there could be no regular motion such as is absolutely necessary to the forming and continuing of any the compacted bodily substances which our eyes behold every day Yea or of any whatsoever suppose we their figures or shapes to be as rude deformed and useless as we can imagine much less such as the exquisite compositions and the exact order of things in the Universe do evidently require and discover And if there were no such thing carried in this supposition as is positively adverse to the thing supposed so as most certainly to hinder it as we see plainly there is yet the meer want of what is necessary to such a production is enough to render it impossible and the supposition of it absurd For it is not only absurd to suppose a production which somewhat shall certainly resist and hinder but which wants a cause to effect it And it is not less absurd to suppose it effected by a manifestly insufficient and unproportionable cause than by none at all For as nothing can be produced without a cause so no cause can work above or beyond its own capacity and natural aptitude Whatsoever therefore is ascribed to any cause above and beyond its ability all that surplusage is ascribed to no cause at all And so an effect in that part at least were supposed without a cause And if then it follow when an effect is produced that it had a cause why doth it not equally follow when an effect is produced having manifest characters of wisdom and design upon it that it had a wise and designing cause If it be said there be some fortuitous or casual at least undesigned productions that look like the effects of wisdom and contrivance but indeed are not as the Birds so orderly and seasonable making their Nests the Bees their Comb and the Spider its Web which are capable of no design That exception needs to be well proved before it be admitted and that it be plainly demonstrated both that these creatures are not capable of design and that there is not an universal designing cause from whose directive as well as operative influence no imaginable effect or event can be exempted In which case it will no more be necessary that every creature that is observed steadily to work towards an end should it self design and know it than that an Artificers tools should know what he is doing with them but if they do not 't is plain he must And surely it lies upon them who so except to prove in this case what they say and not be so precarious as to beg or think us so easie as to grant so much only because they have thought fit to say it or would fain have it so That is that this or that strange event happened without any designing caus But however I would demand of such as make this exception whether they think there be any effect at all to which a designing cause was necessary or which they will judge impossible to have been otherwise produced than by the direction and contrivance of wisdom and counsel I little doubt but there are thousands of things laboured and wrought by the hand of man concerning which they would presently upon first sight pronounce they were the effects of skill and not of chance yea if they only considered their frame and shape though they yet understood not their use and end They would surely think at least some effects or other sufficient to argue to us a designing cause And would they but soberly consider and resolve what characters or footsteps of wisdom and design might be reckon'd sufficient to put us out of doubt would they not upon comparing be brought to acknowledge there are no where any more conspicuous and manifest than in the things daily in view that go ordinarily with us under the name of the works of nature whence it is plainly consequent that what men commonly call universal Nature if they would be content no longer to lurk in the darkness of an obscure and uninterpreted word they must confess is nothing else but common Providence that is the universal power which is every where active in the world in conjunction with the unerring wisdom which guides and moderates all its exertions and operations or the wisdom which directs and governs that power Otherwise when they see cause to acknowledge that such an exact order and disposition of parts in very neat and elegant compositions doth plainly argue wisdom and skill in the contrivance only they will distinguish and say it is so in the effects of art but not of nature What is this but to deny in particular what they granted in general to make what they have said signifie nothing more than if they had said such exquisite order of parts is the effect of wisdom where it is the effect of wisdom but it is not the effect of wisdom where it is not the effect of wisdom and to trifle instead of giving a reason why things are so and so And whence take they their advantage for this trifling or do hope to hide their folly in it but that they think while what is meant by art is known what is meant by nature cannot be known But if it be not known how can they tell but their distinguishing members are co-incident and run into one yea and if they would allow the thing it self to speak and the effect to confess and dictate the name of its own cause how plain is it that they do run into one and that the expression imports no impropriety which we somewhere find in Cicero The art of Nature or rather that nature is nothing else but Divine Art at least in as near an analogy as there can be between any things Divine and Humane For that this matter even the thing it self waving for the present the consideration of names may be a little more narrowly discuss'd and search'd into Let some curious piece of workmanship be offered to such a Sceptick's view the making whereof he did not see nor of any thing like it and we will suppose him not told that this was made by the hand of any man nor that he hath any thing to guide his judgment about the way of its becoming what it is but only his own view of the thing it self and yet he shall presently without hesitation pronounce This was the effect of much skill I would here enquire why do you so pronounce or what is the reason of this your judgment surely he would not say he hath no reason at all for this so confident and unwavering determination For then he would not be determined but speak by chance and be indifferent to say that or any thing else Somewhat or other there must be that when he is askt is this the effect of skill shall so suddenly and irresistibly captivate him into an assent that it is that he cannot think otherwise Nay if a thousand men were askt the same question they would as
