of the World but also of Mankind they are of two sorts viz. 1. Such as have affirmed that the successive Generations of Men have been eternal not only without any beginning but without any first Parents of Mankind and that they have been always geniti ex genitis 2. Those that have supposed that there were some first Parents of Mankind which by a natural and univocal generation multiplied their Species but yet that those first Parents of Mankind were eternal Individuals having an eternal existence in their individual nature and in relation to them the rest of Mankind were geniti ex non genitis As to the former of these Opinions they seem to be divided into these ensuing Parties or Opinions 1. Such as think the successive Generations of Men were eternally so and independent upon any Efficient and necessarily by the eternal established course of Nature independent upon Almighty God or any first Efficient of the Species 2. Such as think the successive Generations of Men were eternally so but dependently upon Almighty God yet as a necessary Effect produced by Almighty God as a necessary or natural Cause as the Light is a coexistent Effect of the Sun 3. Such as think the successive Generations of Men were eternally so but dependently upon God as an efficient voluntary Cause of them by eternal Creation yet suppose that Will intrinsecally determined to such an eternal Creation of Mankind by the indispensable benignity and goodness of his nature 4. Such as though they take Almighty God to be under neither of the former necessities but an Agent purely voluntary and determining his own Will by it self only and that deny the eternal successions of humane Generations as to the fact but yet affirm it possible that Almighty God might if he pleased have created the World and Mankind eternally Having thus stated the Opinions of the Assertors of the Eternity or Beginning of Humane Generations I shall pursue this Method 1. In this Chapter I shall consider the possibility or impossibility of eternal Generations of Mankind with relation to the four preceding Suppositions that assert it 2. In the next Chapter I shall consider the possibility or impossibility of any one Man or Woman eternally existing from whom Mankind had their production by univocal generation 3. I shall afterwards consider of those evidences of fact and probability that de facto may seem to prove that Mankind had their beginning in time and the Objections against it 4. I shall then descend to the Consideration of the various Suppositions of those that have supposed a temporary Origination of Mankind At the present therefore I shall propound those Reasons that to me seem concludent that although it might for Arguments sake be supposed that some parts of universal Nature namely such as are permanent and fixed and not in fluxu might be eternal yet it is simply impossible that the Generations of Mankind can be eternal in any of the four foregoing ways And before I come to give my Reasons I shall premise two things 1. In relation to the four foregoing Opinions there seems to be this implyed in them 1. The two former do most clearly take up the entire collection of Mankind and the Generations of them to be a meer natural Effect or Work with this odds that the former acknowledgeth no Efficient at all the latter acknowledgeth God the Efficient or first Cause of the eternal World and the Generations of Mankind as a natural Cause And consequently they must needs hold that as Man is now generated so he was eternally so and as he is now so he always hath been and the measure that we take of him now will fit to all those innumerable Men that have been within the vast compass of Eternity As Man is now a compound Body of the four Elements so he always was as he is now nine Months in utero matris such was the method and the mora of every Man's production for the Effect is a natural uniform Effect whether independent upon God as the Efficient thereof or dependent upon Him as a Natural Effect And therefore whatsoever is impossible to be attributed to Peter or John or any other individual Man is incompetible to every Man in all this infinite Collection within the unlimited extent of Eternity But the two latter though both suppose an eternity of Generations and though in Eternity there cannot be supposed well a first yet do what they can if they suppose a production of Man by eternal Creation they cannot deliver themselves from these consequences 1. That there must be some Man or Men that had his or their beginning in some other way then other persons had it namely by Creation for although Creation be an instantaneous act of the Divine Will and Power it must of necessity be terminated in some individual determinate Person and it cannot be quid vagum the consequence whereof must necessarily be That if there were an eternal Creation of any Man or Men they that were thus created had their production if we may suppose such a production by a different way from the production of those that had their being by generation and herein this Supposition of the Origination of Humane Nature differs from the two former Suppositions 2. And consequently that if the Creation of Man and of the rest of the World must be in the same point as I may call it of Eternity the rest of the World or any part thereof could not be precedent to the Creation of Man for then they have lost what they contend for namely an eternal Creation of Man If it were but one imaginable moment after then the World might indeed have had an eternal existence but it would be impossible for Man to have had that eternal existence by Creation unless in the same first imaginary conceptible moment of Eternity an expression improper enough I confess Man and the rest of the World were concreated The consequence whereof as I before said is that those Men must not as the former suppose all Individuals of Mankind had the same natural manner of production for among the whole Collection some one or more had a supernatural manner of production namely by Creation 2. This being premised concerning the different states of the two former and two latter Opinions somewhat I shall say in general touching the Reasons I use against all these Suppositions 1. In general That that kind of reasoning which reduceth the opposite Conclusion to something that is apparently impossible or absurd is as much a Demonstration in disaffirmance of any thing that is affirmed as can possibly be in any case if the Conclusion of the affirming party doth necessarily inferr an impossibility or absurdity in the nature of the thing affirmed it is a Demonstration Argumentum cum contradictione conclusionis and such will those be which I shall bring 2. Because the former Suppositions touching the Eternity of Mankind though they conclude in the same
and fitted for this production which could not be but after some great and long continuing Flood or Inundation that might prepare and dispose the Matter for the Activity of that great Revolution and if these should not meet together or in some convenient nearness the production of Mankind and perfect Animals would be frustrated 3. That in as much as provident Nature hath had for many Ages and yet hath a sufficient Seminium and stock for the preservation of the Species of Men and perfect Animals raised by propagation and the mutual conjunction of Sexes Nature is not necessitated to have recourse to this extraordinary way of peopling and furnishing the World and therefore it cannot be expected but after some vast devastation that may endanger at least the extinguishing of the species of things To these things I say first in general That if Men shall upon such a Method of Arguing go about to establish a Supposition that neither they nor any else have ever known or experimented and make a Conclusion of a thing as natural upon such Suppositions as never any Man knew or heard to produce such effects Men may assume any thing to be natural which yet hath not footsteps in Nature bearing any analogy to it But to the particulars As to the first it is unreasonable to make such a Supposition for since it is not possible for any Man to know whether there be any such Influence of the Heavens to effect such productions unless by Experience and Observations of some Men or some other way the notice thereof were given to Mankind it being a Matter of Fact that can no other way be known but by Experience or Revelation and since the bare beholding of those Heavenly Bodies being of that distance can never without Observation of Events give us any natural estimate of their Effects what they are or may be and since it must needs be granted that such imagined Conjunctions as may be effectual for such productions are at vast unknown distances and such as no Age before hath or indeed can leave us any Memorial of it must needs be a vain and precarious assumption to attribute any natural Efficacy to any Conjunction whatsoever for such a production The Ancient and Divine Historian Moses gives us indeed an account of the Origination of Man and all other Animals but not upon any natural causation or activity of the Heavens or Heavenly Bodies but as he gives us the History of the Things so he gives us the true Resolution of the Cause not a natural but a supernatural Cause namely the Intention and Volition of the Great and Wise God and to exclude any imagination of a natural or necessary Cause of these productions doth not only tell us in express terms that the production of them was by the Energy of the Divine Fiat but also that the production even of Vegetables themselves that seem to have the greatest dependance upon Celestial Influences was antecedent to the Constitution of those Heavenly Bodies 1. As the Supposition of such a Natural Causality in the Heavens is meerly precarious so it seems even to our Sense apparently false for we see every year without any other than an ordinary Conjunction by the Access of the Sun Insects and Plants sponte nascentia do arise and we know that ordinarily in the compass or revolution of 800 or 1000 years very great and considerable mutations happen in the Position and Conjunction of the Heavenly Bodies and we know that within the compass of Authentick History these Revolutions have happened above thrice and since the latest Epocha of the Worlds Inception above five times yet none of these great Revolutions have for any thing we ever knew or heard produced any one Horse or Lion or Wolf much less any one Man as a Terrigena And therefore Experience the best means to settle such an Hypothesis doth not only not warrant it but is evidently contrary to it and denies it 2. As to the second the Mosaical History gives us an account of an Universal Deluge about 4000 years since which lay long upon the whole Earth and the Grecian History gives us an account of two very great Floods namely the Ogygian and the Deucalian Floods and every Year gives us an account of the Inundation of Nilus in Egypt a most fruitful Continent and near the Sun whereby the Soil is made admirably fruitful and there is scarce any Age but some great portions of Land are laid dry by the recess of some parts of the Ocean which had lain covered for many thousands of years before with the sea And as the universal Deluge was as great a preparation of the whole Earth so these particular Inundations and Recesses of the Sea left particular Spots of Land as well prepared for such productions as can well be imagined and yet in no Age have we any Instance of any such production abating the Story of the Egyptian Mice which concrete after the recess of Nilus which yet of most hands are agreed to be Insects and sponte nascentia ex putredine Indeed Beregardus tells us ubi supra out of Camerarius that about Cayro after the reflux of Nilus there are often seen divers Limbs or Parts of Mens Bodies whether this be true or no or if true whether they are not only relicks of some Bodies swept away by the Inundations of Nilus out of their Graves or Sepultures and torn asunder by the furious Cataracts of Nilus is not clearly evident But be they what they will or whether the Lusus naturae yet they make nothing to this matter unless Camerarius or some other had seen those divulsa membra come together and configured into an humane Shape and animated with a humane Life which neither he nor any other have yet affirmed or pretended 3. As to the Third I say 1. If by Nature they intend the great and glorious God that most wise intelligent powerful Being they do indeed in effect affirm what I have designed to prove but do not make good their Supposition of such a Natural Cause as they declare in their Hypothesis wherein they mean only that natural connexion and series of Causes whereby Natural Effects are naturally produced And if they intend by Nature that unintelligent series or order of Natural Causes or the blind and determinate Cause of Natural Productions How comes that Nature to know when and where this necessity of Spontaneous Productions doth happen or in what proportion measure limits or place it is necessary to be done Such a provisional care requires a knowing and perfectly intelligent Being that operates ex cognitione intentione voluntate which is not to be affirmed of Agents purely natural who do therefore act according to a Law of necessity and determination non ex consilio cognitione 2. It is plain that Insects and Vegetables spontaneously produced are produced every Year and their production is as natural as the access of the Sun and the constitution
sensitive nature That the Rational Nature should have those Faculties of a Sensitive Nature and superadded to it the Faculties of Intellect Reason and Will whereby it might govern it self as a reasonable free Agent and determine it self to this or that action And these are the instituted Laws of the Divine common Providence 2. A continued influx of the Divine Goodness whereby things are upheld and continued in their state of being according to this Law of their Creation And by virtue of both these acts of common divine Providence all things are enabled to act and operate according to the Laws of their being without the necessity of any new individual concurrent act of special Providence producing directing or determining their several operations And hence it is that the Will of man by the instituted Law of his Creation and the common Influence of the Divine goodness and power is enabled to act as a reasonable Creature to determine it self and to govern its proper actions according to the Law of his Creation without any particular specificating concurrent new imperate act of the Divine special Providence to every particular determination of his Will Even as the continued influx of the reasonable Soul enables those Faculties which we call Natural or Involuntary without new deliberation purpose or counsel to every new act thereof And by this means the World is in an ordinary course of Providence governed according to those standing fixed Laws given to the Universe and the several parts thereof by the Divine Will wherein it is supported by the common influx and presence of the Divine power and goodness And this is that which being duly considered extricateth that Question which hath so much troubled the World concerning the sinful acts of men and how far forth the glorious God is at all concerned in them Certainly the imperate acts of his Blessed Will have nothing to do to enforce or necessitate the Will of man to any sin it is far from the purity of his Glorious Nature But the general Law of his Providence is only thus far concerned in it That he hath made Man an intelligent and free Agent put him into the power of his own Will but yet sub graviore imperio to restrain its actings if he please by his special Providence and Man in this state of his liberty when he doth sin sins from the Empire of his own Will and not from a determination of the Divine Regiment But though the contemplation of the regiment of the Soul over the Body hath given some analogical explication of the Divine Providence in the Government of the World yet as this Analogy is but imperfect the Divine Regiment of the World is infinitely more wise more powerful more perfect than the regiment of the Soul over the Body so in many things this Analogy by no means holds For instance The Soul doth what it doth in the Body though by a kind of efficiency yet it is but a subordinate efficient and vicarious and instrumental in the hands of the Almighty who as it hath endued the Soul with this energy so the Soul is but his substitute in this regiment of the Body but Almighty God is the supreme Rector of the World and of all those subordinate provinces and parts thereof Secondly in the imperate acts of the Souls regency of the Body and the Compositum She cannot in the Body work immediately without the instrumentality of the intermediate animal and vital Spirits But in the imperate acts of the special Divine Providence though we may justly think he doth most ordinarily use