individual Starrs and other parts of Fire which shew that it is not the whole The Water is not all in the Sea we know that there is much in the Clouds whatever there is elsewhere above the Clouds We have no great cause to think that this Earth is Terra Vniversalis I confess since I have looked upon the Moon through a Tube and since I have read what Galilaeus saith of it and of Venus and other Planets I finde little reason to think that other Globes are not some of them like our Earth And if you can believe an Individuation of Greater Souls why not of Lesser The same reasons that tempt you to think that the Individuation of our Souls will cease by returning into the Anima Systematis vel Solis may tempt you to think that the animae systematum may all cease their Individuation by returning into God and their existence too 3. If this were left as an unrevealed thing you might take some liberty for your Conjectures But when all the Twenty Arguments which I have given do prove a continued Individuation
duration yet it is after God in order of being as caused by Him as the shadow is after the substance and as the beams and light are after the Sun or rather as the leaves would be after the life of the Tree if they were conceived to be both eternal One would be an eternal Cause and the other but an eternal Effect 2. It is certain that this present World containing the Sun and Moon and Heavens and Earth which are mentioned Genes 1. is not from Eternity And indeed Reason it self doth make that at least very probable as Revelation makes it certain Which will appear when I have opened the Philosophers opinions on the other side 2. Among your selves there are all these differences and so we have several Cases to state with you 1. Some think that this present Systeme of compounded beings is from Eternity 2. Others think that only the Elements and Heavens and all simple Beings are from Eternity 3. Others think that Fire or Aether only as the Active Element is from Eternity or the incorruptible matter of the Heavens 4. Others think that matter and motion only were from Eternity 5. Others think that only spiritual purer beings Intelligences or Mindes were from Eternity and other things produced immediately by them 6. And there have been those Heathen Philosophers who held that only God was from Eternity Among all this variety of opinions why should any one think the more doubtfully of Christianity for denying some of them which all the other deny themselves Is it a likely thing that any individual mixt body should be eternall when we know that mixt bodies incline to dissolution and when we see many of them oriri interire daily before our eyes And if Man and Beast as to each individual have a beginning and end it must be so as to the beginning of the species for the species existeth not out of the Individuals and some individual must be first And as Bp. Ward argueth against Mr. Hobs If the World be eternal there have infinite dayes gone before e. g. the birth of Christ and then the whole is no greater than the parts or infinity must consist of finite parts The Heavens and the Earth therefore which are compounded beings by the same reason are lyable to dissolution as man is and therefore had a beginning So that the truth is there is no rational probability in any of your own opinions but those which assert the Eternity of some Simple Beings as Matter or Intelligences or an Anima Vniversalis Now consider further that if ever there was a moment when there were no Individuals or mixt Beings but only some universal Soul or Matter then there was an Eternity when there was nothing else For Eternity hath no beginning And then will it not be as strange to your selves to think that God should from all Eternity delight himself in Matter unformed if that be not a contradiction or in an Anima simplex unica without any of all the variegated matter and beings which we now finde besides in Nature as that he should eternally content himself with Himself alone If all individuals of compound beings were not from Eternity what was Either the Egge or the Hen must be first as the old instance is If you will come to it that either Anima unica or Atoms unformed were eternal why should not God as well be without these as be without the formed Worlds What shall a presumptuous minde now say to all these difficulties why return to modesty Remember that as the Bird hath wit given her to build her nest and breed her young as well as man could do it and better but hath no wit for things which do not concern her so man hath reason for the ends and uses of reason and not for things that are not profitable to him and that such looks into Eternity about things unrevealed do but over-whelm us and tell us that they are unrevealed and that we have not one reason for such employments And what is the end of all that I have said Why to tell you that our Religion doth not only say nothing of former worlds but 2. that it also forbiddeth us to say Yea or Nay to such questions and to corrupt our minds with such presumptuous searches of unrevealed things And therefore that you have no reason to be against the Scripture on this