Summer will remain fruitful and produce the Insect this Spring and possibly some time after so that they are in the next degree above Vegetables and have a nature very analogal to them But these things are not so in greater Animals of an univocal generation this also appears in the great disparity of these degrees at least of perfection in the perfect Animal above that of Insects of a spontaneous production For though as before is said these little Animals have Faculties conformable to the Sensitive Life so that we may plainly discover at least in many of them the Faculties as well as the Organs of Sense Phantasie Memory Common Sense Appetite Passion Local Motion yet the more perfect and univocal Animals have greater strength and perfection in these Faculties their Phantasie and Memory more exact their Appetite more perfect and free if I may so call it they are capable of Discipline which these smaller Animals are not There is greater variety complication and curiosity in the state frame and order of their Faculties and a greater distinction and variety of operation in them than in the smaller Pieces of Nature There are more Wheels more variety and curiosity in their motions more variety of ingredients into the Constitution of the Automata of the more noble Animals than in the Insects that are sponte orta so that for the Constitution of their Souls the Principle of their Faculties and Motions there is required a more curious elaborate and elevated Composition and Fabrick than in these minute Animals And hence it is that though it be not only possible but frequent that these Insects and minute Animals may thus spontaneously arise yet it hath never been known so according to the setled Laws and Order of Nature It is impossible these greater and nobler Animals can arise spontaneously nor otherwise naturally than by the mixture of both Sexes and a Semen formatum and prolificum received and united in utero foemineo and impregnated as it were with that Specifical Idea and Formative Power derived from the Parents and those other accessions which may elaborate rectifie and advance the Soul and its Faculties and the Body and its Organs to their due proportion and perfection And therefore there is no parity Reason in the production of Insects and perfect Animals nor any Consequence to be drawn from the spontaneous production of one to the like production of the other in any natural course without the intervention of a Supernatural free Cause effecting the same besides and out of the road and course of Nature And what may be said upon this account against the Consequence of the spontaneous production of other Animals from the spontaneous production of Insects may with much more advantage be said against the Consequence of the production of Mankind by any natural spontaneous production because the perfection of his nature and the specifical excellence thereof doth exceed the greatest excellence of other Animals far more than the noblest Animals exceed the Insects And therefore as the spontaneous production of these Insects no way concludes the like production naturally possible in greater Animals so if it were naturally possible and de facto true that the greater Animals themselves were sponte producibilia producta it were not at all conclusive nor deducible from thence that Mankind were producible naturally upon the like account The nobleness of the structure of the Humane Body the great curiosity and usefulness of most of his Organs especially of his Tongue and Hand the curious and useful configuration and disposition of his Nerves and Brain the admirable variety and quickness of his Phantasy the great retentiveness of his Memory but especially the admirable power of his Intellect Reason and Will give him a far greater specifical perfection above the most perfect Brutal Nature than that hath above the meanest Insects And therefore certainly according to the ordinary Observations in Nature and the Rules and Methods observable therein requires the noblest and most advanced Method to produce it that Nature can afford But against these Reasons it may be and is urged That all these Observations and Inferences are bottomed upon the state and course of Nature wherein we see things are in the state of things already setled but in the first production of things it might be otherwise and must be otherwise if we admit an Origination of Mankind ex non genitis And though in the ordinary course of Nature as now things are constituted the production of Mankind is ex semine formato ab utroque parente deciso that his nourishment is per venam umbilicalem that it cannot be otherwise now but in utero foemineo that the state of Infancy now requires those adventitious helps that are above remembred Yet in the first state of Humane Production all these Suppositions must be laid aside as unaccommodate to that state another Seminal Principle another method of Nutrition another state and habit of the Foetus must be and may be supposed in the first production of Mankind than now is to be found in the World wherein the order of things is setled in a regular Method If it should be supposed that a Mouse or a Rat were produced ex putri we cannot suppose any such Semen or Vena umbilicalis or that it lived upon the Dams Milk all which are notwithstanding supposable and necessary when that equivocal Animal afterward propagates its kind I answer That as it is true that Mankind and other Animals had an Original and an Original in quite another way than now it is and ex non genitis so it is unquestionably true that those Processes Principles and Methods which now serve in the production of Humane Nature or other perfect Animals are no way conceptible or applicable unto the first production of Man or Animals And therefore I must not only grant that these Modes of Production Nutrition c. are utterly ineffectual and unapplicable to the first Origination of Humane Nature But I must suppose quite contrary that in truth it is impossible they should be the Modes or Order of that first Origination But it must be remembred whom it is that I am here contending against namely not against those that do and that truly referr the Origination of Man to the Divine Power and Will and a Supernatural production but against them that are the great Venerators of established Nature that think it below their Gravity and Wisdom to recognize any other Efficient but what they find in Natural Causes and Effects nor any other Rule of things but what they see that take their Measures of their Conceptions and Sentiments from what is obvious to Sense and the common Observation of things as they now appear and for the most part frame all their Conclusions accordingly And therefore that which I herein contend for by these Arguments is this That a Man that duly considers the natures of things and makes the course of Nature and the Observation
give rain Jer. 14.22 Thus the wise God who doth nothing vainly or unnecessarily nor infringeth the more constant Laws of Nature when those parts thereof that are more anomalous and more easily applicable to his imperate acts and ends of Providence may serve more ordinarily chuseth those parts of Nature to execute his special Providences that may do it without any great fracture of the more stable and fixed parts of Nature or the infringment of the Laws thereof Again as the Empire of the Divine Will doth exercise its imperate acts in the Methods of special Providence upon things simply in themselves natural so it doth upon Agents or Natures intellectual and free Sometimes immediately by Himself sometimes by the Instrumentality of Angels or proposed Objects This Exercise of the imperate Acts of the Divine Providence may be upon the Understanding or Will Upon the Understanding principally these ways 1. By immediate afflatus or impression as anciently was usual in prophetick Inspirations 2. By conviction of some Truths and this may be either by a strong and over-bearing presenting of them to the Understanding with that light and evidence that it is under a kind of necessity of believing them which was often seen in the primitive times of Christianity wherein God was pleased many times irresistibly and by immediate overpowering the Understanding by the powerful impression of the Object or Truth propounded to conquer as it were the Understanding into an assent Or 2. By advancing and enlightning the understanding Faculty with a superadded light and perception whereby it was enabled to discern the truth of things delivered For as the Understanding receives some Truths proposed by reason of the congruity between the Faculty and the Object as the Eye sees some visible Objects by reason of the congruity between it and them so the reason why it perceives not all Objects of Truth is because of some defect of the Faculty whereby it holds not a full and perfect congruity with them either by reason of the remoteness or sublimity of the Object or some deficiency of light in the Faculty which is aided by the Collyrium of the Divine Assistance Rev. 2. Or else 3. By some extraordinary concomitant moral evidence such was that of the Miracles of our Saviour and his Apostles the Seals and Credentials of the Truths they delivered And as thus the imperate acts of the Divine special Providence are exercised upon the Understanding so they are exercised upon the Will and that either immediately or mediately Immediately 1. By an immediate determining of the Will For although the Will be naturally free yet it is naturally and essentially subject to the imperium divinae voluntatis when He is pleased to exercise that empire upon it This although he rarely doth yet he may do it and sometimes doth it irresistibly determining the Will to chuse this or that good and yet this without any such force or violence as is simply contrary to the nature of it because as there is no Power in the World but owes most naturally an obediential subjection to the Lord of Nature so even the Will it self is naturally and essentially subject to the determination of the Lord and Author of it 2. By immediate inclining and inflecting it to determin of it self This is that secret striving of the Spirit of God with the Will inflecting and perswading it to this or that good It differs from the former way because that it is irresistible this though potent yet in its own nature resistible by the Will of Man though it many times prevails by its efficacy V. Gen. 6.3 Eph. 4.30 Again 2. Sometimes it is done Mediately more humano and yet not without the mediate special Empire and Regiment of the Divine Will and thus it is done two ways viz. 1. By an irresistible or at least powerful conviction of the Understanding that the thing in proposal is fit and necessary to be done or omitted for although some think that the Will hath a power of choosing or refusing or suspending notwithstanding the final decision of the practical Understanding yet certain we are that ordinarily and when the Will acts as a Rational faculty it is or ought to be determined by the last decision of the practical Understanding and 2. By proposing Moral objects that do more humano guide the Will to determine it self accordingly and these are various sometimes Intervention Perswasion or Examples of others and sometimes even the junctures of Natural occurrences For as I shall have occasion to shew and is partly touched before even the Natural occurrences of things are under the guidance and conduct of the Divine Providence even when to us they seem to be either Accidental or to be the meer product of Natural Causes And surely if we should deny the intervention of Imperate Acts of Divine Providence in relation to actions Natural or Moral that appear in the World we should exclude his Regiment of the World in a great measure and chain up all things to a fatal necessity of Second Causes and allow at most to the glorious God a bare prospect or prescience of things that are or shall be done without any other Regency of things but meerly according to the instituted nature and operations of things And thus far of the Imperate Acts of the Divine Providence Only this farther I must subjoyn as a certain truth That neither the Empire of the Divine Providence or his mediate or immediate determinations perswasions or inflexions of the Understanding or Will of Rational Creatures doth either naturally morally or intentionally deceive the Understanding or pervert the Will or necessitate or incline either to any falshood or moral evil 3. The third Analogy that is between the regiment of the Soul over the Body and the Divine regiment of the Universe is in relation to the acts of general Providence or that ordinary Law wherein Almighty God governs ordinarily the Universe and the things in it without the particular mixture of those that I have called the Imperate Acts of special Providence which seems to consist of two parts 1. The institution of certain common Laws or Rules for all created Beings which without a special intervention of his Will to alter or change they should regularly observe as that the Heavenly Bodies should have such Motions and Influences that the Inferiour or Elementary World should have its several Mixtures and Transmutations by the application of the active principles and particles in it to Passives and by the virtue of the Heavenly Motions and Influences That there should be vicissitudes of generations and corruptions that Vegetables should have the operation of vital vegetation increase duration and productions according to their several kinds that Sensible Natures should enjoy a life of Sense and those several powers or faculties of Sensation Phantasie Memory Appetition Digestion Local Motion Generation and those several instincts whereby they should be managed and governed according to the conveniencies of a
and fitted for this production which could not be but after some great and long continuing Flood or Inundation that might prepare and dispose the Matter for the Activity of that great Revolution and if these should not meet together or in some convenient nearness the production of Mankind and perfect Animals would be frustrated 3. That in as much as provident Nature hath had for many Ages and yet hath a sufficient Seminium and stock for the preservation of the Species of Men and perfect Animals raised by propagation and the mutual conjunction of Sexes Nature is not necessitated to have recourse to this extraordinary way of peopling and furnishing the World and therefore it cannot be expected but after some vast devastation that may endanger at least the extinguishing of the species of things To these things I say first in general That if Men shall upon such a Method of Arguing go about to establish a Supposition that neither they nor any else have ever known or experimented and make a Conclusion of a thing as natural upon such Suppositions as never any Man knew or heard to produce such effects Men may assume any thing to be natural which yet hath not footsteps in Nature bearing any analogy to it But to the particulars As to the first it is unreasonable to make such a Supposition for since it is not possible for any Man to know whether there be any such Influence of the Heavens to effect such productions unless by Experience and Observations of some Men or some other way the notice thereof were given to Mankind it being a Matter of Fact that can no other way be known but by Experience or Revelation and since the bare beholding of those Heavenly Bodies being of that distance can never without Observation of Events give us any natural estimate of their Effects what they are or may be and since it must needs be granted that such imagined Conjunctions as may be effectual for such productions are at vast unknown distances and such as no Age before hath or indeed can leave us any Memorial of it must needs be a vain and precarious assumption to attribute any natural Efficacy to any Conjunction whatsoever for such a production The Ancient and Divine Historian Moses gives us indeed an account of the Origination of Man and all other Animals but not upon any natural causation or activity of the Heavens or Heavenly Bodies but as he gives us the History of the Things so he gives us the true Resolution of the Cause not a natural but a supernatural Cause namely the Intention and Volition of the Great and Wise God and to exclude any imagination of a natural or necessary Cause of these productions doth not only tell us in express terms that the production of them was by the Energy of the Divine Fiat but also that the production even of Vegetables themselves that seem to have the greatest dependance upon Celestial Influences was antecedent to the Constitution of those Heavenly Bodies 1. As the Supposition of such a Natural Causality in the Heavens is meerly precarious so it seems even to our Sense apparently false for we see every year without any other than an ordinary Conjunction by the Access of the Sun Insects and Plants sponte nascentia do arise and we know that ordinarily in the compass or revolution of 800 or 1000 years very great and considerable mutations happen in the Position and Conjunction of the Heavenly Bodies and we know that within the compass of Authentick History these Revolutions have happened above thrice and since the latest Epocha of the Worlds Inception above five times yet none of these great Revolutions have for any thing we ever knew or heard produced any one Horse or Lion or Wolf much less any one Man as a Terrigena And therefore Experience the best means to settle such an Hypothesis doth not only not warrant it but is evidently contrary to it and denies it 2. As to the second the Mosaical History gives us an account of an Universal Deluge about 4000 years since which lay long upon the whole Earth and the Grecian History gives us an account of two very great Floods namely the Ogygian and the Deucalian Floods and every Year gives us an account of the Inundation of Nilus in Egypt a most fruitful Continent and near the Sun whereby the Soil is made admirably fruitful and there is scarce any Age but some great portions of Land are laid dry by the recess of some parts of the Ocean which had lain covered for many thousands of years before with the sea And as the universal Deluge was as great a preparation of the whole Earth so these particular Inundations and Recesses of the Sea left particular Spots of Land as well prepared for such productions as can well be imagined and yet in no Age have we any Instance of any such production abating the Story of the Egyptian Mice which concrete after the recess of Nilus which yet of most hands are agreed to be Insects and sponte nascentia ex putredine Indeed Beregardus tells us ubi supra out of Camerarius that about Cayro after the reflux of Nilus there are often seen divers Limbs or Parts of Mens Bodies whether this be true or no or if true whether they are not only relicks of some Bodies swept away by the Inundations of Nilus out of their Graves or Sepultures and torn asunder by the furious Cataracts of Nilus is not clearly evident But be they what they will or whether the Lusus naturae yet they make nothing to this matter unless Camerarius or some other had seen those divulsa membra come together and configured into an humane Shape and animated with a humane Life which neither he nor any other have yet affirmed or pretended 3. As to the Third I say 1. If by Nature they intend the great and glorious God that most wise intelligent powerful Being they do indeed in effect affirm what I have designed to prove but do not make good their Supposition of such a Natural Cause as they declare in their Hypothesis wherein they mean only that natural connexion and series of Causes whereby Natural Effects are naturally produced And if they intend by Nature that unintelligent series or order of Natural Causes or the blind and determinate Cause of Natural Productions How comes that Nature to know when and where this necessity of Spontaneous Productions doth happen or in what proportion measure limits or place it is necessary to be done Such a provisional care requires a knowing and perfectly intelligent Being that operates ex cognitione intentione voluntate which is not to be affirmed of Agents purely natural who do therefore act according to a Law of necessity and determination non ex consilio cognitione 2. It is plain that Insects and Vegetables spontaneously produced are produced every Year and their production is as natural as the access of the Sun and the constitution