the ministry of those noble natures called Angels yet he may and oftentimes doth by the immediate Fiat of his own Will exercise these imperate acts of special Providence for his Power is infinite and all Beings are in an immediate obedience and subjection to it 3. The Soul cannot by its own Will exercise any immediate imperate act upon those natural and involuntary operations which yet are exercised by an influx from it indeed it may starve and destroy the Body by its Empire and thereby consequently impede and determine those natural and involuntary operations yet it cannot by its Intention or Empire prohibit or suspend their exercise the natural means being allowed and present it cannot effectually prohibit the Heart not to move or the Blood not to circulate or the Ventricle not to digest But it is otherwise with the Regent and regiment of the World even those things wherein he hath set a fixed Law which by virtue of the common influence of the Divine Power and Goodness they observe and follow are subject to the Empire of his special Providence and the imperate acts thereof And this is evident in that Administration of special Providence which is miraculous he commanded the Fire not to burn stopped the mouths and appetites of Lions and prohibited the natural operation and agency of Natural Causes 2. In all the special Providences that are exercised in the World though they do not visibly appear to us to be miraculous yet they most certainly are governed by the imperium of special Divine Providence whereby it sometimes excites second Causes to production of Effects which being thus excited they naturally produce sometimes impeding them sometimes diverting them sometimes directing them sometimes by contemperation or uniting other more active or contrary Causes allaying or enforcing them and although it may be the interposition of the Divine imperium or special Providence be not immediately the immediate antecedent Cause but it may be the third the fourth the tenth the twentieth Cause distant from the Effect Nay though possibly the conjunction of the immediate imperium Providentiae be with the First Mover in Nature the Heavenly Aethereal or Fiery Influx yet the regiment of the Divine Providence is as full and infallible in relation to the imperate regiment of the Effect as if it were immediately joyned to the designed Effect So that the Moral of that Poetical fiction that the uppermost Link of all the series of subordinate Causes is fastned to Jupiter's Chair signifies a useful truth Almighty God doth as powerfully govern and direct when he pleaseth and how he pleaseth all subordinate Causes and Effects as the Soul governs the motion of the Muscle or Limb by those strings of the Nerve which are rooted in the Brain 4. Again the regiment of the Soul over the Body is the regiment of the more active part over the more passive though both making one Compositum but the regiment of Almighty God over the World is not as a part of it or as a Form or Soul informing it but as a Rector or Governour distinct separate and essentially differing from it his regiment of the World in this respect not so much resembling the regiment of the Soul over the Body which together with it make one compounded Nature as the regiment of the Master or Rector over the Ship or the regiment of a King over his Subjects And
Mankind whether although there should be a possibility of an eternity of some permanent created Beings whether yet there be a possibility in Nature or any probability of evidence that Mankind can be eternal à parte ante or without beginning This I oppose by Arguments of two kinds 1. From the very repugnancy in Nature of successive Beings to be without an inception or eternal and upon these kind of evidences I do indeed lay the principal weight and stress of my Conclusion because though these kind of Arguments may seem more obscure yet upon a due consideration of them they are highly consequential and concludent to my purpose 2. The second sort of evidences are Moral evidences wherein I take into consideration most of those Moral evidences that have been collected by others or thought of by my self against the Eternity of Mankind Whereupon I do conclude 1. That singly and apart many of them are subject to exception yet collectively they make up a good moral evidence touching a temporary inception of the humane Nature 2. I do consider the particular deficiencies of those moral evidences taken singly and apart 3. I substitute other moral evidences that even singly and apart have each of them a great moral and topical evidence of this truth and are not capable of any considerable Objection against them though taken sigillatim and apart But when all is done I lay the great stress of my Conclusion upon the first sort of Evidences natural or metaphysical which seem to me no less than demonstrative and therefore if no other moral evidences were added thereunto or if those moral evidences should be capable of exception as some of them are yet the truth of the Conclusion against the eternity of Mankind is sufficiently supported by those that I offer in the first place which I call Physical and Metaphysical 2. Again I then come to consider that Opinion which supposeth an Inception of the Humane Nature I consider the various Hypotheses that the Ancients entertained touching the manner of that Origination and shew the absurdity of them in their several orders I then consider the Mosaical Hypothesis and the great reasonableness thereof upon a bare Natural or Moral accompt without taking in the Infallibility of Divine Revelation In order to that I consider the whole Mosaical Systeme or History of the Creation of the World the admirable congruity it hath both with it self and with a due and unprejudiced and considerate Reason And lastly I deduce certain Corollaries or Consequences from the whole Discourse both Theoretical and Moral and this is in effect the whole Method of what these Papers contain Wherein I proceed meerly upon an account of Natural Reason and Light because in this Discourse I deal with such as are either only or most commonly guided and governed by such Sentiments and therefore I do not call in to my assistance the Authority of Divine Revelation though that of it self doth and ought to carry the full and unquestionable Assent of all good Men that are acquainted therewith CAP. III. A brief Consideration of the Hypotheses that concern the Eternity of the World ALthough I intend not a large Discourse touching their Suppositions that hold the Eternity of the World yet it will be convenient a little to consider it for the better application of what follows in the ensuing Discourse touching the Eternity of the Successions of Mankind and the possibility or impossibility thereof The Supposition of the Eternity of the World is considerable under a double relation 1. With relation to the Notion of Eternity 2. With relation to the Subject it self which they would have eternal namely the World either wholly or in some parts thereof In relation to Eternity it self two things are to be premised 1. What it is 2. What its Kinds are 1. As to the former in all this Discourse I call that Eternal which is without beginning or eternal à parte ante 2. Things thus supposed Eternal may be of two kinds either such as have an Eternity simply independent upon any thing without it or from which it should derive that Eternal Being as we and all good Men say that Almighty God is Eternal Or else such an Eternity as yet supposeth its dependence upon Almighty God as its Cause And they that attribute the first kind of Eternity to the World must do it upon one of these two grounds viz. That there is no other first Being no first Cause no God upon whom the World should depend or from whom it should derive this its Eternal Existence And this is the grossest and most irrational Supposition as well as the foulest Atheism that can be imagined Or else That although there be in truth such a Being as God yet the World had not this its Eternal Existence by any derivation or influx from Him but hath it absolutely and independently This is the Epicurean Atheism which though it oppose the Eternity of the World in that consistency that now it hath yet it asserts the Eternity of those small and infinite particles of Matter and the coalition of them into that state wherein they now are in process and succession of time and motion yet without any dependence of the one or the other upon Almighty God whom he totally secludes from the concerns of the World Others there are again that attribute an Eternity to the World but yet withall acknowledge Almighty God and also Him to be the Efficient thereof And therefore though they attribute an Eternity to it yet it is but a dependent Eternity and so though it be Eternal yet it is but an Eternal Effect of an Eternal Cause These are much more tolerable than either of the former for they assert a God and likewise the dependence of the World in its Eternal Existence and Duration upon Almighty God as the Cause and Root of that Being of the World But among those that thus assert this dependent Eternity of the World upon Almighty God as its Cause or Efficient there seems to be two Parties namely 1. Such as suppose Almighty God the Necessary Cause of the World as his Necessary Effect 2. Such as suppose Him meerly the Voluntary Cause of the World and of its Eternity Of the former sort that suppose Almighty God the Necessary Cause of the World and of its Eternal Existence there seem to be these two Parties or different Opinions 1. Such as suppose the World a meer natural and necessary Emanation from God as its necessary Cause without any manner of intrinsecal freedom in Himself to do or be otherwise and consequently it being a necessary and connatural Effect of the first Cause it must be necessarily as ancient as Himself and if Almighty God be as He is most necessarily so upon the same necessity He is the Cause of the World and the World a necessary and consequently Eternal Production necessarily flowing from the same as if the Sun be Eternal his Light which necessarily
that things had no other method of their production than what we now see they have and therefore they must if they hold to their Principles agree that they had their production always as now they have The necessary consequence whereof is that if such a kind of production of mixt Bodies cannot in the nature of the thing be eternal they cannot have an eternal production But it is true that this doth not answer the Supposition of those that though they suppose an Eternity in mixt Bodies do attribute even that Eternity to an eternal Creation and therefore to another kind of production than what we now suppose to be natural and consequently as they suppose at first in an eternal moment Almighty God created simple Bodies as the Heavenly or Elementary Bodies so in the same instant He might and did create other Bodies which though in their constitution they were or might be composed of such particles as had they been asunder and divided might have been of the simple nature of those simpler Bodies yet they were in the same eternal moment or instant created and put together without any priority of existence in those simple Bodies whereof they might otherwise consist nor were such mixt eternal Bodies successively desumed or compounded out of the pre-existing simple Bodies but con-created and put together in the same eternal and indivisible moment or instant so that a Mineral for the purpose might be created in the same moment wherein the elementary Earth was created And although after the completing of the whole Frame of Nature in that eternal indivisible intelligible moment the production of mixt Bodies either by spontaneous or contingent coalition of various particles of Matter or by an univocal generation the course that is now held in Nature might be observed and that Priority of particles of simple Matter Influx of the Heavens and Preparation of Matter might be antecedent and precedaneous not only in order but in time to their ordinary productions yet at first it might be and was otherwise in the primitive constitution of such mixt Bodies as had their original by Creation I do confess this Supposition may evade the illation made upon the Natural production of mixt Bodies but then we must remember that this quite departs from the method of things as they now stand in the course of Nature neither can any man conclude that it was or could be so from the observation of the Order or Cause of Nature or any rational deduction from the same but must have recourse either to bare Notion or Conjecture or else to Divine Revelation the former seems somewhat too light soundly to ground any Hypothesis and the latter namely Divine Revelation though it doth discover unto us that things had their production in a different way in their first Constitution or Origination namely by the almighty Power of God creating them yet withall it informs us that that origination was not from Eternity but in the beginning of Time which wholly overthrows the Hypothesis of an Eternal Creation of the World If therefore they will appeal to Revelation for their Creation they must be concluded by it not to say it was eternal 2. My second Reason is this Because all things that are in their nature successive must have a first beginning of their being and cannot be eternal But there are in the World many things of great note and moment and without which the Order and Usefulness of the Universe would be deficient which have a successive nature and therefore such things cannot be eternal or without beginning And this reason concludes forcibly as well against that independent Eternity supposed by some of the Ancients as that Eternity dependent upon Almighty God whether as a necessary Cause or as a free voluntary intellectual Cause determined by the necessary Goodness and Beneficence of his nature or as a perfectly free Agent determining his Will by his own beneplacitum thus eternally to produce the World The Assumption or minor Proposition That there are many things in the World of great moment and importance to it that are in their own nature successive is apparent such are all the Individuals of Species of corruptible things that yet notwithstanding have a continued succession in their individuals as Vegetables Animals and Men that successively propagate their kind 2. All kinds of Motions to which all natural Bodies are in some kind or other subject as the motions of Generation and Corruption Augmentation Diminution and Alteration that are uncessantly incident to all sublunary Bodies and they must change their nature and cease to be what they are before they can cease to be actually subject to alterations such is also Local motion communicable not only to the inferior and sublunary Bodies but also to celestial Bodies and this motion even of the Heavenly Bodies themselves seems to be partly continued and unintermitted as that motion of the First Moveable partly interpolated and interrupted as some affirm of that Motus trepidationis sometimes of access and recess as the Annual motion of the Sun wherein some have thought there is a small though impeceptible rest in the very point of returning which we call Solstices The major Proposition namely that such successive things cannot be eternal includes two Affirmations viz. 1. That the motions or successions themselves cannot be eternal or without beginning 2. That the things that have necessarily and inseparably these motions or alterations annexed to their nature cannot be eternal so long as we suppose them necessarily accompanied with these alterations The former of these is considerable in this place the other is considerable under the next Reason Now touching the impossibility of the eternal succession of the Species whether of Men Animals or Vegetables by natural propagation or prosemination the same and the Reasons thereof shall be fully delivered when we come to the particular consideration of the Origination of Mankind and the necessity of fixing in some common Parents of the individuals of Mankind and thither I shall refer my self As touching the eternity of any kind of Motion especially even of that of the Heavenly Bodies I shall say somewhat briefly in this place which will be easily reducible to any other of the motions in the World as namely the motions of Generation Corruption or Alteration all which are in some respect but the effects of Local motion of one kind or another And there seem to be two special Reasons even from the intrinsecal nature of the things that encounter the possibility of an eternal successive duration in them The first concludes against all imaginable eternity of Motion of the Heavenly Bodies whether independent or dependent upon Almighty God the latter indeed principally concludes against the possibility of the created or dependent eternity thereof And they are these 1. If the circular motion of the Sun or Heavens were eternal then there must be two circulations of the Heavens immediately succeeding on the other Eternal the consequence