it is a most apparent and demonstrable truth For it is plain that all being and perfection which is not necessary proceeds from that which is as the cause of it And that no cause could communicate any thing to another which it had not some way in it self Wherefore it is manifestly consequent that all other being was wholly before comprehended in that which is necessary as having been wholly produced by it And what is wholly comprehended of another i. e. within its productive power before it be produced can be no real addition to it when it is Now what can be supposed to import fulness of Being and perfection more than this impossibility of addition or that there can be nothing greater or more perfect And now these considerations are mentioned without solicitude whether they be so many exactly distinct heads For admit that they be not all distinct but some are involved with others of them yet the same truth may more powerfully strike some understandings in one form of representation others in another And it suffices that though not severally they do together plainly evidence that the necessary Being includes the absolute entire fulness of all Being and perfection actual and possible within it self Having therefore thus dispatcht that former part of this undertaking the eviction of an every way perfect Being we shall now need to labour little in the other viz. Secondly the more express deduction of the infiniteness and onliness thereof For as to the former of these it is in effect the same thing that hath been already proved Since to the fullest notion infiniteness absolute perfection seems every way most fully to correspond For absolute perfection includes all conceivable perfection leaves nothing excluded And what doth most simple infiniteness import but to have nothing for a boundary or which is the same not to be bounded at all We intend not now principally infiniteness extrinsically considered with respect to time and place as to be eternal and immense do import But intrinsically as importing bottomless profundity of essence and the full confluence of all kinds and degrees of perfection without bound or limit This is the same with absoute perfection Which yet if any should suspect not to be so They might however easily and expresly prove it of the necessary Being upon the same grounds that have been already alledged for proof of that As that the necessary Being hath actuality answerable to the utmost possibility of the creature That it is the only root and cause of all other Being The actual cause of whatsoever is actually The possible cause of whatsoever is possible to be Which is most apparently true And hath been evidenced to be so by what hath been said so lately as that it needs not be repeated That is in short that nothing that is not necessarily and of it self could ever have been or can be but as it hath been or shall be put into Being by that which is necessarily and of it self So that this is as apparent as that any thing is or can be But now let sober reason judge whether there can be any bounds or limits set to the possibility of producible Being either in respect of kinds numbers or degrees of perfection Who can say or think when there can be so many sorts of creatures produced or at least individuals of those sorts that there can be no more Or that any creature is so perfect as that none can be made more perfect which indeed to suppose were to suppose an actual infiniteness in the creature And then it being however still but somewhat that is created or made how can its Maker but be infinite For surely no body will be so absurd as to imagine an infinite effect of a finite cause Either therefore the creature is or sometime may be actually made so perfect that it cannot be more perfect or not If not we have our purpose that there is an infinite possibility on the part of the creature always unreplete and consequently a proportionable infinite actuality of power on the Creators part Infinite power I say otherwise there were not that acknowledged infinite possibility of producible being For nothing is producible that no power can produce And I say infinite actual power because the Creator being what he is necessarily what power he hath not actually he can never have as was argued before But if it be said the creature either is or may sometime be actually so perfect as that it cannot be more perfect That as was said will suppose it actually infinite and therefore much more that its cause is so And therefore in this way our present purpose would be gained also But we have no mind to gain it this latter way as we have no need 'T is in it self plain to any one that considers that this possibility on the creatures part can never actually be filled up That it is a bottomless abyss in which our thoughts may still gradually go down deeper and deeper without end that is that still more might be produced or more perfect creatures and still more everlastingly without any bound which sufficiently infers what we aim at that the Creators actual power is proportionable And indeed the supposition of the former can neither consist with the Creators perfection nor with the imperfection of the creature it would infer that the Creators productive power might be exhausted that he could do no more and so place an actual boundary to him and make him finite It were to make the creature actually full of being that it could receive no more and so would make that infinite But it may be said since all power is in order to act and the very notion of possibility imports that such a thing of which it is said may some time be actual it seems very unreasonable to say that the infinite power of a cause cannot produce an infinite effect Or that infinite possibility can never become infinite actuality For that were to say and unsay the same thing of the same To affirm omnipotency and impotency of the same cause possibility and impossibility of the same effect How urgent soever this difficulty may seem there needs nothing but patience and attentive consideration to disintangle our selves and get through it For if we will but allow our selves the leasure to consider we shall find that power and possibility must here be taken not simply and abstractly but as each of them is in conjunction with infinite And what is infinite but that which can never be travell'd through or whereof no end can be ever arriv'd unto Now suppose infinite power had produced all that it could produce there were an end of it i. e. it had found limits and a boundary beyond which it could not go If infinite possibility were filled up there were an end of that also and so neither were infinite It may then be further urged that there is therefore no such thing as infinite power or