instituted and statuminated Nature is his Law and his Institution and the connexion of natural Effects to their natural Causes is his Institution his Law his Order And therefore we do neither deny a Law of Nature or a connexion between natural Causes and Effects but that which we justly blame in these Men that pretend themselves to be the great Priests of Nature and admirers and adorers of it is 1. That they do not sufficiently consider and observe that this which they and we call Nature and the Law of Nature and the Power of Nature is no other but the wise instituted Law of the most wise powerful and intelligent Being as really and truly as an Edict of Trajan or Justinian was a Law of Trajan or Justinian Sic parvis magna and 2. That they do not warily distinguish between that first Law in rebus constituendis and this second Law of Nature in rebus constitutis but inconsiderately misapply that Law and Rule and Method which is ordinary and regular constituted and fitted and accommodate to Nature already setled as if the same were and ought to be necessarily the Rule and Law in the first formation and setling of things which is an Errour that proceeds from the over-much fixing of our Minds to that which in the present course of things is obvious to Sense and not adverting that the first Constitution and Order of things is not in Reason or Nature manageable by such a Law which is most excellently adequated and proportioned to things fully setled Therefore besides that Law which the Divine Wisdom Power and Goodness hath fixed in Nature fully statuminated we must also suppose a Law and Order of the Divine Wisdom not rigorously bound either to second Causes or present stated Methods in the first production of things And this the due Consideration of the different nature of the state of things in fieri and in facto esse will easily perswade that the most wise God that hath established a fixed regular ordinary Law in things already setled which he rarely departs from yet used another kind of order namely the regiment of his own Will and Wisdom and if I may with humility speak it a dictatorian power more accommodate to the first production of things And thus much for the comparison between the Mosaical and Philosophical Theories touching things and the great advantage and preference of the former as most suitable to the true nature state and reason of things And now I draw towards a conclusion of this long Discourse and shall therefore in the last place give an account of those Consectaries Consequences and Corollaries which are evidently deducible from this Consideration of the Origination of Mankind by the immediate Efficiency of this Supreme Intelligent Being Almighty God and indeed principally for the sake of these Consequences and Corollaries hath all been written that precedes in this Book and it is the Scope End and Use of the whole Book which I shall absolve in the next Chapter CAP. VII A Collection of certain evident and profitable Consequences from this Consideration That the first Individuals of Humane Nature had their Original from a Great Powerful Wise Intelligent Being I Now come to that upon which I had my Eye from the first Line that was written touching this Subject namely the Consequences and Illations that arise from this great Truth contained in these Conclusions 1. That Mankind had an Original of his Being ex non genitis 2. That this Origination of Mankind was neither casual nor meerly natural 3. That the Efficient of Man's Origination was and is an Intelligent Efficient of an incomparable Wisdom and Power First therefore we have here a most evident sensible and clear conviction of a Deity and a confirmation of Natural Religion which consists principally in the acknowledging of Almighty God to be a most perfect Eternal Being of infinite Wisdom Goodness and Power and a due habitude of Mind Life and Practice arising from that Principle It hath been commonly observed that the particular or instituted Religions since the Creation have had their Proofs by Miracles which were as it were the Credentials to subdue the Minds of Men to assent to it Thus the instituted Religion of the Jews given by the hand of Moses was confirmed by the great Miracles done by God by the hand of Moses in Egypt and in the Wilderness and the Christian Religion had its Confirmation by the Miracles of Christ and his Apostles who did wonderful things beyond the reach and power of created Agents or Activities which were therefore Miracles such as were governing of the Winds and Seas healing of the Sick by a touch or word raising the Dead c. But it is farther said That Almighty God never used Miracles to evidence the truth of his own Existence Power Wisdom Goodness or for the establishing of Natural Religion or the confuting of Atheism But I take it that there are really as many Miracles for the evincing of the truth of Natural Religion viz. the Existing of Almighty God as there are Works in Nature For although it be a great truth that the Laws of Nature as the Positions of the Heavenly and Elementary Bodies their Motion Light Influence Regularity Position propagation of Vegetables Animals Men and the whole Oeconomy of the Universe is by the Divine Wisdom Power and Goodness setled in a regular course so that now we call things Natural and Works and Laws and Order of Nature and being so setled and fixed cease to be Miracles yet in their first Institution and Constitution they were all or many Miracles Works exceeding the activity of any created or natural power and accordingly ought to be valued and really are so and it is nothing else but their commonness and our inadvertence and gross negligence that hinders the actual estimate of them as great and wonderful Miracles As I have often said if at this moment all the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies should cease or there should be a general stop of the Propagation of Animals Vegetables or Men if Mens Reason should generally fail them and for the most part they should become like Brutes if the Light of the Sun were darkned or the great Luminous or Planetary Bodies should bulge and fall foul one upon the other or that disorder or confusion should generally fall upon the Works of Nature and break that excellent Order that now obtains among them we should be full of admiration of such a Change and account them Miraculous And the reason is because the sense of the Change is at present incumbent upon us and we cannot choose but take notice of them as strong unusual miraculous Prodigies When all this while Natures course holds regularly the Wonder and Miracle is ten times greater in the state of things as they now stand than it would be in such a discomposure of Nature The Motion and Light and Position and Order of the Heavenly and Elementary Bodies is a greater
parts in Natural Philosophy and the rules motions and variety of Qualities and Operations of divers Natural Objects the connexion of Causes and Effects the observation of the Order of things in Nature are of singular use to carry the Mind up to the acknowledging and admiration of the Great Efficient and Governour of the World of His Wisdom Power Goodness Bounty and consequently to raise up the Heart to veneration of Him dutifulness and gratitude unto Him dependance upon Him and a deep impression of Natural Religion towards Him and of all those consequents that arise in the Mind and Life from this habit of Religion So true is the Saying of an excellent Naturalist of our own A little knowledge in Philosophy may perchance make a proud empty Man an Atheist but it is impossible that Atheism can lodge in a Mind well studied and acquainted with Natural Philosophy And as thus the knowledge of Nature is useful to Mankind to bring him to and confirm him in the knowledge of the Glorious God so it is preparatively useful and indeed necessary to many useful things in this Life as to make a Man a good Physician ubi desinit Philosophus ibi incipit Medicus where the Philosopher ends the Physician begins which next to the knowledge of Almighty God is of great necessity and use to Mankind And touching Geometry Astronomy and Arithmetick though in the knowledge of them there be many things that are nice and curious and not so much in order to use as to speculation and exercise of Wit yet they are such Objects the knowledge whereof is in many things very beneficent to Mankind as we see in the construction of all Mechanical Engins in the measuring of Bodies Superficies and Distances in the Rules and Exercise of Architecture Fortifications and ordering of Battalia's Computations and Reckonings in Contracts and Merchants Affairs in Navigation in the Measure and Computation of Time and the right knowledge of several Seasons these Mathematical Subjects and Sciences have great use in relation to humane affairs and concerns And as thus those more curious Sciences have their use in the Affairs of Mankind and are commended unto us not only upon the account of the nobleness but also of the usefulness thereof so the knowledge of History of Humane Laws of Moral Philosophy and of Political and Oeconomical regiments of the various Modes Temperaments and Qualifications of Governments with their Appendages are upon the account of their usefulness to Humane Society and the Peace Tranquillity and Order of the World and of the particular Societies Relations and Persons therein commended to our knowledge and contemplation as things without which the World of Mankind would soon be in disorder and confusion And although these Studies are not so pleasing and grateful to the Understanding as those other more curious Contemplations either Physical or Mathematical yet they recompence it with the excellency and necessity of their use in relation to the noblest visible Creature Man and in relation to his noblest and most useful posture and station in this World namely a state of regulated Society and Government Now according to the kind or degree of the usefulness of the Objects to be known so the knowledge thereof is more or less commended unto us upon the account of the various degrees of usefulness Some Objects and their knowledge are of greatest value because their use is of more universal concern and important necessity and such is the true knowledge of Almighty God His Greatness Power Wisdom Goodness and Will especially as He hath revealed Himself in His Word and those noble habits that upon that account are ingenerated in the Soul as Religion Gratitude Obedience and Tranquillity of Mind Regularity of the Soul and Life And upon the same account there is a great value in knowledge of Morals and of those Duties that we owe to our selves and others and a conformity of Minds and Lives to the Dictates of Religion and Morality And the excellence of their use and consequently the commendation of that knowledge upon that account is evident in these particulars 1. The right and true knowledge of those things do not only perfect our Souls and Natures by the excellency of the knowledge it self but they perfect our Souls and Natures with Goodness They do not only perfect the Intellectual Faculty but they also perfect the Volitive Faculty they make the Man not only more knowing but more wise and they also make him the better more just sober temperate religious A Man may know very much in Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy and yet be a bad Man but a Man truly acquainted with the knowledge of God and with the due sense of his Duty to Him in matter of Religion and his Duty to others in points of Morality which is a part also of the Divine Will is not only a knowing Man but becomes also a good Man if indeed his knowledge be sound and true Again 2. All other knowledge meerly or principally serves the concerns of this Life and is fitted to the meridian thereof They are such as for ought we know will be of little use to a separate Soul at least we do not know whether the Soul in its state of separation will be much concerned in the knowledge of Physical or Mathematical Learning or the Rules or Methods of Political Regiment But this we are or may be sure that the Soul will carry with it into the other World that knowledge of God which it acquires here and receive an unspeakable improvement thereof by a nearer union to Him and it will carry with it those improvements and advances of Piety Goodness Righteousness Holiness those Habits and Graces that it began here and as the Soul is improved and made the better in this Life by this knowledge and those effects and meliorations that it here acquired by them so it will carry along with it those advantages to the next World for there is a connaturality and congruity between that knowledge and those habits and that future estate of the Soul So that this kind of knowledge is not only serviceable and useful for the present Life in via but is proportioned to that state that is in patria And as touching the knowledge of things that are meerly accommodate to the present Life they receive their disparity of value in this respect according to the disparity or different degrees of usefulness Some are useful for nobler ends some for lower and more inferior ends some are in a greater degree useful for the same ends than others and according to the varieties of ends uses and their degrees the knowledge of them as in reference to this part of the commendation of an Object namely usefulness is more or less eligible But this is too large a Subject particularly to prosecute in this place III. The third commendation of a Subject of Contemplation and that renders it eligible is Certainty Where the Subject is uncertain and
and the Humane Nature Almighty God is the highest and most excellent and soveraign Object of the Intellectual Faculty It is true he falls not under the last qualification Though he is but one and one most simple uncompounded Being yet his Nature and Perfections his Power Wisdom Goodness and all other Excellencies are infinite and incomprehensible by any intellectual Nature but himself and therefore he is an Object infinitely too large for the comprehension of any created Understanding He is a Light too bright for our Intellective eye to see but by reflexion or through the Vail of his Word or Works The more we know of him and the more we draw near unto him by serious and humble contemplation the more we discover an endless and unsearchable Ocean and Perfection in him so that we must not cannot expect to find out the Almighty to perfection his ways are unsearchable and past finding out and much more his Essence and Perfections so that though he be the most natural and the most desirable Object of created Understandings he is an Object infinitely too large for it But although in respect of the measure of his Perfection he be an Object unproportionate to a created Understanding a Light too bright and an Ocean too large and too deep for it yet there is so much of his knowledge attainable by us as is sufficient for use nature and everlasting happiness and the knowlede of Almighty God so far as it is attainable by our narrow created Understanding highly advanceth the humane Understanding upon all accounts and infinitely excels the knowledge of any other Object in the world upon these ensuing accounts among many others First It is a knowledge of such an Object that hath the greatest and most convincing certainty in the world a certainty that he is and in a good measure a certainty what he is for though it be impossible for any or all the created Beings in the world to attain a distinct perfect and full Idaea of the Divine excellencies in their full adequate distinct perfections yet that Image that he hath given of himself in the admirable Frame of so much of the world which we know doth with all imaginable certainty evince That he is that he is but one one most intelligent wise powerful free good simple eternal infinite and most perfect Being the Fountain of Being and the first Cause of all things though we cannot attain the full comprehension of that perfection And truly it is no small evidence of the Divine Wisdom and Goodness That that great and important Truth of the being and perfection of Almighty God the Principle and Object of the greatest importance in the world to the good of Mankind and for the advance and perfecting of humane Nature should be written in such plain clear and evident Characters in the Works of Nature and evinced by Evidences rising from thence as are obvious to any person that hath but the common use of Reason and the honesty to use and exercise it sincerely Secondly It is the most noble and excellent Object in the world and that may and doth most enoble and advance the intellective Faculty he is the Fountain of all Being and of all Perfection Those Excellencies that are in the noblest created Natures in the world are but shadows of that perfection that is in him Though a created Understanding can never take in the fulness of the Divine Excellencies yet so much as it can or doth receive thereof is of greater extent use and value and doth more advance and enrich the Faculty than any other Object in the world though that other Object were fully and adequately known Thirdly Although the Understanding can never search out the Almighty to perfection by reason of the infinite excess of this Object beyond the capacity of a created Faculty yet there is that congruity between this Faculty and this Object that connatural ordination as it were of Intellective Faculty to this Object as if it were if not only yet principally lodged in the humane Nature for the sake of this Object so that though there is no commensurableness between this Object and a created Understanding yet there is a congruity and connaturality between them And hence it is that so much as we do or can know of God is delightful and grateful to the Understanding And though this abyss of excellency be infinite yet it doth not confound nor disorder nor overwhelm the Understanding in its modest and due searches into it And besides although the perfection of his Essence and many of his Attributes as Infinitude Immensity Indivisibility c. do dazle our Understandings yet some of his Attributes and the Manifestations thereof are not only highly delectable to the Intellective Faculty but are sutable and easily conceptible by us because apparent in his Works as his Goodness Beneficence Wisdom Power c. if we attend to it And certainly it was the great Goodness and Condescention of the Glorious God unto his Creature Man that when he knew all his own Excellencies were too great and too bright for us to see he hath Been pleased to discover so much of himself as was fit and necessary for us to know by means that our Faculties might use without dissipation distraction or too great astonishment namely first By his Works reflecting his Greatness and Goodness Secondly By his Word by Divine Revelation discovering his Goodness Mercy Power and Truth Thirdly By his Son through the Vail of our Flesh by all which that Brightness and Splendor of the Divine Excellence that by an immediate intuition or exhibition would-have overwhelmed our Intellective Faculty as it stands united to our Bodies is presented to us more proportionately to our Capacities and Faculties by a kind of refraction and a more easie and familiar manifestation Fourthly It is the most useful Object of our Knowledge that can be and in comparison of this all other Knowledge is vain light and impertinent and indeed all other knowledge is valuable upon this single account by how much it gives us a manifestation of the Divine Excellencies and leads and conducts to the knowledge of Almighty God and his Attributes If I consider my self in this Life there is not a moment which I live or wherein I have any contentation or comfort or convenience but all this I have from his Influence and Bounty and certainly it concerns me highly to know my Benefactor from whom I receive my Good that I may depend upon him be thankful unto him probitiate him and make my applications to him for what I want Again the wisest men that have searched after happiness in this Life though they have missed of the place where it is to be found have with great reason placed the best happiness that can be found on this side Death either in Virtue and the exercise thereof or in Tranquillity of mind or in both for they are rarely asunder Now I may be an excellent Mathematician a
