is kept by all natural Beings but because they keep such a course as carries an intrinsick reason for it in their very nature and being and such a course as they must keep and can keep no other If you dig up a Tree and cut off the root 't will certainly die This we are assured of not only from the fact of it that we continually find it so but our reason necessarily tells us it must be so and can be no otherwise And therefore whatever is done above all natural power and contrary to all natural operation must needs silence our sense and our reason and all parts of the world and forceth us to recurre to somewhat above the world that must be Lord over it and the great disposer of it Two things seem to make it plain that the whole world and all the ability that nature has can never produce a miracle First Nature can never go beyond it self nor do any thing by a power above it self The bounds of every thing is its own being 'T is an absurdity to say a thing should out-do it self or that the effect should be greater than the cause If any thing be done that is beyond all the power of nature that could never be caused by nature To cure a man that is sick of a disease or to raise a man that is a natural creeple to a perfect soundness by speaking a word to him is beyond all the confines of natural power and therefore cannot be an effect arising from any natural cause there being no such thing potentially in nature it self nor any relative operation natural in such a way Secondly Nature cannot contradict it self because its productions are suitable to and inherent in its own being Nature is as a free agent so a necessary agent The fire cannot be cold nor the water hot Throw men into the fire and if they be not burnt they must be beholding to somewhat above nature for nature will destroy them If a man should walk in the air and not fall and walk upon the waters and not sink it must be by a help supernatural For nature should otherwise oppose it self which it cannot do And to say its effects should cease is all one as to say nature it self in its own being should cease and so the world should cease Whatsoever can go beyond the power of nature and contradict the power of nature must needs be above the power of nature and what is so must needs be above the power of the world And this doth two waies evidently overthrow the vain supposition of the worlds eternity For First If there be any power above it it cannot be eternal unless you will make two eternals one above another which is absurd and perfectly impossible And Secondly If ever the course of nature and this world were stopped and crossed then I am sure the world in the course of it cannot have been eternal neither Two things are usually objected against miracles First The matter of fact is denied And Secondly The Atheist will tell you that those things we call miracles were not really and truly so but were extraordinary and unusual things brought about by some secret natural cause though not known nor perceived For the first of these Objections I will handle it distinctly by it self To the second I answer Every thing in the world was at the first a miracle nor could any reason be given of it Which is a plain proof that God made the world and that it did not make it self There was no other cause of all originals in nature and of the first things that were in the world but that God pleased to make them No doubt at the first a man might have called the Sun or a Rainbow a great miracle Nor could they ever find out any natural cause of them nor of the first being of any thing The whole world was a stupendious miracle and without any reason to be given for it but what lay in the makers breast To me therefore that saying of Aristotle seems wise and excellent That it is absurd for any man to go about to define first principles because they cannot be defined But since the world is extant and our constant beholding of it and converse with it makes it no more a miracle to us than we are to our selves and since we find that certainty and fixation in the worlds first make that there is no more since made but a continuance of the world in a natural orderly course and succession and that these first originals do by a certain necessary law of their own being and existence propagate the world in a way not only obvious to our senses but demonstratively to our reason and that such beings cannot cease to operate as they do nor cannot operate otherwise than they do we come rightly to call that a miracle which is neither one of the worlds original pieces or first principles nor any thing that can naturally be deduced from any or all of them in the regular way of the worlds existing In answering therefore this objection I will first admit all that can be admitted to the Atheist's advantage which is that whensoever we see any thing come to pass that we are not able to give an account how in a natural and in the ordinary course of the world it should come to pass and though we have not seen it come to pass before yet in that case if there be a possibility of a remote and occult cause that we do not at the present see nor comprehend there is no absolute necessity to impose that as a miracle upon any man because he will say 't is more reasonable to believe it to come from somewhat he doth see if there be a possibility of it than to come from what he doth not see But when the case falls out to be that a thing is brought to pass to which we are not only unable to assign a natural cause but such a thing as is not possible to have a natural cause which is necessarily to be concluded when it either overthrows the course of nature and goes directly counter to it or is evidently above it and superiour to it in such a case mankind must submit to it as a miracle and go to somewhat superiour to nature to find the cause of it There can never be a natural cause assigned for raising a dead man to life 't is both above nature and against nature For any man to be able in one moment to speak all languages is a thing above nature and naturally impossible for we see and know that men must arrive at the knowledge of any language by industry and use and cannot attain it otherwise In such cases as we see no visible natural cause for such things so 't is utterly impossible there should be any If a man should vanish out of our sight and in two or three minutes convey himself a hundred miles off as we could give