unintelligible and is accompanied with so great unmentioned difficulties which it would give us perhaps more labour than profit to discuss and the absolute perfection of God appears so evidenceable otherwise by what hath been and may be further said that we are no way concern'd to lay the stress of the cause on this matter only Moreover necessary Being is the cause and author of all Being besides Whatsoever is not necessary is caused for not having Being of it self it must be put into Being by somewhat else And inasmuch as there is no middle sort of Being betwixt necessary and not necessary and all that is not necessary is caused 't is plain that which is necessary must be the cause of all the rest And surely what is the cause of all being besides its own must needs one way or other contain its own and all other in it self and is consequently comprehensive of the utmost fulness of Being Or is the absolutely perfect Being as must equally be acknowledged unless any one would imagine himself to have got the notice of some perfection that lies without the compass of all Being Nor is it an exception worth the mentioning that there may be a conception of possible being or perfection which the necessary being hath not caused For it is manifestly as well the possible cause of all possible Being and perfection as the actual cause of what is actual And what it is possible to it to produce it hath within its productive power as hath been said before And if the matter did require it we might say further that the same necessary Being which hath been the productive cause is also the continual root and basis of all Being which is not necessary For what is of it self and cannot by the special priviledge of its own Being but be needs nothing to sustain it or needs not trust to any thing besides its own eternal stability But what is not so seems to need a continual reproduction every moment and to be no more capable of continuing in Being by it self than it was by it self of coming into Being For as is frequently alledged by that so often mentioned Author since there is no connexion betwixt the present and future time but what is easily capable of rupture it is no way consequent that because I am now I shall therefore be the next moment further than as the free Author of my Being shall be pleased to continue his own most arbitrary influence for my support This seems highly probable to be ture whether that reason signifie any thing or nothing And that thence also continual conservation differs not from creation Which whether as is said by the same Author it be one of the things that are manifest by natural light or whether a positive act be needless to the annihilation of created things but only the withholding of influence let them examine that apprehend the cause to need it And if upon enquiry they judge it at least evidenceable by natural light to be so as I doubt not they will they will have this further ground upon which thus to reason That inasmuch as the necessary Being subsists wholly by it self and is that whereon all other doth totally depend It hereupon follows that it must some way contain in it self all Being We may yet further add That the necessary Being we have evinced though it have caused and do continually sustain all things yet doth not it self in the mean time suffer any diminution It is not possible nor consistent with the very terms necessary Being that it can 'T is true that if such a thing as a necessary Atom were admitted that would be also undiminishable it were not else an atom But as nothing then can flow from it as from a perfect parvitude nothing can so it can effect nothing And the reason is the same of many as of one Nor would undiminishableness upon such terms signifie any thing to the magnifying the value of such a trifle But this is none of the present case For our eyes tell us here is a world in being which we are sure is not it self necessarily and was therefore made by him that is And that without mutation or change in him against which the very notion of a necessary Being is most irreconciliably reluctant and therefore without diminution which cannot be conceived without change Wherefore how inexhaustible a fountain of life being and all perfection have we here represented to our thoughts from whence this vast Universe is sprung and is continually springing and that in the mean time receiving no recruits or foreign supplies yet suffers no impairment or lessening of it self What is this but absolute all-fulness And it is so far from arguing any deficiency or mutability in his nature that there is this continual issue of power and virtue from him that it demonstrates its high excellency that this can be without decay or mutation For of all this we are as certain as we can be of any thing That many things are not necessarily That the Being must be necessary from whence all things else proceed and that with necessary Being change is inconsistent It is therefore unreasonable to entertain any doubt that things are so which most evidently appear to be so only because it is beyond our measure and compass to apprehend how they are so And it would be to doubt against our own eyes whether there be any such thing as motion in the world or composition of bodies because we cannot give a clear account so as to avoid all difficulties and the entanglement of the common sophisms about them how these things are performed In the present case we have no difficulty but what is to be resolved into the perfection of the Divine Nature and the imperfection of our own And how easily conceivable is it that somewhat may be more perfect than that we can conceive it If we cannot conceive the manner of Gods causation of things or the nature of his causative influence it only shews their high excellency and gives us the more ground since this is that into which both his own revelation and the reason of things most naturally lead us to resolve all to admire the mighty efficacy of his all-creating and all-sustaining Will and Word that in that easie unexpensive way by his meer fiat so great things should be performed We only say further That this necessary Being is such to which nothing can be added so as that it should be really greater or better or more perfect than it was before And this not only signifies that nothing can be joyned to it so as to become a part of it which necessary Being by its natural immutability manifestly refuses But we also intend by it that all things else with it contain not more of real perfection than it doth alone Which though it carries a difficulty with it that we intend not wholly to overlook when it shall be seasonable to consider
