endowed and which she constantly declares in the prosperous exercise of her Monarchy with the short line of our intelligence or to estimate her Providence according to the rate of our cheaper faculties is both ignorance and unjustice how infinitely more stupid and unwarrantable a course doth that wretch take who adventures to commensurate the superexcellent knowledge and almighty virtue of God whereby he procures and moderates the affairs of the World That man is for the most incurious of smal and trivial occurrences is so far from being a wonder that contrariwise those who could tripartite their thoughts to the contrivemeÌ„t of but three different businesses at once as Caesar have been lookt upon as Prodigies and he that can lay the grounds of but one popular designe so as to have it succeed without impediment or the intervention of cross accidents is reputed a profound Politician and his head a whole sphear above the vulgar This I am not ignorant the haughtiness of his spirit hath referred to the fixation of his thoughts upon objects either of his pleasure or ambition when in modest truth this pretension of sublimity is but a gloss or specious vernish to conceal the imbecillity and limitation of his intelligence For that being two narrow to be extended to the forecast and reguiation of many things at once and his stomach too high to descend to a due acknowledgment of the imperfection of his nature he guilds over the poverty with the pride of his minde and endevours to excuse his frailty by insimulating that to attend the study of trisles and in the interim supersed the projection of matters of importance is a disparagement to the nobility of his Intellectuals When if his reason were so capacious as to admit the care of petty affairs without the confusion or neglect of others of more concernment nothing though nere so mean and ordinary could seem below the dignity of his Providence But that God should be incurious of any action in the world is absolutely impossible since contrapugnant to the Vniversality of his Cognition and Praesence for what is Omniscient and Vbiquitary can be ignorant of nothing and consequently it can be no more either of Profanation to the Sanctity or dishonour to the glorious Majesty of the Deity to extend his Providence to the meanest contingents in nature then it can be to the Soul to vegetate and inspire each single hair of that body she informs SECT V. TO their Second objection that all events in the World are either the non-praedestinate and extemporary results of Article 1. The first division of the Atheists second objection viz. that the apparent irregularity of events doth justifie their non-praedestination or meer contingency strongly convelled and that to the praeordination of divinity nothing can be casual clearly commonstrated Chanâ—e or the necessary and setled effects of Nature all Actives and Passives being by the unalterable laws of their primitive constitutions firmely adliged unto and irresistibly impelled upon the causation of determinate effects respective to the energy of their particular consigurations we as easily as uprightly answer First that to the praedestination of that Almighty Cause which can and doth dispose the motions of all things according to the praescripts of his own Will no event can be casual or unexpected though indeed if we have regard to the praescience and forecast of man to whose dim opticks all things are invisible that stand in the dark of futurity many events seem meer Accidents and the most mature determinations of Fate may pass for the rash and inconsiderate hitts of Fortune And if so how audacious a temerity is it in us so to magnifie our own slender perspicacity as when we cannot discern why this or that particular concurse and encounter of natural causes should occur rather then another and such or such an issue of their confederate activities succeed rather then another instantly to conclude that there can be no Superior Cause or superintendent power which hath thus or thus ordained and disposed those certain means to those certain ends and whose counsels we are not privy unto Look we no farther then the ordinary Providence of Princes and in every Republick our observation shall meet with a thousand events which in the judgements of their vulgar subjects and such as stand aloof from the Councel table are deemed meer Contingents as never at all designed upon any secret reasons of State when yet to the Prince himself and those to whom he hath communicated the mystery of his designations they really are the intended effects of his Prudence which had so politickly ordered his affairs and so wisely prepared all Agents requisite to the bringing about of his purposes that they could not but hit and be accomplish't accordingly And is there then why we should not be confirmed that in this immense Commonwealth in whose government the most inobservant cannot but take notice of innumerable passages so admirable both in respect of the weak Insturments that served to bring them to pass and of the obscurity or impervestigability of the Ends at which they were levelled that nothing less then an infinite Wisdome could contrive nothing less then an infinite Power effect them there must of necessity be a Rector General or President Paramont by whose soveraign dictates all subordinate ministers are set on work in order to the execution of his pleasure and in their operations vary not a hairs-bredth from the rules prescribed by his Will though neither the manner of their activities nor the Ends to which they are destined fall under the discovery of our puâ—blinde reason For the Polity of God is inscrutable and may well delight our Piety with wonder but must empuzle our insolent Curiosity and the eye of our souls being in this life far dimmer then that of Moses body cannot survey so much as the back parts or dark side of Divinity much less pry into the maze of his Counsels and read the invisible decrees of that mystical Sâ—nate wherein though there be a consult of three Persons there is yet but one minde which votes without contradiction and his Volition deliberation and Election make but one simple act For my part that the wayes of God in the World are past finding out that there is a Sanctum Sanctorum in the Ark of Providence into which blind mortality cannot look and that the cryptick turnings doublings and redoublings of that hand which works all its rarities in the dark and sometimes inverts now and then transcends and anon infringes the Axloms of Nature to shew that as he made so he can alter her and tune all her strings to a concord with his will make a labyrinth to intricate and lose the presumptious reason of man that dares hope to explore and trace it this I say is demonstration enough to me that there is one Vniversal Intelligence which both moves and directs all individual Agents to act in order to the accomplishment of some positive
of that large Tohu Vacuum Coacervatum or Nothing which must then have bin introduced from the surface of the Waters up to the midle region which Nature could never endure nor had God any necessity to enforce if Aer condensed into Water shrinks into a space or Continent 400. times less then what it possest before condensation for since Water weighs 400. times heavier then Aer as the subtile Galilaeo Dialog 1. del moviment pag. 81. examining the proportions of Gravity betwixt those two bodies demonstratively discovered it must necessarily carry the same proportion also to Space or Locality then assuredly when we shall have calculated the perpendicular height of the Atmosphear or lower region of the Aer and reduced it to the 400 th part we shall soon be satisfied that the Addition which the Aer Aquaefied could bring to the waters of the Sea effused upon the bosome of the earth cannot suffice to swell the Deluge so high as the semialtitude of many lofty mountains such as Slotus in Norway which Franc. Patricius out of Fr. Bacon and Scaliger hath accounted the highest on the earth Athos in Macedonia Tenariff Caucasus Atlas c. whose tops make large encroachments on the midle region and seem to invade the Firmament Again to charge this immense Accumulation of Waters upon 40. days rain though we should conced that rain to be neither Sea evaporated nor Aer condensed is not to undo but entangle the miracle For taking the Altitude of the mountains according to the calculation of the most moderate Geometry and then soberly perpending what aggravation to the Waters of the Sea now converted upon the earth the most violent natural rain of 40. days and nights could probably make which the most hyperbolical conceit cannot advance higher then 40. fathom we shall easily detect the difficulty And secondly as Nature could not afford the Material Cause of this general Inundation the Waters so neither the Mighty Essicient or Impulsive that should with such prodigious impetuosity hoyse up so huge a mass of Sea contrary to the strong renitency or depressure of its Gravity drive it from its native easy Currents in the declining veins and cavities of the earth upon an absolute 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Acclivity on the elevated surface thereof and make it fall in Cataracts up-hill For 1 though the Waters desire to stand above the mountains as the Divine Hebrew Poet hath pleased to phrase it Psalm 104. vers 9. yet they but desire it and by their own inherent and essential Tendency are renderd uncapable to satisfy that elemental ambition for water permitted to its own propensity or inclination immediaiely tendeth downward and therfore he that can conceive a river to desert its declive chanel and climb a precipice without the violence of a Miracle hath a strong Phansy but a weak judgement nor need any man despair to perswade his credulity that Helmonts ridiculous Romance of the Cause of Earthquaks viz. that an Angel or minister of Divine revenge descends into the Centrals of the Earth and there with a great Clapper or Sledge giving a mighty Thump against the feet of Rocks makes a hoarse or grave kind of Bom which enlarging its sound rends the foundations thereof and puts the percussed mass into a rigor or shaking fit of an Ague is a solid and philosophical Verity And thirdly as the Waters could not elevate themselves so neither could the Attractive Virtue of those Celestial Magnets the Sun Moon and Stars work them out of their depths by rarefying them into vapours which mounted up to the midle region of the Aer and there encountred by intense Cold should be reduced to clouds and those again dissolved in Cataracts For should we grant what the Arabian Astrologers returned in answer to the Aegyptian Caliph who had set them to unty this knot viz. that there was a great Conjunction of ♄ and ♃ not long before the floud and the malignant influence of that confederacy much aggravated by another fatal Convention of all the Planets in the watery signe of Pisces immediately preceding it as Sepher Juchasin fol. 148. hath delivered which the learned Mirandula hath sufficiently disproved and smiled at yet must the greatness of the Effect manifestly confute the possibility of that for a Cause First because Nature hath frequently shewed to the world the like Conjunctions but never the like event and again because those Luminaries are not commissioned with so unlimited a power and in their strongest conspiracies of insluence can at most but weakly incline or dispose not at all compell or necessitare nor are their destinations to ruine but conserve the world If therfore Nature uniting all her divisions of Waters below the Moon into one great heap or Abyss must yet fall very much short of that immane proportion requisite to furnish out the Deluge and though her stock had bin large enough yet could she not without apparent destruction of her self i. e. infringing those fundamental Constitutions or Elementary Laws whose constant Tenor only defines her to be Nature assist to their eruption out of their proper Receptaries and their preposterous Ascension up hill truely I am yet to learn what can be conceived to remain but this that those Decumani Fluctus those immens Cataracts had both their supply and motion immediatly from that high hand to which nothing that he wills can be difficult With this Problem I confess I have more then once impuzled my reason yet doth the difficulty sometimes enflame my Curiosity to enquire out the pervestigable part of the miracle viz. Whence Omnipotence summoned this mighty Syndrome or Conflux of Waters to appear at so short a warning upon the face of the Earth or in what part of the Universe they were quartered before and by what wayes and means they were drawn off again and voyded after the Floud That eminent Master of the Opticks and excellent Mathematician Christoph Scheinerus in Rosa Vrsina pag. 693. discoursing against those who have asserted the Incorruptibility of the Heavens quoad partes totum introduceth Ferdinand Quirinus de Salazar a Jesuit in his Comment upon 27. vers of the 8. chap. of the Proverbs of Salomon delivering his opinion derived from others together with reasons to support it that there must be a Tehom Rabba or Abyss of Waters above the Firmament or betwixt the 8 th sphear and the Shecinah or dwelling place of God The Texts of Scripture upon which this opinion is supported are 1 the 7. vers of the 1. Chap. of Genes where the Author of that book describing the several piles or stories of this great building saith thus and God made the Firmament and divided the Waters which were under the Firmament from the waters which were above the firmament c. 2 that of David Psalm 33. vers 7. he layd up the depth in storehouses 3 that of the Angel to Esdras 2. ch 4. vers 7. proposing questions to puzle weak but proud
appeared in the East deprived of more then half her light the Calculation and sigure of which Lunar eclipse are largely set down by Sethus Calvisius to the 3 of April in the 33 year of the Nativity under Tiberius Caesar and by Henricus Buntingius in Chronologiae Catholic fol. 337. And thereupon we may safely conclude that the Defection of the Moon on the Passion day being meerly Natural that of the Sun on the same day must be Supernatural it being impossible for the Moon to keep two different stations or to possess those two opposite points of heaven which define the Conjunction and Opposition at one and the same time This S. Aug. 3. de Civit. Dei cap. 15. had respect unto when he said Quam solis obscurationem non ex canonico syderum cursu accidisse ostenditur quod tunc erat Pascha Iudaeorum T was a Dismal day that same though the King of Terrors was then vanquisht for Darkness was not only upon but under the earth the miraculous obscuration of the Sun in our Hemisphere of necessity causing a defection of the Moon in the subterraneous one and so making it more then midnight to the Antipodes and a second natural eclipse of the Moon succeeding within six hours after nay more then all this Saturn the signifier of blackness aggravated this horrid opacity for at the same time rising from the Horoscope he beheld both eclipfes in a square malignant aspect But though this eclipse was Vnnatural to the Sun per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet t was purely Natural per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it being requisite nay necessary for a stream or reflex of Light to suffer a defection when the Fountain of Light was under a cloud proper for the Creature to sympathize with the Creator And therefore though t was a miracle yet t was no wonder The wonder was in the reverse part of the accident that the most glorious Sun of Righteousness should suffer a dark and unnatural eclipse to expiate our deeds of darkness Nor was that a wonder neither now I think on t for t was the natural effect of his infinite love to mankind And this I presume the most stubborn and prejudicate Atheist Article 14. The Adequation of all to the verification of the Authors third Position will admit as evidence both strong and clear enough to evince the verity of our Minor Proposition viz. that God hath in times prelapsed frequently manifested his prerogative of causing effects not only superior but also contradictory to the ordinary and establisht Laws of Nature his ordinary instrument when such effects seemed either necessary or expedient to his Providence and therefore our Conclusion viz. that his arme is not shortned and he can doe the like in the future upon any occasional emergency designed by his secret counsel comes not much short of perfectly Apodictical SECT VI. WE have now brought our selves to the last Objection urged Article 1. Lucretius his blasphemy that mans ignorance of the energy of Natural Causes is the sole basis of the opinion of an Universal Providence against Universal Providence namely the unequal distribution of good and evil or the frequent occurence of events which carry too much appearance of Temerity to be interpreted the mature designes of an infinite Wisdome and seem too oblique and deflecting towards Partiality to stand in a right line with the hand of divine Iustice which must be conceived to discriminate betwixt the Pious and Impious in the Consignation of Happiness and Misery and accordingly to distribute its benefits in some proportion to the merits at least the worthy susceptibility of the receivers this is a member belonging to another head and falls more properly under the contents of our next Chapter of the Special or Particular Providence of God and therefore we shall thither transfer the plenary refutation thereof making it the subject of this last section to blow off those light and cobweb scruples that were spun by that Spider Lucretius when he composed these verses to alienate mens minds from the fear of an Vniversal Moderator Caetera quae fieri in terris coeloque tuentur Mortales pavidis quom pendent mentibu'saepe Efficiunt animos humileis formidine divûm Depressosque premunt ad terram proptereà quod Ignorantia caussarum conferre deorum Cogit ad imperium res concedere regnum Quorum operum causas nulla ratione videre Possunt haec sieri divino Numine rentur c. lib. 6â—â— Those bug-bear Meteors which the tim'rous eyes Of pavid Mortals wonder at i' th skies And those unfrequent Prodigies that appear On earth while their weak souls are fool'd by Fear Are the sole charms that emasculate And cheat mens minds to a beleif of Fate And some vindictive Numen For because Men understand not Natures cryptick Laws Nor her occult Efficiency they fly To salve their Ign'rance to Divinity And idly rest in this what ere befall T was caus'd by Providence that disposeth all The Redargution True it is indeed nor will any thing but ignorance deny that Article 2. The redargutâ—on thereof Physiology or the speculation of Natural Causes hath a power to raise the mind of man to a generous height from whence it may securely and without that vertigo or giddiness which usually turnes the brains of the multitude behold the most prodigious meteors and look in the threatning face of Lightning without growing pale while those that stand below become convulst with needless horror and are ready to be shook to dust with superstitious fear True it is also as Lucretius would have it that t is unworthy the constancy and setled courage of a Philosopher when he sees a bearded comet hears a loud crack of Thunder or feels the earth unhinged all which Natural events common eyes gaze upon as horrid Portents and dangerous agonies of Nature instantly to forget his Principles and run to consult with the superstitious books of the Hetrurians and other pusillanimous Comments on those pageants or necessary Phaenomenas whose Causalities are establisht and their precise contingencies presageable by the easie prognosticks of meteorology But however though this ought to prevent our fears yet it cannot be extended to the extinction of our devotion Though it may commend our knowledge to smile when the heavens frown yet it more commends it if we look above them and through those visible operations of Nature discover that invisible cause that made conserves and regulates her Though it demonstrate our skill in Physicks to stand unmoved when the ground trembles yet will it detect our ignorance in the Metaphysicks not to fall prostrate in an humble reverence to that awfull majesty that stretched out the North over the empty place and hanged the earth upon nothing And though it be an honour to our Reason to explore the Abstrusities of Nature and readily refer her most admirable effects to their proper efficients yet at the same time not to confess that
alteration is not only above the hopes of man whose virtuous endeavours piety and prayers must therefore prove as fruitless and ineffectual towards the Aversion as vitiosities impiety and profaneness towards the Attraction or Acceleration of any misfortune predecreed but even of God himself whom though they allow to have bin the Author of that sempiternal and irrepealable law of Destiny yet they deny him to have reserved to himself the prerogative of exemption from the obligation thereof This was the Creed of Philetas when he sayd ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mortales superat quodcunque necesse est Vi solida quia nec superos reveretur in almis Qui Coeli spatiis degunt sine luctibus aevum Of that old Poet quoted by Cicero de Fato who sayd quod fore paratum est id summum exuperat Jovem and of that renowned Captain Hector when being importuned by his wife not to hazard himself in a salley upon the Graecian trenches he conjured her fond fears into a resolved confidenco that no sword could reach his heart but that of Fate by this spell Parce precor nimio misera indulgere dolori Nam quis me Fat is invitis mittet ad Orcum Nullum equidem vitasse hominum dico ultima Fata Prithee forbeare thy needless grief and know No hand can send me to the shades below Without the Fates assent I hold it true What Fate hath destin'd no man can eschew As also of those Military men mentioned by P. Gregorius Tholosanus lib. 21. de republ cap. 8. whose minds being seasoned with the same perswasion that the manner and moment of every mans Death is appointed by the immutable law of Fate and his lot inscribed in invisible Characters on his forehead became of so hard a temper as to be wholly insensible of the threats of that terrible Giant Danger nor did they account it other then a vanity resulting from the cowardize of Ignorance to provide against the blows of War either by caution or defensive armes urging the examples of many valiant Soldiers who have bin observed to have confronted whole showers of levelled bullets shot from the neer engines of the advancing Foe without a wound and yet at last have fallen by some petite and unexpected peble thrown from the sure sling of Destiny even then when they seemed immured in the secure Cittadel of Peace and thought their triumphant Lawrels armour of proof even against thunder Occidis Argivae quem non potuere phalanges Sternere nec Priami regnorum eversor Achilles Hic tibi mortis erant metae c. Virg. 12. Aeneid But alas 't is not the Academy of the Stoicks alone that affords patronage to this Error of Absolute Fatality nor the Camp that only contends for the propagation thereof nor the politick institutions of that Secretary of Hell Mahomet in his absurd Alcoran cap. 6. that only countenance the diffusion thereof in these our days for even the Schools of Christianity in some parts have advanced the reputation thereof to so unreasonable and dangerous a height as to make it an Article of Faith if not absolutely necessary yet at least collaterally conductive to Salvation and this by Auctority of the Councel of Dort which ratified the doctrine of their Apostle Calvir concerning Absolute Predestination and enjoyned the publick Assertion thereof to most of their Divines of the last reformation I sayd the Doctrine of Calvin concerning Absolute Predestination Article 11. The Stoical Fate and the Calvinists Predestination fully defined thereby though tacitly intimating my knowledge of the no small Disparity between the Fate of the Stoicks and that propugned by many Christian Divines The one being as Chrysippus hath defined it Sempiterna indeclinabilis series rerum catena quae seipsam velvit perpetuò implicat per aeternos consequentiae ordines ex quibus connexa est A sempiternal and indeclinable series syntax or chaine of Causes whose turnings convolutions and perpetual implications are dependent on it self by those eternal orders of consequence of which it is made up and connected the other as the best of School men hath defined it Pendens à Divino Consilio series ordoque caussarum a series or successive complexion and order of Causes dependent on the Will of God From the just Collation of which two Definitions our first thoughts may collect that the Difference between the Stoical and Theological Fate may be thus stated The Former in some things excludes Divinity from that Article 12. A full and câ—â—ar discrimination of the Stoical from the Theological Fate round or Circle of Causes reserring all events as well general as particular to the meer subsequence of Naturall Actives operating upon capable Passives subordinately connected unto and so by successive influx necessarily disposing each other to the production of those particular Effects to the Causation whereof their Natural Faculties were at first determinately accommodated and in others includes Divinity within it i. e. confines his Power and Will to that rigid and infringible Law of Necessity excogitated by his Wisdom from all eternity and established by his Decrce at the inauguration of Nature to Existence The Later makes the Will of God to be the first link in the chaâ—n of Causes and so superior to the restriction of natural necessity dependent thereon The Stoick being a declared Enemy to the Arbitrary Prerogative of God adligeth the Energie of the First and Infinite Cause to the capacity of Secondary and Finite and upon consequence doth acknowledge neither the Liberty of his Will nor the Absoluteness of his Power or Omnipotency But on the Contrary the Christian look's up to heaven as the Councel-house where the Instruments opportunity place and success of every Action receive their Specification to this or that determinate purpose to the Arbitrary Resolve of God as the Definite Sentence or Injunction and on all Second Causes but as subordinate and subalternally instrumental to the punctual execution and accomplishment of the same and upon legal consequence concludes that the Divine Will is absolutely Free knowing no circumscription but that of the Divine Wisdome that the meer Fiat of that Councel is the Director and Spring in the Enginâ— of the World and that the Author of Nature hath reserved to himself the Privilege of adding unto detracting from intending remitting inverting transcending or adnulling the fundamental Constitutions of Nature and so breaking that Concatenation of Causalities or the Chain of Fate at pleasure The Heathen absurdly dream't that all effects are inevitably produced by the conspiracy and coefficiency of natural Causes respectively qualified or that all Accidents spring up from the proper tendency of their particular Efficients without the influence direction or moderation of any other Virtue besides their own native and Congenial Faculties The more intelligent Christian proves that all natural Causes doe not produce their respective Effects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ex