it hath been before observed that he that goes about to make the whole Universe and all the several parts thereof the business of his Enquiry as he shall find that there are many things therein that he cannot come at or make any discovery of so among those parts of the Universe that are objected to a greater discovery of our Senses the multiplicity is so great that a man of the most equal and firm constitution must despair of Life enough to make a satisfactory particular and deep enquiry into them But the Object in hand is but one it is Man and the Nature of Man I confess it is true that he that shall make it his business to take in as it were by way of a common place all those things that may be taken up under this consideration and follow all those Lines that concenter in this or almost any other the most single piece of Contemplation will make this Subject large enough and upon that account may be drawn in almost all things imaginable We find in the consideration of the Humane Nature a Substance a Body a Spirit We find the several Objects of his Senses Light Colour Sound and infinite more He that upon this account will take in the distinct and large considerations of these and the like Appendices to Humane Nature in their full amplitude will have a large Plain that will more than exhaust his Life before he come to the Subject it self which he designes Again there is an infinite multitude of collateral considerations that yet are relative to man hither comes all the considerations of Theology Physick Natural Philosophy Politicks the considerations of Speech Government Laws of History Topography of Arts of those Sciences that relate to the Senses of Opticks Musick and infinite more for all these have a relation to Man and are like so many Lines drawn from several Objects that some way relate to him and concenter in him and he that shall make it his business to follow all those Lines to their utmost shall make the contemplation of Man almost as large as the contemplation of the whole Universe When I say therefore the contemplation of Man is the contemplation of a single Object I mean when it is kept into those single bounds of Man in his own specifical Nature and under the physical contemplation of his Nature Parts and Faculties as they are appropriate unto him And then it is a Subject that we may possibly make some progress in its contemplation and conception within the period of the time that by the ordinary time of Life and the permission of necessary avocations a man may employ in such a contemplation And yet secondly though in this restrained notion the Subject seems to be restrained and single we shall find it no very narrow Subject but there will be business enough in it to employ our Faculty and to take up that time which either more necessary or more imporunate thoughts or employments will allow us and variety enough to entertain our thoughts with delight contentation and usefulness 3. The Third Commendation of this Object to our contemplation is this that therein we have more opportunity of certainty and true knowledge of the Object enquired into than we can have in any other Object at least of equal use worth and value Many excellent things there are in Nature which were very well worth our Knowledge but yet as hath been said either by reason of their remoteness from us unaccessibleness to them subtilty and imperceptibleness to us either are not at all suspected to be or are not so much as within any of our Faculties to apprehend or discover what they are or in case we have any conception that there may be something of that kind yet our Notions touching them are but products of Imagination and Phantasie or at best very faint weak ungrounded and uncertain conjectures and such as we can never prove to the satisfaction of others or our selves Our Sense is the best evidence that we have in Nature touching the existence of corporeal things without us and where that is not possibly to be exercised we are naturally at a great uncertainty whether things are or what they are Now the Understanding perceives or understands things by the assistance of Sense in a double manner 1. It either perceives them immediately as being immediately objected to and perceptible to the Sense as I perceive the Sun and the Stars by my sight I find that there is a Body hard or gentle or hot or cold by my Touch and accordingly my Understanding judgeth of them Or secondly though the Sense perceive not the Object immediately yet it doth represent certain sensible effects or operations and though by those effects or operations the Understanding doth not immediately conclude anything else to be but what the Sense thus feels or sees yet the Understanding sometimes by ratiocination and sometimes by the Memory doth infer and conclude something else to be besides what the Sense immediately represents either as the cause or the concomitant of it and doth as forcibly and truly conclude the thing to be and also sometimes what the nature of that cause or concomitant is as if it were seen by the Eye or felt by the Hand I do not see nor by any Sense perceive the quiet undisturbed Air yet because I do see that a Bladder that was before flaccid doth swell by the reception of that which I see not I do as truly and certainly conclude that there is such a subtil Body which we call Air as if I could see it as plain as I see the Water I do not see the Animal or Vital Spirits neither can they by reason of their subtilty and volatileness be discovered immediately to the Sense yet when I see that forcible motion of the Nerves and Muscles I do as certainly conclude there are such Instruments which the Soul useth for the performance of those motions as if I saw them I come into a Room where there is no visible or tangible Fire yet I find by my Sense the Smoke ascending I do as forcibly conclude that Fire is or hath been near as if I saw it because my sensible experience and memory tells me they are concomitant Upon the same account it is that when my Sense and sensible experience shews me that these and these effects there are and that they are successively generated and corrupted though my eye sees not that God that first made those things yet my Sense having shewed me these sensible Objects and the state and vicisstude of them my Understanding doth truly conclude that all this vicissitude of things must terminate in a first cause of things with as great evidence and conviction as if my Sense could immediately see or perceive him So that in the ordinary way of Nature and without the help of divine Revelation all our certainty of things natural begins at our Senses namely the immediate sense of the things themselves
those natural Laws that they are ad omnem eventum fitted to the ordinary administration of the World When the wisest Counsel of Men in the World have with the greatest care prudence and foresight made Laws yet frequent emergencies happen which they did not nor could foresee and therefore they are necessarily put upon repeals correctives and supplements of such their Laws But Almighty God by one most simple foresight foresaw all Events in Nature and could therefore fit Laws of Nature that might be proportionate to the things he made and not stand in need of any change in the ordinary administration of his Providence The special Providence of God is so denominated either in relation to the objects which are special or in relation to the acts themselves Special Providence in relation to the objects is that Providence which Almighty God exerciseth either to Man or Angels in relation to their everlasting ends such as are Divine Laws and Institutions the Redemption of Men by Christ Jesus the Message of the Gospel and the like Special Providence in relation to the acts themselves are those special actings of the Divine Power and Will whereby He acts either in things natural or moral not according to the Rules of general Providence but above or besides or against them And these I call the Imperate Acts of Divine Providence whereof in the next place 2. Analogal to the imperate acts of the Soul upon the Body are the imperate acts of Divine Providence whereby with greatest wisdom and irresistible power He doth mediately or immediately order some things out of the tract of ordinary Providence For although the Divine Wisdom hath with great stability settled the Laws of his general Providence so that ordinarily or lightly they are not altered yet it could never stand with the Divine Administration of the World that He should be eternally mancipated to those Laws he hath appointed for the ordinary administration of the World Neither is this if it be rightly considered an infringing of the Law of Nature since every created Being is most naturally subject to the Soveraign Will of his Creator therefore though He is sometimes pleased by extraordinary interposition and pro imperio voluntatis to alter the ordinary method of natural or voluntary Causes and Effects to interpose by his own immediate Power He violates no Law of Nature since it is the most natural thing in the World that every thing should obey the Will of him that gave it being whatever that Will be or however manifested Now the Instances that I shall give touching these actus imperati of Divine special Providence shall be 1. In things simply natural 2. In things voluntary or free Agents In things natural we have these Instances of the actus imperati of the Divine Providence namely first those that are real and also appearing Miracles as Moses his Rod turned into a Serpent our Saviours miraculous curing of all sorts of Diseases and raising the Dead and the like Again there are other things that though they are natural effects and not in themselves apparently miraculous yet are in truth the actus imperati of the Divine Providence Winds and Storms Hail and Thunder and many the like are things that are in themselves natural yet when they are in such a season and such a juncture they may be and are and possibly more often than we are aware actus imperati specialis providentiae The East Wind that brought the Locusts and the West Wind that carried them off from Egypt Exod. 10.13 19. The East Wind that divided the Red Sea Exod. 14.21 The Hail that slew the Canaanitish Kings Josh 10.12 The Rain and Drought 1 Kings 18. Amos 4.7 Thunder and Lightning 1 Sam. 13.18 Yea the very Blasting and Mildew and Caterpiller and Palmer-worm Amos 4.9 are sent by God The ravenousness of a Lion or Bear are natural to them yet the mission of them upon an extraordinary occasion may be an actus imperatus of Divine Providence 1 Kings 14.24 2 Kings 2.24 And although we often attribute as well mischiefs as deliverances to accidental natural Causes yet many times they are actus imperati of the Divine special Providence as much and as really and truly as the motion of my Pen is the actus imperatus of my Will at this time And if we enquire how these things are effected though it may be they be sometimes effected by the immediate Fiat of the Divine Will yet I have just reason to think they are most ordinarily done by the Ministration of Angels as the destruction of the Host of the Assyrians and divers other great Exertions of these imperate acts of Divine Providence Psal 103. His Angels that excel in strength that do his commandements hearkning to the voice of his word That as the more refined and efficacious Matter which we by way of analogy call Spirits are the executive Instruments of the actus imperati of our Will so these true and essential Spirits are ordinarily the immediate Instruments of the imperate acts of Divine Providence And therefore although many times Effects purely natural that have their Originals meerly by the ordinary course of Providence are ordered by special Providence unto great and wonderful Events yet it seems to me very plain that there be many natural productions that it may be in the immediate Cause or second or third may be purely natural yet at the farthest end of the Chain there is an Agent that is not simply natural as we use to call natural Causes but voluntary sometimes in the first production sometimes in the restriction sometimes in the direction of them for otherwise we must of necessity make all successes in the World purely natural and necessary and Almighty God would be mancipated to the Fatality of Causes and to that Natural Law which he gave at first and Prayers and Invocation upon Him in case of any calamity would be unuseful and ineffectual And therefore though Almighty God do not create a Wind for every emergent occasion but the Wind is a Vapour breaking out of the Earth yet the Ministration of an Angel may restrain open excite direct or guide that Vapour to the fulfilling of those imperate acts of Divine special Regiment And it is observable that although the regular part of Nature is seldom varied but ordinarily keeps its constant tract as the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies yet the Meteors as the Winds Rain Snow Thunder Exhalations and the like which are in themselves more unstable and less mancipated to stated and regular motions are oftentimes employed in the World to very various ends and in very various methods of the special Divine Providence And hence the Winds and Storms are stiled in a peculiar manner Winds and storms fulfilling his will Psal 148. And He bringeth his winds out of his treasury Psal 134. And again Hath the rain a Father and who begot the drops of dew Job 38.28 And again Can any of the vanities of the Gentiles
sensitive nature That the Rational Nature should have those Faculties of a Sensitive Nature and superadded to it the Faculties of Intellect Reason and Will whereby it might govern it self as a reasonable free Agent and determine it self to this or that action And these are the instituted Laws of the Divine common Providence 2. A continued influx of the Divine Goodness whereby things are upheld and continued in their state of being according to this Law of their Creation And by virtue of both these acts of common divine Providence all things are enabled to act and operate according to the Laws of their being without the necessity of any new individual concurrent act of special Providence producing directing or determining their several operations And hence it is that the Will of man by the instituted Law of his Creation and the common Influence of the Divine goodness and power is enabled to act as a reasonable Creature to determine it self and to govern its proper actions according to the Law of his Creation without any particular specificating concurrent new imperate act of the Divine special Providence to every particular determination of his Will Even as the continued influx of the reasonable Soul enables those Faculties which we call Natural or Involuntary without new deliberation purpose or counsel to every new act thereof And by this means the World is in an ordinary course of Providence governed according to those standing fixed Laws given to the Universe and the several parts thereof by the Divine Will wherein it is supported by the common influx and presence of the Divine power and goodness And this is that which being duly considered extricateth that Question which hath so much troubled the World concerning the sinful acts of men and how far forth the glorious God is at all concerned in them Certainly the imperate acts of his Blessed Will have nothing to do to enforce or necessitate the Will of man to any sin it is far from the purity of his Glorious Nature But the general Law of his Providence is only thus far concerned in it That he hath made Man an intelligent and free Agent put him into the power of his own Will but yet sub graviore imperio to restrain its actings if he please by his special Providence and Man in this state of his liberty when he doth sin sins from the Empire of his own Will and not from a determination of the Divine Regiment But though the contemplation of the regiment of the Soul over the Body hath given some analogical explication of the Divine Providence in the Government of the World yet as this Analogy is but imperfect the Divine Regiment of the World is infinitely more wise more powerful more perfect than the regiment of the Soul over the Body so in many things this Analogy by no means holds For instance The Soul doth what it doth in the Body though by a kind of efficiency yet it is but a subordinate efficient and vicarious and instrumental in the hands of the Almighty who as it hath endued the Soul with this energy so the Soul is but his substitute in this regiment of the Body but Almighty God is the supreme Rector of the World and of all those subordinate provinces and parts thereof Secondly in the imperate acts of the Souls regency of the Body and the Compositum She cannot in the Body work immediately without the instrumentality of the intermediate animal and vital Spirits But in the imperate acts of the special Divine Providence though we may justly think he doth most ordinarily use the ministry of those noble natures called Angels yet he may and oftentimes doth by the immediate Fiat of his own Will exercise these imperate acts of special Providence for his Power is infinite and all Beings are in an immediate obedience and subjection to it 3. The Soul cannot by its own Will exercise any immediate imperate act upon those natural and involuntary operations which yet are exercised by an influx from it indeed it may starve and destroy the Body by its Empire and thereby consequently impede and determine those natural and involuntary operations yet it cannot by its Intention or Empire prohibit or suspend their exercise the natural means being allowed and present it cannot effectually prohibit the Heart not to move or the Blood not to circulate or the Ventricle not to digest But it is otherwise with the Regent and regiment of the World even those things wherein he hath set a fixed Law which by virtue of the common influence of the Divine Power and Goodness they observe and follow are subject to the Empire of his special Providence and the imperate acts thereof And this is evident in that Administration of special Providence which is miraculous he commanded the Fire not to burn stopped the mouths and appetites of Lions and prohibited the natural operation and agency of Natural Causes 2. In all the special Providences that are exercised in the World though they do not visibly appear to us to be miraculous yet they most certainly are governed by the imperium of special Divine Providence whereby it sometimes excites second Causes to production of Effects which being thus excited they naturally produce sometimes impeding them sometimes diverting them sometimes directing them sometimes by contemperation or uniting other more active or contrary Causes allaying or enforcing them and although it may be the interposition of the Divine imperium or special Providence be not immediately the immediate antecedent Cause but it may be the third the fourth the tenth the twentieth Cause distant from the Effect Nay though possibly the conjunction of the immediate imperium Providentiae be with the First Mover in Nature the Heavenly Aethereal or Fiery Influx yet the regiment of the Divine Providence is as full and infallible in relation to the imperate regiment of the Effect as if it were immediately joyned to the designed Effect So that the Moral of that Poetical fiction that the uppermost Link of all the series of subordinate Causes is fastned to Jupiter's Chair signifies a useful truth Almighty God doth as powerfully govern and direct when he pleaseth and how he pleaseth all subordinate Causes and Effects as the Soul governs the motion of the Muscle or Limb by those strings of the Nerve which are rooted in the Brain 4. Again the regiment of the Soul over the Body is the regiment of the more active part over the more passive though both making one Compositum but the regiment of Almighty God over the World is not as a part of it or as a Form or Soul informing it but as a Rector or Governour distinct separate and essentially differing from it his regiment of the World in this respect not so much resembling the regiment of the Soul over the Body which together with it make one compounded Nature as the regiment of the Master or Rector over the Ship or the regiment of a King over his Subjects And