it hath been before observed that he that goes about to make the whole Universe and all the several parts thereof the business of his Enquiry as he shall find that there are many things therein that he cannot come at or make any discovery of so among those parts of the Universe that are objected to a greater discovery of our Senses the multiplicity is so great that a man of the most equal and firm constitution must despair of Life enough to make a satisfactory particular and deep enquiry into them But the Object in hand is but one it is Man and the Nature of Man I confess it is true that he that shall make it his business to take in as it were by way of a common place all those things that may be taken up under this consideration and follow all those Lines that concenter in this or almost any other the most single piece of Contemplation will make this Subject large enough and upon that account may be drawn in almost all things imaginable We find in the consideration of the Humane Nature a Substance a Body a Spirit We find the several Objects of his Senses Light Colour Sound and infinite more He that upon this account will take in the distinct and large considerations of these and the like Appendices to Humane Nature in their full amplitude will have a large Plain that will more than exhaust his Life before he come to the Subject it self which he designes Again there is an infinite multitude of collateral considerations that yet are relative to man hither comes all the considerations of Theology Physick Natural Philosophy Politicks the considerations of Speech Government Laws of History Topography of Arts of those Sciences that relate to the Senses of Opticks Musick and infinite more for all these have a relation to Man and are like so many Lines drawn from several Objects that some way relate to him and concenter in him and he that shall make it his business to follow all those Lines to their utmost shall make the contemplation of Man almost as large as the contemplation of the whole Universe When I say therefore the contemplation of Man is the contemplation of a single Object I mean when it is kept into those single bounds of Man in his own specifical Nature and under the physical contemplation of his Nature Parts and Faculties as they are appropriate unto him And then it is a Subject that we may possibly make some progress in its contemplation and conception within the period of the time that by the ordinary time of Life and the permission of necessary avocations a man may employ in such a contemplation And yet secondly though in this restrained notion the Subject seems to be restrained and single we shall find it no very narrow Subject but there will be business enough in it to employ our Faculty and to take up that time which either more necessary or more imporunate thoughts or employments will allow us and variety enough to entertain our thoughts with delight contentation and usefulness 3. The Third Commendation of this Object to our contemplation is this that therein we have more opportunity of certainty and true knowledge of the Object enquired into than we can have in any other Object at least of equal use worth and value Many excellent things there are in Nature which were very well worth our Knowledge but yet as hath been said either by reason of their remoteness from us unaccessibleness to them subtilty and imperceptibleness to us either are not at all suspected to be or are not so much as within any of our Faculties to apprehend or discover what they are or in case we have any conception that there may be something of that kind yet our Notions touching them are but products of Imagination and Phantasie or at best very faint weak ungrounded and uncertain conjectures and such as we can never prove to the satisfaction of others or our selves Our Sense is the best evidence that we have in Nature touching the existence of corporeal things without us and where that is not possibly to be exercised we are naturally at a great uncertainty whether things are or what they are Now the Understanding perceives or understands things by the assistance of Sense in a double manner 1. It either perceives them immediately as being immediately objected to and perceptible to the Sense as I perceive the Sun and the Stars by my sight I find that there is a Body hard or gentle or hot or cold by my Touch and accordingly my Understanding judgeth of them Or secondly though the Sense perceive not the Object immediately yet it doth represent certain sensible effects or operations and though by those effects or operations the Understanding doth not immediately conclude anything else to be but what the Sense thus feels or sees yet the Understanding sometimes by ratiocination and sometimes by the Memory doth infer and conclude something else to be besides what the Sense immediately represents either as the cause or the concomitant of it and doth as forcibly and truly conclude the thing to be and also sometimes what the nature of that cause or concomitant is as if it were seen by the Eye or felt by the Hand I do not see nor by any Sense perceive the quiet undisturbed Air yet because I do see that a Bladder that was before flaccid doth swell by the reception of that which I see not I do as truly and certainly conclude that there is such a subtil Body which we call Air as if I could see it as plain as I see the Water I do not see the Animal or Vital Spirits neither can they by reason of their subtilty and volatileness be discovered immediately to the Sense yet when I see that forcible motion of the Nerves and Muscles I do as certainly conclude there are such Instruments which the Soul useth for the performance of those motions as if I saw them I come into a Room where there is no visible or tangible Fire yet I find by my Sense the Smoke ascending I do as forcibly conclude that Fire is or hath been near as if I saw it because my sensible experience and memory tells me they are concomitant Upon the same account it is that when my Sense and sensible experience shews me that these and these effects there are and that they are successively generated and corrupted though my eye sees not that God that first made those things yet my Sense having shewed me these sensible Objects and the state and vicisstude of them my Understanding doth truly conclude that all this vicissitude of things must terminate in a first cause of things with as great evidence and conviction as if my Sense could immediately see or perceive him So that in the ordinary way of Nature and without the help of divine Revelation all our certainty of things natural begins at our Senses namely the immediate sense of the things themselves
For the true prospect of the Humane Fabrick in its essential and integral parts in the fabrick of his Body and the faculties and operation of his Soul must needs convince any man of ordinary reason that can observe but clear and evident consequences that the Efficient that first made this first root of Mankind was not only an intelligent Being but a Being of most admirable Power Wisdom and Goodness for such this effect doth necessarily declare its Efficient to be 3. As the contemplation of the Origination of the Species of Mankind gives us an assurance of the Existence of the first Cause and of his Attribute of Wisdom Power and Goodness so the contemplation of the secondary origination of Mankind or the production of the Individuals by generation gives us an evidence of the like power wisdom and goodness of God and a little Emblem of the Divine Power in the Creation of the World Any man that attentively considers the progress of the generative production of mankind will find that this goodly and noble Creature called Man hath its gradual formation and complement from a small almost imperceptible vital principle which by the Divine institution is endued with such a regular orderly and unerring power that from most inconsiderable and unlikely materials builds up gradually the goodly frame of the Body cloaths it self with it and exerciseth an admirable Oeconomy over it And this it doth not by such a kind of choice deliberation and forecast as the Watch-maker makes his Watch for as yet this vital rational principle doth not exercise an actual ratiocination or discursive deliberation neither hath those organs of Heart and Brain and Spirits and Vessels by the help of which we exercise our Acts of Reason till it hath made and framed them And yet this admirable Frame is immediately wrought by this little particle which we call the Soul and moulded formed and perfected with an incomparable and unerring dexterity skill elegance and curiosity more and greater than the most exquisite Artist can shew in the most polished piece of Artificial work Now if this little spark of Life that in this work of generation and formation is Vicarius Dei the Instrument of his power and wisdom if this little imperceptible Archeus is endowed by the Divine power wisdom and institution with this admirable regular and effective power out of so small inconsiderable and unlikely materials to mould up and fashion the goodly Fabrick of Humane Nature and to perfect it for a complete habitation for it self wherein to exercise its most excellent oeconomy and operations if this Pusillus divinae lucis radius ex tantilla tam improbabili materiae particula mirandam naturae humanae fabricam tam affabrè eleganter inerrabundè formaverit If we find in so small a particle of a created Being this admirable energy why should we make a question whether that God that at first gave this admirable energy to the Soul to frame so goodly a piece out of matter so near to nothing should not have power to create a World of matter out of nothing 2. Again since I do see as plainly as I see my Paper that I now write upon that this fabrication of the Humane Body is the immediate work of a Vital principle that prepareth disposeth digesteth distributeth and formeth the first rudiments of the Humane nature when it is no bigger than a little Bean that afterwards gradually augmenteth and perfecteth it to the goodly complement of a Man And the same thing I see in the first rudiments of all generations as well vegetable as animal It doth give to me notwithstanding all the bold confidence and conjectures of Epicurus and those that follow him as far as for shame they durst I say it doth give me not only an undeniable evidence but an exemplar in analogy and explication that the coalition of the goodly frame of the Universe was not the product of chance or fortuitous concourse of particles of matter nor the single effect of matter and motion but of the most wise and powerful ordination of the most wise and glorious God who thus ordered the World and instituted that Rule Order or Law which we call Nature to be the Law of its future being and operation if I see that the Coagmentation of a Man nay of a Chicken or a grain of Wheat is not by casualty but the wise and powerful God hath committed the Coagmentation Disposition and Formation thereof to their Seminal Principles tanquam Vicariis substitutis Divini Numinis Instrumentis as it were to Vicegerents and subservient Instruments of the Deity I have no reason to think that the goodly Frame of the Universe was the production of Chance or Accident or bare Matter or its casual motion or modification thereof but that the same was the Contrivance and Work of the Great Wise and Glorious God as a Work in a great measure answerable to the Excellency of such an Efficient 3. Again I find a sort of Men that pretend to much severity of Wit and would be thought too wise to be imposed upon by Credulity where they think they have not evidence enough of Sense or Reason to convince them that would be thought to be Men above the common rate these have gone about as far as they durst to exclude God out of the World and pity those Men as troubled with Credulity and of weak Parts that believe the Regiment of Divine Providence a business that they think or pretend to think may be made use of to impose upon the weaker part of Mankind think it a Fiction and such as is utterly inexplicable to the satisfaction of a reasonable and impartial judgment Now the due contemplation of the Humane Nature and that Oeconomy that the Active Principle in it ordinarily called the Soul doth exercise therein to my Understanding gives me both a reasonable evidence of the Divine Providence governing the World and a fair explication of it to me I mean not in this place to examine the truth or falsity of the Plurality of Subordinate Forms or whether there be two or three distinct Substantial Forms or Souls in Man whereby he is Vivens Sentiens Intelligens for they are proper for a farther Examination in their proper place But at present I do suppose that that one Soul whereby Man is constituted in Esse Hominis is the single Principle of all his operations of Life Sense and Intellection because as to this purpose which I am now upon it comes all to one whether there be a Unity or Plurality of Subordinate Forms or of Souls in the Humane Nature I say therefore in the Humane Fabrick we may observe two kinds of Forms if I may so call them the one the Forma Corporis as such whereby it hath those Properties or Operations which are common to Bodies of the like make or composition whereby it is weighty and descends as other Bodies it is figured it hath dimensions and
Soul from the Body As the Body could not be reduced into that orderly frame in which it is constituted without the Plastick and Formative power of the Soul so it could never be upheld in that state of Order and Convenience without the continued Influence of the Soul The latter is as absolutely necessary for its continuance and conservation as the former for its constitution I easily foresee two Objections against the Method proposed 1. That the Hypothesis it self is not sufficiently evidenced How do we know that this Oeconomy is the effect of a Power or Nature or Being distinct from the Body and why may it not be the result of this Disposition Harmony or Contemperation of qualities or parts of that Matter that constitutes the Body 2. And if it be what need we magnifie the Humane Nature as the great Instructer in this business since we may with a little observation find very much the like in Brutes as well as Men For there we find a sensible Perception and Phantasie answering the Intellect in Man an Estimative or Judicial faculty an Appetition or Aversation and Locomotive faculty answering the Will and the very Oeconomy of the animal Soul or Spirits managing as well their spontaneous actions as these natural or involuntary exertions of Digestion Egestion Circulation and the rest of those Motions called Involuntary or Natural To the First of these I say That this is not the place for a large reduction of these Operations to the regiment of the Soul as a distinct active Faculty distinct from the Corporeal Moles and its contemperation that shall God willing in its due place be at large discussed which I am not here willing to anticipate In the mean time let the Objector but honestly and impartially examine and observe Himself and he will need no other evidence of this truth but his own experience to satisfie him that all those effects proceed from an active regnant Principle within him distinct from the Moles corporea or the contemperation thereof The distemper of the humours of the Body cause sometimes such sickness as disorders the Phantasie and Reason but sometimes though it distempers the Body the Intellective faculty and operations are nevertheless free and sound as Experience shews If this Objector was ever under a Sickness or Distemper of the latter kind let him give an account what it is that gives him under such a Disease the use of his Reason To the Second I need not say more than what I have before observed namely 1. That although the Inferiour Natures have a kind of Image of the Humane Nature yet it is less perfect and therefore no equal Instance in order to the explication of what I herein design 2. As it is less perfect so it is more distant and less evident to us than our selves are or may be to our selves the Regiment and Oeconomy of our own Souls in our Bodies and of them are more evident to us and perceptible by us than that Regiment and Oeconomy that the Souls of Brutes exercise in them and therefore fitter to be made our Instance of that which I go about thereby to illustrate namely the possibility necessity and explication of the Divine Providence in the governing and influencing of the Universe and all the parts thereof which I shall in the next place prosecute in the Analogy that this small Regnant Principle bears within its little Province to the Divine Regiment of the Universe Sic parvis componere magna I come therefore to the illustration of the Divine Providence and Regiment of the World by the foregoing Emblem thereof 1. By