account for it doth not determine any thing against your own opinion if you assert not the eternity of this present world or system but it determineth against your presumption in medling with things which are beyond your reach And withall it giveth us a certainty that as in one Sun there is the Lux Radii Lumen so in one God there is Father Son and holy Spirit eternally existent and self-sufficient which quieteth the mind more than to think of an eternity of an Anima or Materia which is not God All this I have here annexed because these Philosophical self-deceivers are to be pitied and to have their proper help And I thought it unmeet to interrupt the discourse with such debates which are not necessary to more sober Readers but only for them who labour of this disease and I know that when they read the first leafe of the book which proveth that man hath a Soul or Mind they will rise up against it with all the objections which Gassendus Mr. Hobs c. assault the like in Cartesius with and say You prove not this Mind is any thing but the subtiler part of Matter and the temperament of the whole To whom I now answer 1. That it is not in that place incumbent on me nor seasonable to prove any more than I there assert 2. But I have here done it for their sakes more seasonably though my discourse is entire and firm without it And I desire the unbelieving Reader to observe that I am so far from an unnecessary incroaching upon his liberty and making him believe that Christianity condemneth all those conjectures of Philosophers which it asserteth not it self that I have taken the liberty of free conjecturing in such cases my self not going beyond the evidence of probability or the bounds of modesty and that I think them betrayers of the Christian cause or very injurious to it who would interess it in matters with what it medleth not and corrupt it by pretending that it condemneth all the opinions in Philosophy which themselves are against Nor am I one that believe that Christianity will allow me that zeal which too hastily and peremptorily condemneth all that in such points do hold what I dislike I do not anathematize as Hereticks all those who hold those opinions which either Stephanus or Guilielm Episc Parisienses condemned in their Articul Contra varios in fide errores though I think many of them dangerous and most very audacious e. g. Quod intelligentia motrix coeli fluit in animas rationales sicut
lusts And nature it self doth abhor the notion when it is brought into the light and will hear him with some horrour who shall speak out and say God is not to be chiefly loved for himself nor as he is best in himself nor as my ultimate objective end but only to be loved next my self as a means to my felicity or pleasure as meat drink ease and sport and lust are And virtue or holiness is not to be loved chiefly for it self that is as it is the Image of God and pleasing to him but as it conduceth to my pleasure As Cicero excellently noteth there is a great deal of difference between these two To love vertue as vertue and so to take pleasure in it because it is virtue and To love virtue for pleasures sake more than for its own For he that doth so must say as Cicero chargeth Epicurus plainly to say that Luxury is not to be discommended if it be not unpleasant for the end is the measure and rule to judge of all the means If pleasure as pleasure be best then to him that so continues it to live more pleasedly in whoredom and drunkenness and theft and murder than in godliness and honesty it will be better so to do And virtue and lust or wickedness will stand in competition only in the point of pleasure And then which think you will have the greater party and what a case would mankind be in I am perswaded that the well studying the excellent discourse of Cicero on this point and the reasons which the Stoicks and the rest of the Philosophers give against the Plebeian Philosophers as Cicero calleth them may much conduce to help many Divines themselves to a righter understanding of the same controversie as in Theology they have otherwise worded it Whether God or our own felicity be most to be loved And yet without running into the fanatick extreme of separating the love of God and our selves and calling men to try whether for his glory they can be willing to be damned Only when you read the Philosopher saying that virtue in and for it self is to be loved as our felicity elucidate it by remembring that this is because that vertue in it self is the Image of God and by our felicity they mean the perfection of our natures in respect of the end for which we were made And that as the excellency of my knife or pen yea or my horse is not to be measured by their own pleasure but their usefulness to me because I am their end so is it as to man's perfection as he is made for God and related to him for all that he hath no need of us seeing he can be pleased in us Thus this Philosophical controversie is coincident with one of the greatest in Theologie Though I have displeased many Readers by making this Treatise swell so big by answering so many objections as I have done yet I know that many will expect