reasons must needs know by that act that he is he needs no other demonstration of his own Being to himself and with great ease may he inform himself of the actual existence of all other things But the souls enquiry will still reach further the proper food of craving reason is a reasonable knowledge of things such as the subject is capable of Reason travels to reduce things First To the truth of their existence Secondly To the reason of their existence And Thirdly To the right manner and method of their existence in their relation to and dependance upon each other The whole truth of no existence can be known so as reason may justly challenge a knowledge of it without knowing the cause of it or else knowing there was no cause of it because the great and supreme distinction of Beings lies in the absoluteness and dependency of them To know any visible existence to be without cause is to know it to be that which no man can rationally know any visible Being to be which is to know it to be eternal And if it have some first cause without some reasonable account of that to our selves we can never tell from what nor from whence to date it nor how to answer many other questions reason will ask about it Things are never in their proper station till they are made a right object for knowledge and reduced to a due correspondence to reason Then they bear their proportion to the great and universal harmony 'T is reason puts the world into regular motion sorts each thing places causes before effects finds out causes by effects and necessary conclusions from their own natural premises and still pursues things to the highest and supremest cause of all Search the world without this Candle and it will appear nothing but a heap of confusion God seems to have placed this sublime faculty in man for two ends First That a man might rule himself and the rest of the world in such a manner and method as might carry some proportion to the eternal reason above of which mans rational soul is an image And Secondly That by the use of it he might ascend to the knowledge of his Maker and have every thing he saw as well as himself made a step to help him upward The ground of all our homage to God lies in the knowledge we have of a Supreme Being before us and above us Without that 't is impossible ever to introduce Religion into the world Two things seem to be but a reasonable collection from the natural composition of mankind and the pure issues of a reasoning soul abstractly taken from all helps of revelation First That 't is not possible for that noble and impartial faculty of mans reason to be true to it self in its own actings and to arrive at its own necessary satisfaction about it self and all other Beings without a strict inquiry into the primary reason and first cause of the Being of it self and all other things And Secondly That the single exercise of natural reason in such an inquiry will safely conduct a man to the conclusion of some first cause and some one Supreme Being the cause of all Beings which we call God To prove there Positions undoubted truths shall be the first endeavour of the following discourse If we can happily bring mankind to God by this high-way of their reason and light a man to his Creator by this Lamp that continually burns in his own soul we shall then prove Atheism a very lye and the Atheist a most unnatural lyer towards his God and towards himself I shall proceed First affirmatively and positively and then negatively in giving a full answer to all the Atheist has to object Consider in the first place 't is not a thing within any compass of supposition that mankind in the use of their reason should fail to fix upon that as their first and great enquiry how things came to be in the posture they are now found and what original they owe themselves to That faculty that reasons about causes and effects must needs ascend by that method to the highest cause of all things No satisfying knowledge which the soul still labours after can be had of any thing unless we can trace it to its original without that it proves but a vexation to reason and reproaches it with ignorance in that grand fundamental in the knowledge of things which must give the truest inlet to all the subsequent comprehension we can have of them That reason in its operation must needs move this way will appear by these several considerations First There is no more obvious enquiry for whatever we see than to know whether it have a beginning or were without a begining If it had beginning when it did begin and how it came first to exist in the world and from whence it had the donation of it self No mans reason can acquiesce without some answer to this Secondly Finding out the original of things determines the property of them and so fills the mind with a satisfaction in that great concern reason has about every thing to know whose it is Whatever was the first cause of a thing and the original maker of it must needs have the property of it 'T is impossible there should be a claim made with so much justice to any thing as by the first maker of it 'T is not possible to disseize him of his right to a thing that gave it its existence and caused it first to be He that first produced a Being had that Being first entirely existing in himself and in his own power Whatever is made can have no property in it self The right must needs be in the maker Here reason sits down satisfied and fully acquiesces in that particular Thirdly The knowing the original of any thing gives us the true boundaries and limits of it Nothing can rise higher than its original No effect can out-reach the cause Nay there must be ever a necessary inferiority in whatever is caused to the first causer of it This is a necessary direction to all the searches of reason about the nature of any thing to know the first cause of such a Being and the true original it derives it self from Fourthly The knowledge of things in their prima causa quiets our reason because it gives us the utmost and ultimate knowledge that is to be had about them To know a thing in it self and to know it in its first cause and original is to know all that reason can expect to know about any visible Being This brings things to hold their due proportion to the rational soul and rectifies us in our knowledge in placing causeâ— and effects in their due Stations Secondly If the being of reason be such as that it must necessarily make out it selâ— into such enquiries and that the first cause of things is the most proper object for a rational soul that trades in causes and effects we will
Atoms had been rational Atoms and truly he might as well have begged and supposed them into reason as motion for bare matter can no more be proved to have an intrinsique motion in it which would make it absolutely necessary for all matter to move at all times than it can be proved to think will and reason and he that beggs and takes things for granted without the trouble of proof should take all that would serve his turn I say had Epicurus his Atoms been reasonable Atoms they would never have done any thing by chance because they had a superiour principle to do it by they would never have put that to the venture which might have been made certain Their own principle would have instructed them not to have put that to the venture of chance whether it should be or should not be which by reason might have been made certain to be A man that hath eyes would never shut them and go to discover colours by feeling Every superiour principle must needs act above an inferiour Whatever did happen by meer chance to be had a power to be and by reason might have been made certain to be How monstrously unreasonable is it to believe that these Atoms that had nothing in themselves but bare matter and motion upon the best supposition should produce in man and in nothing else a rational soul and that that in man which we call the rational soul should be nothing else but the more active and generous part of these Atoms which became so by being more smooth and round than the rest which you must believe fell by chance all to the share of men and no other Being had the hap to have any of them in their compositions We must also believe these eternal Atoms to be some of one size and some of another some of one