it includes as its own or rather as it self the other as what it is and ever was within its power to produce If any better like the terms formally and virtually they may serve themselves of them at their own pleasure which yet as to many will but more darkly speak the same sense We must here know the productive power of God terminates not upon himself as if he were by it capable of adding any thing to his own appropriate Being which is as hath been evinced already infinitely full and incapable of addition and is therefore all pure act But on the creature where there is still a perpetual possibility never filled up because Divine power can never be exhausted And thus all that of Being is virtually in him which either having produced he doth totally sustain or not being produced he can produce Whereupon it is easie to understand how necessary being may comprehend all Being and yet all being not be necessary It comprehends all Being besides what it self is as having had within the compass of its productive power whatsoever hath actually sprung from it and having within the compass of the same power whatsoever is still possible to be produced Which no more confounds such produced or producible Being with that necessary being which is its cause than it confounds all the effects of humane power with one another and with the being of a man to say that he virtually comprehended them so far as they were producible by him within his power And is no wiser an inference from the former than it would be from this latter that an house a book and a child are the same thing with one another and with the person that produced them because so far as they were produced by him he had it in his power to produce them And that the effects of Divine power are produced thereby totally whereas those of humane power are produced by it but in part only doth as to the strength and reasonableness of the argument nothing alter the case And as to the next that infinite being should seem to exclude all finite I confess that such as are so disposed might here even wrangle continually as they might do about any thing in which infiniteness is concern'd And yet therein shew themselves as Seneca I remember speaks in another case not a whit the more learned but the more troublesom But if one would make short work of it and barely deny that infinite being excludes finite as Scotus doth little else besides denying the consequence of the argument by which it was before inforced viz. that an infinite body would exclude a finite for where should the finite be when the infinite should fill up all space And therefore by parity of reasons why should not infinite being exclude finite shewing the disparity of the two cases it would perhaps give them some trouble also to prove it For which way would they go to work Infinite self-subsisting Being includes all Being very true and therefore we say it includes finite And what then doth it because it includes it therefore exclude it And let the matter be soberly considered somewhat of finite being and power we say and apprehend no knot or difficulty in the matter can extend so far as to produce some proportionable effect or can do such and such things And what doth it seem likely then that infinite being and power can therefore do just nothing Is it not a reason of mighty force and confoundingly demonstrative that an Agent can do nothing or cannot possibly produce any the least thing only because he is of infinite power For if there be a simple inconsistency between an infinite Being and a finite that will be the case that because the former is infinite therefore it can produce nothing For what it should produce cannot consist with it i. e. even not being finite and then certainly if we could suppose the effect infinite much less But what therefore is power the less for being infinite or can infinite power even because it is infinite do nothing what can be said or thought more absurd or void of sense Or shall it be said that the infiniteness of power is no hinderance but the infiniteness of Being But how wild an imagination were that of a finite being that were of infinite power And besides is that power somewhat or nothing surely it will not be said it is nothing Then it is some Being And if some power be some being what then is infinite power is not that infinite being And now therefore if this infinite can produce any thing which it were a strange madness to deny it can at least produce some finite thing Wherefore there is no inconsistency between the infinite and finite beings unless we say the effect produced even by being produced must destroy or even infinitely impair its cause so as to make it cease at least to be infinite But that also cannot possibly be said of that which is infinite and necessary which as hath been shewn cannot by whatsoever productions suffer any diminution or decay If here it be further urged But here is an infinite being now supposed let next be supposed the production of a finite This is not the same with the other for surely infinite and finite are distinguishable enough and do even infinitely differ This finite is either something or nothing nothing it cannot be said for it was supposed a Being and produced but the production of nothing is no production It is somewhat then here is therefore an infinite Being and a finite now besides The infinite it was said cannot be diminished the finite a real something is added Is there therefore nothing more of existent Being than there was before this production It is answered nothing more than virtually was before for when we suppose an infinite Being and afterwards a finite This finite is not to be lookt upon as emerging or springing up of it self out of nothing or as proceeding from some third thing as its cause but as produced by that infinite or springing out of that which it could not do but as being before virtually contained in it For the infinite produces nothing which it could not produce And what it could produce was before contained in it as in the power of its cause And to any one that attends and is not disposed to be quarrelsome this is as plain and easie to be understood as how any finite thing may produce another or rather more plain and easie because a finite Agent doth not entirely contain its effect within it self or in its own power as an infinite doth If yet it be again said that which is limited is not infinite but suppose any finite thing produced into being after a pre-existent infinite this infinite becomes now limited for the being of the finite is not that of the infinite each hath its own distinct Being And it cannot be said of the one it is the other therefore each