this smaller Instance of this Regiment of this lesser World by the immediate presidency of the Soul it seems evident that it is no way impossible but that the greater World may be governed by the Divine Wisdom Power and Providence It is true there are these two disparities between these namely the greater World and the lesser The greater World is of a more vast extent and again the Integrals and Parts thereof are of greater multiplicity and variety but neither of these are any impediment because the Regent thereof is of an infinite immensity more than commensurate to the extent of the World and such as is most intimately present with all the Beings of the World and of an infinite Understanding Wisdom and Power that is able to apply it self to every created Being and therefore without any difficulty equally able to govern the whole and every part thereof This we see in Natural agents that little spark of Life the Soul that exerciseth its regiment upon an Infant of a span long when the Body is grown to its due stature and together with the extension of the Body this little Vital particle evolves and diffuseth it self to the extent of the enlarged Body governs it with the same facility as it did before that extension And the sensible Soul of a vast Whale exerciseth its regiment to every part of that huge structure with the same efficacy and facility as the Soul of a Fly or a Mite doth in that small and almost imperceptible dimension to which it is consigned For the Soul is expanded and evolved and present to every part and the uttermost extremity of the greater as well as the lesser Animal And therefore if my Soul can have its effectual energy and regiment upon my Body with ease and facility with how much more ease and facility can a Being of immense Existence and Omnipresence of infinite Wisdom and Power govern and order a great but yet a finite Universe and all the numerous yet not infinite parts thereof 2. As there is a possibility of such a regiment of the Divine Wisdom Power and Influence in the Government of the World so there is a necessity of it It is not enough for the Soul of the Humane Nature to form and mould its Corporeal Vehicle if it gave over its work when that were done it would soon dissolve dissipate and corrupt There is the same necessity for the Divine Influence and regiment to order and govern conserve and keep together the Universe in that consistence it hath received as it was at first to give it before it could receive it The intermission of that Regiment and Divine Providence and Influx but a moment after the constitution of this World would have dissolved its order and consistence if not annihilated its Being And indeed he that observes the great variety of things in the World the many junctures and contributions of things that serve to keep up its consistence the want of any of which as the disorder of a little Nerve Vein or Artery in the Body would bring it into a great disorder the continual strife between contrary qualities the strange activity of the active Fiery Nature that involves it or at least is disseminated up and down in it the vast and irregular concretions of Meteors and those strange and various Phaenomena that are in the World which
as they proceed from or are found in the Integrals of the Universe are devoid not only of Reason but of Sense And he that after all this shall see the World upheld without any considerable decay or defect in the same state and order as it hath been for many Thousands of years will upon a due and impartial search find that it were far more impossible that this could be without the Wisdom Power and Influx of a most Infinite Omnipresent Omniscient and Omnipotent Fixed Being than for the Humane Body to be kept without dissolution and putrefaction being destitute of the influx and regiment of its Vital Principle the Soul And therefore some of the Ancients that were willing to solve the Phaenomena of the World have though erroneously thought that the World was Animate and that all these Operations in the World proceeded from that Anima Mundi as the Operations in the Bodies of Men proceeded from that Anima Humana that lodged in it and at length finding so great effects that are and may be done by this supposed Anima Mundi according to their Hypothesis have at last proceeded in plain terms to determine that this Anima Mundi was in truth no other than the Glorious God whereas they might with much more ease and truth have attributed all the great Oeconomy of the Universe to the most Glorious God without dishonouring him into the existence of a Forma informans or a constituent part of that World which he made Others to amend that absurdity and yet out of a piece of mannerliness and respect as they think to God though they deny this Universal Soul or Form informing of the whole Universe yet without any sufficient ground have devised several Systems of the Universe and assigned several Souls to each System or Vortex at least which should be the immediate Regent in every such System as the Soul is in the Body This as it supposeth something without evident ground so it doth without any necessity For the Divine Wisdom and Power is sufficient for the management and government of the whole Universe and if such Animae Systematum should be granted yet still there must be some one common Regent of all these Systems and their respective Souls or otherwise disorder would follow between the Systems themselves But thus far even those suppositions bear witness to the necessity of a Providential Regiment of the parts of the Universe that bare Matter Motion and Chance cannot perform this business but that there is a perfect necessity of a Regent Principle besides it which may govern and dispose it as the Soul of Man doth his Body And even that supposed regiment of these particular Souls of every System as they must needs have it if they had it at all from the institution and efficiency of the Wise God so they are all continually influenced from him and the whole College of them governed guided and ordered by him as their sovereign Regent 3. The Third thing that I design is this That although it is impossible for any Created Being or the Operations thereof to hold a perfect Analogy or adequate Representation of the Divine Wisdom Power and Providence in the governing of the World because the Wisdom and the Ways of Almighty God are unsearchable and past finding out they are of such a perfection that no Created Being or Operation thereof can be a just Parallel or adequate Resemblance of them yet there seems to be such an instance in the regiment which the Humane Soul exerciseth in relation to the Body that with certain correctives and exceptions may give some kind of Explication or Adumbration thereof whereby though we can never get a complete Idea of the Divine Regiment yet we may attain such a notion thereof as may render it evidently credible and in some kind explicable 1. The first act of the Divine Nature relating to the World and his administration thereof is an immanent act The most wise counsel and purpose of Almighty God terminated in those two great transeunt or emanant acts or works the works of Creation and Providence The Divine Counsel relating to the work of Creation is that whereby he purposed to make the World and all the several Integrals thereof according to that most excellent Idea or Exemplar which he had designed or chosen according to his infinite Wisdom in those several ranks and methods and in that order and state wherein they were after created and made The Divine Counsel relating to his Providence or Regiment of the World seems to consist in these two things 1. A purpose of communication of an uncessant influence of his power and goodness for the support and upholding of things created according to the several essential states and conditions wherein they were made some being created more durable some less some in one rank of being or existence some in another 2. A purpose of instituting certain laws methods rules and effluxes whereby he intended to order and rule all the things he had made with the greatest wisdom and congruity and according to the natures and orders wherein he had created them And this is that which I call the law rule and regiment of Divine Providence and seems to be of two kinds namely general Providence and special Providence The general Providence I call that whereby every created Being is governed and ordered according to that essential connatural implanted method rule and law wherein it was created And thus the state and several motions and influences of the Heavenly Bodies is that general providential law wherein they were created and according to which they are governed and the susceptibility of those influences and the effects thereof and of that motion is the general providential law whereby other physical Beings are governed in relation thereunto the activity of the active Elements and the passiveness of the passive the methods and vicissitudes of generation and corruption the efficacy of natural causes and the proper effects consequential to them the natural properties or affections of Bodies according to their several constitutions as motion alteration ascent of light descent of heavy Bodies These and the like are the general providential Laws relating to them Again that things indued with sense should have a sensible perception and certain instincts connatural to them that rational and free Agents should move rationally and freely These and infinite more are the standing and ordinary Rules and Laws of general Providence and the wise God who sees all things from the beginning to the end and therefore can neither be disappointed nor overseen in any of his Counsels hath with that great and admirable Wisdom so ordered these Laws of his general Providence that he thereby governs most excellently the World and they are never totally changed and but rarely altered in particular and that only to most wise ends and upon most eminent occasions And the reason is because the Infinite Wisdom of God hath so instituted and modelled
those natural Laws that they are ad omnem eventum fitted to the ordinary administration of the World When the wisest Counsel of Men in the World have with the greatest care prudence and foresight made Laws yet frequent emergencies happen which they did not nor could foresee and therefore they are necessarily put upon repeals correctives and supplements of such their Laws But Almighty God by one most simple foresight foresaw all Events in Nature and could therefore fit Laws of Nature that might be proportionate to the things he made and not stand in need of any change in the ordinary administration of his Providence The special Providence of God is so denominated either in relation to the objects which are special or in relation to the acts themselves Special Providence in relation to the objects is that Providence which Almighty God exerciseth either to Man or Angels in relation to their everlasting ends such as are Divine Laws and Institutions the Redemption of Men by Christ Jesus the Message of the Gospel and the like Special Providence in relation to the acts themselves are those special actings of the Divine Power and Will whereby He acts either in things natural or moral not according to the Rules of general Providence but above or besides or against them And these I call the Imperate Acts of Divine Providence whereof in the next place 2. Analogal to the imperate acts of the Soul upon the Body are the imperate acts of Divine Providence whereby with greatest wisdom and irresistible power He doth mediately or immediately order some things out of the tract of ordinary Providence For although the Divine Wisdom hath with great stability settled the Laws of his general Providence so that ordinarily or lightly they are not altered yet it could never stand with the Divine Administration of the World that He should be eternally mancipated to those Laws he hath appointed for the ordinary administration of the World Neither is this if it be rightly considered an infringing of the Law of Nature since every created Being is most naturally subject to the Soveraign Will of his Creator therefore though He is sometimes pleased by extraordinary interposition and pro imperio voluntatis to alter the ordinary method of natural or voluntary Causes and Effects to interpose by his own immediate Power He violates no Law of Nature since it is the most natural thing in the World that every thing should obey the Will of him that gave it being whatever that Will be or however manifested Now the Instances that I shall give touching these actus imperati of Divine special Providence shall be 1. In things simply natural 2. In things voluntary or free Agents In things natural we have these Instances of the actus imperati of the Divine Providence namely first those that are real and also appearing Miracles as Moses his Rod turned into a Serpent our Saviours miraculous curing of all sorts of Diseases and raising the Dead and the like Again there are other things that though they are natural effects and not in themselves apparently miraculous yet are in truth the actus imperati of the Divine Providence Winds and Storms Hail and Thunder and many the like are things that are in themselves natural yet when they are in such a season and such a juncture they may be and are and possibly more often than we are aware actus imperati specialis providentiae The East Wind that brought the Locusts and the West Wind that carried them off from Egypt Exod. 10.13 19. The East Wind that divided the Red Sea Exod. 14.21 The Hail that slew the Canaanitish Kings Josh 10.12 The Rain and Drought 1 Kings 18. Amos 4.7 Thunder and Lightning 1 Sam. 13.18 Yea the very Blasting and Mildew and Caterpiller and Palmer-worm Amos 4.9 are sent by God The ravenousness of a Lion or Bear are natural to them yet the mission of them upon an extraordinary occasion may be an actus imperatus of Divine Providence 1 Kings 14.24 2 Kings 2.24 And although we often attribute as well mischiefs as deliverances to accidental natural Causes yet many times they are actus imperati of the Divine special Providence as much and as really and truly as the motion of my Pen is the actus imperatus of my Will at this time And if we enquire how these things are effected though it may be they be sometimes effected by the immediate Fiat of the Divine Will yet I have just reason to think they are most ordinarily done by the Ministration of Angels as the destruction of the Host of the Assyrians and divers other great Exertions of these imperate acts of Divine Providence Psal 103. His Angels that excel in strength that do his commandements hearkning to the voice of his word That as the more refined and efficacious Matter which we by way of analogy call Spirits are the executive Instruments of the actus imperati of our Will so these true and essential Spirits are ordinarily the immediate Instruments of the imperate acts of Divine Providence And therefore although many times Effects purely natural that have their Originals meerly by the ordinary course of Providence are ordered by special Providence unto great and wonderful Events yet it seems to me very plain that there be many natural productions that it may be in the immediate Cause or second or third may be purely natural yet at the farthest end of the Chain there is an Agent that is not simply natural as we use to call natural Causes but voluntary sometimes in the first production sometimes in the restriction sometimes in the direction of them for otherwise we must of necessity make all successes in the World purely natural and necessary and Almighty God would be mancipated to the Fatality of Causes and to that Natural Law which he gave at first and Prayers and Invocation upon Him in case of any calamity would be unuseful and ineffectual And therefore though Almighty God do not create a Wind for every emergent occasion but the Wind is a Vapour breaking out of the Earth yet the Ministration of an Angel may restrain open excite direct or guide that Vapour to the fulfilling of those imperate acts of Divine special Regiment And it is observable that although the regular part of Nature is seldom varied but ordinarily keeps its constant tract as the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies yet the Meteors as the Winds Rain Snow Thunder Exhalations and the like which are in themselves more unstable and less mancipated to stated and regular motions are oftentimes employed in the World to very various ends and in very various methods of the special Divine Providence And hence the Winds and Storms are stiled in a peculiar manner Winds and storms fulfilling his will Psal 148. And He bringeth his winds out of his treasury Psal 134. And again Hath the rain a Father and who begot the drops of dew Job 38.28 And again Can any of the vanities of the Gentiles