De Fluxibus Lapsus graves Nuperriméque Calculum foetum Suum O abdita praeclarior Gemniâ Liber Donasse luce publicum gaudet bonum Jam nunc ad altiora surgit Numinis Assertor est Vindexque providentiae Fortuna Fati vis Voluntas Libera Summi docentur obsequi Dictis Dei Deo favente Cuncta Vocum Copiam Lectissimarum mirer an Rerum magis Utramque miror pariter atque exosculor Utramque pronus veneror longè sequor O Autor annumerande Charltonis Tuis Gassende Chartes Magne Sennerte Angliae Et ipse vivas Libri vivant diu Et Artium de Te optimae certent diu Homines priori Opere devinctos habes Nunc Maximum Tibi obligavisti DEUM Clemens Barksdallus THE CONTENTS SERIES AND ORDER OF THE WHOLE BOOK CHAP. I. The Existence of God demonstrated page 1. SECT I. ARTIC 1. ARistotle the most Knowing and curious Ethnick did yet by his silence in the cardinal point of Theology proclaim the impossibility of mans full understanding the simple and perfect Essence of God p. 1. 2. The Hebrews intimated so much in the immoderate Veneration enjoyned towards his Name Jehovah p. 3. 3. The clearer sighted Christian also can perceive no more of the Divine Nature then what is shadowed in its Attributes ibid. 4. And therefore the Author restrains the Readers expectation only to a Demonstration of the Existence of God in this chap. subnecting a short scheme of his praesent Design and Method p. 4. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THe Mind of man can have no cognition of the Nature of its Objects but by the mediation of their proper Ideas p. 5. 2. Those Ideas are 1 Innate 2 Adventitious 3 Imaginary p. 6. 3. A strict enquiry whether the Ideas of objects existent without our selves hold an exact simlitude to their Natures ibid. 4. A second Disquisition whether any of those things whose Ideas are found in the mind of man have any existence without it p. 8. 5. A firm induction that its impossible for any Idea to import or comprehend more of perfection then its prototype or Cause p. 10. 6. And therefore if any Idea contain more of perfection then can be sound in our minds â— certainly our minds cannot be the Efficient of that Idea ibid. 7. The diversity of Ideas respective to the diversity of Entities ibid. 8. The possible originals of each sort severely examined and all sound desumable from our selves the Idea of God only excepted p. 11. 9. The Idea of God here described cannot be either formally or materially false but the most clear distinct and true of all others p. 13. 10. A declarement of the impossibility of the divine Ideas desumption either from our selves p. 15. 11. Or from some other cause less perfect then God p. 18. 12. Or from our Parents p. 19. 13. The concernment of all or a conclusion that the Idea of the divine nature is innate and congenial to the mind of man p. 20. 14. An abstract or Anacephalaeosis of the whole demonstration p. 21. SECT III. ARTIC 1. THe importance of the term Cogitation p. 21. 2. Of an Idea ibid. 3. Of the objective reality of an Idea p. 22. 4. Of the â—oâ—mal and eminent being of Attributes in the objects of Ideas ibid. â— Of a substance ibid. 6. Of the word Mind ibid. 7. Of a Body p. 23. 8. Of the real distinction of two substances ibid. 9. Of the substance supremely perfect ibid. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. OBject 1. That the mind of man being sinite cannot extend to the clear and distinct intellection of an Infinite quatenus an Insinite and the Solution thereof by three distinctions p. 23. 2. Object 2. That the Idea of the divine nature resident in the mind os man is a meer Ens rationis and the Solut p. 27. 3. Object 3. That an effect may have more os reality or persâ—ction thâ—n its Cause and the Solut p. 27. 4. Object 4. That the existence of such an excellent Idea as hath been described of the Divine Nature doth not necessitate the existence of an Entity in all points respondent or superior thereto because of the possible composing such an Idea out of our collections from sensible objects p. 29. And the ample Solut p. 31. 5. Object 5. That the Idea conceived of God is capable of Augmentation and diminution and the clear Solut p. 32. 6. Many scruples concerning the finality manner and form of the Idea imprcst as also concernining the seeming Heterogeneity or Alterily between the essence of the mind and that of the Idea particularly satisfied p. 33. CHAP. II. That God created the world ex nihilo proved by Arguments Apodictical page 39. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe insâ—parability or rather identity of God and Creator b. 39. 2. The two respects which inclined the Author to amore a mâ—le comprobâ—tion of the first Article of our Christian creed together with a dielenchical explosion of that antiquatated delusion that the Vniverse was autocthenous in its original or constructed meerly by Chance ibid. 3. The summary of Empedocles Leucippus Epicurns Democritus c. doctrineâ— of the worlds spontaneous result from a Chaos of Atoms p. 40. 4. A Digression winnowing the Chaffe from the Wheat concealed in the former theory of Epicurns and by the Corollary of some castigations restrictions and additions declaring the great advantages that this Hypothesis of Atoms hath beyond any other concerning the Material Principle of all Bodies as yet excogitated p. 43. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THe conceit of the Worlds fortuitous production disparaged by a praepollency even of Pagan Auctority that profoundly asserted the contrary viz. of 2. Thales Milesius p. 47 48. 3. Anaxagoras ibid. 4. Pythagoras and Plato ibid. 5. The Stoicks p. 49. 6. Aristotle ibid. SECT III. ARTIC 1. THe pretext of Fortune destroyed by the constancy of Nature in her act of specification i. e. the restraint and determination of the semnalties of Animals to the procreation of their like in specie and the Atheists objection of fiequent Anomalous and Heteroplasmical or monstrous Productions dissolved p. 53. 2. The necessity of the Worlds Creation by an Agent infinite in Science and Power proclaimed by the constant Vniformity of Nature in her perpectuation of Vegetables p. 56. 3. The Sun convincively demonstrates the infinite wisdome of its Creator by 3. Arguments viz. 1. The universal convenience of its situation in its proper orb p. 57. 2. The appointment of its continual Circ umgyration p. 58. 3. The contrivement of its oblique motion along the line Ecliptick p. 59. 4. The impresses of an infinite Intelligence plainly legible in the fronts even of Subterraneous Inanimates p. 60. 5. The impossibility of the worlds Creation by any Agent but God illustrated both by the Magnitude and Pulchritude thereof and the Epicureans dream of a motive faculty eternally inherent in Atoms derided p. 61. 6. The Epicureans grand Argument of the possibility of the consiguration of the Vniverse by a casual and spontaneous
To instance I finde within my self two divers Ideas of the Sun the one taken from my sense which I therefore think fit to refer to that classis of Ideas called Adventitious representing the Sun in a very small round of less diameter then a Coach wheel the other from the reasons or maximes of Astronomy i. e. extracted by way of induction from certain Notions implantate in me or by any other way whatever composed or modelled which represents the Sun in a vast circumference much larger then the Terraqueous Globe Now both these cannot exactly respond in magnitude to their Originall the Sun existent without me and reason offers me invincible evidence to assure that image to be the most unlike which seems to have most neerly streamed from the Sun it self All which considerations to ample satisfaction evince that hitherto I have not upon any scientificall and authentick judgement but onely upon a certain obscure and blinde impulse from within beleived that there are a sort of Entities existent without the sphear of my nature which by subtle transfusion through the organs of my senses convey the Ideas or Idols of themselves into my mind But I have found out another certain way for the more happy progress of my enquiry Whether any of those entities whose Article 4. A second disquisition whether any of those things whose Ideas are sound in the mind of man have any reall existence without it Ideas sojurn within me have any reall existence without me and this is it These Ideas considered in this relation that they are certain modi cogitandi or means which the soul makes use of in order to her act of Cogitation have indeed no dissimilitude Alogy or inequality amongst themselves and all seem to slow from me in one and the same chanel after one and the same manner but considered in this interest that one represents one thing a second another a third another quite different from both manifest it is that they hugely differ each from other as to the degrees of more or lesse objective reality For doubtlesse those Ideas which represent substances are more something or to speak more intelligibly though more scholastically contain in them more of objective reality then those which represent only certain modifications of substances or meer Accidents and again that Idea by which I speculate some supreme Essence or Deity eternall omniscient omnipotent creator and conservator of this great All c. seems in severe truth to comprehend more of objective Reality or Formall Verity then such poor Ideas that carry onely the shadowes of some subordinate dependent and finite substances Now evident it is by the light of Nature that there must be so much at least if not more in the Cause efficient and Total as is in the effect of the same Cause For I demand from what can the effect derive its reality but from the Cause and how can the Cause bequeath that to the effect which it self is destitute of Out of which root spring two branches of ever flourishing truth 1. Nihil à nihilo fieri nothing can be made by nothing 2. Id quod magis perfectum est hoc est quod plus realitatis in se continet fieri non posse ab eo quod minus perfectum est A more perfect something i. e. which imports more of objective reality cannot be produced by a lesse perfect something So that I may safely infer that this position hath not its verity restrained to those effects onely whose Reality is Actual or Formal but extended also to those Ideas in which is considered only their Reality objective For example a stone that never was before cannot only not now begin to be unless it be produced by some other thing which in it self hath formally and eminently what ever is included in the perfect or full nature of the stone nor can heat be introduced into any subject that was not formerly hot unless by something of equal perfection or at least equivalent to heat but besides all this there cannot be in me the Idea of a stone unless that Idea be first inserted into me by some cause wherein there is so much at least of reality as I conceive to be in the stone or in the heat For though that Cause transfuse nothing of its Actual or Formal reality into my Idea yet am not I therefore to apprehend my Idea to be the less reall but that the nature of it is such that it can require no more reality formal ex se then what it borrowes from my cogitation whose manner of apprehension it is But that this my Idea comprehends this or that objective reality rather then another this must of necessity inevitable arise unto it from some other Cause wherein is so much at least of reality Formal as the Idea contains of objective For if I grant any thing to be found in the Idea which was not in the Cause thereof that something it must derive from nothing but how imperfect soever that Modus essendi or manner of being whereby a thing is objectively in the Intellect by an Idea or representative be yet is it not wholy nothing and cannot therefore proceed from nothing Nor have I any cause to suspect that since the reality which I consider in my Ideas is onely objective that therefore the same reality cannot be formally inherent in the causes of them but that it is sufficient to their nature that it be in them only objectively For as that Modus essendi objectivus belongs to those Ideas by the charter of their own peculiar nature so doth that Modus essendi sormalis properly belong to their causes at least to the principal and grand cause by the law of their essence Further though I allow it possible for one Idea to produce Article 5. A firme induction that its impossible for any Idea to import or comprehend more of perfection then its prototype or cause another yet I can never heer admit a possibility of a progress in infinitum of unravelling the pedigree to a length so immense as never to goe so high as the Adam or Grandfather Idea but must at length arrive at the Ne ultra or first Idea whose cause is the Archtype or Protoplast wherein all that reality is inherent Formally which is in the Idea only objectively So that by the light of Nature I read this unalterable Axiome that those Ideas or Images of other natures or entities which are in my understanding are certain Counter-parts or resemblances which in truth come short of the perfection of those objects from which they were desumed and cannot be conceived to contain any thing greater or of more perfection then their Causes From hence my thoughts advance to this conclusion If the Article 6. And therefore if any Idea contain more of perfection then can be found in our minds certainly our minds cannot â—e the efficient of that transcendent Idea reality objective of any Idea be so
I should have given unto my self also all those perfections whereof I have the Idea in my mind and so I my self should have been God Nor am I bound to conceive that those excellencies wanting to the accomplishment of my nature can be more difficult to acquire then those graduall abilities of which I am already master for on the contrary t is manifest that it must import infinitely more of difficulty for me to have had a being i. e. for a Cogitant something to be deduced from nothing then for me being once constituted in a Capacity to attain to the cognition of many things whereof I am now actually ignorant which can be esteemed no more but the Accidents of that substance And assuredly had I borrowed the greater my substantiality from my own stock of power I should not have denied unto my self the less those Accumulations or accidentall additions nor any other of those divine accomplishments which I understand to be included in the Idea of God why because no one of those seem more difficult to be acquired and if any were more difficult for me to aspire unto t is more then probable I should understand that difficulty if I had those Faculties of which my nature stands possessed from my own donation in respect I should find my power to be terminated in them Nor doe I evade the convictive rigor of these reasons if I adventure on this supposition that I have been ever heretofore as I now am as if the induction of this hypothesis would be that therefore I am to trace the genealogy of my essence no higher then my self or seek out no other cause of my Existence for in respect that all time may be divided into innumerable parts each whereof hath no necessary dependence on the rest either precedent or subsequent from hence that I have formerly been is no valid consequence that therefore I must now be unlesse some other cause be admitted which dothfreshly create me in each of those particles or atoms of time and particularly in this instant moment i. e. doth constantly conserve me in being For manifest it must be to any that looks attentively into the nature of Duration that to the Conservation of any thing through all those several minutes in which its existence endureth is required no less then the same power and act which is necessary to the Creation of the same thing anew if it were not already existent and consequently that the act of Conservation doth not at all but in the cloudy reason of man differ from the act of Creation These things thus stated I am concerned to propose to my self this interrogation Whether there be any power inherent in my nature whereby I may be enabled to conserve my self the same in the future that I am now in the present for since I am nothing but a meer res cogitans for here I precisely regard only that part of my self which is properly and distinctly a Cogitant substance if there were any such power conservatory radicated in my essence doubtless I should be conscious of it but I am convicted there is none such and therefore from this one evidence that I cannot maintain or perpetuate my own being for the shortest moment imaginable I judge that I am subordinate unto and dependent upon some other Entity distinct from my self But to tolerate any doubt in this my meditation in order to the exclusion of all doubts from the intended result or conclusion put the case that this Entitie to whose sufficiency I owe my Conservation pardon ò thou incomprehensible Essence thou great and sole Preserver of men pardon this supposition that modestly intends only the clearer demonstration of thy Supremacy is not God and that I deduce my production from my Parents or some other cause less perfect then God For determination t is an Axiome to which every Sceptick will readily condescend Tantundem ad minimum esse debere in causa quantum est in effectu there must be so much at least in the cause as is found in the effect and therefore since I am res cogitans a substance thinking and having a certain Idea of God in me what cause soever be at length assigned for the principle or fountain of my being that cause also must be Ens cogitans and must possess the Idea of all those perfections which I ascribe unto God Now of that cause it may be again enquired whether it were derived from it self or from some other Cause for if from it selfe then may it bee naturally collected from what hath preceded in this disquisition that such a Cause is God For as it hath the power or act of self-existence or self-conservation so also undoubtedly hath it the ability of actually possessing all such perfections the Idea whereof it comprehends in it self i. e. all such accomplishments as I conceive to be concentred in God But if from some other cause then I repeat my question again Article 11. Oâ— from some other cause leâ—s perfect then God concerning this other cause whether that had its being from it self or from another untill I arrive successively at the first Cause or highest linke in the chain which also will be God For no melancholy can be so absurd as to dream of a progress in infinitum in the series of Causes especially since I doe not here intend that Cause only which did in time past produce me but principally that which doth conserve me in the present Nor can it be imagined that a plurality of Causes met concurred and conspired to the making up of my nature and that from one cause I inherited the Idea of one of the perfections which I attribute to God from a second the Idea of another from a third the Idea of another c. so that all those perfections may indeed be found severally in the distinct and scattered peices of the Universe but no where conjoyned and amassed together in one single Essence which might be God For on the contrary the Vnity Simplicity Inseparability or Identity of all those excellencies in God is one of the chiefest of those perfections which I understand to be in him nor assuredly could the Idea of the Vnity of all those his Perfections be placed in me by any other cause from whom I could not acquire the Ideas of other perfections also nor could he have effected that I should understand them conjoyned and married together by an indissoluble union unless he had also effected that I should know what they are in their distinction To expunge the last scruple and so render this demonstration of the Existence of God fair and immaculate have not my Article 12 Or from our Paâ—ents Progenitors devolved a being to my Parents and they devolved the like to me and may not this Idea of those perfections which I attribute to God be implanted radically in this my being so derived down to me by propagation without the necessary insertion of it by
thus That the Celestiall orbs and all their radiant Furniture the stars are wheeld about by a constant and even circumgyration that they veer perpetually towards that point of the World unto which they first inclin'd and never change either the way or tenor of their Circumvolutions that they observe the same distance each from other which they obtained at the instant of their Formation nor sink down upon and so crowd or enterfeire each the other that the Eclipses of the two great Luminaries necessarily succeed upon the conjunction of the same Causes in our days as in the infancy of Nature and may therefore with so much facility as certainty be prognosticated and predicted by the rules of Astronomy in brief that such and such determinate effects arise from the Concurrence and coefficiencies of such and such particular Causes c. all these we are not to referre to any other Principle or Efficient but that Fortune whereby they were so and so disposed in the first Casual Emergency of the World nor are those constant and setled operations produced by any other necessity then what fell to their Efficients at the primitive segregation concourse disposition coadunation of those Atoms whereof their bodies are compacted That before the constitution of the Universe there was an infinite Chaos of Atoms of various figures and magnitudes in an infinite space floating hither and thither hurried up and down on all sides crowding impelling and justling each other by reason of the Tendency resulting from their own innate Gravity That after a long long afflux reflux conflux elevation depression coagmentation and other various and successive agitations and molitions of these Atoms when each order had chanced to confront and meet with others most consimilar and convenient then at last they all conspired acquiesced and fixed in this regular position and situation which constitutes the Forme of the Universe as Lucretius who was deplorably infected with this accurst contagion of Epicurus hath briesly exprest it Quae quia multa modis multis vexata per omne Ex infinito vexantur percita plagis Omne genus motus coetus experiundo Tandem deveniunt iu tales disposituras Qualibus haec rebus consist it summa creata c. The Worlds Materials having first been tost An infinite Time within an infinite Roome From this to that uncircumscribed coast And made by their own Tendency to roame In various Motions did at last quiesce In these Positions which they now possess That upon the Diacrisis or segregation of heterogeneal Atoms succeeding upon a circumvolution gyration or vertiginous eddy of them in the confusion of their eternal Chaos the more gross and ponderous tended towards the Center or downwards and in their descent expressed the more gracile and lighter and impelled them upwards which convening all together in the circumference of the immense vortex wedged in each other into the form of an integument or cortex called Coelum or heaven but the more gross and weighty crowding to the centrals were there compacted and coagmentated into a solid mass the Earth and the remaining matter of a midle nature upon the concurse of its insensible particles assumed to it self the form of a Humid substance and part thereof being afterward circumagitated uncessantly and so both tornated and calefacted was graduated into many orbs of Light the Sun Moon and Stars the residue being reserved for the compaction of other bodies c. And this if my memory hath proved a faithfull Steward of my readings is the marrow of Leucippus Empedocles Epicurus and Democritus their doctrine concerning the spontaneous configuration of the Universe T is proverbial amongst Scholars and long since applyed by an Author of good repute Aneponymus in lib. de substant physic Article 4. A Digression winnowing the Chasse from the Wheat concealed in the former theory of Epicurus by the corollary of some castigations restrictions and additions declaring the great advantages that this Hypothesis of Atoms hath beyond any other concerning the Material Principle of all Bodies as yet excogitated to this particular Case Nullam esse tam falsam opinionem quae non habeat aliquid veri admistum sed tamen illud admistione cujusdam falsi â—bscurari that no opinion hath so much of falshood as not to contain some sprinkling of truth though that spark of truth be so obscured by the cloud of prejudice arising from the discovery of the falsity admixt that it may require the subtile and decisive judgement of an Oedipus for its discernment and sequestration And in this heap of dross lies raked up so much pure and rich metall as if by the chymistry of an industrious hand extracted may more then fully compensate the patient Lecture of a short Digression In this old Romance of the spontaneous result of the World from a Casual segregation and disposition of that Abysse of Atoms which rowled up and down to and fro by an impetuous and continual inquietude estuation or civil war caused by their ingenite propensity to motion in the range of the infinite space some things sound so harsh and discordant to meer Reason as they are justly to be abominated others carry the smooth face of so much Verisimility as they deserve to be admitted at least diligently and impartially examined The Positions we are to reject are these 1. that the Chaos of Atoms was non-principiate or as antient as Eternity 2. that they were not created ex nihilo ab aliqua beata simul ac immortali Causa by God 3. that they were not becalmd separated ranged and disposed into their proper stations in that serene order and figure which they are now of inevitable necessity bound to observe in every single concretion or individual Entity by the artifice of any other Cause but the blind Ordination or improvident disposure of Fortune All which smells so strong of the Fable and strikes the nosethrills as wel of the meer Natural man as the Pious with such infectious stench that nothing but the opportunity of confutation can excuse my coming so neer it And yet notwithstanding I have never yet found out any justifiable ground why Atoms may not be reputed Mundi materies the Material Principle of the Universe provided that we allow that God created that first Matter out of Nothing that his Wisdome modelled and cast them into that excellent composure or figure which the visible World now holds and that ever since by reason of the impulsion of their native Tendency or primitive impression they strictly conform to the laws of his beneplacuits and punctually execute those several functions which his almighty Will then charged upon their determinate and specifical Concretions For with the advantage of these restrictions the Atoms of Epicurus have more of probability and hold rational through most of those operations which occurr to the curiosity of the Philosopher with more familiarity to our conceptions and less variation or apostasie from the first Hypothesis then the
not consent to his own Adnihilation though he might evade his torments by the bargain with advantage preferring the miserable condition of something to the horrid opacity of nothing Third that God made such abundant provision conductive to the utility of men that both from the Amplitude and Variety of 3. his work they might collect matter sufficient to incite them to the constant contemplation of his Wisdome and gratefull acknowledgement of his Munificence as also that having observed what of the Creatures were less commodious they might be directed in their election of the more commodious and beneficial as well for their Conservation as Delight Fourth that the labours of Agriculture are superfluous and voluntarily undergon by man more for the maintainance of his 4. delicacy and inordinate luxury then the provision of Necessaries to his livelyhood Since the same liberal earth which is Mother Nurse and Purveyer to all other Animals cannot be thought inhospitable to man only nor so cruelly penurious as to exclude her best guest from participating the inexhaustible bouÌ„ty of her table And though we grant some moderate labour necessary in order to the comfortable sustentation of our prodigal bodies always upon the expence yet have we good cause to esteem that more a blessing then a curse since the sweat of industry is sweet Not only because the active genius of man is constellated for business and therefore never more opprest then with the burthen of idleness but also because the sprightly hopes of a wealthy harvest sweeten and compensate the labour of semination Nor is the contentment which growes from ingenious Husbandry much below any other solace of the mind in this life if we may credit the experience of many Princes who having surfetted on the distractions of royalty have voluntarily quitted the magnified pleasures of the Court magnified only by such ambitious Novices who never discovered the gall that lyes at the bottom of those guilded sweets and with inestimable advantage exchanged the tumult of their palaces for the privacy of Granges have found it a greater delight to â—ultivate the obedient and gratefull earth then rule that giddy beast the multitude a happier entertainment of the mind and more wholsome exercise of the body to hold the easie plough then sway an unweildy Scepter and revell in the infatuating pomp of greatness Fifth that those preposterous seasons Blights Mildews Combustions c. putrefactive accidents that make the preguant earth 5. suffer abortion and so nip the forward hopes of the laborious swain doe neither intervene so frequently nor invade so generally as to introduce an universal famine or so cut off all provision as not to leave a sufficient stock of Aliment for the sustentation of mankind Sixth that the divine Intellect was the universal exemplar 6. to it self framing the types or ideas both of the world and of man within it self and accordingly configurating them This may be evinced by an argument à minori since even our selves have a power to design and modell some artificial engine whose pattern or idea we never borrowed from any thing existent without the circle of our selves but coyned in the solitary recesses of our mind Seventh concerning mans being obnoxious to the injury of many Contingencies as the voracity of wild beasts the venome of 7. Serpents the conflagration of Lightning the contagion of the Pestilence the corruption of swarms of other diseases both epidemick and sporadick c. that all these are the regular effects of Gods Generall Providence and have their causes times and finalities preordained and inscribed in the diary of Fate to whose prescience nothing is contingent But of this more satisfactorily in our subsequent consideration of universal Providence whither in strictness of method it refers it self Eight that this complaint against the unkindness of Nature 8. for producing man tender naked unarmed c. is grosly unjust For the imbecillity of our Infancy is necessary to the perfection and maturity of those noble organs contrived for the administration of the mandates of that Empress the Cogitant Soul and is amply compensated either by the vigor and acuteness of the senses or by diuturnity of life It being observed by Naturalists that those Animals which live long have a long gestation in the womb a long infancy and attain but slowly to their maturity and standard of growth the four general motions of life Inception Augmentation State and Declination carrying set and proportional intervals each to other as that truly noble Philosopher Scaliger hath hinted in his correction of that fabulous tradition of the extreme loâ—gaevity of Deer in these words De ejus vitae longitudine fabulantur neque enim aut gestatio aut incrementum hinnulorum ejusmodi sunt ut praestent argumentum longaevi Animalis As for his being born naked t is no disfavour nor neglect in her for that cumbersom wardrobe of raggs which man hath gotten upon his back is become necessary only by the delicacy of his education and custome not so intended by nature in the primitive simplicity and eucrasie of his constitution when there needed nothing but the skin either to warme or adorn the body Lastly those Armes which Nature hath denied him either he wants not at all or his own ingenious hands can provide at pleasure CHAP. IV. The General Providence of God DEMONSTRATED Sâ—CT I. THe Synopsis of my method exhibited in the hem of the first Section of the first Chapter was designed Article 1. The Authors reasons for his present adherence to the common discrimination of Providence from Creation as a clue to conduct the thoughts of my Reader along the series of those Attributes of the supreme Ens which as being of most general concernment and such as may be clearly demonstrated by the Light of Nature even to those who either never heard of or except against the testimony of Holy Writ I have promised to illustrate by the conviction of Arguments deduced from that catholique Criterion Reason to whose Judicature all Nations and Ages have readily submitted their assent and therefore I am not necessitated here to insert any farther explanation of the connexion and dependence of this Theme upon the precedent but only in avoydance of misconception to advertise that when I say the Creation of the World ex nihilo and the constant Conservation of the same in its primitive order and harmonious Coefficiency of causes subordinate are the general operations of the Wisdome and Power of the First cause I doe not intend that those are Acts really distinct each from other for in the demonstration of the Existence of God t is plainly though succinctly evinced that the Conservation of the Vniverse is nothing but the Act of Creation prolonged or continued but only conform my theory to the customary notions and terms of the Schools and yeeld to the necessity of a division in the gross capacity of mans understanding in order to the more