quality and some of another and yet all eternal which is a flat contradiction to all notion of eternity Fourthly Suppose in these Atoms matter and motion the world could never come to be made fortuitously thereby For First all motion in every thing must either be from a superiour mover or from an innate and self-originated principle of motion in it self If from a superiour mover then we come to God If from an innate motion that any thing hath in and from it self that motion must needs be eternal For nothing can move that is not set on work or that doth not infinitely set it self on work If motion have beginning it must own it self to some beginner if it have no beginning it must be infinite and eternal and there needs no better or other argument to prove that any motion had a beginning than when we see it has an ending for as all mechanick motion by its coming to an end shews plainly it had a primum movens and was set on work so does all other motion by its perioding and ending declare plainly it had its beginning ab extra and is not self-originated and eternal So that if the motion of these Atoms came from a first mover then they came from a cause and their motion must needs be regular and corresponding to that first cause If they had no first mover then their motion must be eternal as Epicurus sayes it is and nothing that moves eternally can move by chance because it must needs have the highest perfection of motion And where that is 't is impossible to suppose any such thing as chance For whatever did eternally move can never cease so to move and so can have no such thing as chance conversant about it Secondly Matter it self cannot be moved fortuitously by motion supposed inherent in it that is utterly impossible because all matter determines its own motion Heavy things move downward and cannot fortuitously move upward Had there been nothing but chance to sement the world the heavy part would have been sure to have gone downward and the light part upward and they would never have met nor pieced together The motion of things is determined in the nature of their being And therefore we cannot reasonably say that bare matter and motion ever caused any thing by chance unless you will say it caused every thing to be by chance just as it must needs be and necessarily be which is a contradiction Who can believe chance the cause and certainty the effect We see all things moving in perfect order and not only our experience assures us of this but our reason shews us it must necessarily so come to pass For such causes do produce such effects suitable to the nature and being of things and an intrinsique causality and innate dependence upon each other which must needs be the effect of the supreme and great cause of all Let any man consider that noble principle in man the rational soul with the suitableness of it to govern himself and the rest of the world and how all things in their being and dependency lie proportioned to such a superiority Let him view the make of a man and a woman and see how suitable and how necessary they are one to another in their very composition and how the male and the female in all other creatures are adapted to propagate their own kind and to be useful each to other and the instinct they carry about them so to be Let him look upon the faces of men and women and consider them there never having been yet seen any two without some variety Let him look above him and below him and round about him and see what harmony there is between the Heavens and the Earth how the well-being of the one depends upon the influence of the other and how certain and regular those are by which all times and seasons are exactly determined Let him look upon the Sea and consider how useful that is to the world to introduce a trade and commerce among all Nations and to make each one capable of enjoying the good of all the rest Let him view the constant course of its ebbings and flowings and the standing Law of its Boundaries whereby such a mass of waters are still kept in one channel and continued in their proper station And when he has viewed these and a thousand things more that lye obvious to his reasonable contemplation if he then think the composition of the whole universe and all the parts of it and the grand oeconomy that is in it came from nothing but meer chance he renders himself a person fitter for Bedlam than disputation Yet such wretched shifts are men forced to fly to when they are labouring to exclude the notion of God and banish a Deity out of the world The Epicurean Atomist falls plainly under the heavy stroaks of several gross absurdities First He makes his Atoms which are the matter of which he will have the world to consist to move about in his ultra-mundan-space without a tendency to a center Which is perfectly impossible that any matter should move by a motion
Emperours who triumphed most in pretending Atheism threatned the wind if it blew upon them and the clouds if they rained upon them betrayed upon every small occasion the dreadfullest fears imaginable Julian the Apostate at last cryed out The Galilaean had overcome him The great Hector of the Gods Epicurus himself was the most eminent coward that ever lived in those things he most defied nothing ever frighted any man more than those two things did him Death and the Gods so you shall find it reported in Cicero His Atoms had not solved his conscience nor cured him it seems of his fears he was certain of them though he bottom'd all the world upon chance How many are to be seen daily that when they think they have safely interred their conscience when they come to any extremity soon find a revival of it again There is nothing so universally certain amongst mankind but what is subject to variation in individuals which strongly proves that the world has not immutability nor eternity affixed to it Sometimes we see such members of the body and such faculties of the soul cease to exert themselves in particulars but yet such monsters for they are no better ought not to destroy the general character and definition we give of natural Beings In this matter of conscience which does plainly admit the Being of a God to which it hath immediate relation two things strongly plead for the generality of it in all men above the generality of any one thing that belongs to them First That 't is the great Trustee for God in the world And unless it be in some very extraordinary case where God concurrs with a man to extinguish it as a special and signal judgement upon him it seems plain that no man can totally obliterate it in himself Secondly 'T is the great medium he will judge the world by He will deal with men according to their light and the consciences of men shall perform that great office of accusing or excusing in the great day He that either actually has a principle of conscience or ever had such a thing or comes hereafter to find that such a principle is within him gives a witness sufficient to the Being of such a principle and I believe the Atheist will undertake a hard task to find one individual man well in his wits that is not included in that compass He that tells me he hath no conscience and expects I should believe him may as well expect that I should take his word if he should tell me he is not of the same composition with other men and does not see nor hear though