that I should have made it much greater by answering 1. Abundance of particular objections from Scripture-difficulties 2. And many discourses of several sorts of persons who contradict some things which I have said But I supersede any further labour of that kind for these following reasons 1. It would fill many volumes to do it as the number and quality of the Objections do require 2. Those that require it are yet so lazie that they will not read this much which I have already written as esteeming it too long 3. They may find it done already by Commentators if they will have but the patience to peruse them 4. I have laid down that evidence for the main cause of GODLINESS and CHRISTIANITY by which he that well digesteth it will be enabled himself to defend it against abundance of cavils which I cannot have time to enumerate and answer 5. The scribles of self-conceited men are so tedious and every one so confident that his reasons are considerable and yet every one so impatient to be contradicted and confuted that it is endless to write against them and it is unprofitable to sober Readers as well as tedious to me and ungrateful to themselves To instance but in the last that came to my hands an Inquisitio in fidem Christianoram hujus seculi the name prefixed I so much honour that I will not mention it Page 3. he calleth confidence in errour by the name of certainty as if every man were certain that hath but ignorance enough to over-look all cause of doubting Page 13. He will not contend if you say that it is by divine faith that we believe the words to be true which are Gods and by humane faith by which we believe them to be the words of God He saith that Faith hath no degrees but is alway equal to it self to believe is to assent and to doubt is to suspend assent Ergo where there is the least doubt there is no faith and where there is no doubt there is the highest faith Ergo Faith is always in the highest and is never more or less And yet it may be called small when it is quasi nulla that quasi is to make up a gap in respect of the subject or at least hardly yielded and in regard of the object when few things are believed Page 26. He maketh the Calvinists to be Enthusiasts that is Fanaticks because they say that they know the Scripture by the Spirit as if subjectively we had no need of the Spirit to teach us the things of God and objectively the spirit of miracles and sanctification were not the notifying evidence or testimony of the truth of Christ The same name he vouchsafeth them that hold That the Scripture is known by universal tradition to be God's word and every mans own reason must tell him or discern the meaning of it And he concludeth that if every one may expound the Scripture even in fundamentals then every man may plead against all Magistrates in defence of murder or any other crime as a rational plea and say Why should you punish me for that which God hath bid me do As if God would have no reasonable creature but bruits only to be his subjects As if a man could knowingly obey a Law which he neither knoweth nor must know the meaning of and is bound to do he knoweth not what And as if the Kings subjects must not understand the meaning of the fifth Commandment nor of Rom. 13. Honour thy father and mother and Let every soul be subject to the higher powers and not resist Or as if Kings must govern only dogs and swine or might make murder adultery idolatry and perjury the duty of all their subjects when they pleased because none must judge of the meaning of God's Law by which they are forbidden or as if it were the only way to make men obedient to Kings and Parents to have no understanding that God commandeth any man to obey them nor to know any Law of God that doth
all which we are seeking after For what any Cause doth by a power received from a higher Cause and consequently ordered by it that is done principally by that first or highest Cause And if God had made the world by an Angel or Intelligence it would have been nevertheless his Creature nor any thing the less to his honour than if he had made it by himself alone § 11. The summ of all is that There is certainly a first uncaused independent Cause of Man and all things else besides that Cause CHAP. V. What this Cause is in it self That it is God § 1. THe first Cause is known to us imperfectly and by the effects Man is so conscious of his ignorance herein and of the perplexities and diversities of opinions which follow thereupon and of the necessity of beginning downward at the effects and rising upward in his enquiry that I need not prove this Proposition to any man § 2. Though God or the first Cause is to be searched after in all his works yet chiefly in the chiefest of them within our reach which is Man himself If any shall say that the Sun and other creatures are more excellent than Man and therefore God or the first Cause is to be searched after rather in them and his Attributes denominated from them I answer There is no doubt but secundum quid the Sun is a nobler Creature than Man But what it is simpliciter we cannot tell unless we knew it better The highest exellencies known to man in the Sun