end for the most part best and many times only known to himself Nor is it an illegal process of our reason but the best logick as to supernaturals to conclude not only the excellencies but even the necessary being of some things meerly from hence that we cannot fully comprehend them since their very being above our capacity is argument both clear and strong enough that they are not only so as but more perfect and far greater then we understand them to be as he that sees but a small part of the sea with a Telescope at distance may safely conclude that t is exceeding large because the circumferrence thereof is by infinite degrees of magnitude wider then to be drawn into the aperture of his slender tube Sure I am at least that the Antisyllogisme or Counter-argument the understanding of man cannot discover its abstruse and mysterious plots resolve its multiplex aenigma's nor analyze its method or series of Causes subordinate and so by a retrograde chase hunt out its first and chief intention Ergo there can be no Providence is intolerable and deserves a greater dose of Ellebor then that absurdity of the blinde man who concluded there was not nor could be any such thing as light or Colours only because he could not see them When therefore we shall have run our eager contemplations to a stand in the wilderness of Providence and lost our busie thoughts in the maze of Gods secret decrees all the satisfaction our bold curiosity can return home with will be only this that all occurrences in the World are predetermined have their Causes Times and Ends punctually set down in the Ephemerides of Fate and though in the incompetent judgment of man some of them may seem the Peradventures or temerarious Hits of Chance yet are they the mature Designations of the supreme Wisdome though in the ears of man they may sound discords to the musick of particular Natures yet will they at last be found well composed Aers necessary both to sweeten and fill up the common Harmony of the Universe To instance are there not many Monsters Heteroclites Equivocal and irregular births on the earth many prodigious and new-faced Meteors in the upper and uncertain Anomalies or unseasonable Tempests in the lower division of the Aer many new Phaenomena among the fixed various encounters diviâ—ions and conspiracies among the erratick stars c. and yet doe not all these as Chrotchets and Quavers in a grave and solemn lesson on a Lute conduce to the advancement of the General Melody Doth not irregularity render order the more conspicuous and amiable and Deformity like the Negro drawn at Cleopatra's elbow serve as a foile to set off Beauty Are not the Moles on the cheeks of Nature as those on Venus skin placed there to illustrate or whiten the snow and sweeten the feature of her face Is it not exceeding gracefull in a Comoedian to temper and endear the sage and weighty scenes of Princes and Melancholy States-men with the light interludes of Pantalons Clowns and Anticks Doth not the Painter then shew the most of skill when he refracts the glaring luster of his lighter Colours with a veil of Sables and makes the beauty of his peice more visible by clouding it with a becoming shadom And without doubt every man will readily conjoyne his vote to ours that he is best able to adorn and imbellish a piece of Art who first contrived and wrought it and therefore the Perfection and Condecoration of a work doth properly and solely bolong to his hand that brought it to that height as to want only ornament nor is it his part to prescribe what 's necessary to the conciliation of gracefulness and decorament to an engine who is ignorant of the modell and holds not a perfect Idea of the Artifice thereof Now the importance of all these similes being put together who can be so ignorant in the Alphabet or rudiments of ratiocination as not at first sight to spell them into this short lesson consisting only of two orthodox Positions First that those subitaneous Accidents which the ignorance or carelesness of the vulgar doth usually refer to the blind sortilegies of Chance are truely the meer hand of God and the prudent designes of that Catholick Providence which hath numbred the sands on the Sea shoar and weighed the dust of the earth in a balance which feeds the young Ravens when they cry and while the old ones wander for meat which thundereth marvellously with his voyce and doth great things that we cannot comprehend for he saith to the snow Be thou on the earth likewise to the smal rain and to the great rain of his strength by whose breath frost is given and the breadth of the waters is straightned which turneth the bright clouds round about by his Counsels that they may doe what ever he commandeth them upon the earth who made the ordinances of heaven and hath set the dominions thereof in the earth who can binde the sweet insluences of the Pleiades and lose the bands of Orion can bring forth Mazaroth in his season and guide Arcturus with his sons c. Secondly that those Monstrosities or extraordinary and prodigious effects which the nescience of the multitude cals Irregularities Perversions and Deformities of Nature to wiser considerations prove themselves to be no wanton excursions or randome shots of her hand made without aim at any final cause but praeordained and collineated by that sure one of Divine Providence point blanck at some certain end private or publick The former being known only to himself à priori and frequently mistaken by man a posteriori the later indeed we have a liberty to conjecture to be either that he leaves the straight and chalks out this serpentine and crooked line to satisfie the World of his Prerogative that himself is the Agent and Nature but his Instrument and therefore to be turned wrenched altered and perverted at his pleasure or else that his wisdome thinks those spots requisite to enhance the beauty of the whole those private fewds and petty discords betwixt Individuals necessary not only to endear but conserve the peace of the whole Both which durable Truths are with so much piety as judgement contracted by that Emperor of the Stoicks as well as of the Romans Marcus Aurelius Antoninus of whom the smooth Herodian initio historiae gives this glorious Character 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Solus imperatorum sapientiae studium non verbis aut decretorum scientia sed gravitate morum vitaeque continentia usurpavit into one short meditation in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Quae ad Deos ut auctores referuntur ea Providentiae plena esse nemo dubitat Quae Fortunae vulgò adscribuntur ne illa quidem extra Naturae leges fatalemque illum contextum complexúmque rerum quae à providentia administrantur Inde omnia sluunt adde quod necessarium est quicquid est toti universo
disprove all that ever he sayd before How dissimilar to Reason that he who durst adventure upon the highest falshood in the world to make himself God should so far forget the maximes of his black Art as of his own accord to confess himself to be the basest of Entities a Devil How remote from all the ways of perswasion that he who had boasted himself Vbiquitary usurped by a counterfeit title the Monarchy of the World and given out that the Prescience of Future Events was not only the natural annex of his Omniscience but the Preordination and disposal of them the adjunct of his Providence should without the impulsion of a superior betray himself chained to utter darknesse to be but a Slave that there was a setled law of Fate above his comptroll as in his excuse to Croesus ruined by his Amphibologie and that his Providence was at best but Praesagition from the concurrent inclinations of second Causes nor his Predictions of things to come other then artificial Conjectures To conclude no man I suppose will be able to remember any other Instance of the Devils Fidelity and Veracity those Confessions of Christs Divinity and that in the presence of Truth it self that he came from compassing the earth in quest of whom he might devour mentioned in holy Writ excepted or produce one sentence of truth ever spoken by him to his own disadvantage besides this one that he was commanded to shut up his Oracles by a Power which he could never contradict And therefore the Second Proposition must be true and evident viz. that his Oracles were silenced by the immediate hand of that Cause whose Activity is so far above the Power of either Satan or Nature taken either singly or combined together for the Former is but a languid Agent if you deny him the auxiliatory concurrence of the Latter as Infinitude is above Limitation Almightiness above Impotency or Omniscience above Ignorance Now to me this process of Argumentation seems so smooth familiar and customary and the whole series of Inductions so obvious to a dialectical consideration that when I reflect upon the facility of their occurence to our thoughts I cannot but extremely wonder how so many profound and circumspect Philosophers and those whose threads of life were unraveld in the eager pursuit of knowledge could referre the cessation of Oracles to Natural necessities and acquiesce in a confidence of those weak remote inconsistent impertinent and so contemptible reasons urged by Plutarch c. to salve the difficulty of this accident and serve as a specious Asylum for their puzled curiosities to retreat to Lastly that that generally confest Eclipse of the Sun and indeed the only one this great Luminary did ever suffer since Article 13. That the Eclips of the Sun at the death of Christ was purely Metaphysical irrefutably demonstrated we may with more propriety call all others but Partial Interceptions of his light by the lesser body of the Moon interposed in a straight line to some part of the Terrestrial Globe which happened at the Death of Christ was above nay against the fundamental constitutions of Nature is manifest from hence that on the third of April or Feria sexta being the Passion day in the year Aerae Christi nati 33. which is synchronical to the 78. of the Julian account the Sun and Moon were then in opposition diametrical and the Moon her self totally eclipsed in Libra to the Antipodes of Jerusalem as may be certified to any man that can read the Celestial Ephemerides backward i. e. recalculate the periodical Conjunctions and Oppositions of those two great Lights of heaven by the Tables of Astronomy For those Characters of time being punctually restrained to set certain periods the Astronomer may as easily attain to the minute of any eclipse in praeterito as to the prescience of any in futuro provided that his Hypothesis be sound and his Schemes erected with exactness correspondent nay such is the certitude of this rule as to the strict decision of time that though the Astronomer may chance to learn of the Historian that there hath bin an eclipse yet for the determination of its precise time place history must go to school to Astronomy as Scaliger de Emendat tempor hath observed to our hands Thus when Eusebius and Dio had recorded an Eclipse of the Sun to have falne out a little before the death of Augustus and so to have been a kind of prodigy portending the fall of so bright a Star the Astronomers coming after to examine the synchronisme by their retrograde calculations found the Historians in a double error that Eclipse being not of the Sun but the Moon and not preceding but succeeding his funerals To assure the miracle yet nearer let us look back to the Elements of Astronomy The Eclipse of the Moon is caused by the Intervention for so t is according to the most probable Hypothesis of Copernicus of the opac body of the earth between her and the original of her light the Sun and the Eclipse of the Sun by the interposition of the Moon betwixt him and the earth and therefore the Sun cannot be eclipsed but when he is in Conjunction with the Moon nor the Moon but when she is in opposition to the Sun Yet notwithstanding doth not every monthly conjunction and opposition of these two lights produce an eclipse to one of the two but only that Conjunction and Opposition which is Diametrical i. e. when the Central point of the Sun faceth the Central point of the Moon and that again confronteth the centre of the earth so directly that an arrow shot in a streight line from the circumference of the Sun through its Centre would also perpendicularly transfix the Centers of the other two orbs And this falls out only when the Moons Eccentrick transecteth the Suns in that line which is for that reason called the Ecliptick nor this in more then two points called by Ptolemy the Nodi or knots and by the Arabians the Head and Taile of the Dragon Again these Intersections are not constant to one certain point or place but circumgyrated by a slow motion make a circle of 18 years complete and therefore every 18 th year the Moon must be eclipsed in the same degree of the same signe in the Zodiack infallibly to the end of the world which is the rule by which every common Almanack maker doth calculate his predictions of Lunar Eclipses Now this being excogitated and the eclipses retrived back as high as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or foot of the Julian compute by revolving the leaves of the Celestial Volume we discover that the Moon indeed was naturally eclipsed on the self same day whereon the Sun prodigiously suffered together with its Author in the 2 deg of Libra the opacity beginning to the horizon of Jerusalem some few minutes before six in the evening so that the Sun was no sooner set in the West but the Moon
omnipotent Agent which is the soul of all energy and the highest link in the Chain of Causes dishonours it even to the most odious shame of Atheisme which is the greatest ignorance Nor is it Religion that makes men Cowards for the best way Article 3. Magnanimity the proper effect of Religion to harden the Spirit of man is first to soften it with the Fear of God and the noblest Tincture of magnanimity is extracted out of an humble apprehension and fiduciary acknowledgement of an all observant Deity This the wise Father well understood when refuting that impious error of the Poet Primus in orbe Deos secit timor he writ this golden Aphorisme Qui Deum non agnosciâ— is non Dominum excutit superbum sed aversatur optimum Parentem cujus respectu Animus sit non formidine humilis sed reverentia fiduciâ—e plenus Again when we ascribe the Monarchy of the World to one supreme Cause we do not derogate a jot from the Power of second Article 4. The opinion of a General Providence consistent with Physiology Causes but rather confirme and subscribe the Charter of their deputations since we thereby inferre an assurance that those Causes are really such as he was pleased to constitute them that their activities are but emauations of his omnipotence and their effects the appointments of his Wisdome And upon this meditation is it that when we observe unfrequent wildfires in the Clouds shaggy Meteors in the acr Trepidations in the earth and other the like admirable effects resulting from the concourse and conspiracy of potent Natural agents we doe not instantly quench our wonder and check our curiosity by ascribing the production of them to God so as if he were the sole and immediate Author of them and that no other Natural Cause intervened betwixt his Volition and their Contingency but by supposing him to be the First and General Cause aswell of that particular one as of all others in the World and that besides the First there is required a Second Particular one whose indagation will fully compensate the sweat and oyle of our study and which we must not deny though we cannot discover but acknowledge it to be ae Natural one however to obscure for the invention of our perspicacity To conclude out of this one Fountain may be derived streams Article 5. Lucretius his scruples concerning the seemingly temerarious effects of the Thunderbolt singularly resolved enough to rince away all those feculent Scruples which the polluted wit of Lucretius hath scraped off the Thunderbolt to obstruct the current of Providence For the Principles of that affrighting Meteor are comprehended under that series of Natural Causes which God permits to act their appointed parts on the theatre of this sublunary Globe nor doth he force them from the ordinary road of their essential and proper Activities upon any extra ordinary or new way of violence and therefore t is as natural an event if this Granado of the clouds fall on the head of an Innocent as if it fell on the head of the most guilty person as regular for it to strike the sacred batlements of a Temple as to light upon an unhallowed roof and as consonant to the rules of its projection or explosion to be shot point blanck at any mark on land as to be discharged at randome on the Sea But here some have by way of objection enquired Why did not God that he might leave nothing to Chance at his first institution of the Laws of Nature ordain such a series of Causes both for the Generation and Explosion of the Thunderbolt and limit their operations to such a certainty of events as that it should never come to pass that this Fireball should destroy the Good and miss the Impious This itch of ignorant and therefore bold curiosity may easily be mortified by applying this euporiston or obvious solution that the ends or designes of Particular Providence in these or the like occurrences are full of Prudence as to the intention of God though full of obscurity as to the investigation of our unequal Vnderstandings and therefore for us when we cannot find out these imperceptible ends therefore to conclude that those Accidents are meer accidents and have no ends at all is not to palliate but aggravate our ignorance since t is a rash and open delusion of the judgment of man to presume that he is acquainted with the secret Counsels of God a madness beyond the severity of Bethlem for mortality to pretend ability to read those Arcana Imperii or mystical decrees of Fate written in invisible Hieroglyphicks which are to hard for the intuition of Angels CHAP. V. The especial Providence of God Demonstrated SECT I. HAving sayled over the immens Ocean of Gods General Article 1. The introduction intimating the neer cognation betwixt this present and the precedent Theme and the necessity of the Authors beginning at the Atheists Objections Providence by the direction of our own congenial Cynosure the Light of Nature our next voyage ought to be up the channel of his Particular or Special which being the golden River that constantly invirons the Microcosme or Isle of Man and imports all the advantages and mutations of Happiness and Misery that occurre to humanity during the trade of life is that point we have thus long coasted about to discover But before we put into the mouth of this Euphrates Ab 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quod agrum laetum foecundumque reddat we conceive it necessary first to sound and send out our Pilot Reason to detect those Shelves and Rocks cast up by the common Adversary of mankind upon which many weak vessels have founderd sprung dangerous leaks of Atheisme and so sunk down right into that Barathrum of sorrow which knowes no exhaustion and admits of no regression The First of those we finde to be that contraprovidential Argument of that Secretary of Hell Epicurus Quod beatum est Article 2. The first objection desumed from the Apathie of the Divine Nature ac immortale id neque ira neque gratia tangi that those Passions of Anger and Love are inconsistent with the constant and immutable condition of that Nature whose simple essence is compounded of Immortality and Beatitude and therefore as Business and Cares must destroy the Tranquillity so the affections of Indignation and Placability must subvert the Constancy or eternal Sameness of divinity and upon inference that neither our most servent Impieties can accend nor our penitential Tears extinguish the Wrath of God That this poysonous Grape grew upon that wild Vine Epicurus Article 3. The same excogitated by Epicurus and promoted by Lucretius that we may not seem to belie the Devill is not only colligible from its stinking odour and assinity of taste that it bears to that detestable design of his in Epist ad Herodotum to erase out of the mind of man all the impressions of Religion by the induction
immoveably fixt by the Special Providence of God that it can be neither by any negligence immoderate and inordinate use of those things Physicians call the Six Nonnaturals or suddain Casualities anticipated or abbreviated nor by prudence temperance convenient Medicaments or caution prolated or prolonged For the first viz. That God is the sole Moderator though not the Author of Article 2. The reasons of the Authors concise tractation of the first part Death for reason will not endure that we conceive him to have created a Privation or more plainly that the hand of his Providence guides the dart of that inevitable and victorious Enemy to life this is a position so frequently and amply illustrated by the pens of many the most learned and judicious men of all ages religions and professions and so genuinely and directly inferrible from the Context and importance of those Arguments formerly introduced in order to the Demonstration of the interest of Providence even in the smallest interludes of Nature and most apparently fortuitous effects of all subordinate Causes that should we run out into any profuse probation thereof in this place the most patient and candid Reader could not but frown at the attempt and justly censure it non only as unnecessary and supercrogatory but also as scandalous and derogatory to his own Dialectical and Collective habilities And therefore humbly referring him as well to his own easy recognition of notions formerly collected from the lecture of other more mature and nervous Discourses on the same Theorem as his familiar Inductions upon many propositions inspersed upon the leaves of this our cold and dull Decembers Exercise I shall in avoydance of an undecent Chasme or Vacuity insert only two concise and obvious Arguments as Corollaries or annexes inservient to the same perswasion Article 3. The moderatioÌ„ of Death by Special Providence Divine aâ—gued from the impossibility of the moderation thereof by any other power Argument I. The life and consequently the Death of every man necessarily depends upon the absolute Will of the Creator and so upon the Decrees or resolves of his Providence or upon some other Principle extraneous alien and superior to the nature of man or upon man himself Not upon any Third or Neutral Principle for that must be either the Epicureans Fortune or the Stoicks Anus Fatidica or Fate or Homers Lottery or Pythagoras his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mentioned by Plutarch de placit 1. or the Jews Angelus mortis or their terrible she Devil Zilith described by our many-tongued Gregory in tract de Episcopo puerorum out of the Glossa Talmud in Nidda fol. 24 and erroneously conceived by Gassarel Vnheard of Curiosities pag. 317. to be the same with Lucina of the Romans for the one was thought propitious to parturient women the other so hostile and malignant that the Hebrew Wives so soon as they fell in travel caused this proscription to be written on the doore of their bed-chamber Adim Chavah chouts Lilith Adam Eve keep out Lilith or the Astrologers Helec and Alcocoden and the like 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Planets called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Fridariae derided by Archangelus a Burgo novo in Comment in dogmat Cabalist and Scalger in Comment in Manilium or the Numbers Ideas or grand Revolution of Plato or the Malus Deus of the Manachees or Helena alià s Selene of Simon Magus or Hesiods Pandora or the great Beldam Mylitta alià s Alytta of the Ethnicks or the Turks Nassub alià s Ctusura vvhich signifies the Goddess Fortune or Paracelsus his Anima mundi Platonica or rather the Macrocosmical Harmony of the Universe and the Microcosmical Concordance with the invisible signatures of the Ascendent or that Hermetico-magical Lamp of life and death lately invented and cryed up by Ernestus Burchgravius but most judiciously extinguisht by Sennertus de Consensu Chymicorum cum Galen cap. 18. or that Internal man of Paracelsus named Ens syderium Olympicum Gabalim c. by that vaine admirer and promoter of Hermetical Follies Oswaldus Crollius in Basil Chym. praefat admonit p. 6. 4. 65. or the implacable Strix or Erinnys of the Gentiles or finally some such fantastique Hobgoblin that hath no more of reality then what it borrows from the confused and obscure idea of it self conceived in the luxuriant womb of a perturbed or deluded Imagination but every sober man already knows that all these are absolute Chimaera's hatched in the adled brains of mad men Poets and idolatrous Pagans and so below our laughter much more our serious Confutation Not upon Man himself or any domestick Conservatory essentially inherent to his Nature For that absurdity once conceded entangles our reason in two the highest Impossibilities imaginable 1 it confounds the Relative Maximes of Nature breaks her chain of Dependence and inferrs a second Self-existence beside Divinity for dreaming that a Principiate Entity actually existent gave to it self existence that a Future something derives its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Futurition immediately and solely from it self and that nothing can by its own power attaine to be something i. e. that which is neither Potentia nor Actus can endow it self with the perfection of both Power and Act we must be carried upon this rock that there is in the World a second something 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Non principiate Causeless and Self-sufficient besides God which is a falshood far beyond the two Principles of all things imagined by the Manichees and more ridiculous then the Devils promise to make our Saviour Monarch of the World 2 It imports an absolute power in man to make himself immortal a Delusion that never found entertainement in the brain of the most desperate Hypochondriack nor durst the Father of lies ever suggest it to his most credulous vassals It follows therefore of pure necessity that as God is the Author of life so also can he alone dispose of the issues of Death and that the end as well as the beginning and mutations of all things are subject to the moderation of his Providence Article 4. The same demonstrated from the necessary dependence of all natural motion in its beginning continuation and period on the will of the First â—over Argument 2. A confest Verity it is that all Natural Motion must proceed from one First Motor which can be no other but God untill we can find out something coequal to him in Eternity and a position never yet disputed that the life of man is a Natural Motion to which the Apostle seemes to allude in his sacred axiome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in God we live move and have our being Act. 17. ver 28. and of parallel certainty it is that every motion hath its determinate beginning duration and period dependent on the Will of the First Mover therefore must the end as necessarily as the beginning and continuation of mans life his Death as well as his conception nativity and maturity be certainly commensurated desined