Memory retaining the series of propositions argumentations and a long tract of historical narratives 3. In that it is more distinct and unconfused than the sensitive Memory 4. In that it is firmer and more fixed and permanent than the sensitive Memory 5. In that it can resuscitate and stir up it self to remember and call together other Images or media to retrive what it once remembred which is Reminiscence an act of intention which therefore Aristotle in his Book De Memoria Reminiscentia makes an act peculiar to Man whereas the Memory of Brutes is either conserved by the Images impressed by the Imagination and there continued or revived and reinforced by the occurrence of external Objects bearing an identity or resemblance to the Images at first impressed by the Phantasie 4. Deliberation a staid and attentive consideration of things to be known and their media and of their several weights conclusiveness or evidence and of things to be done and their media their congruity suitableness possibility and convenience and of the several circumstances aptly conducible thereunto which is an act far above the animal actings which are sudden and transient and admit not of that attention mora and propendency of actions 5. Judgment either concerning things to be known of the weight and concludency of them and ends in decision or of things done or to be done of their congruity fitness rightness appositness and this if it refers to things to be done ends in determination or purpose if in relation to things already done then in sentence of approbation or disapprobation And hither that which we call Conscience is to be referred namely if by a due comparison of things done with the rule there be a consonancy follows the sentence of Approbation if discordant from it the sentence of Condemnation And this act of the Judgment in relation to things to be done and the determination thereupon is that which is usually stiled the last decision of the practical Understanding immediately antecedent to the decree of the Will which it must follow by a kind of moral necessity when it acts as a reasonable Faculty and in the due state and order of its nature though by its liberty and empire it sometimes suspends its concurrence And thus far concerning the Acts of the Understanding 3. Concerning intellectual Habits or the genuine effects of these acts in the understanding Faculty and they are divers and diversly expressed by those that have treated thereof 1. Opinion when the assent of the Understanding is so far gained by evidence of probability that it rather inclines to one perswasion than to another yet not altogether without a mixture of incertainty or doubting 2. Science or Knowledge effected by such evidence cui non potest subesse falsum as in case of demonstrative evidence 3. Fides or Faith or Belief which rests upon the relation of another that we have no reasonable cause to suspect and upon this account we believe Divine Revelation when we are sufficiently convinced that it is Divine Revelation we also believe our Senses because we have the greatest Moral evidence that we can reasonably have of the truth of their reports when they are not controlled by apparent Reason impossibility or improbability We believe good and credible persons and this principally referrs to matter of fact which we cannot or do not controll by our Senses or other weighty evidence as that there was such a man as Julius Caesar that there is such a place as Rome though we never saw the one or the other because delivered over to us by credible persons and such who could probably have no end to deceive us 4. Wisdom which is a complicated habit referring to all things to be known and done the due comparison of things and actions and the preference of them according to their various natures and degrees 5. Prudence which is principally in reference to actions to be done the due means order season method of doing or not doing 6. Moral Virtues as Justice Temperance Sobriety Fortitude Patience c. for these begin in the Intellect though their exercise belong principally to the faculty of the Will 7. Arts Liberal or Mechanical for though the exercise of those in which the formal nature of an Art consists be external yet the Ideal notion and habit of them begins in the Understanding and a man is first a Geometrician in his Brain before he be such in his Hand And all these habits of the intellectual Faculty are far advanced above what is found in Sensible Natures take the last for instance It is true we find a rare dexterity in the Spider and Silkworm in framing of their threads but this proceeds not from any Intellectual principle in them but from an Instinct connatural to them and whereunto they are determined by the Law of their nature again we find in the Fox the Hawk and other Animals admirable sagacities wiles and subtilties in getting their prey and in defending themselves But when we consider the sagacity of the Humane Understanding although the particular Instincts of some Animals are scarce imitable by it yet it exceeds them in other things almost of the same nature and so by way of equivalence or rather prelation in those very Instincts witness the Arts of Painting Tapestry Fortification Architecture the Engins whereby noxious and subtil Animals are subdued and infinite more arising from the fruitfulness of the Understanding and the dexterity of the Hand And thus much touching the Intellective Faculty the seat of intellective Perception and Counsel I come to consider of that other Faculty the Will the seat of Empire and Authority The Will therefore is that other great Faculty of the Reasonable Soul and it is not a bare appetitive power as that of the sensual appetite but is a rational appetite and is considerable 1. In its Nature 2. In its Object 3. In its Acts. 1. The Nature of this Faculty is that it is free domina suarum actionum free from compulsion and so spontaneous and free from determination by the particular Object wherein it differs from the sensitive appetite which though spontaneous because moving from an inward principle yet is if not altogether yet for the most part determined in its choice by the external Object But how far forth the Will is determined by the last act of the practick Understanding or how far such a determination is or is not consistent with the essential or natural liberty of the Will is not seasonable here to dispute This liberty of Will together with that other Faculty of Understanding is that which renders the humane Nature properly capable of a Law and of the consequence of Law Rewards and Punishments which doth not properly belong to the animal Nature because destitute of these two Faculties 2. The Object of the Will is not confined to a sensible Good but is much larger namely such a Good as is compatible to an Intellectual Nature in its full
flows from the Existence of the Sun is likewise necessarily Eternal This seems to be the Opinion of Aristotle and some others that follow him 2. Again some there have been who will not have Almighty God to be a meer natural and necessary Cause of the World but such a Cause as is a free Agent agens per intellectum voluntatem and that the World was an Effect of Him not as a natural or necessary but as a voluntary and free Agent And yet the World was necessarily Eternal though freely willed to be Eternal For they do suppose that in as much as God Almighty is necessarily Good and Wise and it is part of his Perfection to will what is best and always to will it therefore the Divine Will was always determined even eternally to will the Existence of the World as a thing eternally consonant to the Perfection of his Nature to will and always to will what is best And there was never in all the vast and boundless Period of Eternity any one moment wherein he willed not to communicate his own Benignity and Bounty to something without Him and therefore though he freely willed the World to be as a free Agent yet that freedom of his Will was from all Eternity determin'd by the Perfect Goodness and Beneficence of his Nature ever to will what He once willed and consequently to will the World to be Eternally Herein confounding the Divine Goodness with the Divine Beneficence and Benignity the former being indeed necessary but the latter under the Conduct and Guidance of his Free Will indetermined by any thing but it self Others there are that attribute the Being of the World to the meer beneplacitum voluntatis divinae neither determined as a meer Natural cause nor determined by any intrinsecal obligation of his own Goodness but only that he willed it because he willed it though most wisely and bountifully Many of these do not indeed conclude the World to have been eternal but in conformity to the truth of the Sacred Scriptures conclude it to be created in the beginning of time but yet do again conclude that there is nothing in the nature of the thing either on the part of Almighty God or on the part of the World it self or on the part of the manner of its Creation which is instantanous and per modum emanationis but that such parts of the World at least as have a permanent existence and are not in a flux of succession might have been not only in some period antecedent to that point of time wherein de facto it was created but also that it might have been thus eternally created if the Divine beneplacitum had so pleased And therefore many of those do not conclude that it was so but that it might have been so eternally created yet freely and voluntarily without any of the two foregoing necessities Thus â—quinas Suarez and some others And thus having considered these various suppositions touching the divers qualities or qualifications of this eternal Existence of the World I shall now consider the subject Matter which men would thus have to be eternal or at least possible to be such namely the World And herein even many of the assertors of the Eternity of the World or the possibility thereof have and not without cause faln into divers conclusions By the World therefore we must understand either the Matter of the World simply in it self without being determined to this determinate Fabrick wherein it is and thus it should seem that all those ancient Philosophers that have asserted the Eternity of the World as Aristotle and before him Otellus Lucanus or that have asserted novitatem mundi in hac constitutione have agreed thus Epicurus that asserts the coalition of Atoms into this Fabrick that we see was of later edition than Eternity yet asserts that these Atoms were eternal and those Ancients mentioned by Aristotle in the 8 th of his Physicks that held that the World was made and unmade and made again by eternal vicissitudes of Amor Inimicitia yet held the constituent Matter thereof eternal And this seems to be the most comprehensive acceptation of the World 2. Again by the World we may understand the World as it is now framed the visible World in that form and constitution as it now is And thus it seems Aristotle and those others that hold it proceeds necessarily from God as a necessary cause or as a cause determined by his intrinsick Goodness have held the World to be eternal but yet we must not rest here The World is like a goodly Palace a fair large Building but as in such a Palace there is first the case or fabrick or moles of the Structure it self and besides that there are certain additaments that contribute to its ornament and use as various Furniture rare Fountains and Aqueducts curious Motions of divers things appendicated to it as Clocks Engins c. so in the goodly Universe there are the great Structure it self and its great integrals the Heavenly and Elementary Bodies framed in such a position and situation the great Sceleton as I may call it of the World But besides this there are very various and curious furnitures and accommodations of the Universe as for instance in our inferior World various Animals Vegetables Meteors Minerals Mixtures and Men and in the Heavenly Bodies various Motions and Aspects Now it will be necessary for him that asserts the Eternity of the World as now it stands or the possibility of such an eternity to consider whether he applies his assertion to the whole World as consisting not only of the greater integrals whereof it consists as the Heavenly and possibly the Elementary Bodies but also of that furniture thereof consisting of Men Animals Vegetables Meteors Minerals and those accommodations that are to it as the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies or whether he intends only some parts of it which seem more capable of an eternal existence as being more fixed and in themselves permanent and so more able to sustain an eternal and consequently an immutable existence And upon examination we shall 〈◊〉 find either of these choices full of incurable difficulties if not utter impossibilities in relation to an eternal existence of the World or any parts thereof And this I shall in the order of this Discourse evince against all those former suppositions of Eternity namely 1. Against those that assert an independent eternal existence of the World 2. Against those that assert an eternal but dependent existence thereof upon Almighty God as a meer natural and necessary Cause thereof 3. Against those that assert an eternal existence of the World dependent upon God as a free intellectual and voluntary Agent but yet determined in his external emanations by the necessity of the Goodness and Beneficence of his nature 4. Against those that assert at least a possibility of an eternal existence of the World but dependent upon the freedom of the Divine Will undetermined
that things had no other method of their production than what we now see they have and therefore they must if they hold to their Principles agree that they had their production always as now they have The necessary consequence whereof is that if such a kind of production of mixt Bodies cannot in the nature of the thing be eternal they cannot have an eternal production But it is true that this doth not answer the Supposition of those that though they suppose an Eternity in mixt Bodies do attribute even that Eternity to an eternal Creation and therefore to another kind of production than what we now suppose to be natural and consequently as they suppose at first in an eternal moment Almighty God created simple Bodies as the Heavenly or Elementary Bodies so in the same instant He might and did create other Bodies which though in their constitution they were or might be composed of such particles as had they been asunder and divided might have been of the simple nature of those simpler Bodies yet they were in the same eternal moment or instant created and put together without any priority of existence in those simple Bodies whereof they might otherwise consist nor were such mixt eternal Bodies successively desumed or compounded out of the pre-existing simple Bodies but con-created and put together in the same eternal and indivisible moment or instant so that a Mineral for the purpose might be created in the same moment wherein the elementary Earth was created And although after the completing of the whole Frame of Nature in that eternal indivisible intelligible moment the production of mixt Bodies either by spontaneous or contingent coalition of various particles of Matter or by an univocal generation the course that is now held in Nature might be observed and that Priority of particles of simple Matter Influx of the Heavens and Preparation of Matter might be antecedent and precedaneous not only in order but in time to their ordinary productions yet at first it might be and was otherwise in the primitive constitution of such mixt Bodies as had their original by Creation I do confess this Supposition may evade the illation made upon the Natural production of mixt Bodies but then we must remember that this quite departs from the method of things as they now stand in the course of Nature neither can any man conclude that it was or could be so from the observation of the Order or Cause of Nature or any rational deduction from the same but must have recourse either to bare Notion or Conjecture or else to Divine Revelation the former seems somewhat too light soundly to ground any Hypothesis and the latter namely Divine Revelation though it doth discover unto us that things had their production in a different way in their first Constitution or Origination namely by the almighty Power of God creating them yet withall it informs us that that origination was not from Eternity but in the beginning of Time which wholly overthrows the Hypothesis of an Eternal Creation of the World If therefore they will appeal to Revelation for their Creation they must be concluded by it not to say it was eternal 2. My second Reason is this Because all things that are in their nature successive must have a first beginning of their being and cannot be eternal But there are in the World many things of great note and moment and without which the Order and Usefulness of the Universe would be deficient which have a successive nature and therefore such things cannot be eternal or without beginning And this reason concludes forcibly as well against that independent Eternity supposed by some of the Ancients as that Eternity dependent upon Almighty God whether as a necessary Cause or as a free voluntary intellectual Cause determined by the necessary Goodness and Beneficence of his nature or as a perfectly free Agent determining his Will by his own beneplacitum thus eternally to produce the World The Assumption or minor Proposition That there are many things in the World of great moment and importance to it that are in their own nature successive is apparent such are all the Individuals of Species of corruptible things that yet notwithstanding have a continued succession in their individuals as Vegetables Animals and Men that successively propagate their kind 2. All kinds of Motions to which all natural Bodies are in some kind or other subject as the motions of Generation and Corruption Augmentation Diminution and Alteration that are uncessantly incident to all sublunary Bodies and they must change their nature and cease to be what they are before they can cease to be actually subject to alterations such is also Local motion communicable not only to the inferior and sublunary Bodies but also to celestial Bodies and this motion even of the Heavenly Bodies themselves seems to be partly continued and unintermitted as that motion of the First Moveable partly interpolated and interrupted as some affirm of that Motus trepidationis sometimes of access and recess as the Annual motion of the Sun wherein some have thought there is a small though impeceptible rest in the very point of returning which we call Solstices The major Proposition namely that such successive things cannot be eternal includes two Affirmations viz. 1. That the motions or successions themselves cannot be eternal or without beginning 2. That the things that have necessarily and inseparably these motions or alterations annexed to their nature cannot be eternal so long as we suppose them necessarily accompanied with these alterations The former of these is considerable in this place the other is considerable under the next Reason Now touching the impossibility of the eternal succession of the Species whether of Men Animals or Vegetables by natural propagation or prosemination the same and the Reasons thereof shall be fully delivered when we come to the particular consideration of the Origination of Mankind and the necessity of fixing in some common Parents of the individuals of Mankind and thither I shall refer my self As touching the eternity of any kind of Motion especially even of that of the Heavenly Bodies I shall say somewhat briefly in this place which will be easily reducible to any other of the motions in the World as namely the motions of Generation Corruption or Alteration all which are in some respect but the effects of Local motion of one kind or another And there seem to be two special Reasons even from the intrinsecal nature of the things that encounter the possibility of an eternal successive duration in them The first concludes against all imaginable eternity of Motion of the Heavenly Bodies whether independent or dependent upon Almighty God the latter indeed principally concludes against the possibility of the created or dependent eternity thereof And they are these 1. If the circular motion of the Sun or Heavens were eternal then there must be two circulations of the Heavens immediately succeeding on the other Eternal the consequence
prepared and at length generated by the conjunction of these active and passive Principles And yet if it be duly considered supposing the Sun and the Earth to be both eternal the Earth and its parts must of necessity persist in an eternal unchangeable state in that period of Eternity antecedent to the first alteration thereof to any such production For if the production of these Minerals should be eternal and consequently infinitely distant from us the productions must be eternal and yet there must necessarily antecede those productions a successive and gradual alteration of those parts of the Earth which were to be moulded in succession of time to Coals or Stone or Minerals And though perchance that alteration might take up a long preparation and disposition yet it could not be eternal but must be absolved though in a long yet in finite time and consequently the Earth if eternal must be before that preparation or alteration and must have continued in an eternal state destitute of such alteration or preparation and in an eternal disposition thereunto which yet had been to suppose the Earth in that eternal period quite destitute of that mutation that upon the Supposition of the agency of the Sun had been connatural to it So that upon the whole matter it seems plain That neither successive natural Beings nor corporeal Beings that are corruptible or necessarily subject to alteration either from an intrinsick Principle or from an extrinsick natural Cause necessarily contiguous or approximate to it in situation or virtue cannot be eternal which will deprive the greatest part of the sublunary World at least of that possibility and must leave only such parts of the visible Universe as are incorruptible unalterable and unsuccessive if any such be capable of this priviledge of the very possibility of an eternal existence à parte ante And consequently the whole Universe cannot be eternal It remains then they who assert the Eternity of the World must content themselves with such parts thereof as are capable of that duration And accordingly there seem to have been three Opinions which although they assume not the Assertion of the Eternity of the whole World yet they endeavour to come as near to it as they can which I shall distinctly set down and examin 1. The first Opinion is of such that although they suppose the sublunary World not to be eternal in its Frame and Constitution yet they assert the Matter thereof eternal though undigested and not perfected till afterwards But yet the Celestial or Ethereal World the Stars and Planets they will have eternal and that these were used as the great Engins in the subsequent formation of the inferior â—r sublunary Worâ—d Touching the Eternity of Matter whether Celestial or Sublunary I mean not in this place to meddle but as to the Supposition of the eternal existence of the Celestial or Ethereal World this shall be all I shall say 1. We are not acquainted with the Constitution of them and whether they are in their nature corruptible or subject to alterations if they are such they are as equally uncapable of an eternal existence as the sublunary World 2. But suppose them to have a radical incorruptibility and immutability in their natures yet their Motion cannot be eternal upon the Reasons before given 3. And therefore though they are a goodly Fabrick yet they are not in a state of