he has eyes and ears visibly as other men have A fourth Argument to prove the truth of a supreme Being above the world is the miracles that have been wrought in the world This stabs the Atheist and mortally wounds him If ever in fact there were such a thing as a miracle the Atheist is irrecoverably gone All his Hypotheses fall to the ground all the fig-leaves he can get will never hide him from apparent nakedness and folly To give this argument its due force I shall endeavour two things First To prove that a miracle leads us directly to God and is in its being destructive to all an Atheist sayes And secondly That the fact of such miracles is true and that we have good reason to believe it is so and that there have been often such in the world A miracle is properly that which could not come to pass by any natural cause If a man actually dead should be raised again it were a thing could not be brought to pass in any natural way nor could any natural account be given of it If a man born blind and that had no eyes should by a word speaking be made to see 't were a thing out of all humane reach to do You must step out of the world and take a view of something above it to know how such a thing could come to pass The working of a miracle is the doing of that which apparently to our senses and our reason nothing visible in the world could do And if so it must needs be done by somewhat that is superiour to the world Nay 't is sometimes the doing of that which is quite contrary to the natural motion and constant tendency of the whole universe If a man be once dead and that principle of life and motion that was in him be gone 't is natural for his body to corrupt and vary the form of its matter Now to make such a man live again who by the standing Law of Nature died and must by the same Law corrupt is not only a thing above all natural power but a thing directly contrary to nature and perfectly inverts the whole course of it For 't is as much the reason and course of nature for a man to die as 't is at the first for him to live If therefore any such thing were ever done in the world it must necessarily be brought to pass by a Power above all natural causes and the utmost ability of all natural Beings We must needs erect a Throne for a power superiour to nature and such a power as must directly lead us to God 'T is as much a miracle and as far above all natural power to revive a man actually dead as to make a man out of a stone or form him from a lump of earth Consider the world in which of the Atheists notions of it you will if there be nothing above it nor besides it then 't is plainly impossible that any thing should happen or come to pass but what has its rise and foundation from somewhat within it For if there be nothing existing but this world there can be nothing produced but what this world can produce But that we call a miracle is such a thing as is quite beyond the worlds production neither the reasonable part nor the sensible part nor the whole together can produce a miracle Not the reasonable part for the great and genuine business of reason is to place things in their due dependencies each upon other and to know causes producing effects and means suited to ends Reason can never elevate any thing in its operation beyond it self nor force an act from it beyond the compass of its own Being That reason has an innate antipathy to 't were to set reason against it self and say reason shall produce things without reason and against reason Reason cannot the imagined to deal in that for which no reason can be given And therefore when we see a miracle a thing that can have no natural cause or reason directs us to look to somewhat above the world that must needs be the cause of it Not the sensible part of the world for that can never alter its course Nature is a perfect Law to it self which it can never repeal This we are assured of not only by our experience of the constant course that
thus proceed Every thing in this world must either be caused by it self or be without cause or else be caused by something that was before and is above it self The two first are not only improbable but utterly impossible and therefore the truth must needs lie in the last For the first The rudest Non-sense that can impose it self upon any mans reason is to say that any thing ever caused or madâ— it self 'T is to make every thing it s own God and to cut uâ— by the roots all subordination and dependency of one thing upon another For were all things equally caused by themselves they must needs be equal in their superiority because equal in their independency 'T is likewise to make a thing impossible to have an end for what once made it self can by the same influence eternally make it self If any thing were once the reason of it self it may be ever so nor would any thing ever cease to be that had a power to preserve its own Being But besides all this there is this further absurdity never to be avoided to say thing made it self is to say it did act before it was and did operate before it had an existence and that it did the highest thing to it self which was to cause and make it self before it was it self The lowest sort of reason wears in antipathy to such an absurdity Secondly The world could not be without cause For then it must be what 't is impossible it should be which is eternal For causes and effects of which the world consists own themselves to a first cause and necessarily suppose time and priority in time The cause naturally precedes the effect They must have time to operate in Causes and effects that are in such existence necessarily conjoyned must needs cease to that denomination in eternity and so cease to be what they really are and therefore are impossible to be eternal if one be eternal the other must needs be so too And 't is evident an eternal cause and an eternal effect is an absurdity Now that the world could not be eternal and so consequently without cause may thus appear If the world be eternal 't is plain and undeniable it must ever have been in the posture that now it is and that is utterly impossible for the posture the world is now in is a course of generation and corruption and so corruption must as well have been eternal as generation And thence 't will evidently follow that things that do generate and corrupt must have eternally been and eternally not have been If the world have been from everlasting then the present state of the world in the propagation of it self must needs have been so too The present way of generation and a succession in that generation must needs have been everlasting too For if the world be eternal though individual persons and Beings cease and new come in their places yet the general round and course of the world in maintaining it self must needs have been the same for ever But to conceive that is directly to oppose our own reason and experience because we find daily that the way by which the world is now propagated and upheld could not have eternally been but plainly points us to some original cause we see not For if the Hen be produced by the Egg and that Egg produced by a Hen and the propagation of both run in such a circle common reason tells us there must be some first Hen or some first Egg to set that way of generation on work or else it could never have been As 't is in motion there must be some