inevitabili necessitate by the absolute and never-failing power of their Essential Qualities or inherent endowments but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quatenus fieri licuit or according to the possibility of their Concingency and therefore though he confesseth that all Events are foreknown and preordained in the eternal Councel of God yet he stands assured as well upon the ground of Reason as Faith that the precise and opportune contingency of every individual Event proceeds from the insluence of this Providence which disposeth and conjoyneth some certain convenient Causes to the production of this or that determinate Effect in some sort respecting the last of Ends his own Glory To conclude the Stoick hath clip't the immense and towering wings of mans Will and allows it no wider range then what the line of Fate affords while the sublimer Christian scornes to stoop to the Lure of any Necessity besides the special Decrees of the Divine Councel not conceiving his will subject to the inclination much less the compulsion of any force below that of him who conferred that infinite liberty upon it For he indeed holds the rains of our Wills and can bend them yet non coactione violenta sed leni suavique influxu not by violent Coaction but gentle and sweet Invitation as the School-men distinguish Now if we consider Fate in the notion of the Stoicks 't will Article 13. A list of the execrable Absurdities impendent on the opinion of Ablute Fatality so accepted as the Stoick proposeth it be no easy wonder if any man though his reason be never so much hoodwinckt with the veile of Prejudice shall not at first glance discover it to be an opinion Blasphemous in respect to God insomuch as it strikes at no less then the cardinal and inseparable Attribute of his Nature Omnipotence by coercing his infinite and arbitrary Activity with the definite laws of second Causes and denying him the prerogative of absolute superiority to his mechanique Vicegerent or rather Instrument Nature and inrespect of man intolerably Absurd since it subverts the Liberty of all humane actions and leaves nothing in the power of mans Will either to elect or avoide For whoever conced's that the mind of man is subject to the compulsive regiment of Fatal Necessity and so that all the actions of our lives are but the accomplishments of so many ineluctable immoveable and inevitable Decrees from the birth of time enrolled in the Ephimerides of Destiny must also concede upon clear inference that our Creator endowed us with the Semi-divine Faculty of Rationality either to no purpose at all or at best to facilitate our betraying our selves into the snares of ruine and misery beyond possibility of reparation or redemption Must induce that the Will being deposed from her arbitrary throne the judgement seate of Reason must fall to the ground nor can there be any room left for Consultation to sit and determine the debates of the Soul concerning the good or Evil of her objects since notwithstanding all our most profound serious and prudent Deliberation the success of our actions as well as the results of our councels would then be no other but what hath bin resolved on and predecreed by Fate and then to conceive our selves obnoxious to punishment for incurring those sins which are imposed upon our wills by a necessity beyond our controll is an open derogation to the equity and Justice of the Divine Nature and to ascribe our Evil to that which is by essence superlatively Good That Prudence is miserable Folly the study of Wisdome laborious Vanity and all our ancient Lawmakers either ridiculous Fools or detestable Tyrants since they prescribe and enjoyne those things which either we must have done had not they injoyned them or are restrained from doing in spite of our own conformable inclinations by the contrary impulsion or seduction of Destiny And finally that all Divine and Human Exhortation to Good and Dehortation from evil are unnecessary and supersluous Thus shall Virtue and Vice vanish into meer and empty notions and Religion become what Libertines would have it a mysterious and well contrived invention to support temporall Greatness and fright vulgar minds into a tame submission to the arbitrary dictates of their imperious Lords nor shall there be a Heaven to compensate suffering Piety or a Hell for the punition of Villainy because as the Good man could not but live honestly and religiously whether he would or no so must it not be in the power of the Wicked man to abstain from doing Evil. Thus shall Love and Hatred the two most usefull Affections of our Souls be robbed of their proper Objects Amiable and Detestable nor shall Justice find convenient subjects whereon to place Laudation and Vituperation since Praise only belongs to those who have chosen to do Good when 't was in their power to have done Evil and Dispraise is the due guerdon of those who choose to do Evil when t was in their power to have done Good And thus shall all our Prayers be fruitless our vowes hopeless our Sacrifices unprofitable and all other acts of Devotion desperate Vanity The least of which and of a myriade of other equivalent Absurdities Incongruities and oblique or appendent and inferrible Blasphemies shooting up from this one poysonous root of Absolute Fatality is more then enough inconsistent to the fundamentals both of Reason and Religion to deterr even Heathens from approaching much more embracing and defending it But as for Theological Fate or Predestination if accepted in the legitimate sense of the Primitive Church and not in that rigorous and inflexible notion of the German Calvinist I conceive it fully concordant not only to many Texts of Sacred writ but even conciliable to mans Free will notwithstanding the apparent repugnancy betwixt them as I shall endevour to prove singularly in an ensuing chapter SECT III. AS for the Second Opinion viz. that the Term of mans Life Article 1. The Authors adhesion to the Second opinion justified by two important reasons is not fixt beyond possibility of either Anticipation or Postposition this I profess my judgement inclines me to prefer as that which seem's to be drawn in the directest line from the point of Truth and that for two mighty Reasons First because there are very few places or testimonies of Scripture which may be thought to advantage the doctrine 1. of Absolute Fatality but on the contrary very many allegable in defence of this Secondly because those Texts which make for this have 2. their importance so perpendicular that nothing but a violent perversion can wrest so perspicuous that nothing but obscure interpretations can darken so soft and easy that nothing but over nice and unnatural Exceptions can harden it And Justice will frown on that stupid partiality that shall prefer paucity to multitude obscurity to clarity and difficult to genuine and familiar solutions To explain and justify this by Instance the Hercules or Article 2. The great
which otherwise would not have come to pass doth or some other Cause interposeth which besides its proper destination and the unpraemeditated concurse of certain other things effecteth that some even◠which otherwise would doth not come to pass or that some event which otherwise would not doth come to pass hence is it manifest that this Posterior kind of Contingency is in the general that w ch men call Chance and if it be especially in Man besides or beyond whose intention any Effect eveneth then is it what they call Fortune unless that somtimes they confound both these and then 't is indifferent whether the event be referred either to Fortune or Chance However we perceive reflecting upon the former Example since the Double Effect viz. the digging of the earth and the invention of the treasure had but one single Cause viz. the man that digged that for this reason the Digger may justly enough be sayd to be Causa per se in respect of the one and per accidens in respect of the other To which we may add this that since in Effects meerly Natural one and the same thing may be both Fortune and Nature or a Natural Cause therefore Gassendus had very good reason to justifie Epicurus in this particular that he made Fortune and Nature no more then synonoma's signifying one and the same thing in Reality Now though common Enquirie may goe away satisfied with Article 3. Their Anatomy of her Nature desicient a more perfect one praesented this pausible Adumbration of Fortune yet cannot a profound and more ocular Scrutiny be terminated therein for the Example introduced to explain it comes largely short of a requisite Adaequation insomuch as no rational man can appositely enough accept either him that digged or his Action of digging for all that 's comprehended under that obscure notion of Fortune Wherefore omitting the consideration of Res Fortuita or the Event which is most frequently apprehended for Fortune it self or the cause of that insperate event let us understand Fortune to be such a concurse of various Causes made without all mutual consultation or praecogitate conspiracy betwixt them as that from thence doth follow an Event or fortuitous Effect which neither all the Causes concurrent nor some of them nor especialy he to whom the Event happens ever in the least measure intended or could expect Now according to the tenor of this Defifinition in regard to the fortuitous Invention of a treasure is required not only the Person who digg's and finds it but also he who first digg'd and hid it it is no obscure nor controvertible truth that Fortune or the Cause by Accident of the invention of the treasure is the Concurse both of the Occultation and Effossion thereof in that particular place We sayd without mutual Consultation and besides the intention of any or all the Causes concurrent thereby intimating that though one or more of the Causes may have haply intended that event yet nevertheless t is properly and absolutely Fortune in relation to that Cause which intended it not Thus if any man who foreknowes or at least conjectures that such a Person will come and digg in such a place doth there hide treasure to the end that the other may find it in this case in respect to him that hid it the Invention of the treasure is not a Fortuitous Effect but in respect to him who unexpectedly finds it it is Thus was it not altogether Fortuitous in respect of Nitocris what hapned at the Violation of his Tomb in regard he praesumed that in process of time there would be some King or other who invited by this promising Inscription If any of my Successors the Kings of Babylon shall want mony let him break open this Sepulchre and thence take what may supply his wants but on no condition unless his wants be real let him attempt it for it shall redound to his no swale detriment would open it but yet in respect to Darius that instead of mony he therein found this deriding Engravement Had'st not thou bin insatiable with riches and covetous of sordid lucre thou wouldst not have thus prophaned the Ashes of thy Praedecessors and ransack't the sacred Dormitory of the Dead this was meerly Fortuitous And thus also though Democritus hath pleaded hard to free Fortune from having any hand in the incomparable Death of good old Aeschylus why because his bald pate being mistaken by a volant Eagle for a white stone in the field was the cause why the Eagle drop't a Tortois perpendicular thereupon yet had we bin of the Jury we should have found her guilty of the Murder 1 in respect of the Poet since that sad event was besides his intention he at the same time having withdrawn himself from the Town for fear of being destroyed according to the tenor of the Astrologers praediction by the fall of an house nor could he possibly foresee that prodigious mischance impendent 2 in respect of the Eagle who drop't not the Tortois with purpose to brain the Poet but to break its shell that so he might come at his prey the flesh thereof However we are willing because in truth we ought to acknowledge that if we regard the height or punctilio of her Propriety Fortune is chiefly when among all those several Causes which concurr no one either principally or collaterally intends or aimes at that Event which unexpectedly succeeds upon that their concurse of which we have a most illustrious and competent Example in the Dilatation of the death of Socrates a day beyond the time praefixt by his Judges for the Execution of their Sentence upon him as Plutarch de Fato hath praecisely observed We have it from the pen of that oraculous Secretary of Nature Article 4. Fortune nothing but a meer Negation of all Praenotion in a Concurse of natural Causes respective to a fortuitous Event D r Harvey that he never dissected any Animal but he always discoverd somthing or other more then he expected nay then ever he thought on before so useful infinite in variety is the Magna Charta of Nature and perhaps some of our Readers may here have occasion to say as much of this our Dissection of Fortune for while we have exercised our thoughts in the exploration of her Nature we have unexpectedly found that if considered per se reverà she hath no nature at all i. e. that in Reality she is nothing For when we have abstracted all those Causes in the Concurse which act per se or by natural virtue there remains no more but a meer Privation or Negation of all Praenotion in the concurrent Causes of that particular Concurse and also of the intention and expectation of the subsequent Event nor can that unpraemeditate Concurse of Causes be rightly accounted the Cause of the Fortuitous Event by any neerer relation then that which Philosophers have termed Conditio sine qua non Since as the Admotion of any
combustible body to Fire may be sayd to be the Cause of its combustion in this respect only that it was Conditio sine qua non or if that Admotion had not praeceded the combustion had not succeded so also cannot that Concurse of Causes from which any Fortuitous Event doth result unexpectedly be sayd to be the Cause thereof in any other respect but this that it was Conditio sine qua non i. e. if that Concurse of Causes had not praeceded that Event had not succeded though not one of those Causes in the single energy of its nature nor all in confederacy ever any way intended it the Analogy betwixt these two cases standing faire and full in all points Again forasmuch as this indeliberate Syndrome or Combination of Causes is always uncertain and various the Causes being Article 5. Epicurus commended for illustrating the instability and uncertainty of Fortune neither elected nor connected nor managed by any Providence of their own we cannot in justice but applaud the wary judgment of Epicurus in this that he called Fortune 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Cause instable in Persons Times and Manners which is aequivalent to this that since she is a Cause of uncertain and indeterminate insluence none but Fools can hope that this Chamaeleon should constantly appear in the same colours or wear the same Countenance Nor is he less to be commended for his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Article 6. Her Indivinity manifested how she came by her Deification Cave ne habeas Fortunam Deam apud Diogen Laert. Epist 3. Epicuro conscripta endeavours to degrade Fortune from her imaginary Divinity and deride the egregious folly of her solemne Worship for so great is the imbecillity of vulgar minds that what they doe not well comprehend they not only immoderately admire but superstitiously revere as somthing wholly Divine and as farr above Nature as it seems above their Capacity and undoubtedly mans Ignorance of the praevious Conspiracy of Accidentaly concurrent Causes from which any Event extraordinary and superintentional doth emerge first praevailed upon him to invest Fortune in such a specious disguise under which he might with less dishonour to his ownâ— Intellectuals advance her to the reputation of a Deity and adore her T is more then probable that men did not at her first Canonization either much care for or enquire into the condition and extent of her Power and evident that when she began to be cryed up for producing strange Effects in the transactions of the world and by a kind of impervestigable superintendency to dispose the activity of Natural Causes to the induction of Events above or beside their proper and Customary Destinations then began the Vulgar to think themselves concerned in the conciliation of her favour and early atonement of her displeasure and so by those to whom she seemed friendly and prosperous was she accounted a Good and Propitious Numen and to those to whom she appeared Inclement and Adverse an Evil and Malevolent one And hence the Error like Rivers still enlarging were stately and magnificent Temples erected for her popular and solemne Adoration and several Inscriptions respective to that particular Attribute which her fond Votaries conceived most eminent in her or most advantagious to themselves ingraven in capital letters on their Porches such as ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of which I have seen at the house of that ingenious Benefactor to Antiquaries Mr Vernon in Essex with no small cost and difficulty digged up in a field neer Smyrna and together with many other very antique Monuments brought by him into England Malae Fortunae Averruncae Blandae Calvae Vitreae Equestri Fallaci Aureae c. a large catalogue of which Appellations we may read in Pliny lib. 2 cap. 7. Plutarch lib. de Fortuna Romanorum and Natalis Comes lib. 4. Mytholog cap. 9. This Pliny with some indignation at the ridiculous delirium of the world in the Deification of this Non-entity takes ample notice of in these words Toto mundo locis omnibus omnibusque horis omnium vocibus Fortuna sola invocatur una nominatur una accusatur una cogitatur sola laudatur sola arguitur cum convitiis colitur volubilis à plerisque verò caeca etiam existimata vaga inconstans incerta varia indignorum fautrix huic omnia expensa huic omnia feruntur accepta in tota ratione mortalium sola utramque paginam facit adeoque obnoxiae sumus sortis ut Sors ipsa pro Deo sit qua Deus probatur incertus We are not ignorant nor in duety to the praeservation of their memories from ingratefull Detraction ought we to conceal Article 7. All sober Philosophers vindicated from the guilt of ascâ—ibing Divinity to Fortune how difficult it is for any man to impeach any one Philosopher among those many whose Names or Writings have hitherto escaped the jawes of Oblivion of this absurd Delusion of ascribing Divinity to Fortune For though Plato de legibus lib. 4. hath this saying Deum omnia ac secundum Deum Fortunam Tempus omnia gubernare Aristotle 2 Phys 4. affirmes that some there were who held Fortunam esse causam quidem sed humanae menti obscuram Stobaeus Ecles Physic tells us of others Qui partem aliquam Fortunae ex eo esse Divinam censerent quo quidam temere agentes optatum finem consequerentur caeteros verò prudentia utentes optata dâ—stituerent who opinioned that Fortune was in some part Divine for this reason that some men who enterprized their designes rashly and inconsiderately did not withstanding accomplish them successfully and happily attain their ends while others who grounded theirs upon the most apparent probability and managed the means conducing to their procuration with great prudence and circumspection were however fooled in their attempts crost in their hopes and frustrated of their purposes by the suddain intervention of some occult impediment which as no Forecast could discover so no Caution praevent yet cannot all this be justly interpreted any other then their wary and tacite Confession of their Ignorance of the cryptick ways and imperceptible Ends of Providence Divine nor did these great Book-men speak other then the Dialect of the Illiterate and conforme their Expressions to the customary notion of the Multitude when they referred to Fortune those Contingents which to the jndgement of Reason seemed to want a Natural Series of Causes proper for their induction being as it were obtruded upon man by a power Supernatural i. e. so far above the praecaution of his Prudence as the investigation of his Sapience And though some few perhaps whose Curiosity was weak but Superstition strong may be found to have contributed toward the propagation of this Error yet cannot that in reason be extended to the attainder of the major and more judicious number of Philosophers who upon the strictest examination of their Reliques must be found guilty of no more then
this by mediation of the Spirits discurrent or rather transmitted through all parts of the body All which Lucretius fully expresseth in these Verses Declinamus item motus nec tempore certo Necregione loci certa sed ubi ipsa tulit Mens Nam dubio-procul his rebus sua quoique voluntas Principium dat hinc motus per membra vagantur lib. 2. Again perhaps Epicurus will not gainsay but that the motion of Declination is as much Natural as the motion of Gravity But yet will He by no perswasions yeeld that the Mind being contemperate of Declinatory Atoms is so affected and attracted by Necessity toward one object that it cannot instantly be deflected to another For as a mixt Nature is made so is the Mobility of its insensible parts varied and from various Natural motions retused or refracted ariseth a Third Nature according to which its motions may be sayd to be Voluntary and Natural both insomuch as they proceed à Natura libera from Nature free and uncoacted Nor will He deny supposing the Occursation and Arietation of Atoms that it is pure Necessity that Percussions Repulses and either Reflexions or Cohaesions should succeed among them but yet may He refuse to allow a Necessity of such Occursations as if they could not be impeded nor their Consequents be diverted Hence concerning that eternal series of the Causes of the Apple and the Mind Epicurus will grant that when things are already effected a kind of Necessity may be attributed thereunto such in respect whereof those things cannot be uneffected since non datur jus in praeterita there is no countermanding things Praeterite but before those things were peracted there was no such Necessity since both Fortune or Contingency and the opposing Liberty of mans Will might have interrupted inverted and changed it For few are ignorant of the wide disparity between these two Assirmations viz. What is once done cannot be not done and what is done might not have bin done Since in the Former a thing is considered as already past and in the Later as yet to come and as according to the Former it is Necessary so according to the Later it may be or Contingent or Voluntary By which reason was it possible that the Apple might not have bin praesented to the eye possible that the Tree which bare it might first have withered that the Seed of which that tree was generated might either have proved abortive and steril or else have bin sowed in some other place that other of its Causes might have bin divers ways praepeded which also may be affirmed of the Mind and its Causes and consequently none of the many Causes which did antecede the Appetition of the Apple can be conceived to have bin Necessary as they might if the Causes were of themselves uncapable of Impediment or if there were one Cause Paramont to all others in the Concatenation which by an absolute soveraignty or despotique power had directed and coacted them Allbeit we concede that the Appetition of the Apple by the mind is the Consequent of the Minds Cognition thereof and that Cognition the consequent of its Occursation to the eye and that the Consequent of its Position in a place convenient for sight and that the consequent of its Existence and so from link to link retrograde up to eternity yet notwithstanding can no man justify this Inference that therefore the Mind is Necessitated to that Appetition because still there remains a Posse to the Mind of being Averted from the Affectation and Prosecution thereof in case either the Species of a better object or a suspicion of poyson therein concealed shall intervene or a refrigeration of the Stomach by the dyspeptical and slatulent juice thereof be feared or any other Cause of moment sufficient to perswade the mind to abstain from the use thereof shall be interposed Nor is this Rejoynder disswasive that when the Mind is averted Article 7. The most weighty Rejoynder of the oonnexion of those Causes which Avert the Mind from so found too light from the Appetition of the Apple the Causes Antecedent were not such as might induce the mind to an Appetition but such as induced it to an Aversation and that these Averting not those Attracting Causes were so connected to the series of Fate that the mind could not but be averted from it well as of those which Attract it to an object to the eternal Series of Fate to overbalance Epicurus his defence of mans Liberty For though the Mind be contemperate of such a Contexture of Atoms as that it may be Commoved by the irruent Species of external Objects yet is the nature of its contexture such also as that it can derive from it self some motions distinct from nay contrary to those motions excited by Extradvenient Images which motions being instituted by no other Principle but it self are manifestly Spontaneous and Voluntary and by which it is empower'd to resist External motions and therefore may not so be carried to one Object as not to be upon advantage deflected to another And hence we may Conclude that the Mind is not obliged to a necessity of any one Object but stands Free to refuse that and elect another and that the Reason of a thing to come is not a little different from that of a thing already past since in respect to a thing Future there remains an Indifferency to the Mind of electing either of two Objects but in respect to a thing Praeterite there is a Necessity of its election of one If this Solution be thought too light we can superadd another of weight sufficient to counterpoyse the Doubt viz. that which Carneades in Cicero insinuated when he taught that the Epicureans might have defended the Liberty of mans Mind without their commentitious Declination of Atoms For having once declared that the Mind hath Voluntary motions of its own institution they needed no other Argument to confute Chrysippus to whom when they had conceded that no motion can be without a Cause Movent there remained no reason why they should have granted that all Effects have their Antecedent Causes since to the will of man no Causes are Antecedent it being to it self the Principium à quo of all its motions Voluntary And this is the faithfull Abridgement of Epicurus his Doctrin concerning Fate as a Constitution meerly Natural and capable of interruption alteration opposition by either of the Two other in his Triumvirate viz. Fortune or pure Contingency and the Liberty of mans mind which He conceived Copartners in the Empire of the World ¶ SECT IV. THere is yet another Species of Fate retaining to our Second Article 1. Mathematical Fate briefly described Genus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose exceeding vanity and inconsiderableness had well-nigh occasioned our total Inconsideration thereof in this place and that is Fatum Mathematicum sive Astrologicum the Mathematicians and Astrologers Fate being a certain imaginary Necessity Natural imposed upon
Reader with the prolix Recitation Article 1. The intent of the chapter and necessary Explanation of the Ancients opinions concerning Fate and the residue of our province is to gratify him with the concise Declarement of our own both concerning the legitimate Admission of this notion of Fate and the Conciliation thereof to mans Free-will Fortune and Providence Divine which we have formerly invited him to expect as the grand scope at which all our praevious Meditations were directed and the point in which all these lines of this small matter of Book are concentred First we are to abominate the execrable Opinion of Democritus Article 2. Democritus Fate inconsistent both to the Fundamentals of Religion and the Liberty of mans Will and therefore detested not only because it is uncapable of due Consistence with the sacred and indubitable Principles of Religious Faith which ascertain that the Creation Molition Conservation and constant Administration of all things are impossible rightly to be ascribed to any Cause but the Supreme Being alone but also because it is è diametro repugnant to the evidence of that infallible Criterion the Light of Nature which demonstrateth the Soul of man to be an Arbitrary and uncoacted Agent For that man hath in himself a power of inhibiting or suspending his Assent unto and Approbation of any object the Verity of whose Species is not sufficiently clear and distinct but Dubious is a perfect Demonstration of the Indifferency or Liberty of his Intellect and so also of its charge the Will or Faculty Elective as Cartesius excellently observes in Princip Philosoph part 1. sect 6. Secondly that opinion of Aristotle and Epicurus may indeed Article 3. Aristotle and Epicurus their Fate admitted in that it is Idenâ—ical to Nature but abominaâ—ed in that it clasheth with the Certitude of Divine Praescience be defended so far forth as it makes Fate and Nature or the Concatenation of natural Causes to be one and the same thing in reality though expressed by different Terms but ought to be exploded insomuch as it not only denies the Verity of Future Events and so substracts from God the proper Attribute of his most perfect Essence Omniscience by not conceding to him an infallible Science of all things to come but also supposeth no Creation of natural Causes no disposition no moderation of their Efficiencies by Providence Divine And thirdly as for that more specious opinion of the Platonist Article 4. The Platonick and Stoick Fate embraced so far as it is conceded to be a Constitution of the Divine wisdome but abandoned in that it detracts from Divine Omnipotence and Stoick we can discover no danger in our adhaesion to it so far as it affirmes the primitive Constitution and continual Gubernation of all things in the Universe by God by defining Fate to be that Method series or systeme of Causes which the Divine Nature at first constituted and established in order to the praecise and opportune effecting all things praedecreed by his infinite Wisdome But yet we must cautiously abandon it in this that it not only blasphemously invades the cardinal Praerogative of Divinity Omnipotence by denying him a reserved power of infringing or altering any one of those Laws which Himself ordained and enacted and chaining up his armes in the adamantine fetters of Destiny but also in great part excludes the mind of man from acting any voluntary part on the theatre of the world and leaves no room for the intervention of Contingents Article 5. In what qualified sense Christianisme may tolerate the use of the term Fate Nor is there any substantial reason to deterr the most scrupulous Christian from admitting the use of this term Fate in a rectified sense i. e. provided that He thereby understand not any blind and unpraemeditate Necessity but a provident and well ordered Concatenation of Causes which like the Magnetick Chain where all the inferior links are dependent on the impraegnating or invigorating Emanations of the First was constituted by the Fiat of the Eternal Wisdome and may be varied or inverted by the occasional Determinations of the same and this without incurring the Imperfection either of Inconstancy or Improvision For our warrant in this we have no less a Praecedent then S t. Austin whose words are these Qui omnium connexionem seriemque Causarum quâ fit omne quod fit Fati nomine appellant non multum cum iis de verbi controversia certandum est quandoquidem ipsum causarum ordinem quandam connexionem summi Dei tribuunt Voluntati ac proinde Fati voce qui voluerit uti sententiam teneat linguam corrigat in 5. de Civit. Dei cap. 8. ¶ SECT II. NOw as for the Abolition of the seeming Enmitie between Article 1. Fate and Fortune conciliated in the point of Providence Divine Fate and Fortune t is not obscure that the Concession of the one is very far from adnihilating the other For if we admit Fate to be a Law by the Divine Will imposed upon Natural Causes according to the tenor whereof all things are done that are done and Fortune to be an Event resulting from a concurse of Natural Causes besides above or contrary to the expectation conjecture and forecast of man though praecisely praeordained by the Providence of God and connexed to the series of Causes or Chain of Fate we cannot but soon perceive their Convention Concentration and Identity in the point of Providence Divine nor is there any veil of Discrepancy betwixt them in their naked and simple Realities but that light and thin one which either the Ignorance or Sophistry of man hath rudely and perhaps profanely drawn When a Prince dispatcheth two Posts to the same place by several waies neither knowing of the others mission and they meet each other in one moment at their journeys end though we may rightly call it Fortune in respect to them who nevet thought of that Convention yet still is it providence in respect to the Prince who sent them and limited their time of travell to such an houre And undoubtedly by the authority of no less reason are we bound to acknowledge that though many Events hourly occurring to us which the highest Human Prudence could never so much as suspect may without derogation to the sacred Monarchy of God be styled meerly Fortuitous in relation to our Improvision yet still are they the wise and convenient Praedeterminations of his Special Providence Our Memory may rehearse that the Terme Fortune hath a double importance 1 a Concurse of Causes 2 mans praevious Ignoration of the Event resulting from that Concurse and our Reason cannot bur hence inferr that according to the First Fortune may be admitted in respect to man though not of God and according to the Last nothing can interdict our assertion that Fortune is a part not only of Fate but also of Providence Divine which as hath bin profusely demonstrated comprehends all occurrences as well those which are