discover him the Author of them that it s altogether impossible they could ever otherwise have been done Now therefore if we have as clear evidence of a Deity as we can have in a way not unsutable to the nature and present state of man and we can have in a sutable way that which is sufficient If we have clear and more certain evidence of Gods government over the world than most men have or can have of the existence of their Secular Rulers yea more sure than that there are men on earth and that thence as far as the existence of God will make towards it there is a less disputable ground for Religious than for Civil Conversation we may reckon our selves competently well ascertain'd and have no longer reason to delay the Dedication of a Temple to him upon any pretence of doubt whether we have an object of worship existing yea or no. Wherefore we may also by the way take notice how impudent a thing is Atheism that by the same fulsom and poisonous breath whereby it would blast Religion would despoil man of his reason and apprehensive power even in reference to the most apprehensive thing would blow away the rights of Princes and all foundations of Policy and Government and destroy all civil Commerce and Conversation out of the world and yet blushes not at the attempt of so foul things And here it may perhaps prove worth our while though it can be no pleasant contemplation to pause a little and make some short reflections upon the Atheistical Temper and Genius so as therein to remark some few more obvious characters of Atheism it self And first such as have not been themselves seized by the infatuation cannot but judge it a most unreasonable thing a perverse and cross-grain'd humour that so odly writhes and warps the mind of a man as that it never makes any effort or offer at any thing against the Deity but it therein doth by a certain sort of serpentine involution and retortion seem to design a quarrel with it self That is with what one would think should be most intimate and natural to the mind of man his very reasoning power and the operations thereof So near indeeed was the ancient alliance between God and man his own Son his likeness and living image and consequently between Reason and Religion that no man can ever be engaged in an opposition to God and his interest but he must be equally so to himself and his own And any one that takes notice how the business is carried by an Atheist must think in order to his becoming one his first plot was upon himself To assassine his own intellectual faculty by a sturdy resolution and violent imposing on himself not to consider or use his thoughts at least with any indifferency but with a treacherous pre-determination to the part resolved on beforehand Otherwise it is hard to be imagined how it should ever have been possible that so plain and evident proofs of a Deity as every where offer themselves unto observation even such as have been here proposed that do even lie open for the most part to common apprehension and needed little search to find them out so that it was harder to determine what not to say than what to say could be over-look'd For what could be more easie and obvious than taking notice that there is somewhat in Being to conclude that somewhat must be of it self from whence whatever is not so must have sprung That since there is somewhat effected or made as is plain in that some things are alterable and daily altered which nothing can be that is of it self and therefore a necessary Being Those effects have then had an active being for their cause That since these effects are partly such as bear the manifest characters of wisdom and design upon them and are partly themselves wise and designing therefore they must have had a wisely active and designing cause So much would plainly conclude the sum of what we have been pleading for and what can be plainer or doth require a shorter turn of thoughts At this easie expence might any one that had a disposition to use his understanding to such a purpose save himself from being an Atheist And where is the flaw what Joynt is not firm and strong in this little frame of discourse which yet arrogates nothing to the contriver for there is nothing in it worthy to be called contrivance But things do themselves lie thus And what hath been further said concerning the Perfection and Oneness of this Cause of all things though somewhat more remote from common apprehension is what is likely would appear plain and natural to such as would allow themselves the leasure to look more narrowly into such things Atheism therefore seems to import a direct and open hostility against the most native genuine and facile dictates of common Reason And being so manifest an enemy to it we cannot suppose it should be at all befriended by it For that will be always true and constant to it self Whatsoever false shews of it a bad cause doth sometimes put on That having yet somewhat a more creditable name and being of a little more reputation in the world than plain downright madness and folly And it will appear how little it is befriended by any thing that can justly bear that name if we consider the pittiful shifts the Atheist makes for his forlorn cause And what infirm tottering supports the whole frame of Atheism rests upon For what is there to be said for their hypothesis or against the existence of God and the duness of Religion For there 's directly nothing at all Only a possibility is alledged things might be as they are though God did not exist And if this were barely possible how little doth that signifie where Reason is not injuriously dealt with it is permitted the liberty of ballancing things equally and of considering which scale hath most weight And is he not perfectly blind that sees not what violence is done to free reason in this matter Are there not thousands of things not altogether impossible which yet he would be concluded altogether out of his wits that should profess to be of the opinion they are or were actually so And as to the present case how facile and unexceptionable how plain and intelligible is the account that is given of the original of this world and the things contained in it by resolving all into a Deity the Author and maker of them when as the wild extravagant suppositions of Atheists if they were admitted possible are the most unlikely that could be devised So that if there had been any to have laid wagers when things were taking their beginning there is no body that would not have ventured thousands to one that no such frame of things no not so much as one single Mouse or Flea would ever have hit And how desperate hazards the Atheist runs upon this meer supposed possibility it