Permanency of so great use beauty and perfection as in a state of Motion which is a great part of their excellency and that which accommodates the several parts thereof one to another and all to the advantage and good of the inferior World and therefore it seems not probable that they should have an eternal existence in Rest and Permanence and afterwards in a process or period of time be endued with that which is their great perfection namely their Motion which neither was nor could be eternal It rather seems more agreeable to the nature of the thing and to the Divine Wisdom whose Works are full of wisdom excellence and perfection to respite the Fabrick till it were capable of its most useful and beautiful perfection namely Motion which must either be natural to them and then it were marvellous they should yet enjoy an infinite duration destitute of what was natural to them and yet not capable to be enjoyed by them in an eternal duration à parte ante Or if it were adventitious from the immediate power of God or by the instrumentality of Intelligences yet surely it was foreseen by him that knew all his Works from the beginning and therefore was not likely to ordain an eternal consistence of those Bodies to which he intended to give Motion their great perfection not sooner than time And therefore though the Heavenly Bodies were admitted capable of an eternal Permanency yet it is not probable they had their Being before or at least not so long before their Motion 2. The second Opinion is of those that although they allow not the Mundus aspectabilis to be eternal yet do suppose that besides that Eternal Generation of the Second and the Eternal Procession of the Third Person of the Sacred Trinity Almighty God eternally created a World of Intelligences whereunto he might and did communicate the emanations of his Bounty and Benignity and that in the beginning of Time he Created this Mundus aspectabilis which we see for the farther communication of his Bounty and Goodness and this they suppose more congenious and suitable to the Order of things and of his own Goodness and the communication thereof than to suppose the Creation of a material World either eternally or quasi per saltum or at the same time with the Creation of those purer Beings who had a greater similitude and proximity to his own most Divine and Spiritual Nature This though it might possibly be so yet we are without any sufficient Evidence that it was so and such Conjectures of things without our knowledge or those media that we are capable to exercise for the acquest thereof are uncertain and endless Upon such conjectural Congruities the Platonists had their Dii ex Deo the Manichees their Aeones and Origen his Mundus Animarum and therefore I leave it as a Conjecture 3. The third Opinion is of those who though they suppose the World not to be eternal and perchance think with reason enough that the duration of Eternity à parte ante is such as is only competible to the Eternal God and not communicable to any Created Being at least such as is in its own nature either corruptible alterable or compounded yet to the end that they may carry the Communication of the Divine Goodness and Benignity as far as is possible are not contented to suppose the World to be sempiternal or eternal à parte post or to be as ancient as the Sacred Scriptures inform us but will carry up the Creation of the World to an immense antiquity long before Six
more are the thoughts of the unsearchable God higher than our thoughts The more sober and weighty part of the Schoolmen do conclude this Question in the negative and assert That Almighty God by one eternal act knew all things from all Eternity and by the like eternal act willed from all Eternity what he any way willed and though the termination of that Will respected Objects that neither were nor could be eternal yet his Knowledge and Will was eternally the same as ever and he begins not to know any thing which he did not eternally know nor to will any thing which he did not eternally will though the execution of that Will respects things to be done in time and futurity And certainly as this is the most probable Opinion so it takes away the pretence of the Objection the immanent Acts and Operations of the glorious God being eternal and without change It is true some late Schoolmen and after them Clara in his 4 th Problem seems to assert that Divina voluntas potest velle aliquid novum sine mutatione sui But suppose that this Supposition were admissible yet this would not any way be inconsistent with the Eternity of the Divine Nature and Essence 1. This is no Physical change in Almighty God but a voluntary and free operation of his Will which possibly was so at first willed by him to be changed according as he saw cause in his infinite Wisdom 2. That this which is here called a change of his Will is not in truth a change of his Will but a change in the Object which only seems to make a diversification of the Will but indeed is the same Will diversified only in the habitude to the Object The Will of God is like a straight unalterable Rule or Line but the various comportments of the Creature either thwarting this Rule or holding conformity to it occasions several habitudes of this Rule unto it We need no better explication hereof than that of the Prophet Ezechiel Chap. 33. from the twelfth to the twentieth Verse 4. A change of Actions and Operations in relation to some external Object or terminated therein and such a change as this is consistent with an Eternal Being though the change happen in any given portion of Time Thus the Almighty and Eternal God created the World by his Power and Will in the beginning of Time and orders governs and disposeth of the things by his Providence in all the Periods of Time and yet without any Physical or real change in himself And thus he began to be a Creator when before he was not a Creator and began to be a Governour of the World after it was made and exerciseth divers external acts of his Providence daily which before he did not For those various acts of his are terminated in such Objects as neither were nor could be eternal namely the World and the Government thereof And although he thereby gain a change of relation or relative denomination yet it is no real or Physical change in himself For all relations arise from the supposition of existence of both the terms of relation as between the Creator and the thing created and the Governour and thing governed and therefore although one of the terms of that relation namely the Eternal God had an eternal existence in his own absolute nature yet the World that was the other term of relation had no eternal existence but was created in the beginning of Time and the relation of a Creator or Governour must necessarily therefore arise in Time and not from Eternity because one of the terms of the relation namely the World had not any existence before Time began But in the eternal Generation of the Son and Procession of the Holy Spirit the termini relationis were all eternal and consequently the relation of Paternity and Filiation between the First and Second Person and the relation between the Sacred Persons of the Trinity and the denomination thereof must needs be eternal because the terms of relation between whom that relation ariseth were eternal But it is not so between the Eternal God and a temporary World for the relation could not arise till the World had an existence and a change or acquest of a new relation is not at all any real change in God but is an accident resulting from the existence of both the termini and can be no ancienter than the coexistence even of the latest and newest of those terms which if began in time must necessarily produce a new relation yet without any real change in the pre-existing and eternal God And thus I have done with those Physical and Metaphysical Evidences of the Inception of the World and of Mankind and against the Eternity of both And although I shall descend in the ensuing Section to Moral Evidences of probability strongly perswading the same Truth yet I lay the principal weight and stress of this Argument upon what is said in the preceding Chapters of this First Section which though perchance they may have something of obscurity as being bottomed upon and fetched from the true nature of the things themselves and therefore not so obvious and plain to all Capacities yet they have a concludency in them not inferior or at least little inferior to Demonstrations SECT II. CAP. I. The Proofs of Fact that seem with the greatest Moral evidence to evince the Inception of Mankind And first touching the Antiquity or Novity of History I Have now done with those Evidences that in my Understanding seem quasi ab intrinseco to evince the Inception of Mankind from that intrinsecal incompossibility and inconsistency that the Supposition of the eternal existence thereof bears with his Nature I now descend to the examination of those Evidences of Fact which do or may seem to contribute to the proof of what is designed namely Novitatem generis humani And although that Evidences of Fact of things remote from our Sense cannot be said infallible and demonstrative because the nature of such matters of fact simply as they are matters of fact is not capable as such of Demonstration yet they may be Evidences of high credibility and such as no reasonable Man can with any just reason deny his assent unto them That which hath been hath as certainly and infallibly yea and as necessarily been as that which is Omne quod est dum est necessariò est omne quod fuit cum jam preteriit necessariò fuit quando fuit in praeteritis non est contingentia Only that which is and is obvious to Sense hath this advantage of evidence which that which hath been wants namely the immediate evidence of Sense wherein though it is not universally impossible but that Sense may be deceived yet because it is the best evidence that we have of matters of fact we give credit to it as a sensible evidence and we have reason so to do But of things transacted before our time and out of the
discovered ex praenotis per viam rationalis discursus Thus probably Men by the Signatures Tasts and Colours of Herbs bearing analogy to other things they knew concluded fairly touching their Nature and Use which by Tryal and Experience they improved into more fixed and stable Theorems and Conclusions And upon this account also many Practical Arts especially relating to Numbers Weight Measure and Mechanism had their production for the Rudiments of Proportion being lodged in the Mind they seem to have grown intentionally and ex industria into those various practices of Arithmetick Geometry and Mechanicks resulting from those principles per media processus rationalis and thus those practices of the Rules of Proportion Mechanical Motions Staticks Architecture Navigation Measuring of Distances and Quantities and infinite more did arise 4. Some things in their first discovery seem purely accidental and although possibly the operation of Reason and Tryal and Experiment might or may carry on the Invention into farther Improvements and Advances yet in the very first primo primum of the Discovery it may be accidental The old whether true or fabulous Discovery of Fire may serve to explain my conception wherein it is supposed that one sitting upon a Hill and tumbling down Flint stones upon the collision thereof he observed sparks of Fire which nevertheless he after improved by adding combustible materials to it and doubtless upon such and the like occurrences many Chymical and other accidental Discoveries have been made besides and beyond and without the intention of the Operator And I well knew a Person that had not capacity enough to deduce any thing of curiosity per processum rationalem yet by accidental dealing with Water and some Canes did arrive to a most admirable excellence in some Mechanical Works of that nature though he never had the Wit to give a reason of his performance of them 5. Some things have been found out by a kind of necessity and exigence of Humane Nature such as Clothes Societies Places of Defence and Habitation and possibly much of the plainer sort of Tillage and Husbandry Venter magister artis ingeniÃque largitor and commonly these were the earliest Inventions because Nature stood early in need of them And hence it came to pass that they who had Coelum clementius that afforded them necessaries without the assistance of considerable Industry continued longest rude and uncultivated And therefore if the Husbandry of Ceres or Triptolemus came late into the World it was because those Eastern Countries then inhabited abounded with plenty of Fruits which supplied the defect of Husbandry till the World grew more dispersed and fuller of Inhabitants and transmigrated into parts of less natural fertility 6. Some things have been discovered not only by the Ingeny and Industry of Mankind but even the inferior Animals have subministred unto Man the invention or discovery of many things both Natural and Artificial and Medicinal unto which they are guided and in which they are directed by secret and untaught instincts which would be infinite to prosecute The Fable or History of Glaucus observing Fishes to leap into the Sea upon tasting an Herb by the shore the Weasel using Plantane as an Antidote the wounded Stag using Dittany to draw out the Arrow if true and divers others give us some Analogical Instances And these are ordinarily the Methods of Discoveries The Things or Objects discovered are principally of two kinds viz. 1. Such things as are already lodged in Nature as Natural Causes and Effects and those various Phaenomena in Nature whereof some lye more open to our Senses and daily observation others are more occult and hidden and though accessible in some measure to our Senses yet not without great search and scrutiny or some happy accident others again are such as we cannot attain to any clear sensible discovery of them either by reason of their remoteness distance and unaccessibleness as the Heavenly Bodies and things closed up in the bowels of the Earth or by reason of their subtil and curious texture escaping the clear and immediate access of Sense as Spiritual Natures the Soul and its various Faculties and Operations and the Reasons or Methods of them wherein for the most part our acquests touching them are but Opinion and Conjecture wherein Men vary according to the variety of their Apprehensions and Phantasies and wherein because they want that manuduction of Sense which is our best and surest Guide in the first Instance in matters Natural Men range into incertain inevident and unstable Notions 2. Such things as are Artificial wherein some Discoveries are simply new others are but accessions and additaments to things that were before mentioned Some things are of convenience utility or necessity to Humane Nature or the condition of Mankind some things are of curiosity some things are found out casually or accidentally some things intentionally and out of those Principles or Notions that seem to be lodged originally in the Mind Now upon these Considerations premised it seems that the late Discovery of many things in Nature and many Inventions in Art are not a sufficient Evidence of the Origination or late Origination of Mankind at least taken singly and apart 1. In things Natural the variety is so great and the various combinations therein so many that it seems possible that there should not have been a full discovery of the whole state of things Natural unto the Minds of Men although there were supposed an eternal duration of Mankind We may give our selves a Specimen hereof if we look but back upon that one Piece of Nature with which we have reason to be best acquainted namely our selves which by reason of our vicinity to our selves our daily conversation with our selves and others of the same Species our daily necessities and opportunities of inquiring into our selves and the narrowness of our own nature in comparison of the vast and various bulk of other things seems to render us a Subject capable of being very fully discovered And besides all this the more inquisitive and judicious part of Mankind have industriously set themselves for many Ages to make the best discovery they could of the nature of Man Hippocrates the Father of Physicians who lived in the 82 d Olympiad and above 2000 years since busied himself much and profoundly in this Enquiry and a succession of industrious observing and learned Physicians and Naturalists have pursued the Chase with all care and vigilancy and by the help of Anatomical Dissections have searched into those various Maeanders of the Veins Arteries Nerves and Integrals of the Humane Body Yet for all this in this sensible and narrow part of Humane Nature the husk and shell thereof how much remains after all this whereof we are utterly ignorant So that notwithstanding all the Discoveries that have been made by the Ancients and those more curious and plentiful Discoveries by the latter Ages there still remains so much undiscovered that leaves still room for Admiration
Guanaco's and Paco's there be a thousand different kinds of Birds and Beasts of Forest in America which have never been known neither in shape nor name in other parts of the World whereof no mention is made nor names given in Greek or Latin or other Eastern Language of the World And in his 34 th Chapter of that Book he tells us That though the Spaniards in their first Plantation found certain Beasts Birds and other things in America common to those of Europe Asia and Africa yet some Beasts and other things they brought thither which were unknown there and for which they had no Names but what the Spaniards brought along with them So that one of the best Indications which they had to know those Beasts which were originally brought with the Spaniards out of Europe in their first Plantation was in that the Indians had no other Names for such but Spanish Names And again since America as is generally supposed is divided on every side from Asia Africa and Europe by considerable Seas and no known passage by Land so that all the possibility there could be for traduction of the Brutes into America from the known World could only be by Shipping Though this might be and certainly was a method used for the traduction of useful Cattel from hence thither yet it is not credible that Bears Lions Tigers Wolves and Foxes should have so much care used for their transportation And upon the same account they seem to inferr That the Beasts and Birds preserved by Noah in the Ark could only be such as were appropriated to Asia but not those that were of the American kinds for how should they come from thence to the Ark Or if it be supposable that they could be brought thither why did none of the kinds which are found commonly in America leave some of their Kind or Race here On the other side it hath been the more received Opinion That the Capita specierum perfectarum of perfect Terrestrial Animals and Birds were created near unto the place of Adam's Creation and that from these and these only the Race of perfect Animals Birds and Brutes were propagated and traduced over the face of the whole Earth and that the American Brood was traduced from these and from those Couples of these that were preserved by Noah in the Ark And that upon these Instances whereof some are of Divine authority others are Physical 1. All the Beasts and Fowls were brought to Adam to give them their Names Gen. 2.19 20. which could not have been if the several kinds of them in their first Creation had not been within some reasonable and approachable distance 2. All the Beasts and Birds had their kinds preserved in the Ark and the rest were drowned by the Universal Deluge Gen. 7.23 3. Although the Continent of America was in the first Spanish Plantations thereof stored with wild Beasts as Lions Tigers Bears c. yet those Islands that were remote from the Land though large and fruitful had not any of these Beasts then in them as Cuba Hispaniola Jamaica Margarita this is verified by Acosta upon a strict examination Lib. 1. Cap. 21. alibi and the same hath been found true in other new discovered Islands by other Navigations Whereby it appears that the Brutes were not Aborigines for then they should have been found in those Islands as well as in the Continent as well as Insects and Vegetables and that therefore in the Continent it self the first storing thereof was not from it self but by some means of accession from other Parts for otherwise they might have been found as well there as in the Continent The two great Obstacles are 1. The difference of the Brutes and Birds of that Continent from those of Asia Europe and Africa 2. The difficulty of finding a commodious passage from Asia Africa or Europe for such Beasts and Birds from hence thither admit they were all of the same kind And touching both these I shall say something 1. Touching the diversity of Brutes and Birds of this and the Western World the difficulty from thence is but small for there are divers Accidents even in the Eastern World Europe Asia and Africa that afford us Instances of that kind though excepting some Islands it be one common Continent I shall instance only in some Accidents of this kind 1. This Variation may happen by Mixtures of several Species in Generation which gives an anomalous Production as we see ordinarily by the mixture of Pheasants and Hens Chickens are produced partaking of both in colour and figure which yet renders them different from both And it is observed by many that the Cause of that great variety of Brutes in Africa is by reason of the meeting together of Brutes of several Species at Waters which in those dry Countries are scarce and the promiscuous couplings of Males and Females of several Species whereby there arise a sort of Brutes that were not in the first Creation This was long since observed by Aristotle so that it grew a Proverb also Semper aliquid novi Africa affert De generat Animal lib. 2. cap. 5. and so continues to this day 2. The Percolation as I may call it of Vegetables by Prosemination will alter their Nature Colour and Shape as Tulips or Carnations rising from Seed will differ in Colour from what those were that yielded those Seeds 3. Culture will improve Wild Flowers in bigness and beauty and want of Culture will sometimes make Vegetables degenerate See for these Transmutations Sir Francis Bacon in the 6 th Century of his Natural History I have often observed that River-Fish as Trouts and Flounders and others will alter their figure some for the better and some for the worse being put into Ponds Again in Animals the Learned Doctor Harvey in the end of his last Book de Generatione Animalium delivers an Opinion which at the first view seems wonderful strange viz. That the Conformation of the Proles both in Men and Brutes to their several specifical Shapes and Configurations is by a certain specifical operative Idea in the Phantasie or Imagination of Animals fixed and radicated in them and conformable to their several Species and that monstrous or anomalous Productions are by some disturbance or discomposure of that specifical Idea by some other inordinate Idea And conformable hereunto seems the Opinion of Marcus Marci in his learned Book de Ideis formatricibus Whatever the truth of this Opinion be it is not here properly examinable yet it seems beyond question that as to some external Signatures as Colour Shape Figure c. the Phantasie or Imagination of the Females as well Animals as of Mankind especially in momento conceptus and for some time after hath a great Influence Some there are that think that Jacob's change of the colour of Sheep and Goats by peeled Rods Gen. 30.37 was partly at least upon a Physical account and he that reads Fienus de Viribus Imaginationis and Sir