there contend with him concerning the extent of Gods Providence even to every single and individuall nature urging no other proof of the Affirmative but the bare authority of Canonicall Writ though to us Christians of undoubted truth and more fiduciary then demonstration is the ready way to confirm him in his impiety and stiffen his infidelity in regard a plain and just exception lies against the Circle Nor have we any probable way left to break his objections but a sober reception of them in the shield of reason and a smart retort of arguments desumed from the proper magazine of all temporall knowledge the Light of Nature Hereupon when we had determined with our selves to erect a building of Physicall science upon those pillars or principles which to our judgment appear most solid firm and permanent because most sensible in all the operations or effects of Nature that can any way occurre to the disquisition of Philosophy as shall be amply commonstrated in the future application of them to particulars and submitted our assent to that excellent Rule of the School-men Nulla res qualiscunque est intelligi potest nisi Deus intelligatur prius revived into an Axiome by the incomparable Des Cartes in these words Omnem omnis scientiae certitudinem veritatem ab una veri Dei cognitione pendere adeo ut dum ignoramus DeuÌ„ esse verum esse nihil omnino de ulla alia re perfecte scire possimus we conceived it necessary to begin as high as the First Cause God and endevour the demonsâ—ration first of his Existence and consequently for strict reason will never endure their separation of those two generall operations of his Wisdome Power and Goodness viz. 1. the Creation of the world ex nihilo and and 2. the continuall Conservation of the same in its primitive harmony by his Providence and this by Arguments so purely extracted from the chief inducements of beleef that no Atheist how acute or refractary soever can justly except against them SECT II. T Is an Assertion which bids defiance to a whole host of Scepticks Article 1. The mind of man can have no cognition of the nature of its objects but by the mediation of their proper Ideas that the Soul of man while she animates this admirable engine the Body can apprehend no more of the Formes of Entities then what she reads in those reflex Characters Images or Ideas which she findes represented to her in the mirrour of Cogitation Now of those Ideas or Representations exhibited to the understanding there are three distinct orders 1. Some are Innate Article 2. Those Ideas are 1 Innate 2. Adventitious or Congenial for that I may understand what a Thing is what Truth is what the act of Cogitation is I need the assistance or information of no other nature but my own 2. Others are Adventitious or emergent from external objects for that I actually hear sounds see the light of the Sun feel the heat of fire and become sensible of all other qualities of bodies I have ever hitherto adjudged these acts of sensation to belong to my essence onely at second hand as being derivative from other causes forreign and alien to my nature 3. And finally others are Created 3 Imaginary modelled or coyned in the mint of the Imagination for the Phansie of the most stupid Ideot is naturally empowerd to forge or paint to it self and represent to the mind what images it please as Chimaeras Sirens Harpies Goblins c. As for those Ideas on which I look as proceeding from things existent without the circle of my self I make this enquiry whether Article 3. A strict enquiry whether the Ideas of objects existent without our selves hold an exact similitude to their natures there be any reason sufficient to perswade me to conceive that such Ideas are exactly like to those things whether these Copies or transcripts are drawn to the life so as in all particulars to resemble their originals And the determination wherewithall I satisfie my self is this that the Affirmative is taught me by nature as being hitherto instructed that those Ideas have no dependence at all on my Will and so by consequence proceed not from my self but are obtruded upon my cognition even against my Will For instance whether I will or nill I am sensible of the heat of Fire and therefore think this perception or Idea of heat to proceed from something distinct from my self viz. from the heat of that fire by which I stand and obvious it is beyond all hesitancy that I may judge that this fire doth immit into me rather the similitude of it self then any thing else The stability of which reasons I shall now strictly examine When I here say I am thus instructed by Nature I intend only that I am rapt on by a certain spontaneous violence or native propensity to submit my assent thereunto not that this declared unto me to be a firm and uncontrollable truth by the light of Nature For I discover a vast and irreconcileable disparity between the Dictates of these two Informers and the Difference may be stated thus Whatever things are declared unto me by the light of Nature as this that I am because I doubt that 2 and 3 make 5 c. can never on any pretence be doubted of in regard there can be no other faculty or Criterion to whose judgement or decision I can afford so ample and firme credit as to that of the light of Nature which onely can teach me whether those things are true or false But as for those Inclinations or Propensions naturall I have long since found by deplorable experience that by them I have been frequently hurried unto and in a sort impelled upon this evill in my solitary disputes with my self concerning my judicature and election of the Good and therefore am not in any measure convinced why I should depend upon their information pursue their conduct or resigne my assent to their testimony in other cases Again though these Extradvenient Ideas depend not on my Will yet is that no valid Argument that therefore of necessity they must proceed from things without my self for as those strong Propensities though seated in me and as it were annexed to my very being doe yet seem clearly distinct from my Will so also perchance there may be another third Faculty within me which I doe not yet sufficiently understand that coyns those Ideas as hitherto my conceptions have ever been that in my dreams such Ideas are created in my brain without the assistance of any forreign Objects invading my senses And lastly should I grant those Counterfeits or Ideas to be desumed from things distinct from my selfe yet could it be no justifiable inference that therefore they must in all points resemble those things or prototypes from which they were transmitted yea in many particulars I apprehend them to be disproportionate and dissimilar toto coelo by inequalities never to be parallels
the long and wary speculation of them such happy persons shall assuredly find in him more satisfactory ample and easie matter of clear and distinct cognition then in all the world beside Thirdly I discriminate an Intellection Adequate from an Intellection Gradual or conforme to the slender capacity of man 3. For the First t were madness beyond the power of Hellebor for any man to dream that he could understand an Infinite Conceptu adaequato by a comprehension fully as large and exactly proportionate unto that Infinite nay it may be a very hard question whether the armes of our understanding be long enough to commensurate the full nature of any Finite object though nere so small by an Idea exactly respondent and equal in all points for the other every sober man is able to find within himself that the wings of his mind are not so clipt as that it cannot aspire to the Gradual cognition of an Infinite finita ad modulum humani ingenii accommodata cognitione If any shall pervert this Distinction to so sinister a latitude as to retort that when I confess my understanding too shallow and dark to comprehend an infinite Conceptu adaequato I doe at the same time implicitely concede that I can know no more then a part of an infinite and indeed the least part which can be said to carry the representation of an infinite no more then the effigies of one single hair to represent the whole body of a man I shall smoothly rejoyne that to affirme that if we fully comprehend any thing that thing must be infinite is a plain and obvious contradiction in terminis since the Idea of an infinite if true cannot be comprehended Incomprehensibility being the formal attribute of an infinite and yet nevertheless it is evident that the Idea which we have of an infinite doth resemble not only some one particular part but even really and truly the whole thereof eo modo quo repraesentari debet per humanam ideam though doubtless a far more accurate and distinct i. e. perfect Idea may be allowed to be in the more luminous and clear intellect of God of Angels or other natures more intelligent then man Thus we doubt not but a Clown who never heard of Euclid or learned one Axiome in Geometry may notwithstanding have in his mind the Idea of a whole Triangle when he is once instructed that a Triangle is a Figure comprehended in three lines though he remain ignorant of many other things which a learned Geometrician knowes intelligible in that Figure and insatiately speculates in the Idea thereof for as to understand a figure included in three lines is sufficient to acquire the Idea of a whole Triangle so also to understand a thing not to be comprehended or terminated by any limits or ends is sufficient to the acquisition of a true and entire Idea of the whole infinite This Idea you have of God is no more then Ens rationis a Article 2. Object 2. That the Idea of the divine nature resident in the mind of man is a meer Ens rationis and the Solut. meer figment or Chimaera that hath no existence at all but in your intellect and therefore hath no more of perfection or reality objective then your own mind that framed it Ens rationis hath a double signification 1. it imports a meer abstracted Notion devoid of all reality or a pure Non-entity 2. it signifies every operation of the intellect or more plainly Ens a ratione profectum in which acceptation the whole World may be properly styled Ens rationis divinae or an entity created by a simple and pure act of the divine intellect Now in this last sense only can I allow that transcendent Idea of God to be Ens rationis a clear and distinct representation of the most perfect Being engraven by his own finger upon my understanding and to that unprevaricate judgment that shall maturely perpend the contents and logical connexion of our precedent meditation it will plainly appear that we intend such a Perfection or reality objective in this Idea which no less then that Artifice objective which is in the Idea of any engine most ingeniously fabricated requires a Cause wherein all that is really and formally contained which is included in the Idea only objectively and at second hand or by reflexion Though we grant your Thesis that this Idea hath more of Perfection or objective reality then your Mind yet cannot Article 3. Object 3. That an effect may have more of reality or perfection then its Cause and the your Assumption stand that therefore your Mind cannot be the Author of this Idea since an Effect may have a degree of Perfection or reality which neither is nor ever was in the Cause thereof To instance common observation teacheth that Flies Frogs c. insects as also some Plants are generated by the Sun rain and earth mutually cooperating by a kind of seminal confermentation or fertile putrefaction and yet in neither of those causes will any man allow so high a Perfection as that of Vitality Ergo c. My Inference is founded on the rock of reason and therefore Solut. too impregnable to be demolished by so feeble a battery For first it is indubitate that there can be no Perfection in Animals devoyd of reason which is not also in bodies devoyd of Animation or if there were that Perfection must be extradvenient or derived unto them from some forreign principle nor are the Sun rain and earth the Adequate Causes of Insects or Animals whose produâ—â—ion is spontaneous and without other seminalitie then that analogous sperme of corruption and it sounds discordant in the harmonious ears of logick for any man only because he is ignorant of any other Cause that may conduce to the generaâ—ion of an insect i. e. hath so many degrees of perfection as as an Insect hath therefore to stagger the truth of an Axiome ratified by the Light of Nature For Quod nihil sit in effectu quod non vel simili vel eminentiori aliquo modo praeextiterit in causa is a First notion at which no man can quarel but he must implicitely abjure his own reason nor doth the ancient and vulgar maxime à nihilo nihil sieri differ from it but only in terminis because if it be conceded that any thing is found in the effect which cannot be found in its cause it must also be conceded that this something was made by nothing nor am I convinced why nothing may not be the cause of something but only from this evidence to the contrary that in such a cause there would not be the same nor any thing equivalent unto that which is in the effect Secondly that my Mind cannot be the Efficient cause of this transcendent Idea needs neither declarement nor support other then this canonical position that whatsoever reality or perfection is only objectively in our Ideas must be either formally or
by God but the pure Natural man who wants the illumination of sacred Writ can follow no other conduct but what by the light of nature appears most consonant to truth My Digression is now ended and I returne to the discharge of my Assumption the redargution of that blasphemous opinion which ascribes the honour of the Worlds composure to Fortune SECT II. ANd first I oppose to the Patron of this error the more noble Article 1. The conceit of the Worlds fortuitous production disparaged by a prepollency even of Pagan Auctority that profoundly asserted the contrary viz. of Auctority of many antient and eminent Philosophers who though unhappily born and educated in the midnight of Paganism had yet their intellectuals so irradiated by the refulgent Light of Nature which their Vigilancy and assiduous Contemplation always kept like the Vestal tapours shining and uneclipsed by the Cimmerian foggs of Tradition and Prejudice that they discovered more then a glimps of Divinity in the original of the World For Thales Milesius being introduced by Diogenes Laertius in vita ejusdem as rendring a reason Cur mundus sit pulcherrimus Article 2. Thales Milesius of the extreme glory comeliness and decency of the World and exact symmetry observed in all and every part thereof most wisely sets up his rest and silences all further dispute in this full solution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 t is the Artifice of God That Anaxagoras had found out the same truth by his retrograde tracing of nature up to her first head or fountain can be Article 3. Anaxagoras obscure to none that shall doe his meditations so much right as to interpret his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mens or supreme Intelligence to be the same with that which we call God for even our School-men doe as much frequently using those appellatives Summa Intelligentia and Deus indifferently and as Synonomas Of Pythagoras and Plato we need no other record then the single testimony of Timaeus Locrus who being a famous Pythagorean Article 4. Pythagoras and Plato and therefore prudently deputed by Plato to deliver his own sense in that golden Dialogue concerning Nature which in the Commentary of Marsilius Ficinus signifies no more then Divinitatis instrumentum in many passages of the debate or investigation takes occasion to declare Deum esse Parentem ac opisicem mundi Nor can it cost the study of many houres to collect from Plato's other inquest into Divinity called Parmenides who also was a disciple of Pythagoras or De uno omnium principio and the now mentioned description of Nature Timaeus conferred together that both Pythagoras and Plato shook hands in that opinion that the world had its beginning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not in Time in regard as they conceived it never had beginning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but in Cogitation i. e. though it be Non-principiate yet may our thoughts have the licence to assume that there was some praeexistent matter out of which it was formed For they both apprehended so absolute a dependence of the world upon God that God being existent in the World must of necessity be reputed the Efficient thereof insomuch as the World could have no other Cause of its Matter Distinction Disposition Beauty and ornament And is not this the same that our Doctors now admit while they defend that the World might have been created by God had his Wisdome thought fit from all Eternity and if so yet notwithstanding he must still have been the Cause of it in regard of that necessary dependence of the World upon him for if there were no God there could be no World 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the same reason as though we grant the Sun together with its light or a Seal together with its signature to have been from all Eternity yet must we grant the Sun to be the Cause of his light and the Seal to be the Cause of its impression For they condescend to this that an Effect may be coaevous to its Cause and that though the Cause be not prior Tempore it sufficeth that it be onely prior Natura or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the very expression of Timaeus Locrus However this may be disputed yet sure I am that as well these two Patriarchs of Learning as all their Sectators and Interpreters were unanimous in this point That God was Author of the Universe What the Stoicks thoughts were concerning this grand particular Article 5. The Stoicks is publick and cannot escape the cognizance of any who have look't into the lives of the Scholiarchs or Heads of that numerous Sect amply registred by the even pen of Diogen Laert. or read Cicero's second Book De natura Deorum where he elegantly personates Balbus smartly and profoundly disputing against Velleius and Epicurus whither I remit the unsatisfied Reader in avoidance of Prolixity For the grand signieur of the Schools Aristotle truth is I Article 6. Aristotle cannot conceal that when he maintains in 8. Physic prioribus de Coelo the Universe to be ingenitum without origination and contemns that forementioned distinction of Priority 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as excogitated by Pythagoras and continued by Plato rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the convenience of Doctrine then the interest of Truth he is positive that he could not admit the World to have had any Author at all and therefore Simplicius in 8. Physic digress 3. chiding Philoponus for daring to assert that the World had its origin and production from God according to the testimony of Moses Chronicle cries out that his doctrine was repugnant to the Fundamentals of his oracle Arist and in some sort highly derogatory to the majesty of the assigned Productor since it tacitly rendred him subject to that imperfection Mutability which is incompatible with the constant simplicity of an Essence sufficiently accomplisht for so mighty an action and implies that he was not the same from all Eternity and but lately became Parens Conditórque mundi But yet have I ground enough to stand upon that Arist grew wiser as he grew elder and that the flame of his reason shined brighter when that of his life burned dim for in the last exercise of his pen his book De mundo which most Antiquaries conclude written in the close of his studies cap. 5. 6. he sings a palinodia and makes open profession that the universal harmony consonance and pulchritude of this great machine were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ab universorum Conditore Confirming the verity of that pious A dage confest and pronounced by all men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All from God That he hinted this from that oraculous Motto fathered upon Zoroaster that King and Magus of the antient Baâ—trians and contemporany to Ninus and Semiramis as Eusebius lib. 10. de praep Evangel cap. 3. accounts Factor qui per se operans fabrifecit mundum doth not want its share of probability
insomuch as the monuments of the Chaldean Learning were ransackt by the Platonicks and so came to the view of Aristotle is manifest as well from the circumstance of Time his life falling not much below the plunder of the Oriental Libraries as from the Rhapsodies or Excerptions which the Pythagoreans had made out of the relicts of Zoroaster and Trismegistus and transmitted down to the hands of Plato and his Scholars who frequently inspersed them upon their own writings a copious series of which sentential transcriptions hath been not long since bequeathed to posterity by the bounty of Caesar Longinus But however I am inclined to beleive rather that his second thoughts and more advanced Contemplations on the excellency and glory of the structure lighted him to this recantation and enforced him to confess that the fabrick of the world was too full of Wisdome and Providence to have been performed by any thing below the Highest for t is warrantable for me to conjecture that since he had his erudition at least his education at the feet of Plato and so could not be ignorant of any Tradition of moment which his Master knew had his judgement been imbued with that lesson in his greener yeers he could not well have stifled it till immediately before his death especially when the knowledge of this great truth might have preserved him from that swarm of Difficulties which he endured in maintaining his Thesis of the Non-production or Eternity of the World There are I confess who stiffely question the propriety of legitimation of this book De Mundo owning it upon some younger Composer who ambitious to have the Minerva of his own colder brain long lived in estimation gave it the glorious name of Aristotle and under the defence of that prosperous title committed it to the encounter of Censure To the satisfaction of these I shall alledge a place or two out of those pieces which have ever escaped the imputation of spurious whereby the former sentence is so ratified that Aristotle may appear to have had great indignation against their incogitancy and stupidity who could beleive the world to be once produced and yet ascribe the production thereof to Fortune Dignum est saith he in 2. Physic cap. 4. admiratione asserert istos Animalia quidem Plantas à Fortuna neque esse neque fieri sed aut naturam aut quandam mentem aut quampiam aliam Causam habere viz. non ex cujusvis semine quidvis nascitur sed ex hoc quidem olea ex illo vero homo coelum autem quae sunt sensibilium divinissima sponte nata fuisse nec causam ullam qualem animalia plantaeque sortiuntur habuisse T is well worthy our admiration how these men can affirm that Animals and Plants neither proceed from nor can be made by Fortune but must have either Nature or some Intelligence or other efficient for the seminalities of things do not fly out into promiscuous and indifferent Generations but every distinct species hath its seed restrained and determined to the procreation of its like nor can the fructifying principle of an Olive deviate into the production of a Vine or the sperm of man produce any thing but man but as for the Heavens and other peices of the world which seem of farre greater alliance to Divinity that these are spontaneous and casual in their originals and have not obtained any Efficient to their Formations equal to that of Animals or Plants And in 1. de Anim. Part. c. 1. he speaks expressely to the same purpose though in other words which to prevent the further trouble of the Reader I shall faithfully transcribe Quamobrem verisimilius dixerim coelum factum esse ab ejusmodi causa si factum est magis esse ob eam causam quam Animalia caduca at que mortalia ordo enim certúsque status-longe magis in ipsis rebus coelestibus quam in nobis patet incerta enim et inconstans fortuitáque conditio in genere mortali est potius At illi genus Animalium quódque natura constare extitisséque censont coelum autem ipsum Fortuna spontéque ejusmodi constitisse volunt in quo tamen nihil Fortunoe ac temeritatis deprehendi potest Again Caelius Rhodiginus lib. 17. cap. 34. pag. 814 reports of him that though during the greatest part of his life he had ascribed all effects solely to secondary and inferiour Causes yet immediately before his death when his soul began to be weaned from sensibility and feel her wings he most earnestly implored the compassion and forgivenesse of the First and Supreme Cause Primae causae misericordiam intentius implorabat c. To these I might have annexed a third text of Aristotle selected by the Master of Roman Eloquence and adaequately engraffed into his second discourse De Natura Deorum but I conceived the two former to be testimony sufficient to the stability of my assertion that he abhorred the absurd usurpation of Fortune Now if the meer Naturall Explorator shall but perpend both the Number and Dignity of these more venerable Professors of Science wholly abating the weight of their Reasons I cannot doubt but he will finde them infinitely to overbalance the single School of Epicurus and of reputation great enough to excuse the conformity of his judgement to theirs if he look no higher then the point of Auctority SECT III. T Is no easie wonder how any man whose Faculties are not in Article 1. The pretext of Fortune destroyed by the constancy of Nature in her act of specification i. c. the restraint and determination of the seminalties of Animals to the procreation of their like in specie and the Atheists objection of frequent Anomalous and Heteroplasmicil or monstrous Productions dissolved disorder nor the Oeconomie of his head subverted into a Wildness beyond the absurdities of Melancholy adust can be infatuated into a conceit that so great so unform so durable so magnificent and therefore so glorious a work as this of the World could be performed by the lesse then feeble and ignorant hands of Nothing of Fortune For however it may be allowed that this imaginary Deity may produce some effects extraordinary or miraculous yet how petite and inconsiderable are those atcheivements of Chance if put in the scale against those more admirable performances of Reason and Wisdome Suppose we that Prodigies may arise from the unequal concurrence of dissimilar and disproportionate Actives and Passives and Monsters be generated by the casual confusion of distinct seminalities as well amongst Animals as Plants yet how incomparably more prodigious are those ordinary propagations in each Classis which by the certain and invariable law of their peculiar species are restrained to their determinate Forms and whose Constancy excludes all pretence of Fortune or the accidental Efficiency of Chance I leave to the decision of every sober man which hath most of the Miracle that the seed of every Animal should be consined to