Dialogue with Averroes the Number of 4 multiplied into it self produceth the Square Number of 16 and that again multiplied by 4 produceth the Cubick Number of 64. If we should suppose a multitude actually infinite there must be infinite Roots and Square and Cubick Numbers yet of necessity the Root is but the fourth part of the Square and the sixteenth part of the Cubick Number The Instance of Algarel in his first Disputation with Averroes which Averroes endeavours to answer but tyres himself in vain to do it may explain this Consequence The Sun passeth through the Zodiack in one year Saturn passeth through it in thirty years so that the Revolution of Saturn to the Revolution of the Sun is as one to thirty and consequently as one Revolution of Saturn contains thirty Revolutions of the Sun so two Revolutions thereof must contain sixty Revolutions of the Sun and so if we should suppose their Revolutions infinite yet the proportion of the Revolutions must necessarily hold the same namely in all the whole Collection the Number of the Suns Revolutions must be thirty times as many as the Number of Saturns Revolutions and consequently the Revolutions of Saturn can be no more than one thirtieth part of the Revolutions of the Sun and yet both being supposed infinite the part namely the thirtieth part must be as great as that whereof it is the thirtieth part which is impossible And this impossibility holds in all other things that have succession or extension as in quantity motion successive duration of things in their nature successive But it is more plain and conspicuous in discrete quantity or different Individuals which are already measured by Number without any breaking the continuity that is in things that have continuity as continued quantity and motion And therefore they that go about to demonstrate the impossibility of Eternal Motion à parte ante or infinite extension in a Body Line or Superficies do first break it into parts to measure them and reduce them to discrete quantity because the demonstration is more clear and sensible thereby and therefore they break the Measures of Motion into Hours Days Years or such like Measures or into Periodical Revolutions and so they break continued Quantity into Palms Feet Perches or the like because though the repugnancy of Infinitude be equally incompetible to continued or successive Motion Duration or continued Quantity and depends upon the incompossibility of the very nature of things successive or extensive with Infinitude yet that incompossibility is more conspicuous in discrete Quantity or Multitude that ariseth from parts or Individuals already actually distinguished But the reason of both is the same especially if broken and divided into real or imaginary parts But in the Matter in question namely Multitude of successive Men or successive Generations of Men there is already a separate divided discrete multitude without any antecedent work of my Understanding or otherwise to reduce it into parts or discrete multitude and so the Instances of the Absurdities that arise by an infinite multitude of Individuals and distinct Generations is made more plain and open to view And he that is desirous to prosecute these Asystata of Infinitude and Multitude let him resort to the Prelections of Faber collected by Monsuerius in his Metaphysica demonstrativa de infinito And to say the truth there are none of the Ancients that have any weight in them that do not agree that it is impossible that any Quantity either discrete or continued should be actually infinite but only potentially either by addition of supposed parts to either or by division of Quantity continued into parts infinitely divisible But the greater difficulty rests in the Assumption which is next to be considered The second Proposition is this That if Eternal Generations of Men were admitted there would be this absurd Consequence that a multitude given might be actually infinite which remains to be proved The Objection that stands in the way seems to be this That there is no repugnancy that Multitude might be possibly infinite for as we may without any inconvenience suppose that the Generations of Mankind might be sempiternal or eternal à parte post so there is no inconvenience to suppose them eternal à parte ante for they never co-exist but are successive and so do not constitute any multitude co-existing actually infinite which is indeed impossible but there is no implication or repugnancy that there might be an infinite succession of Generations for they are not together but one Generation passeth and another succeedeth And hence it is they say that in moventibus vel causis per se subordinatis there cannot be processus in infinitum but we must necessarily fix in a First Mover between whom and the last Motion or Effect there cannot be a series of Infinite Causes for two Reasons First Because if there were Infinite Movers or Causes moving per se to the same effect or motion the motion would be infinite and so would the time wherein that motion would be absolved for infinitus motus non fit in finito tempore Secondly And again there would be an actual Infinitude of co-existing Causes which is impossible and therefore for the purpose to the production of this generation of an Insect by putrefaction there is not an infinite series of Causes per se co-operating to its production but the series of Causes is finite for the active qualities of the Elements move the Matter and the Heat and Influence of the Heavens agitate and move it may be the Elementary Body and the Intelligences move the Heavenly Bodies and Almighty God the Primum Movens moves the Intelligences and these are finite in number But in causis aut moventibus accidentaliter subordinatis there may be an Infinitude or Eternity thus the Father may beget the Son and the Grandfather begat the Father and so backward to Eternity and so in the successive productions of all Animals ex semine For though the Individuals successively existing from all Eternity must needs be infinite yet they do not coexist but as one Generation comes another decays and so make no infinite multitude and consequently that all the absurdities that are heaped upon the Supposition of infinite multitude or numbers conclude nothing to the matter in question because there is no infinite multitude because no infinite Individuals or Generations of Mankind coexisting And though this cannot at all according to their supposition any way admit the possibility of an infinitely extended Body Line Superficies or Place because that would be an actual infinitude in extent yet as to successive continued things as successive Motion as that of the Heavens and successive Duration as that of Motion which we call Time there is nothing of inconvenience according to their Supposition if they be infinite eternal and without beginning because though they consist of infinite Parts yet they are not altogether or coexisting without which there is no real Multitude So that the
of one Country supplied by another as Canaan was by Egypt 2. It is ordinarily not sudden but gradual and foreseen before felt in the extremity which gives People opportunity of transmigrations 3. Though the ordinary supplies fail yet necessity makes Men ingenious and hardy and if they have but Landroom or Sea-room they find some supplies for their hunger which they did not before think of or use though it be otherwise in a close Siege but that is but a narrow compass and not of moment to be compared to the multitudes abroad 2. Plagues are indeed a sharp and speedy Visitation yet it hath these Allays 1. Many there are that are able to escape it by Flights some by Physick and some by their Age and Complexion 2. It is not ordinarily of long continuance the strength of the Disease seldom continuing longer than a Year 3. Though the Desolation be terrible while it lasts yet it rarely consumes one half of the Inhabitants The late Computation of the Number of the Inhabitants Men Women and Children in the City of London and the 16 and 10 Out-Parishes are estimated at 384000 and about six Millions in the whole Kingdom of England 2. The greatest Plagues in our remembrance have not swept away above 100000 at most in London and the Suburbs Indeed that before mentioned by Walsingham which was in a manner Universal and successively in several places of the World lasted about 15 Years is said to be so great that scarce a tenth part of People survived it yet if it left a tenth part suppose in England it left near a Million of People which in a little time would and did recover and increase considerably as shall be shewn 4. Again suppose the Devastation by Plagues greater than History gives us an Account yet it is for the most part a Disease that reigns in some times and some places it may fall in those places where the numbers are already too small and need an Increase And so taken singly by it self is incompetent and unsuitable to the Excess unless managed by the wise Conduct of Almighty God 3. Touching Wars and Internecions It is true it hath been a great Consumption of Mankind but yet it is not an equal Corrective of the Excess of Generations 1. Though such have happened and frequently yet they seem against the nature and disposition of Mankind ordinarily and in a course of Humane Constitution Naturally Mankind is a sociable Creature and more than Bees as the Philosopher observes and though sometimes Passions Jealousies and Politick ends produce Wars yet naturally Man is not a Creature of prey upon others as Lions and Tigers are 2. Ordinarily though Wars are by one Kingdom or State upon another yet they preserve their own Societies with increase under Forein Wars and therefore Civil Wars as they are more destructive so they are more rare because they are more unnatural and destructive to that which Men usually are careful to preserve namely their own Societies 3. It seems an improper and unsuitable Corrective because Accident and the Wills of Men have so great an Influence in the production of Wars whereby it may fall out that Wars may happen in those Ages Times or Places and consequently Devastations upon them where or when they need not to correct And though it be true that a Plethory or Excess of Numbers of Men sometimes by a kind of Natural or at least Moral Consequence cause Wars yet we have hardly known any produced singly upon that Account though it hath oftentimes occasioned Transmigrations deductions of Colonies and new Plantations and the World hath been never yet so full but a weaker or oppressed Party have sound room to retreat from the violence or insolence of their Oppressors 4. Touching Floods and Conflagrations It is true that Almighty God as he manageth the forementioned Reductives by his Wisdom and Providence so he hath done these especially in that Universal Deluge But as they are instanced in by the Philosophers as Natural or Periodical Events whereby Mankind is reduced to an equability we have no reason to believe them Therefore I say 1. That there doth not appear either in History or in the Observation of Nature any such Periodical Floods or Conflagrations those that we have Relations of happened indeed near together and in the same Country viz. in Greece had they been Periodical or Natural probably either by a continued Circulation or Rotation or else by the interposition of some reasonable intervals the like would have happened before in Persia or some Easterly parts of Asia or since in Italy or Germany or some other Western parts of the World which we have not observed to be And therefore this Supposition of the Hyems magna whereby parts of the Earth should be successively drowned seems to be only an Imagination or at least it cannot be known with any tolerable certainty in as much as the Periods are supposed to be vast and not happening within any competent time to give us an Observation or Proof thereof And therefore although we yearly see a reduction of the numerous increase of Insects by the Winter Frost and Storms yearly happening we have no warrant from thence to imagin that great Winter that must make the like reduction of Men and Brutes for every Year gives us Experience of the one but never any Age gave us any reasonable Observation upon which to build an Hypothesis of the like Periodical Revolution of the other and the same I say touching Conflagrations Indeed there have been accidental and particular Instances of both but not any Periodical Return or Revolutions thereof quasi in quodam ambitu circuitu naturali 2. If such were supposed yet unless they were very sudden and very general they would not be sufficient to make the Correction Men would escape Floods by running up to Mountains and Hills and though some might perish through improvidence or though the suddenness of a Deluge many would escape 3. Natural and Periodical Floods or Conflagrations would not be sutable nor commensurate to the Increase which depending either upon Accidents or the Wills of Men would possibly be more in one place than in another The Country of Palestine would be more peopled than the Sands and Desarts of Arabia Egypt than the Mountains of Ethiopia and fruitful Countries or Countries open to Trade and safe from Incursions and Invasions more populous than barren Countries or such as are out of the way of Trade or subject to Inroads But Natural and Periodical Floods or Conflagrations would probably keep some constant or ordinary Tract or Course either from East to West or from North to South and possibly keeping in such a Climate or Latitude possibly in another whereby possibly these Plagues might be more fierce in those places or Continents where the World wants People and less vehement in those places where there needs a Corrective for their excess If these should be Universal they would destroy the Race
Constitution of these Semina and so upon the whole account it is fortuitous 2. Some assign a natural determined Cause of the first production of Mankind namely the due preparation of the fat and slimy Earth after a long incubation of Waters and some admirable Conjunction of 〈◊〉 the Heavenly and Planetary Bodies in some certain Period of Time at a long distance from us which as naturally and necessarily produced the first Couples of Mankind and likewise of other perfect Animals as necessarily and naturally as the return of the Vernal Sun produceth divers sorts of Insects which though they are called sponte orientia yet they arise meerly from a Connexion of Natural Causes and the various Ferments and Dispositions of the Elementary and Positions and Influxions of the Heavenly Bodies Thus some of the Ancients and also Avicen Cardanus Caesalpinus Berogardus 3. Some of the Ancients that most truly assign the Origination of Mankind to the most High Intelligent Powerful Beneficent Being viz. Almighty God and the Beneplacitum and Fiat of his Omnipotent Will as Zeno Citicus And thus their differences arose touching the Cause of this Origination As to the second namely the different Manner of the Origination of Mankind Censorinus ubi supra Euseb praepar Evang. lib. 1. cap. 7 8 9. and others give it as followeth 1. The Opinion of Anaximander Videri sibi ex aqua terráque calefactos exortos esse sive pisces sive piscibus simillima animalia in his homines crevisse foetúsque ad pubertatem intus retentos tum demum ruptis illis viros mulierésque qui jam se alere possent processisse 2. The Opinion of Empedocles and Parmenides Primò membra singula ex terra quasi praegnante edita deinde coisse effecisse solidi hominis materiam igni simul humori permixtam 3. The Opinion of Democritus and Epicurus Ex aqua limóque primùm homines procreatos viz. uteros limo calefacto radicibus terrae cohaerentes primùm increvisse infantibus ex se editis ingenitum lactis humorem natura ministrante praebuisse quos ita educatos adultos genus hominum propagasse 4. The Opinion of Zeno Citicus the Founder of the Stoical Sect Principium humano generi ex novo mundo constitutum putavit primósque homines ex solo adminiculo divini ignis id est Dei providentia genitos Ovid though he were a wanton Poet and his Metamorphosis full of Fictions yet in the Description of the Creation he hath out-done many of the more serious Philosophers and I believe was not only acquainted with the Mosaical History but with most of those Writings that were extant in that time containing the Origination of the World and Mankind though he mingle his own Fancies with what he so learned He gives us an account of the Origination of Man Lib. 2 Fab. 2. and of other Animals Ibid. Fab. 8. Of the former Natus homo est sive hunc divino semine fecit Ille Opifex rerum mundi melioris origo Sive recens tellus seductaque nuper ab alto Aethere cognati retinebat semina eoeli Quam natus Iapeto mistam fluvialibus undis Finxit in effigiem moderantum cunct a deorum Touching the latter the Origination of other Animals after the Deluge he gives an elegant Description and from the Instance of the Productions after the Inundation of Nilus Ex eodem corpore sapè Altera pars vivit rudis est pars altera tellus