since it is evident that there is some necessary Being otherwise nothing could ever have been and that without action nothing could be from it Since also all change imports somewhat of passion and all passion supposes action and all action active power and active power an original seat or subject that is self-active or that hath the power of action in and of it self For there could be no derivation of it from that which hath it not and no firstderivation but from that which hath it originally of it self And a first derivation there must be since all things that are or ever have been furnisht with it and not of themselves must either mediately or immediately have derived it from that which had it of it self It is therefore manifest that there is a necessary self-active Being The cause and Author of this perpetually variable state and frame of things And hence 6. Since we can frame no notion of life which self-active power doth not at least comprehend as upon trial we shall find that we cannot it is consequent that this Being is also originally vital and the root of all vitality such as hath life in or of it self and from whence it is propagated to every other living thing And so as we plainly see that this sensible world did sometime begin to be 't is also evident it took its beginning from a Being essentially vital and active that had it self no beginning Nor can we make a difficulty to conclude that this Being which now we have shewn is active and all action implies some power is 7. Of vast and mighty Power we will not say infinite lest we should step too far at once not minding now to discuss whether creation require infinite power when we consider and contemplate the vastness of the work performed by it Unto which if we were to make our estimate by nothing else we must at least judge this power to be proportionable For when our eyes behold an effect exceeding the power of any cause which they can behold our mind must step in and supply the defect of our feebler sense so as to make a judgment there is a cause we see not equal to this effect As when we behold a great and magnificent fabrick and entring in we see not the master or any living thing which was Cicero's Observation in reference to this present purpose besides Mice or Weasles we will not think that Mice or Weasels built it Nor need we in a matter so obvious insist further But only when our severer Reason hath made us confess our further contemplation should make us admire a power which is at once both so apparent and so stupendous Corollary And now from what hath been hitherto discoursed it seems a plain and necessary consectary That this world had a cause divers from the matter whereof it is composed For otherwise matter that hath been more generally taken to be of it self altogether unactive must be stated the only cause and fountain of all the action and motion that is now to be found in the whole Universe Which is a conceit wild and absurd enough not only as it opposes the common judgment of such as have with the greatest diligence enquired into things of this nature But as being in it self manifestly impossible to be true As would easily appear if it were needful to press farther Dr. More 's reasonings to this purpose which he hath done sufficiently for himself And also that otherwise all the great and undeniable changes which continually happen in it must proceed from its own constant and eternal action upon it self while it is yet feigned to be a necessary being with the notion whereof they are notoriously inconsistent Which therefore we taking to be most clear may now the more securely proceed to what follows CHAP. III. Wisdom asserted to belong to this Being The production of this world by a mighty Agent destitute of Wisdom impossible On consideration of 1. What would be adverse to this production 2. What would be wanting some effects to which a designing cause will on all hands be confessed necessary as having manifest characters of skill and design upon them Absurd here to except the works of nature Wherein at least equal characters of Wisdom and design to be seen as in any the most confessed pieces of Art Instanced in the frame and Motion of heavenly bodies A mean unphilosophical temper to be more taken with novelties than common things of greater importance Further instance in the composition of the bodies of Animals Two contrary causes of mens not acknowledging the Wisdom of their Maker herein Progress is made from the consideration of the parts and frame to powers and functions of Terrestrial Creatures Growth Nutrition Propagation of kind Spontaneous motion Sensation The pretence considered that the bodies of Animals are machines 1. How improbable it is 2. How little to the purpose The powers of the humane soul. It appears notwithstanding them it had a cause By them a wise and intelligent cause It is not matter That not capable of Reason They not here reflected on who think reasonable souls made of refined matter by the Creator Not being matter nor arising from thence it must have a Cause that is intelligent 9. Goodness also belonging to this Being WE therefore add That this being is Wise and Intelligent as well as powerful upon the very view of this world it will appear so vast power was guided by equal wisdom in the framing of it Though this is wont to be the principal labour in evincing the existence of a Deity viz. the proving that this universe owes its rise to a wise and designing cause as may be seen in Cicero's excellent performance in this kind and in divers later Writers Yet the placing so much of their endeavour herein seems in great part to have proceeded hence that this hath been chosen for the great medium to prove that it had a cause divers from it self But if that once be done a shorter way and it fully appear that this world is not it self a necessary Being having the power of all the action and motion to be found in it of it self which already seems plain enough And it do most evidently thence also appear to have had a cause foreign to or distinct from it self though we shall not therefore the more carelesly consider this subject yet no place of doubt seems to remain but that this was an Intelligent cause and that this world was the product of wisdom and counsel and not of meer power alone For what imagination can be more grosly absurd than to suppose this orderly frame of things to have been the result of so mighty power not accompanied or guided by wisdom and counsel that is as the case must now unavoidably be understood that there is some being necessarily existent of an essentially active nature of unconceivably vast and mighty power and vigour destitute of all