species can we I say imagine that all this could arise from a spontaneous range of Atoms or that Necessity which ensued upon the casual disposition of the First matter and not rather with devout hymns proclaim the Efficiency of a Glorious and Eternall Cause whose Essence being incomprehensible and Attributes infinite Intelligence Goodnesse Power Beatitude Glory c. must therefore be the Ordainer Creater and Consecrator of all things Let us sink our meditations yet one degree lower on the scale of Article 3. The Sun convincively demonstrates the infinite wisdom of its Creator by 3 Arguments viz. Creatures and consider how convincively even Inanimates argue for the wisedom of their Maker Doth not the Sun to omit the speculation of its glorious Light and comfortable Influence the former whereof is so excellent the other so necessary that they challenge as due the Admiration of all and have drawn the Adoration of many ingenious nations by three prevalent arguments viz. the Commodiousness of its situation the Designment of its motion and the Line or tract of its revolution sufficiently illustrate the forecast and artifice of its Creator First by the universal Convenience of its situation For had it been placed in any other orb either inferior or superior to its 1. The universal convenience of its situation in its proper orb own such horrid incommodities as are inconsistent with its use and intention and destructive to the two principal designes of Nature Conservation and Generation must unavoidably have followed nor had the whole fabrick of the Universe been more then one degree removed from the confusion of its originary Chaos To particular had the Sun been setled in the lowest sphear and obtained that place which the Moon now possesseth the year had been no longer then a moneth for in that account of time it must have fulfilled its course through every part of the Ecliptick and so the intervalls of seasons had suffered such a contraction that must have been repugnant to their institution i. e. must have prevented the production of all things For the Antipraxis or Counter-activity of contrary seasons immaturely succeeding one upon the neck of another destroys the principles of Vegetation and checks the promotion of seminalities Again by this unsafe vicinity or too neer approach to the globe of the earth its intenser beams had verified the Conflagration of Phaeton at least proved so intolerable as that all things must have had the ycie and glutinous temper of the Salamander or else been torrified into cynders and to have had no Sun at all had been the easier misery For if there be and some are positive there must be an intention and remission of heat respective to the different points or access and recess of the Sun in its proper orb and that in its Apogaeum or mountee to the highest point in Cancer the heat is not so scorching under that Tropick on this side the Aequator as on the other side in its Perigaeum or stoop to the lowest point of its excentricity in Capricorne we cannot with any pretext of reason doubt that had the Sun been lodged in the bed of the Moon it had long since anticipated the general combustion of the last day and calcined all things to the exiguity of their primitive Atoms And on the other extreme had the Sun been appointed to the eight or highest sphear then must it have been by reason of the exceeding slow motion assigned to that sphear so manythousand years in the absolution of its course as that it must have extended one year to the compute of Platos Jubile nor could the world if learned men guess aright concerning its duration have attained to the period of one revolution Besides that Hemisphear which first faced the Sun in the beginning of its tedious gyre must have enjoyd the curse of a long long day and consequently have mist the fertile blessing of a vicissitude or reciprocal succession of distinct seasons but the opposite Hemisphear must have for many myriads of ages continued as cold dark and barren as the grave and so half of the earth had been made to no purpose And the like discommodities though more moderate would have succeeded to the earth had the Sun obtained a situation in any one of the other six orbs between the two former extreams Secondly by the appointment of its Circumrotation For had 2. The appointment of its continual Circumgyration it remained fixt and not moved at all then must the world have wanted that necessary division of times and seasons of Spring and Autumne Summer and Winter day and night and by consequence the generation and conservation of things dependent on those vicissitudes of Heat and Cold it being necessary that the fixation of this Luminary must have caused a perpetual summer in one hemisphear and as lasting and disconsolate a Winter in the other or driven nature upon the exigent of making another Sun to irradiate and cherish the opposite half of the earth it being experimentally true and therefore advanced to the dignity of an Axiome by Galilaeo Philolaus Niceron Kircherus and other junior Masters in the Opticks that no spherical luminous body of what diameter soever can project its light upon the whole sphear of another at once or in a fixt position though it illuminate more then the half of a lesser placed at convenient distance Lastly by the contrivement of its oblique motion along the line 3. The contrivement of its oblique motion along the line Eclipitick Ecliptick For had its revolution been assigned to any other circle discommodities no less fatal then the former had unavoidably ensued First had it sayled along on either side the Aequator some parts of the earth could have known no Sun at all but should have groand under the oppression of perpetual frigidity and opacity while others had suffered the contrary extream of an everlasting noon and been parched by the violence of its too constant and perpendicular beams and so the whole had been inhabitable an Alternation of Heat and Gold being indispensably requisite aswell to the Conservation and growth of all things in their Individuals as to their Propagation in Specie Secondly had it been confined to the conduct of the Aequator first unto a parallel sphear or such who have the Pole for their Zenith its revolution could have made neither perfect day nor perfect night for being in the Aequator it would intersect their horizon and be half above and half below it and to those who inhabite under the Aequator though it made a distinction of day and night yet would it not make any considerable distinction of seasons for the Sun being always vertical to them in that situation would have introduced a constant Summer and the perpendicularity of its unremitted heat have exhausted the fructifying humidity of the earth and so left the womb of our common mother squalid and barren as the desert Sarra in Africa Lastly had it moved
gentle enforcement of a stable beleif The Act of Conservation of all things in their originary stations and the perpetual obedience of all second Causes in their several Article 2. The Definition and received Division of divine Provldence motions to the laws of his will that elemented them hath ever been called Providence divine which derived high enough seems to import the constant operation of an infinite Wisdom and infinite Power combined in the effusion of an infinite Goodness This Providence for to that Appellation as most antient most common and therefore most familiar I shall adhere most Clerks have branched into General whereby the government of the whole Universe is administred and Particular or special whereby God doth take special care of mankind and regulate the affairs of his master-peice Now according to this necessary Division must I range my forces into two Files and draw up one to defeat those Atheists who have proclaimed open hostility against the First and the other to subdue those that have declared against the Second The Colonell to that black regiment that fought against the Article 3. A short list of the principal ethnick Physiologists who in order to theiâ— propagation of Atheism have attempted the eradication of this magisterial verity of divine Providence a gentle cure of S. Hieroms wound caused by his venial lapse from the same opinion of the government of the World by the Sceptre of Divine Monarchy is generally accounted Epicurus but in the authentique records of Stobaeus Ecl. Phys 25. we may finde him to have been no more then Captain-lievtenant to Leucippus who of all the Graecian Philosophers whose doctrines have escaped the spunge of oblivion was the first that appeared in the field against universal Providence and not long after surrendred the staffe to Democritus the elder whose immediate successor was Heraclitus as we are told by Nemesius De nat Homin 13. But whoever led up the van was closely followed by many both of the same and succeeding ages the most eminent whereof were Dicaearchus Cicero 4. Academ Strato Idem de Divinat 2. Ennius Idem de Nat. Deor. 3. Lucretius Libro ejus 2. Velleius Cicero de Nat. Deor. 1. Lucian in bis Accus who like a facetious villain personates Jupiter complaining of the oppression of overmuch business nay the devout Father S. Hieron in Comment in Abac. seems to have espoused the quarrel though doubtless upon another interest His words I shall faithfully transcribe for two important reasons First because I would not appear to have fixt a scandal upon so venerable a Pillar of our Church who otherwise hath deserved so amply of the Christian faith that the consideration of the transcendent merits of his pious labours had once almost perswaded me to beleive the possibility of justification by works Secondly to deliver his memory from the imputation of impiety for it may be naturally collected from the syntax and scope of his discourse that it was a noble esteem which he had of the majesty of the Divine Nature whom he thought too fully taken up with the blisfull contemplation of his own perfections in truth the only Felicity God can be capable of to be concerned in ordering the trifling occurrences of the world and not any conceit of the insufficiency of omnipotence that cast him upon this rock Caeterum absurdum est says he ad hoc Dei deducere majestatem ut sciat per momenta singula quot nascantur culices quotve moriantur quot cimicum pulicum muscarum sit in terra multitudo quanti pisces in aqua natent qui de minoribus majorâ—m praedae cedere debeant Non simus tam fatui Adulatores Dei ut dum potentiam ejus ad ima detrahimus in nosipsos injuriosi simus eandem rationabilium quam irationabilium Providentiam esse dicentes So that his diminution of the universality of Providence may seem the pardonable effect of immoderate devotion and but a high strained description of the glory of that essence which in strict truth can be concerned in nothing but it self and must then appear to be undervalued when most magnified by the extension of its influence to petty and trivial mutations and conceived to act a part in the interludes of Flies order the militia of Pismires and decree what and how many Gnats shall be devoured by swallowes in a summers day But as for Epicurus and the rest of that miscreant crew t is more then probable that a quite different interest inveigled them into this dangerous error For first their own writings bare record that they made it the grand scope of their studies to promote Atheisme by plotting how to undermine the received beleif of an omnipotent eternal Being to murder the immortality of the Soul the basis of all religion and deride the Compensation of good and evil actions after death In particular Epicurus did not blush to profess that the chief end at which his Physiology was collineated was this ut mens ex perspectis causis conquiescat neque aliam eamque divinam subesse causam suspicando felicitatem interturbet And Secondly the grounds upon which they erected this detestable negation of universal Providence may sufficiently satisfie a heedfull enquirer that not any intense honour or veneration of the most perfect and happy nature transported their minds to this height of delusion but rather a confiâ—med infidelity of the infinity of his Wisdome and Power which is affirmed by us that maintain the diffusion of Providence over all and descry the finger of Divinity in the smallest actions of inferior causes though ne're so contemptible in the eyes of Humane reason But a more ample knowledge of this doth offer it self to our thoughts in the particular examination of their Arguments to which we therefore immediately address The First Argument they drew from the apparent incompatibility of business and happiness or more plainly from the vast Article 4. The Atheists first Argument against universal Providence with the absurd and malicious comment of Lucretius thereupon disparity between the blisfull condition or contemplative quiet of the supreme Nature and the trouble or disturbance for so their ignorance unfitly apprehended it that must arise from the oversight and managery of such infinite variety of Actions as are every minute performed within the immense Amphitheatre of the World For Epicurus indiscreetly attempting to take the altitude of the Divine Intellect by the unequal Jacobs-staffe of the Humane rashly inferred that it could not be extended below the sphear of its own mansion and that no Intelligence could be so large as not to be overwhelmed by that Ocean of Cares that must flow from the multitude and diversity of continual emergencies here below This he contracted into that sentence Quod est beatum immortale neque sibi habet neque alteri exhibet negotium which so pleased him that he reputed it a Cornerstone in the fabrick of science and enacted it
then that of the Chaos in a word to conserve all things in existence this no man will deny to be a Perfection since we define the perfection of man by his abilities sor dominion i. e. in the judgement of our reason every man is esteemed by so much the more perfect by how much the more generous august liberal prudent and benigne mind he is endued withall and by inference by how much the more digne he is to bear rule over others Therefore is this Perfection Mundo providere seu singulis rebus consulere to take care of the world and provide for the subsistence of every single entity of necessity to be ascribed to God For though that obsolet fallacy that business imports disquiet and disquiet contradicts sâ—licity be retrived upon us and our reason seem captived in the snare of this conclusion That this Perfection as it stands in relation to Divinity must be an imperfection as being point blanck repugnant to its nature which cannot at once be superlatively happy and yet subject to multiplicity of business yet we may soon redeem it to the liberty of truth by conceiving some nature wherein these two seeming contraries may be reconciled i. e. the Procuration of affaires may shake hands with extreme beatitude Nor do we conceive an impossibility herein because even among men we daily find that those Negotiations which are an oppression to a low narrow and unpractised Wit are but the pleasant diversions and familiar recreations of a sublime capacious and polypragmatical and by consequence that Nature which is able to sustain the administration of affairs infinite in number and variety without detriment to its complet happiness must be conceded by incomputable degrees of transcendency more perfect then that whose quiet must suffer diminution by the distraction of cares Wherefore let us not suffer our cogitations to acquiesce in this imperfect but vigorously advance to that most perfect Nature whose propriety it is to be at once both supremely Provident and supremely Beate And since we conceive God to be such it is of necessity inevitable that we grant Vniversal Providence to be his proper Attribute For Confirmation or more properly requisite Explanation for sure no man whose intellectuals are not suppressed by that intolerable tyrant profest Incredulity can longer doubt of this let us reflect upon our Idea of the Deity and therein we shall discover that t is impossible for the minde of man to conceive the import of this word God and not in the same numerical notion to understand him to be most Wise most Potent most Good or in abstracto infinite Wisdome infinite Power infinite Goodness assimilated or rather identified into one simple eternal essence For undoubtedly our minds would speculate the Idea of a poor inconsiderable and imperfect Divinity if they conceived it subject to circumscription and apprehended his Intellection so narrow as not actually to comprehend all things his Power so restrained as to know Impossibility his Goodness so scant and shallow as to be exhausted in a partial diffusion or limited by the admixture of Envy i. e. withdrawn from or denied unto any of the works of his hand out of a designe to delight or glory in their infelicity Now if God be infinitely wise he must be Omniscient and Article 2. The same particularly supported by that trinity of Attributes viz. his consequently must understand not only the simple and naked Forms of all natures in the Universe but hold also a full and clear theory of their Essential proprieties how and by what kind of activities they operate toward the satisfaction of their praedestinate ends and in what method they may be most conveniently disposed to maintain the order and harmony of the whole and so 1. Infinite Wisdome must know and exercise the due administration of all things in this vast Common-wealth I say must know and exercise for if he understood the politie or method of the worlds Gubernation only Contemplatively then would not his Intellection be complet and absolute in all points and we should have been compelled to recurre to our former device of cogitating some other nature more perfect which might be actually possessed of both the Theorical and Practical Intelligence Again since Sapience doth consist in and manifest it self chiefly by Action and the real administration of difficult and important affairs with what shadow of reason can we argue God to be most Sapient if we conceive him to be Idle devoyd of all action and taking care of nothing Secondly if God be infinitely Potent then must he be Omnipotent and so to his power there is no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or impossibility 2. Infinite Power But how can we apprehend this aright unless we first grant that having produced all things and endowed them with faculties respectively inservient to their conducement to the satisfaction of the general end he doth through all the independent subdivisions of time i. e. constantly moderate their activities in full conformity to the prudent rules of his own Will and how can this be done unless we allow him to have a hand in all operations and that both Causes and effects doe so fully and wholly depend upon him that they can have neither Existence nor Motion without the assent and coefficiency of his Beneplacet Again Action is the Pathognomonick or proper manifest of Power nay in precise and orthodox logick they are Correlatives or twins that are â—orn live and dye together and we are not now to learn that Gods prime scope in the Creation was to have an opportunity for the manifestation of his excellencies if so can Inactivity declare Supreme Power or a cessation from acting not induce a suspicion of Lassitude and imbecillity Lastly if God be infinitely good it necessarily followes Goodness being Communicative that all natures must be sensible 3. Infinite Goodness of by participating that his inexhaustible goodness And with what unpardonable incogitancy can that be asserted while we opinion that he doth concenter his goodness and when he hath created so many excellent natures take no care or make no provision for their welbeing but abandon them to the impendent misery of confusion Might we not justly censure him of Malevolence or Envy if he should withhold the communication of his perpetual Providence from the works of his own hands which must unavoydably perish by the Antipathies of their Constitutions and relaps into their primitive nothing in that moment when he should intermit his act of Conservation Nay so essential is the constant oversight and tuition of the Creator to the subsistence of the Creature that some contemplative heads have hereupon hinted a conjecture that nothing shall go to the dissolution of all at the period of time but the meer Cessation of Providence or the dereliction of Nature to the necessary discord of her several peices And thus hath the clue of Gods chief Attributes chief in his relation to the World in a
direct line conducted our single reason to the demonstration of his General Providence which indeed is the clearest mirror of his superexcellent Nature and to the opticks of mortality doth afford a lively reflexion of his infinite Wisedome Power and Goodness It succeeds that we endevour to look at Providence through the Telescope or Perspective of the World Since God made the World as hath been already proved it cannot but be absurd to imagine that he instantly deserted it or Article 3. The necessity of the worlds gubernation by the indesinent influence of Gods general Providence demonstrated from the consideration of the absolute and total dependence of all Second Causes upon the First having once imprest a virtue of motion upon the greater wheels of this vast machin immediately withdrew his hand from action leaving them to be carried on by their own rapt or swinge and all the lesser and subordinate wheels of particular natures to conforme to the impulsion of those greater For though he made all things Perfect i. e. omitted nothing requirable to the integral accomplishment of each Creature in suo genere yet since himself is the Vniversal Soul that both Materiald and Informed each particle of this great body in striâ—tness of consequence nothing can have existence longer then he shall please in every minute of its duration freshly to create it or to speak the interest of Providence to conserve it in being by a continual communication of it self all the Actions of Divinity being real Divinity at second hand or nothing but Dissusions or Emanations of its own essence Again who ever reared a magnificent structure a purpose to ruine it and since there is no Artificer so unnatural or stupid as not to desire rather that his Artifice should prosper and continue long by carefull looking to then be exposed to ruine by neglect or violence t is infinitely more improbable that the great Exemplar of all Mechanicks for no age ever produced a peice of Art whose pattern was not first in Nature should so far grow out of love with his own operation and despise those perfections which were but the extracts of himself as to disclaim it commit it to the imminent disorder and demolition of Fortune and not make provision of all things conducible to its preservation especially when no Intellect but his own could be large enough to comprehend the Idea of the work no Prudence but his own absolute enough to project the convenient modell of its due gubernation no Power but his own almighty enough to furnish him with requisites thereto Nor can it with safety or honour to our judgements be imagined that God might had he so pleased have constituted the World in such absolute perfection as that from the minute of its complete existence it might have continued independent and to all eternity have subsisted by it self and all its appointed motions have constantly without intermission or variation succeeded by the direction of their bequeathed impressions without the assiduous moderation of his care or the minutely supply of his providence since the Universe according to the Grammar of sound Philosophy is no Noune Substantive and enjoyes reality only by a distinction i. e. is something by dependence upon him who was eternally contrary to nothing and being at that instant when Omniety informed Nullity into existence educed out of nothing by the single Fiat of God and thence forward continued to be something by the continued Power of the Creator must unavoidably revert to nothing again if the perseverance of that identical power be substracted from which it once obtained to be something And as Light cannot subsist if separated from a lucid body but instantly vanishes into opacity so cannot the World which is but a reflexive deradiation from that Light which is invisible continue if the perpetual sourse of that miraculous Virtue which upholds its existence be withdrawn but must immediately vanish into nothing For the Analogy holds in all points and the dependence of the Creature upon the Creator is as highly absolute as that of Light upon the Sun or other lucid body And though there are some things which being once assisted into determinate essences by their causes doe afterwards subsist without them and keep possession of those Forms by their own native force yet are they such as were still something before their specification to this or that nature by their causes since all that natural Causes can doe is to mould an old matter into a new figure and so dispose the faculties existent therein that a new something may start out of the ruines of an old something But the World which was nothing before the fruitfull voyce of Elohim called it into something hath nothing from it self to subsist upon but must therefore in the twinckling of an eye become nothing again unless its existence be supported and maintained by the constant recruit of the same miraculous Power which first created it I say the same miraculous Power for the Creation doubtless was the greatest miracle that ever was wrought it being more difficult to turn Nothing into all things by the bare nutus or vote of the First Cause then to produce an extraordinary effect by inverting the usual method of Secondary Causes a harder wonder to make Nature herself then to praeposter or transcend her customary rules of acting to the causation of an effect either against or above her self Though to speak rationally and as men that understand something of Theosophy nothing can be a miracle to him to whom all things are not only of equal possibility but of equal facility also When therefore we say that God is the Cause of the world we are to understand him to be so in the same relation that the Sun is the Cause of Light and by consequence as the Light disappears in the Aer when the Sun discontinues its Actinobolisme or deradiation in our hemisphear by visiting the lower so also must the World disappear and be lost in adnihilation when God shall please to discontinue his influx of minutely Creation or to speak more conform to our praesent scope though it signifie the same thing in height of truth to intermit his Providence Moreover so immense are the bounds of this vast Empire the Article 4. The vastity of the world the infinite variety of its parts and the irreconcileable discord of many natures domonstrate as much World so numerous and various its subdivisions and those again dichotomized into so many myriads of Cantons or Provinces and each of those peopled with so many millions of different and discordant natures that no reason can admit it so much as probable that a constant correspondence could be maintained and a general amity observed though all without the conserving influence of a Rector General or Supervisor whose Will receives laws from his Wisdome and gives them to all besides himself And therefore their thoughts missed not much of the white of truth who conceived God to