first mover or else an innate and self-originated principle of motion if there be an innate self-originated principle of motion then whatsoever so moves can never cease to move if not there can never be motion without a first mover We see nothing but what is produced by somewhat else and therefore must rationally conclude there must be some first producer The whole world can shew us the beginning originally of nothing so as to satisfie our reason about it and yet in its whole constitution palpably fathers it self upon some first begining Our reason therefore compels us to look out to some supreme Beginning that gave the first rise to all things we see and set them first on work A man begets a man and that man was begotten by another man but where is the first man to beget that was not begotten nor brought forth in the common way of Generation For such our reason tells us by this visible course of propagating the world there must needs have been 'T is utterly impossible in the way we see men begotten there should ever have been any men in the world without some first man Our reason is lost in the circiel of one mans begetting another without some first man that was not begotten 'T is non-sense to say that one man begat another from eternity because that one mans begetting another directly relates to time beginning and priority which are all perfectly destructive to the notion of Eternity and cannot be originated there Sometimes Aristotle himself confesseth there must be a first cause and that infinity of causes is a monstrous absurdity Either the Atheist must confess that this course of generation does point us to some first rise and begining of it and cannot be supposed by out reason to be without it and then there must be some first man that must begin the natural way of propagating mankind and that first man could not be begotten by any other for then he could not be the first for that rule is true primo non est prius and if so that first man must either cause himself or be caused by something above and before himself to say the first I have shewed is an absolute contradiction to say the latter is to bring us regularly to God If the Atheist denies that there was any beginning of things or any first in generation but saies that the world is eternal and the way of its generation is eternal likewise I shall plainly refute him as rendring himself grosly absurd and that several waies First he begs a thing for granted to be and must take it so to be which he never saw nor can have any assurance of The eternity of the world and the succession eternal of generation and corruption is not only unreasonable for any man to believe but impossible for any man to know 'T is unreasonable to believe because our selves and all we converse with have a visible beginning and ending and manner of production which directly fathers it self upon some first beginning and could not have its rise from eternity For whatever begins and ends to say it was eternal in that course is to say plainly there was eternal beginning and eternal ending which is to affirm a most ridiculous contradiction And 't is as impossible for any man to know unless he knew himself eternal and
foppery and believe it I would never doubt to make him confess against Euclide That a part is greater than the whole and bring him to justifie the highest Non-sense that absurdity it self can attain to A second Argument to conduct us toward God and to prove that he made the world shall be this The natural rectitude and innate harmony of the world and the due subornation of things one to another and to the whole of the world all things concentring in one common end This must needs come from an eternal rectitude and a supreme Director the wisest of all workmen and contrivers if you admit causes superiour to effect Can you perswade your reason that the Sun and the Moon and the Stars were by chance fixed in the Firmament and that they do by chance keep a constant uninterrupted course and make constant day and night and a certain fixed determination of all times and seasons Can the Atheist without impudent madness perswade himself that Seed-time and Harvest and all the regular subordination of things one to another in their proper uses and dependencies are owing to nothing but chance Either they were so eternally or so in time If eternally they could not be by chance for chance cannot be eternal for whatsoever was eternally so could have no possibility of chance whether it should be so or not so Chance is a fiction a phantasm a thing without a real Being there is no such thing as chance ever was or can be either in things temporal or eternal A thing that is by chance must be such a thing as comes to pass without the necessary enforcement of any certain cause A thing that might have been or might not have been or might any way have been otherwise than it is But there is no such thing now in the world and whatever was eternally so was ever so and without a possibility of ever being otherwise so or of ever being not so If they come to be so in time they must either make themselves so or be made so make themselves so I have proved already they could not nothing can be the original cause of it self and therefore they must needs be made so and if made so then they could not come by chance to be so Because the world consisting of causes and effects one thing still causing another and nothing without cause there must necessarily and naturally be a cause of these causes and whatsoever caused these causes must needs be a cause and the highest cause If the world were ever caused by any thing but it self it could never be by chance because whatsover causeth any thing destroyes the being of it by chance For if it had a cause there was a reason why it came to pass and if there were a reason why it came to pass then it did not come to pass by chance And if the world in the first matter of it brought forth it self by chance there could then never have been any thing but chance in it for chance can produce nothing but chance there could have been no such thing as a certain cause in it Now we evidently see the contrary that there is no such thing as chance is the world The whole world is a great bundle of causes and effects When we say a thing happens by chance we say and mean no more but that it happened unexpectedly and that we do not at present see the cause of it That we call Lottery is nothing else but taking the visible effects of causes we purposely conceal from our selves He that shuffles Cards does not know what game he shall have because he purposely hides the cause from himself and takes only the effect But no man can therefore think there is such a thing as chance in that for if he looked upon the Cards as he shuffled them he would find his own disposal of them in such places was the cause of his game There is a certain fixed regularity in the course of every thing and a genuine dependance of one thing upon another Nothing moves nothing operates any way but as 't is moved and caused which unanswerably shews that nothing in the world hath any motion or operation innately and primarily in it self but comes all from a first mover and infinite cause of every thing Whatsoever we see come to pass though at the present we cannot point out the cause yet we see enough visible in it to assure us it has some