and like itself which could not be such if Mankind had any other Method of Origination than now it hath And in Natural Appearances Causes and Effects they thought it not becoming the Genius or Spirit of a Philosopher to call in any other Assistant or Producent than what was and is the ordinary Rule Course and Law of Nature as they now find it And by this means they thought that they proceeded consonantly both to Nature and to themselves 2. Because that among those ancient Philosophers that either supposed the Origination of Mankind to be either casual as Epicurus Democritus c. or to be natural from the Earth and conjunction of the Influences of Heavenly Bodies in some Periodical Aspects or partly natural and partly fortuitous or at least spontaneous as Insects arise I say in and among these various Suppositions of an Origination of Mankind yea and perfect Animals ex non genitis they found so much incertainty improbability and repugnancy that they threw them all aside together also with the Beginning or Origination of Mankind and took up that more compendious and more sutable as they thought to the Laws which they observed in Nature and concluded That the Generations of Mankind and of perfect Animals were without beginning but always obtained in the same manner as now they are Of this Opinion was Ocellus Lucaenus and likewise Aristotle though in some places he seems to be doubtful and although Plato in his Timaeus seems to assert an Origination of Mankind yet in some other places his Expressions are doubtful and therefore Censorinus in his golden Book de Die Natali reckons as well Plato as Aristotle Ocellus Lucanus Architas Tarentinus Xenocrates Dicearchus Pythagoras Theophrastus to be Assertors of the Eternity of Mankind And this Opinion I have examined in the Chapters of the Second Section of this Book and offered Reasons Physical Metaphysical and Moral against it The last Moral Reason which I offered was The received Opinion of Mankind asserting the Origination of Man and that as well of the common sort of People as of the Tribe of the Learned Philosophers The former I dispatched in the last Chapter but the Suffrage of the Gens literata I reserved to this Section because thereby at once I may with the same labour shew the Opinions of Learned Men among the Heathen asserting the Origination of Mankind and what their several Sentiments were concerning the manner of it And therefore I shall be constrained herein to mention the Opinions of some of those Learned Philosophers above-mention and to add some others of the contrary Perswasion which out-ballance the former 2. The second general Opinion was of those Learned Philosophers that held an Origination of Mankind ex non genitis and the Reason moving them to this Perswasion was not only the great Tradition that obtained generally in favour of it and the great reasonableness of the Supposition it self but also the many absurd Consequences and indeed irreconcilable Contradictions that they found in the Hypothesis of an Eternal Succession of Humane Generations without beginning Insomuch that the Assertors themselves of Eternal Generations were doubtful of the truth of their own Perswasions as will hereafter appear And those of this latter sort were even Epicurus himself Anaximander Empedocles Parmenides and Zeno Citicus the great Founder of the Sect of the Stoicks with those that followed or favoured it But above all the great Law-giver Moses who was divinely inspired and yet if he had not that advantage of Divine Infallibility but stood barely upon the great credibility both of his Person his Learning and the Hypothesis it self which he delivered he hath as great a weight even upon a natural moral and rational account as any or all the rest put together But because I intend a particular Explication of the Hypothesis Mosaica I shall not mingle this among the other Opinions but reserve it for the next Section The Heathen Philosophers that held the Origination of Mankind ex non genitis have these things in general wherein they agree one with another and with the Truth it self and some things wherein they differ among themselves and in some things from the Truth 1. They herein agree both among themselves and with the Truth and with that excellent and divine Relation of Moses Gen. 1. That Mankind is not Eternal but had a Beginning ex non genitis 2. They herein also agree among themselves and with the Truth That it is most absolutely necessary if Mankind had a Beginning or Origination it must needs be in a differing kind and manner from that common course whereby Mankind is now propagated This is asserted by those that hold the Origination of Mankind by the Efficiency of Almighty God consonant to the Mosaical Hypothesis either immediately or partly by the Instrumentality of Angels as Zeno Citicus Plato and others it is also asserted by them that hold the Origination of Mankind to be at first fortuitous as Epicurus and Democritus And therefore as to these Perswasions and Suppositions it is not only necessary that they should suppose a differing manner of the first Origination of Mankind from what now obtains but it is consonant also to their Principles and the grounds of their Supposition that it must be so This is also asserted by those that suppose the Origination of Mankind to be purely natural and according to the constituted Rule of Nature But yet this Supposition though most necessarily true where an Origination ex non genitis is once supposed yet it seems less sutable to the Principles of those Men that assert such a natural Production of Mankind as is by them asserted because they mancipating all Productions and Effects to the Laws of Nature and governing their thoughts and taking their measures barely by it have no reason to think or believe any other Method of Production of Mankind to have at any time been any otherwise than as they see it now to be which as is before shewn was the reason why Aristotle inclined to the Opinion of the Eternity of Humane Generations because Nature is presumed to be consonant to it self and always to have been what once it was 3. But in the Explication of the Cause and Manner of this Origination of Mankind therein they differed very much among themselves This difference consisted principally in two great Considerations 1. In the true stating of the efficient Cause of this Origination of Mankind 2. In the Manner Method and Order of such Origination As to the difference touching the Cause of such Origination and the nature of that Cause thereof 1. Some assigned a bare fortuitous Cause of the first Origination of Mankind as Epicurus and his Explicator Lucretius for although in some places they are driven to assert some determinate Semina of Mankind and perfect Animals to avoid that indefinite and unlimited excursion of Atoms yet they that suppose these Semina do suppose a fortuitous Coalition of Atoms to the
thereof to be the Rule and Guide of his Sentiments though he be drawn by the necessity of Reason to grant and conclude that Man must needs have an Origination and that in another way than now he hath namely ex non genitis yet it is not reasonable for him to conclude that he had this Origination upon a bare natural account as the Insects and sponte orta have because it quite thwarts and crosses all the appearances of Nature and is wholly incongruous to the nature of things as they now stand And a Man that makes such a Conclusion must needs offer violence to his own Reason and Experience and depart from those Laws and Rules of Nature which he makes his Guide and the Compass by which he steers his Judgment touching things and suppose that natural which is wholly different from what it seems And consequently if the reason and nature of things compel a Man to assert that Mankind had their Origination another way than that in which it now is the same reason and nature of things duly and impartially considered must needs evince that it had not its Origination from any either casual or meer natural course of things But by the Power and Will of a most wise intelligent bountiful free and powerful Being who according to his Wisdom and Goodness first gave being to Man yea and all other things secundùm intentionem beneplacitum suae voluntatis And since it is apparently necessary for any Man that will admit the first production of Mankind to be totally in another Method than now and since they that will suppose a natural production of Man at first must necessarily suppose a different production from that which now obtains And since no more is asserted by those that suppose its Origination by the Will Power and Institution of Almighty God this latter Supposition is much more reasonable and explicable than theirs that suppose the first Origination natural yet totally different from what now it is which is the great thing I intend in this long process touching the Origination of Man CAP. VII Touching the Matter of Fact it self whether de facto there hath been any such Origination of Mankind or of any perfect Animal either Natural or Casual THis I propounded as a distinct Inquiry at the first namely Whether or how far forth we have any Evidence of Fact touching any such casual or natural production of perfect Animals but especially of Man But the truth is that this is but an Appendix to the former Chapter for if there be any credible Instance of any such Production all or any reasoning against the possibility thereof is but vain for what hath been naturally or casually may be again But on the other side if in all the Successions of the Ages of the World there hath not been any Experience or credible Instance of any such Production but contrarywise since Mankind was first upon the Earth both Mankind and all perfect Animals have had their being by natural Procreation and Generation by conjunction of Sexes it is a frenzy for any Man that pretends to Reason to suppose a natural possibility of that to be either from a casual or meer natural Cause which never had any Instance of its being or existence in such a manner The World hath now upon the shortest Account lasted above 5600 Years and within the compass of these Ages of the World there have been in many Nations especially among the Egyptians and Grecians Men of great Wisdom and Understanding and singular Industry to search into the History of Nature and many of them have had great opportunities to know very much therein and since their times especially the generality of the wiser and more inquisitive sort of Men being allarmed by the Writings of those that went before them have made it their business to search yet farther and the Learned in all Ages have left the Essays of their Learning Reason and Observation to succeeding Ages and if any Prodigy or considerable Production hath happened in their times they have sent us the News of it But never in all the Ages of the World since those 5600 Years hath there been any credible Relation either of the casual or natural production of a Horse or a Dog much less of a Man or a Woman happening within the compass of that time abating some Poetical Fictions and Fables that have no colour of any Authentick History or Authority And therefore Scaliger well saith Exercit. 193. Si bos aliquando ex putri ortus cur post hominum memoriam ex ejusmodi procreatione nullus extitit and therefore Aristotle the wisest Pagan Philosopher that ever wrote and the strictest observer and searcher into Nature even upon the account of Experience and Reason tells us Lib. 3. de Gen. Animal cap. ult that there never hath been nor can be according to the Rules of Nature any such Production though by way of Supposition that it some times had been he gives us that Hypothesis of it that seemed to him most likely And upon this very account and partly because he was not acquainted with the Truths of God or at least because he was not willing to acknowledge any other Original of things but by Nature he took up the Opinion of his Predecessor Ocellus touching the Eternity of the World and of Mankind in it and so absolved the difficulty of the Manner of the Origination of Mankind by denying it And therefore we have no reason to believe any such thing since we find nothing in any Authentick History of any Man or perfect Animal since the first Being of Man upon the Earth hath been thus produced abating the Fables of Poets touching the production of Men and Women out of Stones by Deucalion and Pyrrha cast over their heads the Serpents Teeth sowed by Cadmus the production of Castor and Pollux out of an Egg and those forlorn Fables of Beregardus of the Green Man found in England in the Den of a Wolf 500 years since the Blew and Red Men of Rabbi Elcha that came out of the Mountains of Armenia And therefore for want of any credible or particular Instances of any such production Caesalpinus supposeth that they are in some unknown Mountains between the Tropicks where the Heat of the Sun is more constant fervent and equable than in Climates remoter from the Equinoctial though he neither doth nor can give any Instance of such a production there or elsewhere To excuse this unexperienced Notion and the difficulty of assigning any Instance thereof they allude these ensuing Apologies 1. That these Productions cannot be but under some notable Conjunction or Position of the Heavenly Bodies which may be accommodate to such Productions which Positions or Conjunctions not happening but after vast and distant Revolutions the Experiment it self can rarely happen and by length of time before the like Revolution return it is forgotten 2. That those Productions could not be but in Matter excellently prepared
of the Earth These are procured every Year whether there be any need of them or not and possibly sometimes in greater numbers than is convenient for this inferior World And although it be true that the Divine Power doth intend or remit or manage these Productions secundùm regimen consilium voluntatis yet it is most evident these Productions are ordinary animal and natural without choice or design in inanimate Nature If therefore these Productions be natural and periodical every Year why should there not be as well productions of Men or perfect Brutes if it were purely natural as well as Frogs and Flies since the former may be of more use especially in many desolate places than always the latter How many great and vast Islands and Continents are there especially in Armenia which have no considerable number of Inhabitants if any at all to people them In Ireland there are great store of Wolves and so there were anciently in England till they were destroyed by the Industry of the Inhabitants in Ireland their increase is by propagation without any new production in England they cannot increase by propagation because here are none How comes it to pass that Nature doth not produce new Wolves in England as well as Frogs Adders Hornets and Wasps If it be said that Nature neglects it because they are noxious as this is to make Nature an intelligent Agent so it answers not the difficulty For why doth she then not destroy the Species in Ireland upon the same account But this is but a vanity Nature as well intends the existence of a Wolf as of a Sheep where the means of its production is equal though Mankind prefer the latter as more useful to him If any thing therefore of this deliberative nature be to be found in the voluntary and intentional Regiments of things of this kind it is to be attributed to the great and supreme Rector of the World who doth work according to Counsel Wisdom and Will Upon the whole matter therefore I conclude That as well by the reason of the thing and upon true natural congruity as also de facto and upon experimental Observations Mankind no nor the perfect Animals are not produced nor producible by any meer natural Cause as at this day or in any Age or Time since their first Creation otherwise than by a natural production which is the Truth asserted by the Great Verulam in his 9 th Century in fine As for the Heathen Opinion which was That upon great Mutations of the World perfect Creatures were first ingendred of Concretion as well as Frogs Worms and Flies and such like we know it to be vain but if any such thing should be admitted discoursing according to Sense it cannot be except you admit a Chaos first and a commixture of Heaven and Earth for the Frame of the World once in order cannot effect it by any Excess or Casualty And as thus neither Casualty nor bare Nature cannot originate Mankind or any perfect Animal ex putri so much less can Art The Chymists tell us that by re-union of separate Principles of Vegetables they will in a Glass revive a Vegetable of the same species at least in figure and effigies this hath been pretended but I could never hear any Man speak it that saw it done But never was any so mad except Paracelsus that could ever pretend to make up a Sensible Being much less the Humane Nature Paracelsus vainly and falsly pretended to the raising of an Homunculus but yet not without the help of those Naturales geniturae utriusque sexus wherein notwithstanding he lyed as he did in many things else which he never could effect notwithstanding his vain boasting of his Skill Upon the whole Matter therefore I conclude That the Origination of Mankind or of the inferior perfect Animals neither was nor could be the Effect of Humane Art or Skill as Paracelsus nor of Chance or Casualty as Epicurus nor of Nature as Cardanus Caesalpinus and some other Recreants in Religion and Philosophy But it was the free powerful and wonderful Work of the God of Nature who made all things by his Power and Wisdom and having made them lodged in them and for them that pre-ordained Law of their Creation and Existence which we commonly call Nature That Nature indeed is the Law or Rule instituted and implanted by the wise and glorious God in things when made but in the first Effection of Mankind God Almighty not Nature was the Author As in my Watch the Law and Rule of its Motion is the Constitution and Position of its Parts by the Hand and Mind of the skilful Artist but the Author or Efficient of my Watch is the Artist himself and not that Motion that is as it were the Law or Rule of the Engin. SECT IV. CAP. I. Concerning the last Opinion attributing the Origination of Mankind to the immediate Power and Will of Almighty God IN the foregoing Section and Chapters I have performed these things 1. I have removed the Supposition of an Eternal Existence of the Humane Species as altogether incredible and indeed impossible 2. I have established consequently this Truth That the Species humana had a beginning and this I have done principally upon natural Evidence of the incompossibility of an Eternal Existence of successive Generations 3. I have considered those Evidences of Fact or Moral Evidences of the Inception of Mankind and removed such as seem more fallible and less concludent and subjoined such as seem to be of greater weight 4. Among these of the latter sort I have considered the general Tradition thereof both of the unlearned and learned part of Mankind wherein among others I have considered the Opinion of those Famous Sects of Philosophers the Platonists Epicureans Peripateticks and Stoicks 5. Though I have made use of their common Suffrage in order to the Proof of the Origination of Mankind yet I have not allowed all their several Notions or Hypothesis touching the Method or Manner of their admitted Origination of the Humane Nature And therefore 6. I having thus established the Thesis in general I have descended to the Examination of the particular Hypotheses taken up by various Philosophers touching the same Origination And those I have distributed into these three Ranks 1. Those that suppose an accidental or casual Production of Mankind which was principally the Opinion of the Epicureans This Opinion I have examined and rejected as vain 2. Those that suppose this Production to be Natural or by the bare Concurrence of Natural Causes as Avicen Cardan and some others which I have likewise examined and rejected as utterly inevident and false 3. There remains therefore the third Opinion that attributes the Origination of Mankind to the immediate Power and Beneplacitum of the Supreme Intellectual Being namely Almighty God and this was the Opinion of divers of the Platonists and Stoicks This Opinion is in the general true and agreeth not only with the Divine