transcend all other in perfection and excellencies how palpable a contradiction did he fall upon in commensurating the latitude of its Power and Wisdome by the span of an imperfect and caduce nature betwixt which and Omnipotent-omniscience are so many degrees of difference as all the figures and cyphers of Arithmetick cannot amount to their compute nor is mortality qualified to conceive To paint a Sound is a far easier task then to describe the impervestigable manner of Gods operations and to deny the possibility of that whose reason we cannot explore is to proclaim our ignorance of any nature more perfect then our own and that upon consequence is to make our nature more imperfect then really it is by rendring it uncapable of the greatest Truth nay of that truth upon whose certitude the assurance of all possible cognition doth necessarily depend This had the rash Epicurus considered doubtless he never had disparaged the nature of man by equalizing it to Gods I say disparaged because to conceive a Finite essence as perfect as an Infinite is openly to confess that nature which can conceive so horrid and sensible an Absurdity to be far more frail and contemptible then all other of its actions declare it to be not but in direct verity t is the greatest disparagement and no less then blasphemy to the infinitely sacred majesty of God to be put in the scales against vile ignorant and impotent Man And while his thoughts flagged so many sphears below the Empyreum of all perfection t was no wonder that he was staggered at Vniversal Providence that being a notion impossible to be instilled into any mind that is not first prepared with the beleif of an Vniversal Intelligence Again to draw into a sharper angle and render the absurdity of this Comparison more ridiculous the Reasons why a man though of the strongest brain and greatest abilities for business must of necessity suffer disquiet distractions and wearisome solicitude from the multiplicity of cares are 1. the narrowness of his Understanding which cannot he expansed to take in all the remote proxime and confederate Causes events dependencies connexions circumstances c. of occurrences 2. the shortness of his Power which cannot stretch to furnish him with all things necessary as well to the prevention and remove of all incident impediments as to the molition promotion and accompletion of his designes and 3. the restraint of his Person to Time Place and distance But on the other side God is Omniscient Omnipotent Omnipraesent and therefore in the praeordination direction and compulsion of all things to the causation of those effects which his Will hath decreed he knows infinitely less of labour or disquiet then the healthiest man doth in the motions of respiration in his soundest sleep That God is not subject to the restraint of Time is manifest Article 2. Divinity demonstrated superior to the circumscription both of Time and Place from his Eternity for that is indivisible and knows no distinction of tenses and therefore what we whose imperfect reason cannot compute the duration of things but by the successive instances or concatenated moments of time call Praedestination is really no praedetermination of what 's to come in respect to God but an act of his will already accomplisht and as soon fulfilled as decreed and so we may truely say that in relation to himself there is no Foreknowledge in God all things which to our inferior Capacities seem either past or to come being actually praesent to him whose whole duration is altogether or but one constant and permanent point one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 entire in unity and uncapable of division into successive minutes or articles That he is not subject to the restraint of Place is evident from his Omniety his being all in all Vbiquity being the proper and inseparable Attribute of his nature His being All in All. not only ratione Praesentiae but ratione Essentiae also he being the chief Soul not only of all Bodies but of all Spirits also And for this reason we cannot offend Theology if we affirme that God is as fully Present in Hell among the accursed as in Heaven among the blessed natures though not so comfortably and that the Devils would rejoyce if they could conceive it possible for him to be absent thence since their existence and so their Torments would then cease his presence being the original and support of all existence Now if all this be amassed into one demonstration and that duely perpended I demand as well of the most contumacious infidelity as the rankest ignorance what can remain desirable in order to the full information of our reason that if there were a million of Worlds nay as many as there are individuals in this and in each a 1000000 times more business then in this yet could the oversight and gubernation of them all and the regular managery of every the smallest occurrence in them put Divinity to no more trouble disquiet or interruption of felicity then the simple Act of Volition doth induce upon the soul of man However for further illustration I cannot think it unnecessary to superadd this that since Man himself doth ordinarily perform Article 3. That the procuration of all the infinitely various actions of second causes in the World cannot be any interturbation of God◠serene felicity proved by an Argument à minori some actions particularly those which he is not only qualified and impowered but also inclined to doe by the native virtue or congenial propensity of his Essence as to Cogitate Desire Love Rejoyce in the manifestation of his good parts or endowments c. not only without labour and inquietude but even with superlative delight and content it cannot but be concordant to reason to assert that God is so far from sustaining any difficulty molestation or diminution of felicity in the constant act of Vniversal Providence which is the natural effect of his Infinite Intelligence and Indefatigable Activity that t is rather a part of his Beatitude so to exercise and manifest his Divinity Not that the abyss of his Happiness was not full before the World was but because being moved by his own immense Goodness to create a convenient subject whereon to actuate his Munificence he is pleased still to delight himself in the continued diffusion and communication of his excellencies by the conservation and regulation of the same according to the most prudent laws of his Will I have often consulted the most knowing and best ordered minds with whom I could attain the blessing of a free conversation and such doubtless are the only competent judges of delight wherein lay the Philosophers stone of Content in this life and in what actions of their lives they discovered the highest and most permanent pleasure and they all concurred in this determination Aliis prodesse quám licet plurimis bene facere And this upon no slender ground since the Beatitude of Man doth radically and totally
nonnaturals and the restauration of the same when impaired by any distemper by rational and approved medicaments and shall therefore enjoy health and attain to longaevity On the Contrary I foreknow that he shall lead a disorderly and luxurious course of life accelerate the dissolution of his temperament by the immoderate praemature or unseasonable use of Wine Woemen Passions c. and when assaulted by any disease chronique or acute shall either omit to consult learned judicious and experienced Physitians or disobey their pharmaceutical or diaetetical praescripts drinke wine in a Fever cold water in a Critical sweat salt sharp acid or corroding liquors in a Dysentery eate Astringents in obstructions frigid crude and dyspeptical fruits in an imbecillity of the stomach c. and shall therefore ruine his health and drop into the grave before hee 's ripe Now take which Praescience you please and either hath for its object the praecise Term of Peter or Johns life as a thing to come and fully and punctually presupposeth the same but so that together with that fixt Term it comprehends also all the order and manner of its Futurition or all the antecedent and conspiring causes amongst which the principal and most energetical is the right use or abuse of his own Free will in whose power it was to move that Term either forwards or backwards i. e. either to adduce or produce it So far therefore is this Praevision of God from excluding the necessity of Medical Remedies as the Defendants of Fate would impose according to that of Solon in Stobaeus Fato quaecunque manet sors Non hanc avertet victima sed nec aves Nec qui Paeonias aegris mortalibus herbas Saepe erraturam ferre laborat opem That it totally includes nay presupposeth it so necessarily that if we take away from man the Liberty of his Will and the opportunity of using either prophylactical or therapeutical means in order to the prolongation of his life we must also submove the Certainty of Gods Praescience since that determineth nothing but only praesupposeth all things nor doth God by a decree subsequent to that Prescience praeordain that this or that individual man shall recover of such or such a disease unless by virtue of such or such appropriate remedies which the Physician shall in the opportunity praescribe Nor is it a more justifiable plea at the bar of reason to argue thus if the Term of mans life be certainly and precisely foreknown to God then must it together with the order and manner of its Futurition be sixt and immutable then to argue thus if God hath a certain and precise cognition of any thing already past as of the Creation of the world therefore could that thing have come to pass no otherwise nor at any other time then it did therefore was the world created by God non liberé sed necessariò not by an Arbitrary but Necessary and restrained activity For as Science having for its object a thing Praeterite doth infer no necessity upon that thing praeterite that it should have bin so and no otherwise effected so doth Praescience having for its object a thing Future infer no necessity upon its futurition each being an Immanent Action in God extra rem or having no compulsive influence at all upon that particular thing or its Causes and Futurum esse imports no other thing but an object of Praescience nor Praeteritum esse any thing but an object of Science or Memorie Science is the perfection of the Subject or thing knowing not of the obiect or thing known much less the destruction of the thing known For necessary it is to perfect Science that it agree in all points with the nature of its object But wholly Antarctical to this is that Praescience which is grounded upon Divine Praedestination whereby not only the Term of every individuals life together with the whole order and manner of its Futurition is praefixt but also all those Causes whose refractary or counter-activity might in any respect hinder the precise accompletion of that prefixt Term are praevented or praedetermined to invalidity lest the Praescience become uncertain or dubious whether that Praedetermination dispose per modum Causae Efficientis by a certain Physical and really effective action or impression upon the will of man enforcing it to the election of such a course of life as may conduce to his punctual pervention to that praestitute Term or per modum Causae Desicientis by nonconcurrent but only permissive influence by some called Permissio simplex Simple Permission by others Permissio essicax efficacious permission since that rule amongst Philosophers Causa Desiciens in necessariis reducitur ad Efficientem doth warrant the Indifferency For this Decretory Praescience though it agree with the precedent simple Praescience in this that it hath for its object rem futuram includeth in its circle the whole order and manner of its Futurition and presupposeth both the end and respective means fully and absolutely yet it clearly and irreconcilably differs from it in this that the precedent Prescience presupposeth the liberty of mans Will and the use thereof not only incoacted and without irrefragable impuls but absolutely free and arbitrary but this wholly destroys the arbitrary monarchy of the Will by importing that the influence of the Decree not only inclineth by soft and gentle flexure or perswasion but by an irresistible violence forceth it upon the election and pursuit of those means which in a direct and natural line lead to the accomplishment thereof and this lest the Certitude or Infallibility of the Divine Praescience be infirmed and staggered To discriminate this Later from that Former Praescience yet Article 5. A third illustration of the same Difference by conceiving the Divine Decrees in the same subordinate scries which the Fatists have imagined morefully and so insinuate the result of the Distinction by the most intelligible and concise way of argumentation it will be necessaty for us to conceive the Decrees of God in the same method of subordination wherein they who found the infallibility of his Praevision upon the necessity of his Praedestination and Praedetermination have bin by the obscurity of the Subject compelled to range their thoughts in the declarement of their opinion The first Decree of God runs thus I will that Peter live till the expiration of the natural or temperamental lease of his life conceive it to be till his glass hath run 50. 60. 70. or 80. year but that John wither before hee 's ripe and fall in the June of his age conceive it to be in the 20. 30. or 40. year from his birth The Second thus I will praeserve Peter from this or that sickness defend him from this or that knock of misfortune conserve him in or restore him from this or that dangerous disease lest he expire before the praestitute Term of his life but for John he shall be invaded by such or such a mortal disease receive such
gathered the first flowers of its triumphant wreath in Nase by Field and supinely give Coloquyntida or Scammony in a Dysentery Antimony in the Iliaca Passio Opium in a Crisis Aqua Fortis for a Julep c. since no Art can supersede nor Poyson accelerate his departure whose time of transition to the invisible world Destiny hath limited to a moment Et cum Fata volunt bina Venena juvant Nor can it be rightly esteemed a Virtue in the Physician to be studious and solicitous or a Vice to be debaucht ignorant and negligent of the safety of his Client if it be only the irresistible Impulse of Fate which forceth his Will to the election of either in order to the precise accomplishment of its Decree or more plainly if the Care or Negligence of the Physician be but the Medium whereby Fate brings about its end concerning the dissolution of the Patient And if so what Moral obligation remains upon the conscience of the Physician Assuredly none at all Which every moderate judgement will soon detect to import so manifest dangerous and detestable an Absurdity that of it self t is able not only to discredit the opinion of Fatality but also to accuse and convict the Abettors thereof of unpardonable Inconsideration Stupidity and Irreligion The Second Inconvenience or rather Absurdity inseparably Article 7. A Second Absurdity connected to the same conjoyned to this opinion of a Decretory Prescience in God is this Whoever shall grant that all the means or remedies and so the sedulity or negligence as well of the Sick as the Physician are subordinately predetermined by the Decree of Fate must also by the necessity of natural consequence be compelled to grant that to allow the merit of Praise or Dispraise Commendation or Reprehension unto either is open Injustice For by what pretext of Equity can a Sick man challenge to himself the honor of having done a praise-worthy action in endevouring to preserve himself both by observing a course of Diet contrary to his disease and seasonable consulting with and strictly conforming unto the advice of a learned and judicious Physician or the Physician for the full discharge of his duty in regulating the sick according to the most profound and salutiferous maximes of his Art if the obedience of the one and the care of the other be not Arbitrary but coacted or necessitated by the Force of the complex Decree of Fate as instrumental to the subsistence of the sick man till the predestined term of his life Vbi mera necessitas locum habet ibi laudem exulare necesse est where meer Necessity is admitted thence all Laudation is excluded And with what justice can we reprehend the sick man for being incurious in the disquisition or irregular in and averse from the use of the means prescribed for his restauration if that his supinity irregularity and aversion be imposed upon his Will by the impuls of Destiny and predetermined as a necessary Medium to accomplish the Decree of his immature death or the Physician either for his neglect or ignorant and inartificial tractation of his Client if t were decreed he should be so to the end the client might expire according to the decree Persuasum est omnibus saith Menasseh Ben Israel de Termino Vitae pag. 205. nec laudandum nec arguendum quemquam nisi qui libero arbitrio consulto benè agit aut delinquit adeo ut nullus suasioni consiliis redargutioni praemio aut poenae locus sit si homo non est liber in actionibus suis Article 8. Two Subterfuges of the Fatists Precluded From this distress our Opponents have promised themselves an easy evasion by replying that both Patient and Physician are wholly ignorant of the Decree the Opticks of Mortality being too weak and remote to read the lines in the Book of Fate without the perspicill of Divine Revelation But this way of Subterfuge may be blockt up by rejoyning that though the Decree be known to neither yet t is sufficiently manifest to both from the Hypothesis of this opinion that not only their Actions but also the Successes thereof are the prescripts and consignations of Fate and so can be no other then what is included in and necessitated by the Decree and consequently that there can remain no just Cause of reprehension on either side Should they insist yet further upon the same plea and urge that t is part of the Decree that either the Physician or Patient or both should be negligent and so become Culpable we may soon exped this obstruction only by demanding what reason or equity can be found to justify such an accusation and respective punition where the Will of the delinquent is controlled inflected nay impelled upon the commission of a crime or omission of a duty by a power infinitely superior to his reluctancy and not only the act but time place instruments means c. conspiring circumstances precisely preordained by a decree of that Will which is Omnipotence Reprehension imports not only an Act of the Reprehendent but also the Guilt or Culpability of the Reprehended otherwise it cannot be just To the legality therefore of a reprehension it is undeniably necessary that the ground or cause thereof be a real and proper Guilt in the person reprehended Now Guilt can have no place where that which is impeached cannot be a Voluntary Agent but a Medium or Instrument ordained and actuated by an irresistible Power to the execution of an infallible Decree The Third and last Absurdity imports no less then the subversion Article 9. A third Absuidity inseparable from the hypothesis of a Decretory Prescience Divine of the very fundamental Principle or basis of all Moral Virtues and Christian Graces by inferring a deniall of Justice in the reward of Good and punishment of Evil either before or after death For t is the Liberty of the Will only that supports the Equity of Compensation and therefore he who doth a good action when t was not in the election of his Will to have omitted that good action or to have done it otherwise then he did hath but a weak claim to a reward nor hath he who commits a sin which is not in his power to leave uncommitted more reason to feare a punishment from the even hand of Divine Justice To conclude therefore since these are the Absurdities which every mans Logick may perceive necessarily and immediately to slow from the doctrine of Decretory Prescience or such as is subsequent to Divine Predetermination and since the same nor any others of equal danger to the Principles of our Knowledge and Articles of the Christian Faith can ever be deduced from the hypothesis of that Simple Prevision or unactive Prescience which we have allowed of as consistent to the justice of God because consistent to the Arbitrary freedome of mans Will t is no hard task to determine in which opinion our judgements may with more safety and permanent
satisfaction aquiesce Now that we may relieve the Memory of our patient Reader Article 10. The reduction of the whole dissertation to 4 Conclusions genuinely extracted from the Premises from the oppression of our not well to be avoyded precedent prolixity we conceive our selves in gratitude obliged to tender him a Recapitulation or reducement of all this tedious discourse concerning the Mobility of mans term of life in Fower Conclusions naturally resulting from the Premises The First Conclusion That God hath circumscribed the duration of mans life with a certain Circle or round of time conceive it to be of 70. 80. 90. or 100. years more or less but yet hath reserved to himself as jus supremoe Majestatis the prerogative power of extending the term of any individual mans life beyond the limits of that sphear so far as it shall seem convenient to the Wisdome of his Will ¶ The Second Conclusion That God who loves justice more then man and man only for Justice sake and hates Injustice more then man and man only for Injustice sake for Sin unravelled to the botome will be found to be nothing but Injustice is willing in respect of the object of his Love or in consideration of mans justice to prolong or on the contrary in respect of the object of his Hate or in consideration of mans Injustice to abbreviate the term of mans life included within that determinate Circle of time reserving still to himself an arbitrary power of acting the quite contrary i. e. of abbreviating the life of the just and prolonging the life of the unjust upon the perswasion of reasons either manifest to us or private to himself ¶ The Third Conclusion That God when he is pleased to condescend to the prolongation of the life of a Just person doth procure the same either by means conforme to the ordinary and setled Constitutions o Canons of Nature or by means Supernatural The Formerâ— when bearing a respect to the native Durability of his individua Temperament he assists to the duration thereof untill the natural Period or last moment of this sphear of time wherewith the life of man in specie is circumscribed and this either by conserving his Temperament in its decent tenor and requisite Vigor or by prohibiting and preventing the invasion of those known Enemies to longevity which might any way conduce to the denormation and consequently the premature dissolution of its harmony The Later when bearing no respect to the native durability of his individual Temperament he meliorateth exalteth and by the secret immission of some special Athanasia or Antidote against early death corroborateth the same so that it doth last longer then otherwise pro vi sua nativa it could possibly have lasted had it never bin impaired by any distemper And this when God doth then is he properly sayd to prolong the life or fulfill the number of the years of the Just But the Contrary effect he procures by contrary Causes i. e. he abbreviates the life of an unjust Person either by an immature turbation and dissolution of his temperament by its native disposition sufficiently tenacious and durable to extreme old age or by not prohibiting i. e. permitting and so procuring the violent and preternatural dissolution thereof by the destructive surprisall of any Accident whatever And in this case properly are the Unjust sayd not to Dimidiate their days ¶ The Fourth Conclusion That a just Person who so much as in him lies sixeth all the Affections of his Soul upon the Fear of God and the avoydance of Evil if he chance through the frailty of his nature or the force of temptation to fall into some Capital Sin which according to the penalty annexed to its prohibition deserves to be punished by the Abbreviation of his life may notwithstanding sometimes his remorse of Conscience profound sorrow fervent prayer religious fasting and other duties requisite to true and perfect repentance effectually exciting the Mercies of God obtain from him a full and absolute remission not only of the sin but also of the temporal punishment due thereunto and moreover a restauration of his Temperament to its native vigor from which it was alienated by former infirmities or corrupted by the dyscratical or distempering contagion of sin And sometimes not and this chiefly when it hath seemed convenient to the most wise and just God to pronounce the fatal and irrepealable sentence of Death upon him for in such a case I beleive the sin committed to belong to that black order of Sins unto Death by contradistinction thereof from that Sin which is not unto Death or upon which the irrevocable Sentence of Death is not yet pronounced which no man can certainly know without special revelation ¶ CHAP. VII Of the Liberty Elective of Mans Will SECT I. IN our enumeration of the Venenate Absurdities Article 1 The Parity of Absurdities resulting from those two Antagonistical Hypotheses of Absolute Fatality and meer Contingency as to the Actions of man which naturaly grow upon that inflexible stock of Absolute Fatality or more expresly upon that execrable Hypothesis of the Stoicks that we may be charitable in forgetting there are any Christians of that irreligious perswasion that all the Actions of every individual man are praedestined and the whole order and manner of their Futurition praecisely praeordained by the invariable decrees of that Supreme Power against which the coacted and limited Will of man can make no effectual resistance we well remember we specified the total sublation of all Virtue and Vice the abnegation of Justice either Divine or Human in the compensation of Piety and Impiety the adnihilation of the use and efficacy of Lawes to coerce from Evil of Precepts and Adhortations to elect and prosecute good in a word the subversion of all Religion and Morality and consequently the necessary resignation and rendition of the minde of man to receive all the destructive Impressions of Hell And no less nor fewer Absurdities may the reason of every man discover emergent from the Antithesis or contrary Assertion that all the Actions of man and their particular Events or Successes are neither the praedeterminations of Fate nor the occasional designations of Providence Divine nor fully the arbitrary elections of mans will but the meer unpraemeditate and temerarious Hits of Chance since in pure Justice those actions onely are Laudable or Vituperable which are done Dâ—liberaâ—ò liberè ratione Agentis upon a deliberation of the Intellect and an arbitrary election of the Will subsequent to that deliberation and not those which are meerly Fortuitous and result from the indeliberate or blind activity of Fortune When first I tasted the odious bitterness of these two streams whereof most of the ancient Greeks many of the noblest Romans Article 2. Those 2 contrarie streams found to have bin derived from one and the same poysonous Fountain viz. a subtersuge of man to evade Culpability and I fear at least not a few of the
the real good of virtue attracteth the mind more weakly and the seeming Good of vice more strongly and on the contrary the real evil of vice averteth or disgusteth the mind more weakly and the seeming evil of good more strongly So he that offends may we confess with Ovid say Video meliora probóque deteriora sequor that he knows those things which he rejecteth to be the better and those things which he electeth to be the worse but yet this must be referred unto some other time when he recognizes his habitual Science and calls to mind that once he had other judgements of those things for he cannot justly say so of that time wherein he offended since then he judged those things he pursued to be the better and those he deserted to be the worse Now as for that internal regret contristation and poenitence which invades the mind of every Delinquent immediately after and most frequently in the same moment of the perpetration of his offence this proceeds from his animadversion that he suffers some loss of good But since this his apprehension of the loss of good and that reluctancy of mind attendant thereupon is but dull and weak in comparison of that complacency he is affected withall by the seeming good or pleasure of evil which subdues his judgement to an approbation of it hence it is manifest that he considers and perpends the impendent omission of Good and the incursion of evil not seriously and profoundly as he ought but only perfunctorily and slightly For were the punishment sorrow ignominy and other evils which he only lightly and confusedly apprehends and fears profoundly examined and lookt into by him not as absent not as future not as uncertain and avoidable but as impendent present certain and inevitable without all doubt the smallest glimpse of reason would be sufficient to let him see those forcible determents nor could he be so mad as from the rock of knowledge to precipitate himself into the most horrid gulph of vice And therefore albeit an offender may say that he saw and approved the Good but embraced the Evil yet is that Inconsideration or Non-advertency by reason whereof he doth not sufficiently discover all the qualities and circumstances of the evil object and what and how great mischiefs must necessarily ensue upon his actual prosecution thereof a kind of Ignorance And in this sense only can we allow Ignorance to be the mother of Sin for had man sufficiently understood the evil thereof he had never bin vicious To conclude therefore this Ignorance must prove but an Article 5. What kind of Ignorance that is which may in some degree excuse a Delinquent invalid and ridiculous plea at the judicious Tribunal of Justice nor ought a Delinquent to slatter himself with the vain hopes of impunity by such an excuse that he sinned for want of knowledge that he prosecuted the apparent Good he saw in the object that it was above his power to prevent the delusion of his understanding by Evil praesented under the species of Good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we cannot countermand Apparences that no man is vicious with his own consent nor happy against his will according to that Proverb Nemo malus ultrò est neque beatus non volens and that he wanted an ability of Jâ—udgement to do otherwise this we say cannot extenuate his guilt and consequently not avert the punishment due thereunto For that Ignorance which excuseth is of another nature such as we may more properly call Inscientia mera meer Nescience Ignorantia pura ac invincibilis pure and invincible Ignorance such as that of Cephalus when mistaking her to have bin a wild beast couchant in a brake he discharged his dart at his beloved wife Procris and unfortunately slew her and that of the constant Deianira when she poysoned Hercules with a shirt dipt in Nessus the Centaures gore which she intended for a Philtre to revoke his affections from Iole and that also of the fatal handed Gentleman who shooting at a Deer in New-Forest killed William Rufus but that Ignorance of which we here discourse is in proper truth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Incuria vel Negligentia mera meer Negligence Inadvertency or Heedlesness and is therefore for distinctions sake denominated Ignorantia crassa affectata supina gross affected supine ignorance To understand the nature of this Non-excusing Ignorance the more distinctly let us observe that every Delinquent must in justice charge the Ignorance he praetends upon one of these two Causes either that himself was to himself the cause of his ignorance or that he neglected the means and advantages of acquiring knowledge i. e. that he did not imploy his Cognoscent Faculty on the examination and consideration of the real good or evil of his action with that care seriousness and sedulity which was requisite To the First of these Causes belongs the ignorance of a Drunkard for in being the Cause of his Ebriety he is also the Cause of his Ignorance and 't was in his power to have praevented this by the praecaution of that and therefore his Ignorance is so far short of extenuating that it naturally aggravates his culpability and he if Aristotle may be judge deserves a double punishment one for making himself drunk another for the crime committed in his Drunkenness Hither also we are to refer his Ignorance who resisteth not the force of a Passion or perturbation of his mind in the first motion or beginning thereof while 't is yet but weak and to be supprest by a small opposition of reason but permits it to acquire more violence and gain upon him by degrees till its impulse grow impetuous and more inoppugnable as also his who suffers a vicious Inclination which he might without any considerable difficulty have at first refracted and totally extinguished to grow into a setled Habit which pleading praescription and possession is hardly ejected but plays the obsolute Tyrant ore the mind and holds the Scepter of both Understanding and Will by the ineluctable title of Conquest Thus if a man who having a rare Bird in his hand willingly lets it sly should complain that he cannot recover it again t is not to be expected that any rational person should pity him for his loss but rather deride his folly in that he manumitted it when t was in his power to have kept it and if a man contract some dangerous disease by intemperance who can afford him half so much compassion since t was in his power not to have bin intemperate as if he had bin invaded by some impartial Epidemick Contagion against which none the greatest temperance is an infallible praeservative To this purpose were these words of Aristotle intended Nemo enim caecitatem quam natura morbus ictus fecerit exprobret sed caeci potius misereatur at si illam aut ebriositas aut intemperantia alia fecerit non id opprobrio ducat in 3. Ethic. cap. 7. To the other belongs his