is the Potentia Motiva Illuminativa Calefactiva Motion Light and Heat with their effects do tell us what we know of it That which we are conscious of in Man is Posse Scire Velle Power Intellection and Will with their Perfections which are an higher excellency than Motion Light and Heat § 3. He that giveth Being to all else that is must needs be the first Being formally or eminently Himself Entity must needs be in the noblest sense or sort in the Primum Ens the original of Being rather than in any derived Being whatsoever For it cannot give better than it hath so that Ens or I am is his first Name § 4. He that hath made Substances more noble than Accidents is Himself a Substance either formally or eminently and a Living Substance yea Life it self Once for all by Eminently I mean somewhat more excellent or transcendent which yet Man hath no better Name for or fitter Notion of God is thus a Substance Life transcendently if not formally § 5. He that hath made Intelligences or Spirits or Minds more noble and excellent than Bodies is himself a Mind Intelligence or Spirit either formally or transcendently and eminently We find that corporeal gross and dense Beings are most dull and passive and have least of excellency The Body of it self in comparison of the Mind is a dull and dirty clod Though we have no adequate conception of a Spirit we know not onely Negatively that it containeth a freedom from the baseness and inconveniences of corporeity but also we know by its essential acts that positively it is a pure active Life Intelligence and Will and therefore a more excellent sort of Being than things meerly corporeal which have no such action So that we have found as to his Being that the first Cause is Ens Substantia Vita Spiritus § 6. There must needs be in the first Cause an Esse Posse Operari If there were no Operation there were no Causation If there were no Power there could be no Operation and if there were no Being there could be no Power Not that these are things so various as to make a composition in the first Cause but they are transcendently in it without division and imperfection by a formal or virtual distinction § 7. Seeing the noblest Creatures known to us are Minds that have a Posse Scire Velle active executive Power with an Vnderstanding to guide it and a Will to command it God hath either formally or eminently and transcendently such a Power Intellect and Will which is his Essence For nothing is more certain than that no Cause can give more than it had to give If the first Cause had not Power Understanding and Will either formally or eminently in a higher and nobler kind he could not have endowed all mankind with what he had not 1. That the first Cause is most powerful is evident by his works he that gave Man his measure of power and much more to many other creatures hath himself much more than any of them He that made this marvellous frame of all the Orbs and causeth and continueth their being and their constant rapid motion is incomprehensibly potent Whatsoever Power there is in all the Creatures visible and invisible set together there must be more or as much in their first Cause alone because nothing can give more Power than it hath 2. His works also prove that the first Cause is an Vnderstanding for the admirable composure order nature motions variety and usefulness of all his Creatures do declare it He that hath given Vnderstanding to Man hath formally or eminently more himself than all men and all his creatures have If Intellection were not an excellency above meer natural or bruitish motion Man were not better than the inanimates or bruites but if it be the Giver of it cannot want it Not that his Intellection is univocally the same thing with ours But it is something incomparably more noble which expresseth it self in humane Intellection as its Image and is seen by us in this Glass and can be expressed by us no better than by this name 3. And as it is a nobler nature which acteth by Volition or Free-will than that which hath no Will at all and so no voluntary choice and complacency so the first Cause which hath given this noble faculty to Man hath certainly himself though not a Will univocally the same with ours yet a Will of a transcendent excellency which expresseth it self in ours as its Image and must be something better and greater but cannot be lower or less And though such Indetermination as proceedeth from imperfection and consequently such Liberty belongeth not to the first Cause which hath no defects yet all that Liberty which belongeth to perfection must undoubtedly belong to Him He that did what we see hath done it willingly and freely § 8. What ever the first Cause is it must needs be in absolute Perfection It must needs have in it more than the whole world besides because it giveth all that to the whole Creation which it hath received and is An imperfect cause could never have made such a world as we behold and partly know And were the first Cause imperfect there would be no perfection in being § 9. The perfection of the first Cause in Being requireth that it be Eternal without Beginning or End of duration Nothing in the world can