cause He that cannot give a punctual demonstrative reason for the ebbing and flowing of the Sea yet sees enough in it by the constancy of it the certain time it keeps and the due correspondency it holds to some of the heavenly bodies to satisfie him that there is a natural cause of it and a reason to be given for it and that 't is not possible to be a thing by chance but is a thing linked into the round of the world and bears its proportion to the general subordination and harmony of things If the Atheist be so ridiculously foolish as to say that all that we see and call order and method is nothing but chance and that every thing happens still by chance so to be as we see it to be he must either palpably confute himself or else deny all the necessary causes and effects we see in the world and tell us that what we see constantly to be and never was known nor seen otherwise to be and in the reason of the things themselves must needs be soe and cannot be otherwise is a thing of meer chance and so may happen to be otherwise That is he must say that Rain must not necessarily moisten the earth but may perhaps scorch it and burn it up and that the Sun must not necessarily heat me but may perhaps cool me and chill me and that Summer is not necessary to come as it does but may chance to come in the place of winter and winter in the place of summer For if these things have no foundation but chance they may by chance be otherwise thaâ— now they are The rational soul abhorâ—â— chance it makes a reason of no use ' Tâ—â— strange chance should frame the world and frame the highest principle in it with a perfect antipathy to it self and to bâ— of no use at all to it For 't is to no purâ—pose to think reason or debate about whâ—â— comes by chance It forbids all foresight and all rational deductions and that suâ—premest acting of a wise man to fit and suâ—â— means to ends Besides there is this further evidencâ— of God to us in this rectitude we finâ— in the frame of the world That direct coâ—traries and such as are in their naturâ— destructive one to another are over-ruled a perfect harmony and coalition in the propâ—gation of the world How could eveâ— contrary elements of fire and water hoâ—â— could all other natural opposites be â—â—conciled and made to consist together 〈◊〉 the composion of things
innate in it without tendency to some center or other He affirms his Atoms could never discontinue their motion but when they encountred other Atoms and were by that impulse deflected into another course To believe this were to deny one of the plainest experimental truths in Philosophy and to suppose matter moving without either a terminus à quo or a terminus ad quem Secondly He ascribes that to dull matter and sensless motion which we ascribe to God infinitely perfect For he supposes his Atoms infinite and in an infinite space And so he makes things mutable and things imperfect infinite For if these Atoms had not been so they must needs have continued without variation or change as once they were and as he saies eternally they were Whatever he objects against us about the infinity of God with ten times more force he objects the same against himself for the infinity of his own Atoms and supposed inanity Thirdly He makes more to arise out of his matter and motion than is contained in the matter and motion themselves which is the rational soul of man Fourthly He makes first eternal causes to have chanceable effects and then those chanceable effects to be the cause of all certainty and regularity He makes eternal causes to have chanceable effects for he saies himself His Atoms and his ultra-mundan space are eternal and the motion of these Atoms eternal likewise in it And the effect of these eternal causes is that by chance they make this world and this chance in making the world hath produced all the certainty constancy order beauty and regularity of it There cannot be two things more ridiculously said than first to make chance the effect of an eternal cause and so the most certain cause and secondly to make chance the cause of all order and certainty 'T is as true to say the Sun is the cause of all darkness and wisdom the true Mother of all folly Lastly He makes things to cause themselves which is the supremest of all Non-sense For saies he these moving particles this matter and motion make up the universe And so if there be nothing above them they must needs make themselves the universe If this matter and motion be made and moved 't is not eternal if you suppose it is eternal then that which is eternal varies it self into all forms and compositions and so is not unchangeable which all eternal things are Although that which is infinite may beget variety of other things distinct from its own being as God himself doth yet that which is infinite cannot do so by varying it self which these Atoms do and so become changeable which cannot be annexed to what is infinite When these Atoms turn themselves by their motion into bodies and all other parts of the world supposing all the principles of the Atomical Philosophy that they destroy not themselves they alter the form and manner of their existence and so I am sure are not as they eternally were Nor could they indeed be eternal because had they been eternal in the posture they were they would have had perfection in that posture and so could never have changed from what was infinitely perfect In short therefore either the world was eternal in some pre-existing matter to what we see either Atoms or what you will or it was eternal just in the course we now see it If it were eternal in any pre-existing matter that matter must needs cease to be so by varying it self into this world unless you will make things changeable and imperfect infinite which is impossible Whatever eternally was must eternally remain as it was or else 't is not eternal 'T is monstrously absurd to talk of a changeable eternity If you take the other way to make the world eternal just as we see it you must unavoidably make corruption generation and all parts of the round and course of the world eternal too unless you admit priority and posteriority which are plainly enough destructive to all notion of eternity If any thing had been unchangeable and unalterable and caused other things distinct from it self as we say Gods does it had altered the case but to say the world is eternal when every part that makes the whole of its self and all the matter of the world is perpetually altering and varying 't is utterly impossible without making the course of it in changes in generating and corrupting particular forms eternal too Though God created variety of creatures that several waies alter and change yet he in his own being is unchangeable and still the same he ever was If he had dilated his own being and spread it into the variety of the world and made the world out of himself and subsisted only in it it had been impossible he should have been eternal because then he would not now have been what he ever before had been A third Argument to prove that God is and that he made the world is that witness that he hath left to himself and his own Being in the CONSCIENCES of men This is so safe and so sure a way to bring us to God that unless we had seen him face to face there could not have been any thing that could possibly have given us a clearer