comparatively hath under the disguise of a Article 1. The Antiquity and Genealogy of Fortune Reality so long and so universally possessed the heads not only of the Vulgar whose rank and muddy brains are ever more fertile in the production and more favourable to the conservation of Monsters then Nilus and all Affrica but even of some of those more cultivated Explorators of truth who well knew the absurdity of Multiplying Entities and pretended to examine every Idea occurring to the mind whether it had an exemplar or prototype in real Existence that so though they could not attain to a full cognition of the distinct Essences or simple Forms of Objects they might at list acquire an assurance of their Reality or Being in rerum natura this we say seems to us no contemptible Argument that the Venome of the Forbidden Fruit hath a stronger and more infatuating operation upon the posterity of Adam in the old age of the world then it had in its youth and midle age and that the sun in the Microcosme hath sufferd a greater and more demonstrable decay of Splendor Clarity and Influence then Bodin method Histor cap. 8. out of Copernicus Reinaldus and Stadius hath affirmed that in the Macrocosme to have sustained and confessed by its neerer approach to the Earth and more Southerly inclination since the daies of Ptolomie For first though Simplicius 2. physic comment 39. hath a certain obscure tradition that Orpheus ingaged in the expedition of the Argonauts composed a votive Hymne to this Fairy Queen which was afterward inserted into the idolatrous Liturgie of the Delphian Apollo together with whom she was solemnly invocated yet hath Macrobius much the better Antiquary of the two faithfully observed 5. Saturn ib. that she was if not unborn yet unnamed in Homers time subjoyning as a reason thereof quod priscis illis temporibus omnia quae sierent referri ad Deos Authores solerent that more simple and intelligent Antiquity used to referre all events to the wise procuration of the Gods Which is evidence sufficient that Fortune could not mount up to an Apotheosis till the world grew into its Dotage and man sunk a whole sphear below that of his Ancestors simplicity and knowledge And 2 that whenever she was borne and whoever was her Father yet Ignorance was her Mother besides the convincing Authority of our own Reason we have that of the impartial Cicero in these words Stultitia Error Caecitas Ignoratio rerum atque causarum Fortunae nomen primò induxisse certum est And so much the more of weight may this Argument bear by how much the more manifest a Contradiction they incurr who have either defended or advanced her reputation for though no one among those many Writers who have professedly treated of her Nature and Power hath denyed her extraction from and necessary dependence upon that accursed Beldam Ignorance yet have most agreed that she is somthing more then Nomen inane a meer and empty Name or Chimaera and some allowed her the dignity of a considerable Influence upon the actions of Man nay others have gon so farr as to exalt her virtue to a competition with Providence Divine and consigned her a throne among the Coelestial Deities as is intimated in that verse of Juvenal Satyr 14. sed te Nos facimus Fortuna Deam coeloque locamus And this briefly concerning the Antiquity and Genealogie of this Nothing As for the full description of her Nature or more properly what Kind of Activity the chiefest Philosophers have allowed Article 2. Plato and Arist their Descriptions of fortune examined and illustrated and 3 Conclusions inferred thereupon her and to what order of Causes referred her this we cannot so satisfactorily present by any other way as by a short Commemoration and aequitable Collation of their several Desinitions of her Plutarch 1. placit 29. makes Plato to have defined her thus Fortuna est causa ex accidenti consequens inopinatò in iis quae consilio fiunt Fortune is a Cause by Accident and unexpectedly supervenient in those actions which are deliberately and upon consultation performed and Aristotle thus Fortuna est caussa per accidens in iis quae rei alicujus gratiâ appetitu movente fiunt eáque incerta instabilis Fortune is an Accidental yea and an uncertain and instable cause interesting it self in those actions which are done by an Agent upon the incitement of its Appetite in order to its consequution of an object Which words indeed seem to comprehend in Epitomy all that the Philosopher in 2. physic cap. 5. intended in his more prolix description of Fortune abating only this that he there confines her concernment only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rebus Contingentibus to Effects purely Contingent i. e. such as may or may not come to pass and are therefore of dubious or uncertain event To explain this they exemplify in him who digging in the earth with no other designe but to plant a tree found a great Treasure of which he never thought for say they the Invention of the Treasure is an effect by Accident i. e. evenient above the hopes and besides the intention of him that digged and so the Digger insomuch as he is Causa per se of the digging is also Causa per accidens of the invention of the Treasure Such an Accidental Cause therefore doe our Philosophers call Fortune and the Event it self viz. the invention of the treasure they call Rem fortuitam a Fortuitous Effect But whereas Arist hath frequently advertised that Fortune 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Chance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are different each from other in this that Fortune is proper only to things done by Causes whose activity is Arbitrary and Chance common both to such and also Inanimate or meer Spontaneous Causes as when a stool falls and breaks a Glass consequently that all Fortune is Chance but not every Chance Fortune hence may we observe that he would have aswell Fortune as Chance to belong to the classis of Contingents and that all Contingents belong to the classis of Possibles More expressly that since among Possibles some are such as that their Event cannot be interdicted impeded or countermanded as this the sun cannot be hindred from rising again to morrow morn and others such whose event is not necessary as this t is not necessary though possible that it should raine to morrow a◠sun rising therfore is it manifest that a Possible of the first sort is the same with that which is called Necessarium absolutely Necessary or such whose Contrary is purely Impossible and of the second sort the same with that which is called Contingens meerly Contingent or of an uncertain event such whose Contrary is aequally possible Further in respect that the meer Contingency or Ambiguity of any Event must be founded on this that either some Liberty interveneth by reason whereof that which otherwise would come to pass doth not or that
as those which are not praevised by Man And in this sense only are we to interpret that sentence of Plato Epist 6. Deum apparare Fortunam as also that other in 4. de Legibus Deum cum Deo Fortunam humana omnia gubernare This duely considered we cannot but conclude that Fortune is consistent with Fate by the same interest that a Species doth consist with its Genus for that the Analogie is consimilar is manifest from what immediately praecedes Plutarch when descanting upon Plato his Distinction of Article 2. Fluâ—archs ingenious Assimilation of Fate to the Civil Law and his design therein Providence into Supreme Planetary and Sublunary judiciously interpreteth the supreme to be Intelligentia benefica Dei voluntas the Intelligence and benefical Will of God and this for two respects 1 that He might with greater reason enunciate that Fate is to be reputed subordinate to the Divine Will 2 that He might with greater auctority contradict that proverbial error Omnia Fato fieri though he conceded Omnia Fato complecti that all things are comprehended in Fate We say All things not only meerly Fortuitous and more General Contingents but also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such whose Event is ambiguous and suspended on the Election or Aversation of Mans Free-will And the scope at which He aimed this Distinction was to insinuate and commend the Analogie betwixt Fate and the Civil Law For sayth He as all actions are not Legitimate i. e. are not done according â—o the rule of the Law which are under the comprehension of the Law for the Law comprehends Prodition Desertion and many offences of the same kind which yet no man can justify to be Legitimate since that only is Legitimate which is praescribed by the Law and therefore He who kills a Tyrant doth not a Lawfull though a Commendable at least not a punishable Act but only those which are enjoyned and expresly praescribed by the Law even so though Fate doth comprehend all Events yet are not all Events therein comprehended Fatal or the Designations and Effects of Fate but only those which follow upon Causes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Divine Disposition Antecedent or Necessary such as are the motions of the Planets upon which their Rising and Setting follow of Necessity SECT III. ANd finally concerning the Enodation of that more then Article 1. Fate concenâ—â—icâ—l to mans Elective Liberty in the point of Praedestination Gordian Knot about which many Ancient Philosophers have broken the teeth of their Reason and as many Christian Theologists bin driven to make use of the sword of Faith to cut it asunder viz. the Conciliation of Fate to its apparent Contrary Mans Free-will we conceive the most hopefull way of dissolving the mighty Difficulty to be with the most penetrating Thom. Aquinas to understand Fate in respect to man to be no more but that part of Providence Divine which Theologists intend by the Term Praedestination For the vulgarly conceived Antipraxis between Providence Divine and Liberty Human being once removed the Repugnancy between Fate and Liberty will also vanish of consequence This that we have in the 4. Sect. of our Chapter concerning the Mobility of the Term of mans life to more then a small part performed the Memory of our Reader is a sufficient record However that we may leave no stone unturned under which any the most minute particle of Truth to whose Explanation the concernment of our praesent Theme doth adlige us may be thought to lye neglected we shall with permission from and due submission unto the Censure of the Church from whose Fundamentals we humbly beseech the God of Truth we may never recede in the least make a second attempt to expound the mysterious Riddle of Praedestination that so we may with more perspicuity evidence the Conciliability thereof to mans Arbitrary Agency In order hereunto we are to observe that as Theology holds it for Article 2. The Concord betwixt Theology and Philosophy in their admission of 2. orders of Causes natural viz. Necessary and Free the ground of the Affinity both betwixt the Difficulties and and Solutions on either part as to the Abolition of the seeming Repugnancy between Fate and mans Free-will a maxime that God created two distinct orders of Causes in the General viz. Necessary and Free and that both of these constantly and faithfully execute the commission of their Natures respectively i. e. the Necessary operate by Necessity and the Free by Liberty so also doth Philosophy admit it for Canonical that both the Necessary and Free aequally acknowledge God for their Author and are so comprehended in the episcopacy of Fate that the Necessary operate Necessarily or Fatally and the Free not Fatally but Freely And from this Consent comes it to pass that as the Difficulties which perplex both Divines and Philosophers are of great Affinity if not Identical in the main so also are the Responses thereto of aequal moment Wherefore it must commend our studies to select only those Two Cardinal Doubts to which all others may in some relation either direct or collateral be referred and to the perspicuous solution of each accommodate such praegnant Reasons as may be of correspondent extent in their importance The Former being desumed from Divine Praenotion is by the Theologist proposed thus Either God knew definitely and Article 3. The First câ—pâ—tal Difficulty desumed from Divine Praescience as stated by Divines certainly that Peter would deny Christ or He did not know it That he did not know it cannot be affirmed first because He praecisely praedicted his Abnegation secondly because Truth it self cannot lye and if He had not known it He not bin Omniscient and consequently not God Therefore He knew it definitely and certainly and upon inference it was impossible to Peter not to deny For had it bin left to his Election and he using that Liberty had not denyed then might the Praenotion of God have bin argued of Fallacity and his Praediction of Falsity But if it was not in Peters power not to have denyed 't is manifest that he wanted the Liberty of Election And by the Philosophers thus Either the Gods have a definite Article 4. The same as stated by Philosophers and infallible praescience of the future events of Contingents i. e. whether of 2. contrary Events in possibility shall be deduced extra Causas or actually succeed or they have no knowledge at all of future things or they have an indefinite and only conjectural cognition such as even Man may justly praetend to but neither the 2. nor 3. proposition can be endured without the joynt toleration of most horrid Absurdities and inevitable praecipitation upon that dangerous rock the Commensuration of the Infinite Science of the Gods by the Finite extent of mans capacity and therefore the First remains only to be asserted If therefore the Gods have a certain Praenotion which of 2. Contraries whose Event is equally possible as
this Basis was it that many Schooolmen erected that Axiom Praevisionem Dei nihil influere in humanas actiones that the Praevision of God hath no influence coactive upon the actions of man Now what hath bin argued for the Praevision and Praenotion of God is also to be extended to his Praediction especially because t is uncontrovertible that Praediction is posterior or subsequent to the Praenotion of any Contingent yet in the womb of Futurity since what is not exactly foreknown can never be certainly foretold For which respect shall any urge upon us that the Divine Praenotion and Praediction cannot be Fallacious we shall most willingly concede their position as most indubitate because nothing can be prognosticate by God as Future which is not really Future but when it shall be thence inferred that if Peter had once the absolute power in his own hands to have not denyed and rightly using that arbitrary power had actually not denyed in that case the praenotion and praediction of his denyal by God had proved Fallacious we must reject the Illation as illegal and absurd because had not Peters denyall bin realy Future God had neither praevised nor praedicted the same For it is the Reality of its Futurition that supports the Certitude of the Praediction of any future Contingent And therefore in case Peter had bin not to deny God had as certainly praedicted that He would not deny since so the Supposition had bin quite contrary viz. that Peter rightly using his Liberty of Election would determine it not to a Negation but Affirmation Whereupon we may safely conclude 1 that Peters Abnegation was Future and 2 that God both praevised and praedicted the same upon no other Necessity but only this that Peter when it should be in his own power to determine himself to either part would then actually determine himself rather to Disclaim and Abjure then own and avow his Master Thus the Divines And thus the Philosophers Non quia Dii definitò norunt Article 6. The Solution of the same by the Philosophers proving that the dâ—finite Praenotion of future Contingents is no Cause of their definite Contingency but è contrà the definity of their Futurition the câ—use of their dâ—finite â—â—anotion Contingentia ideo illa eventura sunt Neque enim quia Dii norunt ideo necessariò eveniunt sed quia cum naturae sint anâ—ipitis aut talem aut talem exhibebunt exitum norunt Dii necessariò qualem seu utrum obtinebunt adeo ut Contingens ex sua quidem natura indefinitum sit sed respectu tamen notitiae Deorum definitum Quinetiam constat nostra quoque notitia Contingens definitò cognosci cum viz. propriè Contingens deinceps non sit sed necessariò consequitur antegressas cur fiat Causas Saith Ammonius in lib. de interpret The whole importance whereof is this That the definite praenotion of Contingents by God is in no relation the cause of their definite Contingency but their being of themselves definitely Future or their Ambiguity being to be determined to Definity of Futurition is the Cause of their praenotion by God For though a Contingent be Indefinite in respect to its own nature i. e. it is equally determinable by the Liberty of its Causes to either of two contrary Events yet in respect to the Praenotion of God it is Definite because God hath an infallible praenotion to which of two contrary Events its Causes will determine it All which may be confirmed à Minori from the Praenotion of Man experience assuring that Physicians frequently prognosticate and praedict the death of their deplored Patients even to an hour Not that their Prognosticks have any influence upon the Disease to determine it to Mortal when yet t is Dubious but that the determination of the disease from Dubious to definitely Mortal by its causes is the ground of their Prognostick Here lest we be misconceived to confound Divine and Human Article 7. The Disparity betwixt Divine and Human Praenotion Praecognition we advertise that the Praenotion of God is Infallible because à Priori i. e. He foreknows Contingents while they are yet only in Possibility and in the womb of their Causes nor to him who demands Why or How God foreknows Events while they are yet in the Dark or Nothing of Futurity can any other response be given but this that He is Omniscient i. e. God but the Praenotion or rather Praesagitition of man is Fallacious because desumed à Posteriori from Effects educed extra Causas into actual Existence Which vast Disparity may be most adaequately Exemplified Article 8. The same exemplified thus God certainly Foreknows that Peter shall fall sick and die of such or such a disease viz. a Pestilent Fever How because He foreknows that those Causes which in respect to the Ambiguity or Indifferency of their event may or may not generate an intense putrefaction and malignity in the humors of Peters body shall lose that their Possibility and determine themselves to the actual production of that particular malignant or pestilential inquinament in his blood which constituteth the essence of that disease and that the disease so generated will be so violent and inoppugnable by the force of Nature that the Temperament of Peters body being too weak to sustain such a disproportionate Encounter will thereby be dissolved and so Death shall inevitably succeed But the Physician can only conjecture that Peter may fall sick of such a malignant Fever why because He discovers that Peters praevious Intemperance hath prepared the continent Cause or Fewell for a putrid Fever and that the access of Malignity either by Contagion communicated or from an intense Corruption of humors internally kindled may according to the Aptitude of its nature seise upon that praepared fewell and Ferment it into a pestilential Fever but Definitely He doth not know that Peter shall fall sick of such a pestilential disease in regard it transcends the maximes of his Art and the Capacity of his limited Reason to foreknow whether the Possibility of such an Effect from such Causes shall be determined to Necessity Nor can He praedict that Peter being invaded with that disease shall certainly perish thereby untill the Dubiosity of the Fever be actually determined to Lethality for then from Symptoms that signify the total Succumbency or yeelding of Nature to the victorious fury of the disease he may with good warrant and honour praesage the imminent death of Peter ¶ SECT IV. THe other Capital Difficulty being erected upon a certain circumventing Socraticisme or Interrogatory Sophisme Article 1. The Second Capital Difficulty erected upon a sophism called Ignava Ratio as it respecteth both Theology and Philosophy most adaequately denominated by Cicero de Fato 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ignava Ratio an unactive Argumentation because praevailing upon the mind it stupefies the same to a perpetual Restiveness or Supinity by charging even the Thoughts of every man upon the
into an arbitrary Mutability Why because the Decree is not made nisi supponendo quide esset facturus but upon a Supposition what the future Actions of his life would be and the Immutability thereof is established upon the Necessity Suppositional which Article 7. A third Conclusion viz that the posteriority of the Decree of Election to Gods praevision of mans future Good actions doth make man the Author of his own Discretion detected and redargued can diminish nothing of the Liberty of man as we have more then once professedly evinced And as little solid reason hath He to argue thus If God did therefore Elect me only because He eternally praevised those Good works which I now do then ipse ero qui me discernam shall I my self be to my self the Author of my Discretion For t is not man who by his own single power can make this Discretion but the very Grace of God alone without which no man can ever attain so high as the foot of Goodness Conclude we therefore though it be not difficult to mans Reason Article 8. Two Extracts from the praemises 1 that the Cooperation of mans Will to sufficient Grace may be conceived a Cause of his Election 2 that to render a reason why God did not constitute All men such as that All should cooperate to sufficient Grace and so be Elect is an impossibility to mans understanding other then this that such was his eternal Will to investigate the Cause Why God was pleased to ordain this vessel for Honour and that for Dishonour why He by the vigorous Magnet of his special Indulgence doth Attract this and not that man still dispensing a sufficient portion of his illuminating Grace to all men since it is not obscure that the Concurse Conspiracy and Cooperation of this mans Will to that sufficient Grace may inoffensively be conceived to be the Cause at least a Cause and so è contra Yet is it and the Acutest Wits have from the Flaws made in them by the more then Adamantine Hardness of this Rock had great reason to conjecture it will always continue the most Desperate Difficulty that ere perplexed the Cogitations of inquisitive Mortality to explore the reason why God made men of such a condition as that some would be destinate to Honour and others to Dishonour and not All men such as that they should willingly suffer themselves to be Allected by the Loadstone of his Love or be willing to cooperate to his Grace diffused upon them when had it seemed convenient to his Wisdome He might have made All men such as that they would with all ardency of Affection and force of their Wills have Cooperated to his Grace and so have bin Elected to Honor. And certainly from hence alone that our Delection of Virtue or Vice conforme to which our Minds are carried on with a kind of infraenable Tendency and to which the Praevision of God being extended He hath either Elected or Reprobated is necessarily dependent upon the Notions or Species of things objected to our Senses and traductively to our Cognoscent Faculty there remains to us more then a great occasion of applauding and admiring the Modesty and judgement of the Apostles Exclamation ô Altitudo especially when the Exhibition or Praesentation of those Notions and Species doth depend upon that Concatenate Series or subalternate syntax and Disposition of Causes and Effects which God when He Created the World according to the Model of his own imperscrutable Wisdome thought good to institute And this we have judged to be a faithfull Summarie of what the Divines Respons to this Circaean Charm or Sophisme of Adrastus containeth The Remnant of our Assumption is only to contract those voluminous Discourses of Philosophers which perpendicularly point at the Solution of the same most bloody and impious Sophisme into a sew medullary or essential lines Plutarch de Fato as Platos Interpreter insisting upon the praerecited Adaequation of Fate to the Civil Law hopes to Article 9. The former Sophisme ignava Ratio in part dissolved by Plutarchs Distinction that though All effects are comprâ—hended in yet all are not caused by Fate decide the mighty Controversy by distinguishing thus Tametsi omnia quae fiunt Fato contineantur non tamen Fato omnia fieri ac ejusmodi esse ea quae Contingenter sive Liberè ac Fortuito fiunt That though all things which come to pass are contained in Fate yet are not all things effected By Fate and particularly those Events which are meerly Fortuitous and those which are effected by Arbitrary Agents Now according to this eminent Distinction we may concede that it is indeed comprehended in Fate not only that Thou being cast upon the thorny bed of Sickness shalt or recover or perish but also that thou shalt or Consult or Neglect the Physician But positively deny that therefore either thy Convalescence or Death is Fatal since t is Contingent as also that thy use or neglect of the Physician is Fatal since t is Arbitrary Notwithstanding this nice and specious Distinction we Article 10. The insufficiency of that Dâ—stinction to the total solution of the Difficulty duely acknowledged confess there remains a Difficulty and such a one as the greatest Oedipuses of the World may without dishonour to their Perspicacity despair of its satisfactory Dissolution viz. How it can be since there is some Cause which condueeth rather to thy Convalescence then Destruction or è contrà rather to thy Destruction then Convalescence and some Cause which induceth or inclineth thee rather to Consult then Neglect the Physician or è contrà rather to Neglect then Consult him and since those Causes had others Antecedent to them and those were connected to others and those to others c. retrograde along the chain of Fate How it can be we say that these Effects being admitted to be Contained in Fate may not be also admitted to be Caused by Fate Especially when we cannot without passion quarrel at his Construction who shall tell us that to be Contained in Fate is as much as to be connected to the Series of Causes and that little less then to be Effected by Fate To palliate not cure the Itch of Curiosity in this particular we ask leave with the sublimest and most daring Contemplators of the World to recurr to that General Asylum Non debet Humana Sapientia supra Divinam illam gloriari juxta quam vetamur scrupulosiùs inquirere quamobrem Deus sic ordinarit And this the reason was of our saying that the second opinion of Divines to our first inspection seemed capable of Extrication from the Labyrinth of the Fatists Vnactive Argumentation for our second and more profounding meditations have found it far otherwise However we judge it worthy our Readers Patience here to acquaint himself with the subtle Evasions of some Philosophers especially when He shall survey them in epitome Article 11. The most promising Responses of some Philosophers