So after the Flood by the moisture of the Ground and heat of the Sun Tellus Intulenta recenti Solibus aethereis altóque recanduit aestu Reddidit innumeras species As to the Origination of brute Animals he seems to ascribe the same in effect as happens in the equivocal production of Insects But as to the Origination of Man he seems to agree with the Stoicks but gives thereof a fuller Explication namely 1. That it was a Seminal Production and not so fortuitous as that of Animals 2. That these Semina humanae naturae were either the immediate Productions of the great Opifex rerum or at least were left in the Earth by the Celestial Nature while it stood mingled therewith in massa Chaotica By which means it seems he thought not that the production of Mankind was by a gradual process and maturation in the Earth and from it like the ordinary course of the Formative process in utero matris in the ordinary course of Generation but by a shorter and more compendious Method For according to the ancient Mythology Japetus signified the Heaven and Japeti satus or Prometheus the Son of the Heaven the Divine Providence which Almighty God exercised by the instrumentality of the Heavenly Motions And the Ancients attributed the Formation or Configuration of the humane Body in its first original to this Divine Providence whereby those Seminal Particles before described being taken and included in convenient Elementary Matter the whole Composition was by the Divine Providence moulded up into the humane Shape and Consistency in its first Origination This was that Notion that divers of the Ancients and Ovid out of them had concerning the first Origination of Mankind vide Caelium Rhodogin l. 7. cap. 19 20. and seems to have some analogy with that Hypothesis of Plato in his Timaeus hereafter mentioned Thus we have an account of the Opinions 1. Of the Pythagorean Philosophers 2. Of the old Academicks 3. Of the Peripateticks all seeming to agree in the Supposition of the Eternity of the World 4. Of the Epicureans under which I include that of Anaximander and Empedocles differing only in the modus 5. Of the Stoicks which give a true Account both of the Origination of Mankind and of the Manner of it where I have been the longer because it is a Key to all that follows and gives us a Scheme of it These several Opinions and the Authors and Assertors thereof I shall here farther illustrate and examin 1. Touching the Opinion of the Pythagoreans because we have nothing extant of his writing I can say little more touching his Opinion though some suppose he was not of Opinion that the World or Mankind was Eternal 2. Touching Plato it is true he seems very various and Poetical in his writing and by reason of the Method of his Discourses by way of Dialogues it is hard to determin what his Opinion was concerning the Eternity of the World or of the Generations of Mankind In the beginning of his third Book de Legibus but especially in the middle of his sixth under the Persons of Atheniensis hospes and Clinias he intimates his Opinion of the Eternity of the World and Mankind Athen. Scire omnes oportet hominum generationem vel nullum prorsus unquam initium habuisse neque terminum habiturum sed fuisse omninò semper fore aut si coepit inaestimabili ante nos temporis magnitudine incepisse Clin. Plané And again in his Menexemus under
seems a Fiction utterly inconsonant to the whole Method of Nature in relation to Mankind For what Person or what Age or Country ever saw any such kind of Production as this any such folliculi humani foetus Or that ever credibly heard of any Man conceived nisi in utero muliebri abating some of those Fables that Fortunius Licetus delivers in his First Book cap. 28. or such as have been begotten by an abominable conjunction Again how is it possible that an Infant whose Nature cannot be kept alive one moment sine calore uterino should be preserved in Bladders adhering to the cold Earth Or that that Infant who by the very course of Nature cannot be supported without the care and oversight of others for divers Months nay some Years after his Birth should be able sub dio Jove frigido to preserve it self Again who ever saw or credibly heard of those venae lacteae arising in the Earth and yielding a sutable nutriment to a new born Foetus These Suppositions must withall suppose a total Inversion of the Course and Nature of Things quite from what they now are and in all Ages have been which though it is true those that admit a higher Principle than Nature do and may with sufficient warrant and consonancy to their Hypothesis admit yet is utterly unreasonable for such a Philosopher who not only with some of the ancient Peripateticks excludes any Divine Providence below the Moon but wholly exterminates it ultra flammantis moenia Coeli And this is all I say at present touching that Opinion which supposeth a meer casual Production of Mankind There will be something in the ensuing Chapter which though it be applied to the Imaginary Hypothesis of the Natural Production of Mankind yet will be of use in relation to this Hypothesis of the Casual Production of Mankind CAP. III. Touching the Second Opinion of those that assert the Natural Production of Mankind ex non genitis or the possibility thereof THe second Opinion is that by a certain kind of natural Connexion of Causes Mankind not only may be but in their first Origination were produced ex non genitis Which though for distinctions sake from the ordinary course of Generation we may call spontaneous or accidental yet the same if it were true were truly natural and deduced by a certain Chain of Natural Causes as the yearly production of Insects ex putri materia or as the Mice or Rats in Egypt are supposed by Diodorus Siculus to be produced after the decrease of Nilus in Egypt This seems to be the Opinion of some of the Ancients that yet subscribed not to the Hypothesis of Epicurus touching the casual production of things by the uncertain concourse of Atoms as of Anaximander and some others which I shall not need here again to repeat and the same Opinion hath been asserted by others but with these two Correctives 1. That the same is no casual and fortuitous Production by the meer casual conjunction of Atomical Bodies as Epicurus would have the first Semina at least of Men and Animals to be made up but by an ordinary natural and necessary connexion of Natural Causes and Effects 2. That yet many of them blame the Ancients as being too venturous in telling us the particular Method or Order of these Productions out of Folliculi or Cortices spinosi or Fishes because that is not a thing discoverable by Experience or Natural Light yet herein they agree That this Production may be and hath been a Natural Production ex non genitis though the particular Manner of it is not so easie to be certainly explained Hippocrates the great Physician seems to have inclined to this Perswasion for Sect. 3. de Carnibus he writes to this purpose Quod Calidum vocamus id mihi immortale esse videtur cunctáque intelligere videre audire sentiréque omnia tum praesentia tum futura cujus pars maxima cum omnia perturbata essent in supremum ambitum secessit quod mihi veteres videntur Aethera appellasse altera pars locum infimum sortita Terra quidem appellatur frigida sicca multásque motiones habens in qua multum sanè calidi inest tertia verò pars medium aeris locum nacta est calidum quid existens quarta pars terrae proximum locum obtinens humidissima crassissima His igitur in orbem agitatis cum turbata esset calidi pars magna alias in terra relicta est partim quidem magna partim verò minor alias etiam valde parva sed in multas partes divisa temporis successu resiccata terra ista in ea tanquam in membranis contenta circum se putredines excitans longo tempore incalescens quod quidem ex terrae putredine pinguedinem sortitum est minimum humidi habens id citissimè ossa produxit And then assigns the Methods of conformation of the Nerves Veins Arteries and the rest of the Body in conformity to this Supposition So this great Physician and Naturalist delivers his Opinion Wherein we may observe that he takes the Hot or Fiery Nature to be God knowing and understanding all things which seems to be the ancient Error of the Eastern Countries especially the Persians Yet this is observable 1. That he supposeth an Origination of Mankind after the Formation of the World 2. Though the Formative Process of Mankind seems in his Opinion to be in a sort Natural yet he supposeth it not purely so but a Production by those fiery Particles which were Particles of a Divine Intelligent Nature And though he be mistaken in the Method of the Origination of Mankind as shall be shewn yet he supposeth it Opus intelligentis Naturae agentis per scientiam Avicen in the second Book of his Metaphysicks cap. 15. delivers his Opinion Possibile esse hominem generari ex terra sed convenientiùs in matrice which Opinion Averroes his Country-man perstringeth with some indignation Commentar 8. Physicor cap. 5. Iste sermo ab homine qui dat se scientiae est valde fatuus his Reasons I confess are such as may not be admitted for being a rigid Assertor of the Eternity of the World in the state it now stands he formeth his Reasons against the Opinion of Avicen principally if not altogether upon that Hypothesis Cardanus in his ninth Book de Animalibus quae ex Putredine generantur discoursing about Locusts hath this passage Et non solum ea minuta sed majora animalia è putredine imo omnia credendum est originem ducere cum jam de Muribus constet Pisces in aquis recentibus sponte generentur but his severe Corrector Julius Scaliger in Exercit. 193. calls it Illa impia nefaria vox Si Bos aliquando ex putri ortus est cur post hominum memoriam ex ejusmodi procreatione nullus exstitit Caesalpinus in his fifth Book Quaestionum Peripateticarum cap. 1. undertakes an entire Defence of the
the learned Philosophers knew not a production ex nihilo by Creation by the Almighty God which breaks and tears in pieces all those petite Axioms and superstructions thereupon which they had been long time in weaving and by which they formed much of their Philosophical Speculation As the necessity of eternal Matter because nothing is made of nothing the necessity of eternal Motion because every Motion must have some Motion anteceding the nature of possibilities which and many more being desumed from Generation as it stood in the setled course of Nature and fitted and appropriated to it are no way applicable to the first Origination and Production of Being by Creation 5. He gives us the true Efficient of Being and the manner of his Operation namely Almighty God a most wise intelligent and free Efficient and one that in the first production of things did not work per modum naturae or necessarily or as a natural or necessary Cause as the Sun produceth Light but per modum intentionis volitionis electionis for he was before he created his Creation of the World was in the beginning namely of Time and created Nature but he was before that beginning namely without all beginning But to pursue a little more distinctly the order of the Creation of things positively and not barely negatively the Mosaical History touching the Creation seems to be as followeth 1. That in the beginning the first Apex of Time which began with the Being of Matter Almighty God created in one indivisible moment the first and common Matter of all this Mundus aspectabilis the Heaven and Earth Vers 1. 2. That in that first Creation and for some continuance of time or duration after this common Matter of all things lay indistinct and confused together without any order or distinction expressed by those words Gen. 1.2 And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep And in this common Mass and Chaos were contained the constituent Matter of the Celestial and Elementary World Which salves the Dispute touching the disparity of the Matter of the Heavenly and Elementary World which appears here to be the same in kind 3. That this common Matter had these deficiencies in it in and for some time after its production 1. It was without Form and Order 2. It was without Light 3. It was without Activity Life or Motion and 4. All that Superficies which it had bore the greatest analogy to Water though in that vast Abyss there was a confused mixture of other Matter 4. That the Spirit of God moved upon the face of this great Abyss incubavit super abyssi faciem What this Spirit of God was whether the essential Spirit the Third Person in the Holy Trinity or whether it were a created Spirit the Spirit of Nature or as some will have it the Anima mundi created by God to digest inspire and communicate an active nature to this confused Moles as some earnestly contend or whether this Spirit of God were any other than the emanation of his Power I shall not determin But whatever it was this Motion of the Spirit upon the face of this Abyss had these great Intentions and Effects upon this confused Moles 1. It derived into it motive Powers or Energies whereby the parts of it were agitated or moved or at least rendred more obsequious to the agitation and motion of that active nature which was afterward created namely Light or Fire 2. It did gradually digest and separate its parts whereby they became more capable of disposition and order according to their several designed and destined places positions and uses 3. It did transfuse into this stupid dead and unactive Moles certain activity and vital influence whereby it did in general affect that which Aristotle calls the common Life of Bodies namely Motion and the several parts thereof were impregnated with several kinds of vital influence varied and diversified according to their several parts and uses As the gentle heat of the Hen seems to communicate a vital influence to the Egg only with this difference that the heat of the Hen seems to excite a pre-existing vital principle in the Egg rather than to give it But the incubation of this Spirit of God did not so much excite as give a new vital power to the several parts of the Chaos as the vital Soul in Nature communicates vitality and activity to the Seminal Particles And this gives us an account how Activity and active Forms Powers or Qualities were derived into Matter namely not from Matter it self or such which is meerly unactive and passive but from another Principle namely the vigorous influx of this Spirit that moved upon the face of the Water Whereby it is apparent that the Vis Vigor Activity or Energy that is in Natural Bodies and in the Universe as it came from no other Principle than Matter so it is an Entity of a distinct nature from Matter or material Substance simply as such and indeed an Entity of a nobler extraction and nature than bare Matter or material Substance So that in this Description hitherto containing the first Stamina or Rudiments of the Universe we have 1. The Efficient thereof Almighty God 2. The manner of his efficiency herein namely Creation ex non praeexistentibus 3. The Matter of the Universe thus by Creation produced the confused Moles containing in it self the Matter of all things 4. The disposition or rather indisposition of this Matter dark stupid and unactive 5. The plastick formative digesting Principle that pervaded it the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the Waters Totósque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem The first Rudiments of the World being thus laid and thus prepared and influenced by the powerful Energy and Incubation of this Spirit of God this divinely inspired Historian gives us in the next place the next succeeding order of Almighty God producing and effectually raising out of this Matter the greater Integrals of the Universe namely the Etherial and Elementary Nature Vers 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. As in the order of Reason it was but fit and convenient that the production and influencing of the Matter should precede the division and distribution and orderly disposing thereof so it was equally reasonable and convenient that the greater and more extensive parts thereof should be first laid out and disposed into their several stations and orders before the smaller and lesser portions of Nature should be either produced or setled and that the simple parts of this great Chaos should be first extracted before the mixed and compounded Existences should be setled For as the Chaos and common Lump of Matter was as it were the first Matter of all things so the more simple and uncompounded parts thereof the Etherial and Elementary Natures were as it were the Materia secunda or proxima of the ensuing Productions and in conformity to this first Divine Ordination of things