evidence of the being of God and of the relation our own beings have to him than this hath done The understanding faculty of man is the noblest part of the world and in that faculty God hath established the knowledge of himself Conscience in a man is nothing but the true result of his understanding about himself in reference to a supreme Being above him Which if there were no God were to no purpose and the noblest exercise of man in his rational part would be wholly in vain which Aristotle would not endure to have thought of the meanest and lowest product of nature He rightly denied that nature did the least thing in vain That we call conscience is not only seated in the understanding of man but has a preculiarity in the exercise of that understanding purely relating to its self For Conscience is not only an ability in the understanding as 't is relating to other matters when a man will make use of it to determine his actions and his condition in reference to God and a superiour Being But conscience carries in its description an innate instinct and necessary inclination in the understanding to operate this way and to pass a continual judgement upon a mans self in all a man does with reference to God and that primary and supreme concern of pleasing him and corresponding to his will Can we suppose this great wheel of the understanding should move this way without a first mover And move about nothing Move in vain Whence should this principle in man come We find it written in fair characters all the world over Man sees nothing in the world but what is inferiour to him and under his jurisdiction If God had not been
no reason for it so our reason assures us it were impossible any natural reason ever should be given for it There is no room for any possibility of an occult cause 't is we know out of all natural compass and such a thing as all the power of the world can never perform and must of necessity be brought to pass by a power superiour to it For the other Objection the Atheist may make which is To deny that ever there were any such miracles wrought in the world and that the matter of fact about them is not true First I must tell the Atheist if he will believe nothing but what he sees nor give credit to any thing that is reported by former ages and delivered down to us he must confine himself to a very narrow part of the world and indeed fall below that due station a rational creature ought to keep When ever my reason can assure me of a thing by arriving at a satisfaction about it such as reason requires I ought to be ascertained of it because doubting in its foundation is imperfection and in its operation vexation The tendency of the rational soul is against both these Reason requires no more in any thing to satisfie it self withall than the matter 't is conversant with is capable of affording 'T were to deny reason to be reason to say it required a knowledge of any thing beyond the nature and extent of it and should not acquiesce in the utmost evidence the subject can afford And therefore in this present case of miracles which are things done and past in other ages a man by his reason considers First 'T is possible such things may have been done I cannot positively upon any good ground determine they have not been done because 't is possible and must be so granted that there may be a supreme power above and beyond the world that may over-rule the world as it pleases and that because there is nothing visible either in sense or reason that makes it impossible Secondly A man must consider by what waies and means he may reasonably be assured and satisfied that such things actually were done To wish to see a thing that is past were childish to call for any Mathematical demonstration of it were ridiculous and both impossible And therefore a man must come to know the fact of things transacted before he was born and of such as he never saw by the credible testimony of others assisted in some cases with the present visible remaining effects of the things themselves and 't is not possible to know them any other way The question therefore in this case will be whether upon the credit of others by a general testimony given to it we may reasonably believe a thing to have been which we never saw and be satisfied of the truth of that which we our selves were not eye-witnesses of For the making of this good in the affirmative let these things be considered First Those that were eye-witnesses at the first of any matter of fact had as much certain assurance of it as we have of any thing we now see And therefore their report of it then cannot be false unless they designed it should be so For whatever mistakes they were capable of then we are still liable to the same now and whatsoever upon that account will invalidate their testimony will destroy the grounds of our own belief for ever 'T is no where necessary here to determine where the ultimate and supreme certainty of mankind lyes and whence it arises To attribute so much to the senses as Epicurus does it doubtless too much to debase that noble part of man which is his reason and to make way for all imaginable deceit 'T is obvious to us how commonly our senses are mistaken Should a man take no other impression of the Sun or the Moon into his understanding but what he receives from his senses he would never know either of them to be above half a yard diameter if he did not consider that the distance of the object deceives his sight Experience tells us how easie it is were it not for the help of our understanding to represent false Images that shall perfectly cheat the senses For when by a false light or any other deceivable way to the senses a thing is represented to me to be otherwise than indeed it is the understanding looks beyond the bare representation to the circumstances wherein the deceit lyes and so rectifies the senses The understanding often does so and is the supreme guide of them Nor does it ever depart from their informations of sense where 't is satisfied there is no accidental deceit put upon the senses In such cases the informations of sense and the results of right reason are ever the same because both perfect in their kind 'T were a great demonstration of imbecillity in the understanding to deny what we feel and see to be and are sure there is no deceit put upon us in so doing In this case Aristotle sayes rightly relinquere sensum sequi rationem debilitas est intellectus And the Philosopher was doubtless upon the right way of probation that when one disputed with him against motion rose up himself and walkt about before him It seems therefore most reasonable to believe that the utmost of all humane certainty lies in the final results of the understanding which takes in all the assistance of sense in such things as are objects for both and never differs from sense when 't is no way deceived or abused of which the understanding is still the Judge And in other things speculative and beyond the compass of sense it judges purely and singly by it self The faculty of our senses and that of the understandings are both perfect in their kind But the understanding is superiour and rectifies that deceit and mistake the senses are liable to and when 't is satisfied the senses are in their true and right exercise and under no deceit never differs from them but the senses and the understanding alwaies concurr 'T were to imagine else that God had made us divided against our selves But so far as our present matter in hand is concerned let us take things which way we will those that were at the first eye-witnesses of any thing and had their understandings about them were capable of making a judgement as certain as mankind is capable of And when very many together agree to witness to the fact of a thing they saw it must needs give all the cumulative advantage to the certainty of it that possibly we can expect The deceit therefore that we can only fear in the testimony of others is an intention and design they may possibly have to deceive and abuse us and to mis-represent matter of fact to us Now that which ought to satisfie our minds in this case because we have as much to our purpose as the subject matter is capable of and as our satisfaction