undoubtingly say the same thing and then since there is a reason for this judgment what can be devised to be the reason but that there are so manifest characters and evidences of skill in the composure as are not attributeable to any thing else Now here I would further demand is there any thing in this reason yea or no Doth it signifie any thing or is it of any value to the purpose for which it is alledg'd surely it is of very great in as much as when it is considered it leaves it not in a mans power to think any thing else and what can be said more potently and efficaciously to demonstrate But now if this reason signifie any thing it signifies thus much that wheresoever there are equal characters and evidences of skill at least where there are equal a skilful Agent must be acknowledged And so it will in spight of cavil conclude universally and abstractly from what we can suppose distinctly signified by the terms of Art and Nature that whatsoever effect hath such or equal characters of skill upon it did proceed from a skilful cause That is that if this effect be said to be from a skilful cause as such viz. as having manifest characters of skill upon it then every such effect viz. that hath equally manifest characters of skill upon it must be with equal reason concluded to be from a skilful cause We will acknowledge skill to act and wit to contrive very distinguishable things and in reference to some works as the making some curious automaton or self-moving Engine are commonly lodg'd in divers subjects that is the contrivance exercises the wit and invention of one and the making the manual dexterity and skill of others But the manifest characters of both will be seen in the effect That is the curious elaborateness of each several part shews the later and the order and dependence of parts and their conspiracy to one common end the former Each betokens design or at least the Smith or Carpenter must be understood to design his own part that is to do as he was directed Both together do plainly bespeak an Agent that knew what he did And that the thing was not done by chance or was not the casual product of only being busie at random or making a careless stir without aiming at any thing And this no man that is in his wits would upon sight of the whole frame more doubt to assent unto than that two and two make four And he would certainly be thought mad that should profess to think that only by some one 's making a blustering stir among several small fragments of brass iron and wood these parts happened to be thus curiously formed and came together into this frame of their own accord Or lest this should be thought to intimate too rude a representation of their conceit who think this world to have fallen into this frame and order wherein it is by the agitation of the moving parts or particles of matter without the direction of a wise mover and that we may also make the case as plain as is possible to the most ordinary capacity We will suppose for instance that one who had never before seen a watch or any thing of that sort hath now this little engine first offered to his view can we doubt but he would upon the meer sight of its figure structure and the very curious workmanship which we will suppose appearing in it presently acknowledge the Artificers hand But if he were also made to understand the use and purpose for which it serves and it were distinctly shewn him how each thing contributes and all things in this little fabrick concur to this purpose the exact measuring and dividing of time by minutes hours and months he would certainly both confess and praise the great ingenuity of the first inventer But now if a by-stander beholding him in this admiration would undertake to shew a profounder reach and strain of wit and should say Sir you are mistaken concerning the composition of this so much admired piece it was not made or designed by the hand or skill of any one there were only an innumerable company of little atoms or very small bodies much too small to be perceived by your sense that were busily frisking and plying to and fro about the place of its nativity and by a strange chance or a stranger fate and the necessary laws of that motion which they were unavoidably put into by a certain boisterous undesigning mover they fell together into this small bulk so as to compose it into this very shape and figure and with this same number and order of parts which you now behold One squadron of these busie particles little thinking what they were about agreeing to make up one wheel and another some other in that proportion which you see Others of them also falling and becoming fixed in so happy a posture and situation as to describe the several figures by which the little moving fingers point out the hour of the day and day of the month And all conspired to fall together each into its own place in so lucky a juncture as that the regular motion failed not to ensue which we see is now observed in it What man is either so wise or so foolish for it is hard to determine whether the excess or defect should best qualifie him to be of this faith as to be capable of being made believe this piece of natural history And if one should give this account of the production of such a trifle would he not be thought in jest But if he persist and solemnly profess that thus he takes it to have been would he not be thought in good earnest mad And let but any sober reason judge whether we have not unspeakably more manifest madness to contend against in such as suppose this world and the bodies of living creatures to have fallen into this frame and orderly disposition of parts wherein they are without the direction of a wise and designing cause And whether there be not an incomparably greater number of most wild and arbitrary suppositions in their fiction than in this Besides the innumerable supposed repetitions of the same strange chances all the world over even as numberless not only as productions but as the changes that continually happen to all the things produced And if the concourse of atoms could make this world why not for it is but little to mention such a thing as this a Porch or a Temple or an House or a City as Tully speaks in the before recited place which were less operous and much more easie performances It is not to be supposed that all should be Astronomers Anatomists or natural Philosophers that shall read these lines And therefore it is intended not to insist upon particulars and to make as little use as is possible of terms that would only be agreeable to that supposition But surely such general easie reflections