others arising ad plurimum ex ovo 2. In the great variety of their bodily composure the texture of the Bodies of Brutes being far more curious and fuller of variety than others 3. Ad plurimum the animal Faculties of the brutal Soul are far more perfect than those of others their Phantasies and Memories refined they have greater and more lively Images of Reason and more capable of Discipline than either Fowls or Fishes Now touching the production of Animals whether Terrestrial Aquatil or Volatil we may observe that they are in the ordinary course of Nature of two kinds Some which arise among us no otherwise nor in any other manner than ex semine which we usually call perfect Animals and arising by univocal generation others there are that be imperfect arising spontaneously in the Earth Air and Water as Worms Flies and some sort of small Fishes and watry Insects This being premised I shall now set down some Suppositions which seem to me truly to explicate the production of these Animals which are these that follow 1. Although the predominat Matter in the constitution of Fowls and Fishes were Water and in the constitution of Terrestrial Animals were Earth yet that Water nor that Earth were not simply such but were mixed and impregnated with the other Elementary Principles 2. That all the Species of perfect Animals of all kinds were constituted in their several Sexes in the fifth and sixth day of the Creation but yet we must not think that all those kinds which we now see were at first created but only those primitive and radical Species How many sorts of Animals do we now see that yet possibly are not of the same Species but have accidental diversifications as we may observe in the several Shapes and Bodies of Dogs Sheep Pyes Parots which possibly at first were not so diversified some variation of the same Species happen by mixt Coition some by diversity of Climates and other accidents 3. That the first Individuals in their distinction of Sexes were not produced according to those Methods of Nature which they now hold nor ex aliquo praeexistente semine but by the immediate efficiency of Almighty God out of the Matter prepared or designed for their Constitution 4. That they were made in the first instant of their Constitution in the full perfection and complement and stature of their individual and specifical nature and did not gradually increase according to the procedure of animal augmentation at this day and the reason is because those gradual augmentations arise from the Seminal Principle which gradually expands it self to the full growth but here they arose not from any such Seminal Principle but the Hen was before the Egg. 5. There was no mean portion of Time between their Formation and Animation but both were together they were living Beings and living Souls and living Creatures as soon as they were formed 6. That consequently the Formation of the Body of these Animals was not as now it is by the Formative Power of the Soul which must needs be gradual and successive as we see it is and must be at this day in all natural Generations but the Formation and Information of them was by virtue of the immediate Fiat Determination or Ordination of the Divine Will 7. That in their Origination the Species of these Animals were determined neither from the Matter nor from the universal Cause the Celestial Heat but by the Divine Intention and Ordination 8. That by the same Divine Ordination and Intention the Faculties specifically belonging to every Individual were annexed and alligated to it especially the power conficiendi semen prolificum speciei propagandae ex mutua utriusque fexus conjunctione 9. That although by the Divine Power and Ordination all these perfect Animals did arise from the Earth yet that Prolifick Power of propagating of them was never delegated or committed to the Earth or any 〈◊〉 other Casual or Natural Cause but only to the Seminal Nature derived from their Individuals and disposed according to that Law of propagation of their kind alligated as before to their specifical and individual nature And therefore it its perfectly impossible that any of these perfect Animals can be casually or naturally or accidentally produced by any Preparation of Matter or by any Influence of the Heavens without the miraculous interposition of Almighty Power because the Earth or those Influences have not this power concredited to them but their production is irresistibly alligated to the Semen innatum and conjunction of Sexes the Earth can as naturally produce a Sun or a Star as it can a Man or a perfect Animal 10. Whether those imperfect or equivocal Animals were created or no it is not altogether clear possibly some might be then produced whose kinds were likewise producible spontaneously after but it seems beyond contradiction that all were not 11. As by virtue of that general Commission or intrinsick Prolifick Power given to the Earth to produce spontaneous Herbs as Grass c. it doth naturally produce such Herbs so by virtue of that common Commission given by Almighty God to the Earth and Water and to that Spirit of Nature diffused in it it doth naturally produce those equivocal insect Animals which arise out of them The same Law of the Creator that hath eternally excluded or rather not committed to the Earth or Water the power of producing perfect Animals hath given and committed to them by concurrence of that Vital Heat of the Sun and the common Spirit of Nature residing in them a Productive Power of some equivocal insect Animals in Matter fitly prepared Touching therefore the Origination of Insects I shall declare my thoughts as followeth 1. That by virtue of the Divine Fiat the Earth at first did produce some Individuals of several kinds which is imported under the words Every creeping thing after its kind 2. That as I have before shewn the greatest part of the Insects that are commonly produced and seem to be spontaneous productions are yet the univocal and seminal productions of Insects of the same kind 3. That yet it is a certain Truth that some Insects are and have an Origination since the first Creation without any formal univocal seminal production some out of Putrefaction some out of Vegetables some by very strength and fracedo of the Earth and Waters quickned by the vigorous Heat of the Sun which infuseth into some Particles of Matter well prepared and digested a kind of Vital and Seminal Principle Some have thought the very Sun and Earth are endued with a Vital yea and with a kind of Sensitive Nature and thereby enabled as it were to spin some prepared Matter into vital and sentient Semina for those insect Animals But we shall not need to trouble our selves with that incertain Speculation we are sure that the greatest part of the Superficies of the Earth being daily and hourly impregnated with the corrupted and dissolved Particles of Vegetables and Animals is
condition of his Obedience to the Command of God and upon the breach of that Condition were either utterly lost as the indissolubility of the Union of the Compositum by one Man's Disobedience Sin entred into the World and Death by Sin Others were abated as the Excellency of his Knowledge Righteousness the fruition of Happiness the Perfection of his Sovereignty over the Creatures the Gloriousness and Beauty and much of the Vigour of his Body the exquisite Order and Subordination of his Faculties but his Essentials the Immortality of his Soul the Faculties of Intellection and Will and the Natural Beauty and Usefulness of his Body remains notwithstanding that terrible Concussion whereof somewhat more hereafter 4. We have the Method of this Production of Man it was not by or from any meer Natural Cause but by the immediate Command of the Divine Will Wisdom and Power it was not from any Semen naturally accidentally or intentionally formed and so by a gradual maturation and growth ex uteris terrestribus or as the foetus humanus is perfected at this day For it was not possible that any such Seminal Principle should be formed casually or by any meer Natural Cause as hath been already shewn And although the Divine Power could have perfected all as well Man as the other Animals by first forming such a Semen and giving it either a gradual or speedy production as Insects are at this day produced yet 1. It was utterly superfluous to have used such a processus formativus ex semine because it required no less than an Almighty Power to have moulded and fashioned or actuated such a Semen as to have produced Man by an immediate Supernatural Formation and Production and therefore since the same Power was requisite in both it is not at all necessary nor reasonable to suppose so long a process as first to form a Semen and by a Seminal Process to have perfected the Humane Nature and the Holy History expresly imports the contrary 2. If we suppose a Semen prepared by the Divine Power that Production that must arise thereupon must either be immediate and sudden if not absolutely instantaneous or it must be gradual and pass through all these spaces of Time gradual Formation and accession of Growth and Increase as we see in embryone foetu nuper nato We cannot suppose the former but we must suppose it to be otherwise than natural and call in the Divine Power to effect it as much as in an instantaneous formation sine praecedente semine And we cannot suppose the latter because it is expresly contrary to the description of the Humane Production for it was done within the compass of the Sixth Day and the formation and perfecting of the Humane Nature was immediately finished after the Omnipotent Command and Determination of the Will of God it was no sooner said faciamus hominem c. but it was done It is true in that ordinary Law which Almighty God hath instituted in Nature already established by him there are regular and successive and gradual procedures and it is convenient it should be so and it is true also in this short period of the Six Days Work within which the Universe was finished Almighty God observed a certain convenient Order making that to precede which was fittest and most useful to precede in order to the production of things but as to the speed and dispatch of Productions the Almighty God used the Majesty that became the Excellency of his Greatness and obsequious Matter presently yielded to the Power of his Command Fiat factum est Psal 33.9 He said and it was done he commanded and it stood fast Therefore although now in settled Nature and according to the standing Laws of the Divine Wisdom Man is first conceived ex semine then lodgeth 10 Months in utero muliebri wherein during that time he is gradually formed and perfected and then after his Birth gradually increaseth passeth through the impotency of Infancy the weaknesses of Childhood and the follies of Youth before he comes to a ripe and full age yet it was not so here in the same moment the Body is formed in its full and perfect nature and the Animal Soul and Faculties together with it and the Rational Soul infused in the same moment without any priority of Time but only of Order and Nature So that Man was at the very same moment a perfect Organical Body with all his Nerves Veins Viscera Bones and Parts conformed a Vital and Sensitive Nature joyned with it and a Rational Soul infused without first living the Life of a Plant then of an Animal then of a Man the whole Scene was performed in one moment and so it became both the Greatness of the Divine Majesty and Power and so it was necessary to be in the first production of Man although in the succeeding procedure of natural Generations it must be and was otherwise because the supreme Wisdom and Will judged it so And although to any Man that will duly consider almost any thing there must of necessity be another Rule or Law for the first production of things than there is or may be in the ordinary regiment and governing of Generations when Nature is once established yet the want of this Consideration hath bred all those vain Errors of those Philosophers that asserted the Eternity of the World and of those others who being not satisfied with that Hypothesis but driven by a kind of necessity of Reason to acknowledge an Origination of Mankind yet could not deliver themselves from fancying that Humane Productions must needs be as like those they now know as they could well frame them And therefore according to these Men the Earth must be conceited to be Mater and the Sun vice Patris and the Earth must have her Uteri and Succus nutritius and the Increase of Mankind must be by some such gradual process as we see in natural productions or sponte nata and they cannot easily bring their Minds to believe the instantaneous production of Man by the immediate Power of God because it hath a gradual process in ordinary natural Generations and yet the same Men can give themselves leave to imagin Hominem oriri posse sicut blitum though never Experience of former Ages since the existence of Men upon the Earth give us any Example of it bating only the Fictions of some Poets Maimonides lib. 2. cap. 27. hath observed this Mistake and singularly confutes it by evincing That if Men go by this Rule of Judgment the nature of things in their Original as they find them in their Constitution being constituted they will disbelieve the most certain Truths Neque argumentari licet ullo modo à natura rei alicujus post illius generationem firmam subsistentiam in perfectione sua ad naturam ejus eo tempore quo movebatur ad generationem quod si verò his erras plurima tibi orientur dubia absurda ut pro
which we also admit as to all his Constituents at least but his Soul and therefore the great Debate hath been touching the Efficient or that Being or Nature or whatever we shall call it that first compounded formed and constituted the first Parents of Mankind in that essential and individual state consonant to that specification of Humane Nature which we daily now see Every thing that hath a beginning of Being must either have it from it self or from some other active efficient and constituent Power or Nature antecedent to it in time or at least in Nature or both To suppose that the Humane Nature at first constituted it self were to suppose it to have a propriety of existence to it self which were a palpable absurdity and contradiction for then it should be before it was Therefore it is necessary that the first Origination of Humane Nature should be from some other beginning or cause antecedent to it besides the Matter out of which it was constituted And whatsoever the Being or Cause originating Humane Nature was it must be in nature of an Efficient namely something that did actively put together the constituent parts thereof and formed it into that consistence and existence whereby he became Man We cannot by any means suppose any such Efficient or Being or thing that did subire rationem efficientis but one of these four 1. An uncertain casual conflux of Particles of Matter that casually compounded a Semen humanae naturae and so though the immediate Semen thus constituted may obtain the Name or Notion of the immediate Efficient yet the true Efficient of that Semen if we may be allowed to call it by that name was Chance or Fortune 2. An implanted blind determinate something which we call Nature which by a fatal and necessary connexion of surd and irrational Causes and Effects produced the first Parents of Mankind as the like Nature by the like necessity produceth yearly Worms and Flies and other Insects that have not their existence by univocal Seed Both these two Suppositions have been before examined and rejected as impares huic negotio 3. The illapse of some pre-existent or animating formative Principle which we may well call the Soul or Anima that as in the Generation of Mankind by ordinary procreation we see the formative power is some refined active Spirit or Soul in semine delitescens that fashions the Matter and actuates it with vital sensible Faculties and Operations so the illapse of some such active substance or powerful Being illapsing into Matter and united to it might form it into that constitution which it enjoyed 4. and Lastly Or some superior powerful wise and intellectual Being that did form fashion actuate and constitute the first Parents of Mankind The two former being as before laid aside I shall use a few words touching the third Supposition of which little hath been before said and so pals to the fourth and last and true Supposition of the First Efficient of Humane Nature 3. Therefore touching the third Supposition concerning the production of Mankind by virtue of such Illapse of Forms we may suppose it to be intended one of these two ways 1. Either that with Origen we should imagin a Mundus animarum that had real and individual Subsistences Or 2. that there were some common Element of animate Existence not divided into individual Existences but one common rational and vital Nature whose Particles illapsing into Matter might produce such first Existences of Mankind and so though in their union to Matter they do subire rationem formae yet they do likewise subire rationem efficientis as to the formation of Mankind as the vital Principle in the Egg becomes not only the form of the Chick but also in the first formation thereof is the disposer of its Organs