have largely discoursed this state than the increase of Atheism nor can any thing prove more destructive to all humane converse and society and what soever relates both to the being and well-being of the world The Atheist as he is the greatest Traitor to the highest King above so his principles carry in them the most dangerous and destructive treason to all his Vicegerents here below The great Objection the Atheist continually makes against the whole of Religion is this sayes he No man ever saw the God you talk of all discourses about such an infinite being as you talk of are meer fables and stories santasms in mens brains nor can you distinctly conceive any thing of him 'T is more suitable to reason a great deal to believe only what I see than to offer my self to be possessed with a belief of what I never saw This that the Atheist boasts of as his chief support he will find to fail him and render him both grosly disingenious and palpably unreasonable First disingenious and false to himself for the Atheist himself upon his own principles is forced to confess he believes things he never saw and cannot himself deny it Take the Epicurean Atheist did he ever I wonder see the Atoms he tells us of Lucretius and all the Atomists confess that the business of the Atoms is a thing that does not fall under the perception of sense Did he ever view their motion by which they caused the world Did he ever take a view of that vacuum that ultra-mundan-space where these Atoms are treasured up Did either of their great Masters Democritus or Epicurus ever assure the world that they saw these things or were eye-witnesses to what they would have others believe Or was any man ever yet heard of that did see them Was there ever any such tradition in the world that they were seen Take the other sect of Atheists that would have the world to be eternal just as it is and let them be asked can they have any ocular certainty of the worlds eternity can they know any thing that way in the age past before them much less what was eternal Is not the worlds being eternal as much a deduction from bare discourse and reasoning as that there is a supreme Being If the Atheist resolve to believe nothing but what he sees unless the world were made over and over no man can ever believe it but those that just saw it made Take all the Sectators of Atheism together and let me ask them this question whether they can refuse to believe without offering violence to their faculties that there is a principle of motion in themselves and many other parts of the world And yet I am sure they never saw it Let any man tell me whether ever he saw that principle that acts himself call it the soul or what you will Did he ever yet see his own thoughts And yet we are not more sure of any one thing in this world than that we think be sure of any thing God has left us the noblest part of our selves invisible which yet we cannot refuse to believe unless we cease the exercise of our own faculties that so we might have apparent reason not to deny his Being only because we do not ocularly behold him The noblest and most peculiar part of reason is to come to assurance of such things as we do not see There are a thousand Propositions a man may make sure to himslef by his reason which have no way been the object of sense All the converse we have with things past and things future depends singly upon the exercise of reason for there sense cannot help us If the Atheist will see every thing he believes he must never believe any sound nor any smell And as one sayes well there is as much reason to deny that to be sensible which is the object but of one sense as to deny that to be whose existence is only the object of reason The senses being upon even terms may more reasonably combate each other in that case than the whole of sense deny a single exercise of reason because reason is a faculty more certain and much superiour to it And if ever the faculty of our reason abstracted from sense can make us sure of any thing 't is in this case about a supreme Being For in our selves we find an apprehension still of somewhat above us a fear of him and a tendency towards him which must needs arise from some innate Idea we have in our souls of him And this we are as sure of as that we think which is the thing in the world we can be most sure of And these impressions of God and the Idea we have in our selves of such a supreme Being does as much assure us there is one as our thinking does assure us that we our selves are and that we have a thinking faculty If we look out into the world we shall find the whole to our reason a most demonstrable effect of him There can be nothing more plain to the reason of mankind than that there must be some first cause of every Being we see and some first mover of all the motion we behold The Atheist is also further disingenuous in this that because he does not see God though there be never so much evidence of his Being therefore he positively denies him and sayes there is none which there may be for ought he knows No man can in the negative say there is not nor lay down any tollerable ground to conclude such a negative upon because there is not the least violence offered to our faculties nor the least absurdity either to sense or reason in this assertion That there is a supreme Being infinitely perfect that made all things Nor will the Atheist help himself at all by retorting this and saying If no man can positively deny the Being of what he never saw then we can never by that Rule deny the Atheists Hypothesis of Atoms or of the worlds eternity for they are all things alike unseen This I utterly deny for t were to make all things we do not see upon equal terms of probation and negation Which were upon the matter to depose our reason and degenerate wholly into sense As if the notion of Gods making the world to which every thing rationally concurres and the first rise of it supposed to be by the casual hitt of two Flints together or a justling of Atoms one against another or the foolishest proposition you can make stood upon equal terms of admittance with a rational soul And that one of these may be as well affirmed as the other and none of them certainly denyed because none of them seen This is very absurd and in its tendency plainly banishes reason out of the world Probation and negation in this and all other cases are necessarily conjoyned and depend upon each other For if one thing can be better proved than another then 't is