others arising ad plurimum ex ovo 2. In the great variety of their bodily composure the texture of the Bodies of Brutes being far more curious and fuller of variety than others 3. Ad plurimum the animal Faculties of the brutal Soul are far more perfect than those of others their Phantasies and Memories refined they have greater and more lively Images of Reason and more capable of Discipline than either Fowls or Fishes Now touching the production of Animals whether Terrestrial Aquatil or Volatil we may observe that they are in the ordinary course of Nature of two kinds Some which arise among us no otherwise nor in any other manner than ex semine which we usually call perfect Animals and arising by univocal generation others there are that be imperfect arising spontaneously in the Earth Air and Water as Worms Flies and some sort of small Fishes and watry Insects This being premised I shall now set down some Suppositions which seem to me truly to explicate the production of these Animals which are these that follow 1. Although the predominat Matter in the constitution of Fowls and Fishes were Water and in the constitution of Terrestrial Animals were Earth yet that Water nor that Earth were not simply such but were mixed and impregnated with the other Elementary Principles 2. That all the Species of perfect Animals of all kinds were constituted in their several Sexes in the fifth and sixth day of the Creation but yet we must not think that all those kinds which we now see were at first created but only those primitive and radical Species How many sorts of Animals do we now see that yet possibly are not of the same Species but have accidental diversifications as we may observe in the several Shapes and Bodies of Dogs Sheep Pyes Parots which possibly at first were not so diversified some variation of the same Species happen by mixt Coition some by diversity of Climates and other accidents 3. That the first Individuals in their distinction of Sexes were not produced according to those Methods of Nature which they now hold nor ex aliquo praeexistente semine but by the immediate efficiency of Almighty God out of the Matter prepared or designed for their Constitution 4. That they were made in the first instant of their Constitution in the full perfection and complement and stature of their individual and specifical nature and did not gradually increase according to the procedure of animal augmentation at this day and the reason is because those gradual augmentations arise from the Seminal Principle which gradually expands it self to the full growth but here they arose not from any such Seminal Principle but the Hen was before the Egg. 5. There was no mean portion of Time between their Formation and Animation but both were together they were living Beings and living Souls and living Creatures as soon as they were formed 6. That consequently the Formation of the Body of these Animals was not as now it is by the Formative Power of the Soul which must needs be gradual and successive as we see it is and must be at this day in all natural Generations but the Formation and Information of them was by virtue of the immediate Fiat Determination or Ordination of the Divine Will 7. That in their Origination the Species of these Animals were determined neither from the Matter nor from the universal Cause the Celestial Heat but by the Divine Intention and Ordination 8. That by the same Divine Ordination and Intention the Faculties specifically belonging to every Individual were annexed and alligated to it especially the power conficiendi semen prolificum speciei propagandae ex mutua utriusque fexus conjunctione 9. That although by the Divine Power and Ordination all these perfect Animals did arise from the Earth yet that Prolifick Power of propagating of them was never delegated or committed to the Earth or any 〈◊〉 other Casual or Natural Cause but only to the Seminal Nature derived from their Individuals and disposed according to that Law of propagation of their kind alligated as before to their specifical and individual nature And therefore it its perfectly impossible that any of these perfect Animals can be casually or naturally or accidentally produced by any Preparation of Matter or by any Influence of the Heavens without the miraculous interposition of Almighty Power because the Earth or those Influences have not this power concredited to them but their production is irresistibly alligated to the Semen innatum and conjunction of Sexes the Earth can as naturally produce a Sun or a Star as it can a Man or a perfect Animal 10. Whether those imperfect or equivocal Animals were created or no it is not altogether clear possibly some might be then produced whose kinds were likewise producible spontaneously after but it seems beyond contradiction that all were not 11. As by virtue of that general Commission or intrinsick Prolifick Power given to the Earth to produce spontaneous Herbs as Grass c. it doth naturally produce such Herbs so by virtue of that common Commission given by Almighty God to the Earth and Water and to that Spirit of Nature diffused in it it doth naturally produce those equivocal insect Animals which arise out of them The same Law of the Creator that hath eternally excluded or rather not committed to the Earth or Water the power of producing perfect Animals hath given and committed to them by concurrence of that Vital Heat of the Sun and the common Spirit of Nature residing in them a Productive Power of some equivocal insect Animals in Matter fitly prepared Touching therefore the Origination of Insects I shall declare my thoughts as followeth 1. That by virtue of the Divine Fiat the Earth at first did produce some Individuals of several kinds which is imported under the words Every creeping thing after its kind 2. That as I have before shewn the greatest part of the Insects that are commonly produced and seem to be spontaneous productions are yet the univocal and seminal productions of Insects of the same kind 3. That yet it is a certain Truth that some Insects are and have an Origination since the first Creation without any formal univocal seminal production some out of Putrefaction some out of Vegetables some by very strength and fracedo of the Earth and Waters quickned by the vigorous Heat of the Sun which infuseth into some Particles of Matter well prepared and digested a kind of Vital and Seminal Principle Some have thought the very Sun and Earth are endued with a Vital yea and with a kind of Sensitive Nature and thereby enabled as it were to spin some prepared Matter into vital and sentient Semina for those insect Animals But we shall not need to trouble our selves with that incertain Speculation we are sure that the greatest part of the Superficies of the Earth being daily and hourly impregnated with the corrupted and dissolved Particles of Vegetables and Animals is
of Mankind was by the same wise and provident Power and that as the Humane Nature is accommodated to it self so this World is accommodated to the exigence and convenience of the Humane Nature When I have considered the admirable Congruity of all the Parts of Christian Religion and how it corresponds and is adapted to the convenience and condition of the Humane Nature and how those antecedent Prophesies Promises and Directions of Religion in the Old Testament bear an admirable congruity to the Model of Religion in the New Testament notwithstanding the vast distances between the manifestations of them and how all the Scheme of Divine Dispensations from the beginning of the World bear an admirable accommodation each to other and to the Evangelical Doctrin it gives us a strong Moral Evidence that the same one God was the Author of this Religion that although there seem a diversity and variety in the Administrations yet when I look upon them together compare the congruity of what goes before to what follows it seems one most beautiful Piece fitted and accommodated in every part to the other and hereby I satisfie my self that it is the true Religion that it is all of one piece and one common Author of it namely the God of Truth And so when I consider the Humane Nature and the admirable accommodation that one part thereof hath to the other and also look upon the Mundus aspectabilis especially this lower World wherewith we are by reason of its vicinity best acquainted and observe how admirably the same is accommodated to the Animal Life of Man And although the Parts thereof are distinct various distant yet there are drawn from it Lines of Accommodations and Communication to the Use of the Humane Nature so exactly and appositly that I cannot choose but acknowledge one common Author both of the greater and lesser World and such an Author as made and disposed all things by the highest Wisdom and the wisest Choice If there had been divers Authors of the greater and lesser World there could never have been an accommodation of things so disparate one to another unless both had acted in subordination to one common third Being or by one common Counsel Again it was not possible that Casualty or Chance could have accommodated things of various kinds one to another If Chance could make a Beam of a House and could have made Tenents at either end yet it is not possible to conceive that Chance could cast it to be just of a fit length to answer the congruity of its contignation to another piece of Timber or fit the Mortises of other pieces of Timber to those Tenents or fit the particles and scantlets to answer just one another this must of necessity require a Workman that works by Understanding Choice and Appropriation because it requires accommodation of several things of several kinds to one End by several Means Thus therefore when I see the admirable accommodation of Humane Nature to its own existence and conveniences the admirable accommodation therein of things of different natures one to another as Organs to Faculties Sinews to Bones Nerves to Muscles Spirits to Nerves when I see the excellent accommodation of this lower World especially to the Humane Nature although they are in themselves several and heterogeneal I cannot without violence to my own Observation Experience and Reason I say I cannot but attribute the first Formation of Humane Nature yea and of all the Universe to one most Wise Intelligent Powerful Being who did all things according to the counsel of his Will after the most wise and excellent Idea of his unsearchable Understanding CAP. V. Concerning the Nature of that Intelligent Agent that first formed the Humane Nature and some Objections against the Inferences above made and their Answer HAving in the foregoing Chapter reduced the Origination of Mankind to an Intelligent Efficient effecting it per modum efficientis voluntarii per intentionem I shall in this place inquire what kind of Intelligent Efficient this was for among Intelligent Beings there is one Primum the Glorious God whose Understanding Power and Goodness is infinite there are also acknowledged by the Heathen Intelligentiae à primo those which Aristotle calls by the Name of Separate Intelligences Plato calls Dii ex Diis and we commonly call Angels very glorious and powerful Creatures which Plato takes into the Business of the Creation of Man as to the Corporeal Frame And it seems to be that the Effection of the Humane Nature in any part thereof is not attributable to the Angels neither as instrumental much less as principal Causes 1. As to the Soul of Man it seems beyond dispute for that was a created Substance and Creation of any new Substance being an infinite Motion is not within the power of any Finite Nature the Pretence therefore rests only as to the Corporeal or at least Animal Nature 2. Therefore I say that the Formation of the Bodily much less the Animal Nature of Man in order to the reception of the Soul was neither coordinately nor instrumentally the Work of Angels And the Reasons that seem sufficient to make out this Truth are these 1. It seems utterly above an Angelical Power to organize the Body of the Humane Nature for though it is true that in the established way of Generation the Parents who are inferior in nature to Angels do organize the Body at least mediante semine yet that is done in the virtue and strength of the Ordination and Institution of Almighty God So that as well Man as the Semen genitale are the Instruments deputed by Almighty God in virtue of his Supreme Power to propagate the Humane Nature And therefore since the first Formation of the Humane Nature was a new Formation not according to the Laws established after in Nature the first Production of Mankind was immediately by the Almighty Power and not by the Power of any subordinate Intelligence 2. Again it could not possibly be but that the Humane Nature must be completed in an instant For how is it conceptible that first there should be Corpus formatum with all the Organs Vessels Blood and Spirits disposed and ordered in their several Cells and Motions unless Man had been then at the same time animated as well as organized For the outward shape or stature of a Man is no more a fit Receptacle of an Animal much less of a Rational Life than a Statue of Wax or Stone The same Hand therefore that animated formed and fashioned also the same Humane Body in the same moment by virtue of the Volition Determination or Faciamus of the Divine Will 3. As we have no manner of evidence of the Angelical concurrence or instrumentality in the Formation of Man or of any of the lower Animals so there is no necessity at all of such a Supposition And we are not to multiply Causes without necessity for as the bare determination of the most powerful and efficacious
Will of God was sufficient to bring Being out of Nothing so the like determination of the same Will was sufficient to form Man out of the Dust of the ground without taking in a subordination or instrumentality of Angels Again if we should suppose the cooperation of Angels in the Formation of the Body of Man it must be in the strength virtue and efficiency of the first Cause which as it gave the Angels their Being so it must give them the efficacy power and virtue to be instrumental in this Formation which as we have no warrant so we have no probable reason to admit since the first Cause was all sufficient for this Effect without their assistance 4. The admirable Structure of the Body of Man the accommodation of it to Faculties the furnishing of it with Faculties accommodate to it even as its Animal Nature though we take not in the reasonable intellectual Soul imports in it a Wisdom Power and Efficacy above the Power of any created Nature to effect If it should be in the power of an Angel by applying actives to passives to produce an Insect nay a perfect Animal yet the Constitution and Frame of so much of that in Man that concerns his Animal Nature were too high a Copy for an Angelick Nature to write unless thereunto deputed and commissionated by the Infinite God which Commission we no where find and I am very sure a bare Naturalist will not suppose 5. Again there is that necessity of a suitableness and accommodation of the Parts of the Body to the Faculties of the Soul and è converso that any the least disproportion or disaccommodation of one to the other would spoil the whole Work and make them utterly unserviceable and unapplicable one to the other It was therefore of absolute necessity that the same skill and dexterity that was requisite to the first Formation of the Soul must be used and employed in the Formation of the Body and if an Angel were unequal to the making up and ordering of the Soul he could never be sufficient to make a fit organical Body exactly suitable to it Upon the whole matter I therefore conclude That not only the Soul but the very Animal Nature in Man and not only that but the Formation and Destination of his Bodily Frame was not only the Work of an Intelligent Being but of the Infinite and Omnipotent Intelligent Being who in the same moment formed his Body and organized it with immediate Organs and Instruments of Life and Sense and created his Intellectual Nature and united it to him whereby Man became a living Soul And this as the necessary Evidence of Reason doth first drive us to acknowledge a Being or first Formation of the Humane Nature ex non genitis and secondly to acknowledge that this first Formation of the Nature of Man was not by Chance Casualty or a meer Syntax of Natural Causes but by an Intelligent Efficient so we are upon the very same and a greater Evidence of Reason driven to acknowledge that Intelligent Efficient to be the Great and Wise and Glorious God no other Cause imaginable being par tali negotio And indeed if once we can bring Men but to this one Concession That the original Efficient of the Humane Nature was an Intelligent Being any Man pretending to Reason will with much less difficulty admit that Efficient to be the Almighty God than any other invisible intelligent Efficient which we usually call Angels or Intelligences And the Reasons are these 1. Because though we that are acquainted with the Divine Truths do as really believe that there are Angels as well as Men yet the Natural Evidences of the Existence of Almighty God are far more evident and convincing even upon a Rational and Natural account than that there are Angels for the former being a Truth of the highest moment and importance to be believed by all hath a proportionable weight and clearness of evidence even to Natural Light more and greater than any other Truth And hence among the Jews the Sect of the Sadduces believed the Existence of God yet denied or doubted the Existence of Angels or separated Intelligences 2. Because the very Supposition of an Angelical Nature doth necessarily suppose the Existence of a Supreme Being from whom they derive their Existences 3. Because the great occasion of Infidelity in relation to Existence of Almighty God is that sensual Men are not willing to believe any thing whereby they have not a sufficient Evidence as they think to their Sense The Notion of a Spiritual and Immaterial Being is a thing that they cannot digest because they cannot see or by any Sense perceive it nor easily form to themselves a Notion of it He therefore that can so far master the stubborness of Sense as to believe such a Spriritual Intelligent Being as an Angel hath conquered that difficulty that most incumbers his belief of a God and we that can but suppose or admit the former cannot long doubt of the latter He therefore that can once bring his thoughts to carry the first Origination of Mankind to the efficiency of an Angel must needs in a little time see a greater evidence not only to believe a Supreme Deity but to attribute the Origination of Mankind and of the goodly Frame of the Universe to the Supreme Being as necessarily best fitted with Power Wisdom and Goodness to accomplish so great a Work and that without the help or intervention of Angels or created Intelligences who must needs derive their Being Power and Activity from him There remains two or three Objections against the force of the Consequence of the Existence of Almighty God and his Efficiencies in the production of Mankind in their first Individuals which I shall propound and answer 1. Object What need there be laid so great a stress upon the Primitive Formation of Man as that it could not be done but by the Power and Wisdom of an Almighty Intelligent Being since every day's experience lets us see that by the mixture and coition of Man and Woman Et ex semine ab utroque deciso in utèro muliebri per spatium decem mensium ad plurimum producitur hujusmodi natura humana quem tot elogiis magnificamus that which we every day see to be an effect of finite Creatures in the daily production of Individuals of Humane Nature Why must we needs call in no less than the Wisdom and Power of God himself to be the immediate Efficient of the first Formation of the Individuals of that nature which we see every day produced by the common efficacy of Nature and efficiency of the Parents Vel ad minus seminis utriusque sexus in utero foemineo conclusi In Answer hereunto I shall not at this time or in this place enter into the dispute how far the Divine Efficiency concurrs immediately in the ordinary Generation of Mankind nor how far the entire Humane Nature as well his Rational Soul as his