and exercise of its Faculties and so doth subire rationem efficients immediati in the formation of the Foetus As to both these in general I say 1. That they are precarious Suppositions without any just reason to evidence either that there were such pre-existing individual Souls or a common reasonable Spirit Again 2. The Supposition that these should be the immediate Efficients of the Humane Nature is likewise precarious and inevident 3. Even they that suppose either such an individual or common pre-existing Nature must be forced to suppose them eternal independent Beings and this will have as many difficulties in it as the Eternity of Mankind or else if they be supposed created Beings yet still there will be a necessary recourse unto an infinite uncreated eternal Being that must create them And 4. consequently the Framers of these Suppositions do with much more difficulty and laboriousness form intermediate Principles of the Origination of Mankind which with less difficulty and greater congruity may be resolved into the immediate Efficiency of Almighty God according to the Divine History 5. And besides all this if Men will needs suppose a Formation of Man by the illapsing of Souls into prepared Matter because they see this is the Method of Formation in the ordinary course of Generation now they must also suppose the progress of the Formation and Maturation of the Humane Nature This way must be gradual and successive which will be attended with all those difficulties which are before observed in the Supposition of casual or natural production of Man in his first Origination But in particular to those several Suppositions and First touching the first of these The Opinion of the pre-existence of Souls of Men and their descent into Bodies though it hath been countenanced by Plato and some that follow him hath chiefly as it seems been entertained by some of the Jews and some few Christians both recognizing the true God the Immortality of the Soul and future Resurrection For the ancient Jewish Opinion vide wisdom 8.19 20. For I was a witty Child and had a good spirit rather being good I came into a Body undefiled Among Christians Origen much asserted this Opinion But whatever may be said touching the truth or falshood of the Opinion it self it can no way support the primitive Origination of Mankind by the illapsing of such Souls into elementary Matter First It exceeds the power and activity of such imagined pre-existent Souls to form and animate Matter into the consistence of a Man without the intervention either of the immediate power of God or at least without that instituted Method fixed by God in the Generation of Mankind ex semine And that it doth so exceed the activity of Souls thus to do appears in this that although there is according to that Supposition of a Mundus animarum a sufficient stock of existing Souls and if there were not yet those that once informed humane Bodies survived after the dissolutio compositi and yet we never heard since the first formation of Man that any such new formation hath been made nor any illapse of any such Soul into any other Foetus but what hath
instituted and statuminated Nature is his Law and his Institution and the connexion of natural Effects to their natural Causes is his Institution his Law his Order And therefore we do neither deny a Law of Nature or a connexion between natural Causes and Effects but that which we justly blame in these Men that pretend themselves to be the great Priests of Nature and admirers and adorers of it is 1. That they do not sufficiently consider and observe that this which they and we call Nature and the Law of Nature and the Power of Nature is no other but the wise instituted Law of the most wise powerful and intelligent Being as really and truly as an Edict of Trajan or Justinian was a Law of Trajan or Justinian Sic parvis magna and 2. That they do not warily distinguish between that first Law in rebus constituendis and this second Law of Nature in rebus constitutis but inconsiderately misapply that Law and Rule and Method which is ordinary and regular constituted and fitted and accommodate to Nature already setled as if the same were and ought to be necessarily the Rule and Law in the first formation and setling of things which is an Errour that proceeds from the over-much fixing of our Minds to that which in the present course of things is obvious to Sense and not adverting that the first Constitution and Order of things is not in Reason or Nature manageable by such a Law which is most excellently adequated and proportioned to things fully setled Therefore besides that Law which the Divine Wisdom Power and Goodness hath fixed in Nature fully statuminated we must also suppose a Law and Order of the Divine Wisdom not rigorously bound either to second Causes or present stated Methods in the first production of things And this the due Consideration of the different nature of the state of things in fieri and in facto esse will easily perswade that the most wise God that hath established a fixed regular ordinary Law in things already setled which he rarely departs from yet used another kind of order namely the regiment of his own Will and Wisdom and if I may with humility speak it a dictatorian power more accommodate to the first production of things And thus much for the comparison between the Mosaical and Philosophical Theories touching things and the great advantage and preference of the former as most suitable to the true nature state and reason of things And now I draw towards a conclusion of this long Discourse and shall therefore in the last place give an account of those Consectaries Consequences and Corollaries which are evidently deducible from this Consideration of the Origination of Mankind by the immediate Efficiency of this Supreme Intelligent Being Almighty God and indeed principally for the sake of these Consequences and Corollaries hath all been written that precedes in this Book and it is the Scope End and Use of the whole Book which I shall absolve in the next Chapter CAP. VII A Collection of certain evident and profitable Consequences from this Consideration That the first Individuals of Humane Nature had their Original from a Great Powerful Wise Intelligent Being I Now come to that upon which I had my Eye from the first Line that was written touching this Subject namely the Consequences and Illations that arise from this great Truth contained in these Conclusions 1. That Mankind had an Original of his Being ex non genitis 2. That this Origination of Mankind was neither casual nor meerly natural 3. That the Efficient of Man's Origination was and is an Intelligent Efficient of an incomparable Wisdom and Power First therefore we have here a most evident sensible and clear conviction of a Deity and a confirmation of Natural Religion which consists principally in the acknowledging of Almighty God to be a most perfect Eternal Being of infinite Wisdom Goodness and Power and a due habitude of Mind Life and Practice arising from that Principle It hath been commonly observed that the particular or instituted Religions since the Creation have had their Proofs by Miracles which were as it were the Credentials to subdue the Minds of Men to assent to it Thus the instituted Religion of the Jews given by the hand of Moses was confirmed by the great Miracles done by God by the hand of Moses in Egypt and in the Wilderness and the Christian Religion had its Confirmation by the Miracles of Christ and his Apostles who did wonderful things beyond the reach and power of created Agents or Activities which were therefore Miracles such as were governing of the Winds and Seas healing of the Sick by a touch or word raising the Dead c. But it is farther said That Almighty God never used Miracles to evidence the truth of his own Existence Power Wisdom Goodness or for the establishing of Natural Religion or the confuting of Atheism But I take it that there are really as many Miracles for the evincing of the truth of Natural Religion viz. the Existing of Almighty God as there are Works in Nature For although it be a great truth that the Laws of Nature as the Positions of the Heavenly and Elementary Bodies their Motion Light Influence Regularity Position propagation of Vegetables Animals Men and the whole Oeconomy of the Universe is by the Divine Wisdom Power and Goodness setled in a regular course so that now we call things Natural and Works and Laws and Order of Nature and being so setled and fixed cease to be Miracles yet in their first Institution and Constitution they were all or many Miracles Works exceeding the activity of any created or natural power and accordingly ought to be valued and really are so and it is nothing else but their commonness and our inadvertence and gross negligence that hinders the actual estimate of them as great and wonderful Miracles As I have often said if at this moment all the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies should cease or there should be a general stop of the Propagation of Animals Vegetables or Men if Mens Reason should generally fail them and for the most part they should become like Brutes if the Light of the Sun were darkned or the great Luminous or Planetary Bodies should bulge and fall foul one upon the other or that disorder or confusion should generally fall upon the Works of Nature and break that excellent Order that now obtains among them we should be full of admiration of such a Change and account them Miraculous And the reason is because the sense of the Change is at present incumbent upon us and we cannot choose but take notice of them as strong unusual miraculous Prodigies When all this while Natures course holds regularly the Wonder and Miracle is ten times greater in the state of things as they now stand than it would be in such a discomposure of Nature The Motion and Light and Position and Order of the Heavenly and Elementary Bodies is a greater
to these Faculties suitable Objects answering those Vital Faculties to Sensitive Nature his Beneficence hath communicated those Faculties of Sense as well as Life and then communicates to them a farther efflux of his Beneficence by communicating to them the Objects grateful and useful both for Life and Sense thus his Beneficence is communicated to them per modum boni sensibilis but to Man his Beneficence is communicated not only per modum boni vitalis sensibilis which yet he enjoys as other Creatures but per modum boni intellectualis voliti First by giving him those nobler Faculties of Intellection and Will and then by communicating to those Faculties Objects suitable to those Powers or Faculties namely Intellectual Truths to his Understanding and Moral Rational and Divine Good to his Will and among all those vera bona that are communicated to these Faculties by the Divine Beneficence God himself his Goodness Truth Will Perfection are the chiefest verum and the chiefest bonum So that no Creature below Man is capable formally to know to love to enjoy God as the chiefest Truth and chiefest Good And this also seems to be another End of the Creation of Man that being made a Creature endued with Understanding and Will he might be receptive of the Effluxus of the Divine Beneficence in a nobler way than the other visible Creatures of this lower World 3. As under the first Consideration Man is more eminently an objective manifestation of the Divine Glory than other visible Creatures and as under the second Consideration Man is more receptive of the Divine Beneficence than other visible Creatures So upon farther examination we shall find that Man was made in a capacity to be a more active Instrument to serve and glorifie his Maker than other visible Creatures which was another End of his Creation specifically different from the End of other visible created Natures which will appear by the farther consideration of those two great distinguishing Faculties his Understanding and Will I shall not go about to make a large Description of those Faculties or the Operation but only observe so much touching them as may reasonably evidence the preference that Man hath therein above the inferior Animals and the Inferences that arise thereupon touching the End of Almighty God in the making Man And first for the Intellective Faculty As in Animals the Faculties of Sense internal and external especially the Visive Faculty placeth Animals in a rank of Being far above the insensible Creatures and accommodates them exquisitly to a Life of Sense so the Intellective Faculty placed in Man puts him into a rank of Beings far above the most perfect Animals and accommodates the Humane Nature to an Intellectual Life And the preheminence of this Faculty above the Faculty of Sense will appear if we consider the Operations thereof I shall instance but in two namely intellective Perception and intellective Ratiocination or Discourse 1. For the intellective Perception the Understanding perceives many things which are not perceptible by Sense or sensitive Phantasie or Imagination for Instance it hath the perception of Substance or Being abstracted from all sensible qualities it hath the perception of the truth or falsity of a Proposition it perceives the Conclusion and the Evidence thereof in the Premises and many more intellectual Objects which never did nor can fall under the perception of Sense or Imagination And although we cannot clearly understand all the Operations of the Brutal Phantasie because we are distinct from them and they have not the instrument of Speech intelligible by us to express their perceptions yet we may know that this is true by our selves for we may perceive that we do perceive these Objects not to be perceptible by our Faculties of Sense but by some other Faculties distinct from that of Sense or sensitive Imagination Again in those Objects that are objective to Sense the intellective perception discovers somewhat that is apparently unperceived by the Sense or sensitive Imagination for Instance the Heavenly Bodies the Sun Moon and Stars are equally objected to the view as well of Animals as Men but yet by the help of intellective perception Man perceives that in those Objects which neither the Brutes no nor Man himself by the bare perception of Sense or sensitive Phantasie doth not cannot perceive The perception of Sense gives us the Sun no bigger than a Bushel and the Stars than a Candle cannot discover an inequality of their distance from us judgeth the body of the Moon to have as many changes in figure and quality as it hath various Phases or Appearances the Sun really to set the Limb of the Heavenly Horizon to be contiguous to the Earth but the intellective perception finds the quantity of the Sun and Stars bigger than the Earth and by the Parallaxes and Eclipses finds the Stars more distant from us than the Sun and that than the Moon perceives distinctly their several Motions Orders Positions and makes distinctions and computations of Time and Duration by them and over-rules and confutes the perception of Sense and Imagination by another kind of perception above the perception of Sense 2. Touching Ratiocination or Discursive Operation the precedure thereof is above the reach of the sensitive Phantasie though this seems to carry some weak and imperfect Image thereof For Instance sometimes not only the media discursûs and the processus discursivus are out of the reach of Sense but the very subjectum discursûs is imperceptible to Sense such are that processus discursivus of the Understanding touching complexed Notions or Universals touching the abstracted Notions of Being Substance Entity and transcendents in Metaphysicks such are also the discursives of moral good and evil just unjust which are no more perceptible to Sense than Colour is to the Ear and yet touching these Subjects the Intellect forms Discourses deduceth Illations and Conclusions Again in matters Mathematical and Physicall though in the concrete and in their subjects they are objective to Sense yet the media and processus discursivus whereby the Understanding makes Conclusions and Inferences and Illations touching them are of a range and kind quite above the range of Sense or sensitive Imagination thus upon certain data or postulata in Geometry the Intellect forms Conclusions which though Mechanically and Experimentally true yet are elicited by a Processus discursivus quite above the activity of sensitive Phantasie And though matters Physical Bodies and Tangible qualities and their several powers manner of production and divers other things relating to them are sensible Objects yet the Intellect useth a Processus discursivus whereby it investigates Truths and draws Conclusions that are quite above the scantlet of Sense or Phantasie ascending up from the Effect to the next Cause and thence to the next and thence gradually to the First Cause of all things So that though oftentimes the foot or root of the Discursus intellectivus be bottomed in some sensible Object perchance