If a Flea or a Fly hath as exact a symmetry organization and diversity of Faculties as an Ostridge or an Elephant the curiosity of the Art is more admirable by the smalness of the Volume And yet these do every day arise spontaneously and it may be propagate their kind after their spontaneous production or it may be have only the existence of a Day neither is it reasonable to think that all these Insects thus spontaneously arising were first produced in the fifth or sixth Day or that the Semina formata of every Worm or Fly that hath arisen this day or yesterday were created in the first Creation of things and lay concealed and unactive for above 5000 Years and yet in these sponte nata we see no necessity nor evidence of any immediate Divine Efficiency for some are every day produced ex putri sine praeexistente semine Why therefore is so much weight laid upon the first Origination of Man or perfect Animals as if it must needs require the immediate interposition of Almighty God when we are content to referr the Origination of Works possibly of as wonderful a fabrication as many at least of perfect Animals to a lower Cause I Answer It is true that there is a great curiosity in the Texture and Faculty of Insects and that there are very many that arise not ex praeexistente semine but either of Vegetables or of that which we usually call Materia putris and it will be too hard a task for any to maintain that all Insects do arise of univocal Seeds derived from their own Species or that all the Species of Insects were created the fifth or sixth Day neither shall I with Scotus affirm that the Forms of such Insects are derived from Heaven and diffused into Matter whereby they mould themselves into their distinct Existences But as the God of Nature gave a seminal prolifick power to perfect Animals and unto Men and did bind and connex this Method of their future Generations unto their Nature without which though they had been constituted otherwise in a most perfect Constitution they could never have multiplied their kind So as to the production of many Insects Almighty God hath given such a prolifick nature to the Earth and Waters in a certain due mixture irradiated and influenced by the Sun to produce divers sorts of Insects by virtue of these two great Benedictions given to the Water Gen. 1.20 and to the Earth Gen. 1.24 as the two great prevailing Elements in spontaneous generations and as by virtue of the Divine Benedictions given to Animals and Men Increase and multiply and replenish the Earth and the Waters Gen. 1.22 28. so by virtue of that first Command to the Waters and Earth Let the Waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind and the cattel and creeping thing and the beast after his kind The spontaneous propagation of Insects by the Earth is by virtue of this Command as effectual and in its kind as natural by virtue of this established Law as the production of Animals per mixtionem though not so perfect And from the Efficacy of this Divine Institution it comes to pass 1. That their Textures and Faculties are curiously disposed for the Elementary Nature in conjunction with the Heavenly Influence doth produce them as Instruments and in the virtue of the first Institution of the Glorious God 2. That though there is a great variety and multiplicity in their Species yet they are not infinite but determinate 3. That according to the variety of Climates and various disposition of Matter Insects are variously produced this Climate produceth that Insect that another doth not and this Herb this Wood this Flesh that Insect that another doth not and the same is observed in Herbs and spontaneous Plants And hence it is that all the Art in the World can never make the meanest Insect out of any other Matter or any otherwise disposed or any otherwise irradiated than what would of it self naturally produce an Insect of that kind But this shall be farther illustrated in the Answer to the next Objection But although it be true that these little Insects discover the wonderful Wisdom and Power of God in their vicarious productions by the commissionated and influenced Elementary Nature yet they come exceedingly short of those perfect Animals who have a nobler and more elaborate production by univocal generation and infinitely short of the excellency of the Humane Nature And therefore there is no parity of Instance in the first formation of an Insect ex non genitis and the first formation of the Humane Nature Every Year gives us Instances of a new spontaneous production of Insects and this by virtue of that primitive commission and vital vigour thereby concredited to the Earth and Waters irradiated by the Sun But never any Age gives so much as a shadow of an Instance of the production of any perfect Animals much less of Man by any such spontaneous Method and that the latter gives a greater and more eminent Specimen of a Divine Power in its primitive formation than the former in its spontaneous production 3. Object It is evident that the malignant Spirits have power to produce Insects as appears by the Magicians producing of Frogs in Aegypt by their Enchantments Exod. 8.7 and therefore the resolution of the spontaneous productions of Insects into the Energy of the Divine Command seems unwarrantable And if he may produce those which are really endued with an Animal Life why not those Animals that have their ordinary production by univocal Generation and why not also Mankind And the Satyrs and Fauns whereof some of the Ancients write seems to be productions out of the common road of humane production I Answer 1. Touching the supposed Fauns and Satyrs they were either Fables or Illusions and no credit to be given to the Histories of them 2. Admitting it should be within the power of good or evil Angels to produce Insects yet it would be no consequence from thence to their efficacy of producing perfect Animals much less Humane Nature which is in another superior rank of Being above the noblest Brutes and excessively above the rank of Insects We might as well conclude because a Man can make a Candle he can make a Star But 3. As to the efficacy of good or evil Angels in effecting of Insects 1. It is of no great difficulty to suppose that good or evil Angels may bring or transport the Semina or Spawn of Insects to other places and possibly thus it might be done by the Egyptian Magicians 2. It is very true that the Angelick Natures have a very great knowledge of Natural Efficacies and Virtues and a great power of transporting uniting and applying Actives to Passives whatsoever therefore is effectible by the most congruous and efficacious application of Actives to Passives is effectible by them And since there are
to these Faculties suitable Objects answering those Vital Faculties to Sensitive Nature his Beneficence hath communicated those Faculties of Sense as well as Life and then communicates to them a farther efflux of his Beneficence by communicating to them the Objects grateful and useful both for Life and Sense thus his Beneficence is communicated to them per modum boni sensibilis but to Man his Beneficence is communicated not only per modum boni vitalis sensibilis which yet he enjoys as other Creatures but per modum boni intellectualis voliti First by giving him those nobler Faculties of Intellection and Will and then by communicating to those Faculties Objects suitable to those Powers or Faculties namely Intellectual Truths to his Understanding and Moral Rational and Divine Good to his Will and among all those vera bona that are communicated to these Faculties by the Divine Beneficence God himself his Goodness Truth Will Perfection are the chiefest verum and the chiefest bonum So that no Creature below Man is capable formally to know to love to enjoy God as the chiefest Truth and chiefest Good And this also seems to be another End of the Creation of Man that being made a Creature endued with Understanding and Will he might be receptive of the Effluxus of the Divine Beneficence in a nobler way than the other visible Creatures of this lower World 3. As under the first Consideration Man is more eminently an objective manifestation of the Divine Glory than other visible Creatures and as under the second Consideration Man is more receptive of the Divine Beneficence than other visible Creatures So upon farther examination we shall find that Man was made in a capacity to be a more active Instrument to serve and glorifie his Maker than other visible Creatures which was another End of his Creation specifically different from the End of other visible created Natures which will appear by the farther consideration of those two great distinguishing Faculties his Understanding and Will I shall not go about to make a large Description of those Faculties or the Operation but only observe so much touching them as may reasonably evidence the preference that Man hath therein above the inferior Animals and the Inferences that arise thereupon touching the End of Almighty God in the making Man And first for the Intellective Faculty As in Animals the Faculties of Sense internal and external especially the Visive Faculty placeth Animals in a rank of Being far above the insensible Creatures and accommodates them exquisitly to a Life of Sense so the Intellective Faculty placed in Man puts him into a rank of Beings far above the most perfect Animals and accommodates the Humane Nature to an Intellectual Life And the preheminence of this Faculty above the Faculty of Sense will appear if we consider the Operations thereof I shall instance but in two namely intellective Perception and intellective Ratiocination or Discourse 1. For the intellective Perception the Understanding perceives many things which are not perceptible by Sense or sensitive Phantasie or Imagination for Instance it hath the perception of Substance or Being abstracted from all sensible qualities it hath the perception of the truth or falsity of a Proposition it perceives the Conclusion and the Evidence thereof in the Premises and many more intellectual Objects which never did nor can fall under the perception of Sense or Imagination And although we cannot clearly understand all the Operations of the Brutal Phantasie because we are distinct from them and they have not the instrument of Speech intelligible by us to express their perceptions yet we may know that this is true by our selves for we may perceive that we do perceive these Objects not to be perceptible by our Faculties of Sense but by some other Faculties distinct from that of Sense or sensitive Imagination Again in those Objects that are objective to Sense the intellective perception discovers somewhat that is apparently unperceived by the Sense or sensitive Imagination for Instance the Heavenly Bodies the Sun Moon and Stars are equally objected to the view as well of Animals as Men but yet by the help of intellective perception Man perceives that in those Objects which neither the Brutes no nor Man himself by the bare perception of Sense or sensitive Phantasie doth not cannot perceive The perception of Sense gives us the Sun no bigger than a Bushel and the Stars than a Candle cannot discover an inequality of their distance from us judgeth the body of the Moon to have as many changes in figure and quality as it hath various Phases or Appearances the Sun really to set the Limb of the Heavenly Horizon to be contiguous to the Earth but the intellective perception finds the quantity of the Sun and Stars bigger than the Earth and by the Parallaxes and Eclipses finds the Stars more distant from us than the Sun and that than the Moon perceives distinctly their several Motions Orders Positions and makes distinctions and computations of Time and Duration by them and over-rules and confutes the perception of Sense and Imagination by another kind of perception above the perception of Sense 2. Touching Ratiocination or Discursive Operation the precedure thereof is above the reach of the sensitive Phantasie though this seems to carry some weak and imperfect Image thereof For Instance sometimes not only the media discursûs and the processus discursivus are out of the reach of Sense but the very subjectum discursûs is imperceptible to Sense such are that processus discursivus of the Understanding touching complexed Notions or Universals touching the abstracted Notions of Being Substance Entity and transcendents in Metaphysicks such are also the discursives of moral good and evil just unjust which are no more perceptible to Sense than Colour is to the Ear and yet touching these Subjects the Intellect forms Discourses deduceth Illations and Conclusions Again in matters Mathematical and Physicall though in the concrete and in their subjects they are objective to Sense yet the media and processus discursivus whereby the Understanding makes Conclusions and Inferences and Illations touching them are of a range and kind quite above the range of Sense or sensitive Imagination thus upon certain data or postulata in Geometry the Intellect forms Conclusions which though Mechanically and Experimentally true yet are elicited by a Processus discursivus quite above the activity of sensitive Phantasie And though matters Physical Bodies and Tangible qualities and their several powers manner of production and divers other things relating to them are sensible Objects yet the Intellect useth a Processus discursivus whereby it investigates Truths and draws Conclusions that are quite above the scantlet of Sense or Phantasie ascending up from the Effect to the next Cause and thence to the next and thence gradually to the First Cause of all things So that though oftentimes the foot or root of the Discursus intellectivus be bottomed in some sensible Object perchance
of no great moment and importance yet by this Processus discursivus the Intellect riseth higher and higher and quickly taketh a flight out of the ken or reach of Sense in Consequences Discursive Inferences and Conclusions and follows the Chain higher and higher till it come to the uppermost ring thereof fastened as the Poets wittily feign to the Throne of Almighty God And thus far of these two excellent Operations of this Intellective Faculty namely Intellective Perception and Discourse But besides these operations and active exertions of the Understanding there seems to be two kinds of accommodations to it which are admirably serviceable to the improving and perfecting of its operations the one internal the other external The internal is this As we find in the Sensitive Nature certain congenit or connatural Instincts whereby they are secretly and powerfully biassed and inclined and carried to their proper sensitive Good either individual or specifical such as are their inclination to that Food that is suitable for them their Appetitus procreativus their care for their Young and infinite more so there seems to be lodged in the Intellective and Rational Nature certain Rudiments and Tendencies whereby they are carried to the good of an intellectual Life certain communes notitiae lodged and connaturally implanted in the Intellect which serve as a kind of connatural inward stock for the Understanding to work upon and also as a secret biass and inclination to carry him on to the good of an intellectual Life Such as are a secret inscribed Notion that there is a God that he is to be worshipped honoured served and obeyed and certain inscribed common Notices of Moral Good and Evil that make him propense to Justice Honesty to do as he would be done by and the like And although evil Customs and the prevalence of the sensual Appetite may in a great measure weaken and impair those common Notions when they come to particulars and particular applications yet it is evident in all Ages and Nations by a kind of connaturality Mankind hath ever retained these two great and noble and discriminating denominations namely first to be Animal religiosum arising from the energy of those infinitae notitiae relating to God and to be Animal politicum sociale arising from these insitae notitiae of Moral Good and Evil and those connatural insitions of Morality implanted in his nature which are the great and chief support of humane Society The external accommodation of the Intellective Faculty is that admirable Wisdom and Goodness of God that hath so ordered things that first of all Mankind is accommodated with those Faculties of Sense especially that of Sight whereby he may perceive all sensible Objects that arrive within the distance of their activity And secondly in that he hath exposed a very considerable part of his admirable Works to that Sense of his Had Man been born blind though his intellective Faculty had been excellent yet that Faculty had been very unactive in this Life at least because the Basis or Root of much of its operation depends upon the reception of sensible visible Objects and had he been endued with Sense yet if the excellent Works of God had been at so great a distance that they had not been perceptible by him he had wanted a great contribution to the perfecting of his intellective Faculty The Divine Wisdom and Goodness hath so ordered things that he hath not only that receptive Faculty of Sense especially that of Sight but hath also presented to his view a great and considerable part of the Universe with great advantage beauty and clearness the inferior or Elementary World with all its variety and store and the prospect of the goodly Celestial Bodies their positions motions beauty order and excellence And this goodly Apparatus of the Universe thus objectively derived to his Understanding furnisheth it with an outward Stock upon which it may trade and exercise it self with great delight and advantage viz. 1. The knowledge of things Physical and Natural the State Order and Oeconomy of Nature the Virtue Efficacy and Energy of Second Causes and their Effects herein he hath a vast extent of the Inferior and Celestial World to exercise himself in and certainly this bare knowledge is a thing of excellent improvement and contentation of the Intellect and far exceeds all sensible Delights in so much that many wise and knowing Men have chosen to sequester themselves from the common Employments and Contents of Mankind for the sake of a Life of Philosophical Speculation But this is the lowest part of that knowledge that is hereby acquirable there is yet a more noble and excellent knowledge acquirable hereby that advanceth and improveth the Intellectual Nature to a very great and high perfection 2. Therefore that knowledge that is hereby acquirable is the knowledge of the Glorious God the first Creator and great Conserver and Governour of all things I have before said that the Goodness of God had lodged an inward Stock in Man whereby to improve his Intellectual Nature namely those communes notitiae of the Existence of a God and that he is to be worshipped served and obeyed the common Root of Religion in Mankind these are in him like the first Rudiments of the Foetus the Embryo of Religion or the Egg as it were out of which it is hatched The contemplation of the admirable Works in the World doth exceedingly fortifie and improve those first Rudiments of Natural Religion digests them into their just formation In these we see and admire and glorifie the Power the Wisdom the Goodness the Presence of God from these we learn his Unity his Eternity his Immensity his Providence his Justice his Mercy And as thus ascendendo we learn to know God by his Works so again descendendo we learn our duty to praise glorifie magnifie honour love fear and obey him to depend upon him to delight in him and by this means Natural Religion arrives to a great advance and the Intellectual Nature mightily perfected and improved and Man becomes not only a passive a receptive Instrument to glorifie his Maker but an active Instrument of his Glory which was as is premised another End of Almighty God in the making of Man namely That he might be an active intellectual Instrument to glorifie God and in glorifying him the more fully to enjoy him and his favour love and goodness 4. As thus the Intellective Faculties render Man fit actively to serve and glorifie his Maker so also that other Faculty of his Will contributes also in like manner to render him fit for that employment We shall for this purpose only consider these two Properties in the Will 1. The liberty of the Will whereby it hath power to determin it self and is free from all force and coaction and upon this account namely that Man is not only an intellectual Creature but also hath liberty of Will he becomes a Creature properly susceptive of a Law and capable of Rewards