on the frame of the universe and the order of parts in the bodies of all sorts of living creatures as the meanest ordinary understanding is capable of would soon discover incomparably greater evidence of wisdom and design in the contrivance of these than in that of a watch or a clock And if there were any whose understandings are but of that size and measure as to suppose that the whole frame of the heavens serves to no other purpose than to be of some such use as that to us mortals here on earth if they would but allow themselves leasure to think and consider might discern the most convincing and amazing discoveries of wise contrivance and design as well as of vastest might and power in disposing things into so apt a subserviency to that meaner end And that so exact a knowledge is had thereby of times and seasons days and years as that the simplest Idiot in a Country may be able to tell you when the light of the Sun is withdrawn from his eyes at what time it will return and when it will look in at such a window and when at the other And by what degrees his days and nights shall either increase or be diminished And what proportion of time he shall have for his labours in this season of the year and what in that without the least suspicion or fear that it shall ever fall out otherwise But that some in later days whose more enlarged minds have by diligent search and artificial helps got clearer notices even then most of the more learned of former times concerning the true frame and vastness of the Universe the matter nature and condition of the heavenly bodies their situation order and laws of motion and the great probability of their serving to nobler purposes than the greater part of learned men have ever dreamt of before That I say any of these should have chosen it for the employment of their great intellects to devise ways of excluding intellectual power from the contrivance of this frame of things having so great advantages beyond the most of mankind besides to contemplate and adore the great Author and Lord of all is one of the greatest wonders that comes under our notice And might tempt even a sober mind to prefer vulgar and popular ignorance before their learned philosophical deliration Though yet indeed not their Philosophy by which they would be distinguished from the common sort but what they have in common with them ought in justice to bear the blame For it is not evident how much soever they reckon themselves exalted above the vulgar sort that their miserable shifting in this matter proceeds only from what is most meanly so i. e. their labouring under the most vulgar and meanest diseases of the mind disregard of what is common and an aptness to place more in the strangeness of new unexpected and surprizing events than in things unspeakably more considerable that are of every days observation Than which nothing argues a more abject unphilosophical temper For let us but suppose what no man can pretend is more impossible and what any man must confess is less considerable than what our eyes daily see that in some part of the air near this earth and within such limits as that the whole Scene might be conveniently beheld at one view there should suddenly appear a little globe of pure flaming light resembling that of the Sun and suppose it fixt as a center to another body or moving about that other as its centre as this or that hypothesis best pleases us which we could plainly perceive to be a proportionably-little earth beautified with little Trees and Woods flowry Fields and flowing rivulets with larger lakes into which these discharge themselves And suppose we the other Planets all of proportionable bigness to the narrow limits assigned them placed at their due distances and playing about this supposed earth or Sun so as to measure their shorter and soon absolved days months and years or two twelve or thirty years according to their supposed lesser circuits Would they not presently and with great amazement confess an intelligent contriver and maker of this whole frame above a Posidonius or any mortal And have we not in the present frame of things a demonstration of Wisdom and Counsel as far exceeding that which is now supposed as the making some toy or bauble to please a child is less an argument of wisdom than the contrivance of somewhat that is of apparent and universal use Or if we could suppose this present state of things to have but newly begun and our selves pre-existent so that we could take notice of the very passing of things out of horrid confusion into the comely order they are now in would not this put the matter out of doubt And that this state had once a beginning needs not be proved over again But might what would yesterday have been the effect of wisdom better have been brought about by chance five or six thousand years or any longer time ago It speaks not want of evidence in the thing but want of consideration and of exercising our understandings if what were new would not only convince but astonish and what is old of the same importance doth not so much as convince And let them that understand any thing of the composition of an humane body or indeed of any living creature but bethink themselves whether there be not equal contrivance at least appearing in the composure of that admirable fabrick as of any the most admired machine or engine devised and made by humane wit and skill If we pitch upon any thing of known and common use as suppose again a Clock or Watch which is no sooner seen than it is acknowledg'd as hath been said the effect of a designing cause will we not confess as much of the body of a man Yea what comparison is there when in the structure of some one single member as an hand a foot an eye or ear there appears upon a diligent search unspeakably greater curiosity whether we consider the variety of parts their exquisite figuration or their apt disposition to the distinct uses and ends these members serve for than is to be seen in any Clock or Watch Concerning which uses of the several parts in mans body Galen so largely discoursing in seventeen Books inserts on the by this Epiphonema upon the mention of one particular instance of our most wise Makers provident care Unto whom saith he I compose these Commentaries meaning his present work of unfolding the useful figuration of the humane body as certain Hymns or Songs of praise esteeming true Piety more to consist in this that I first may know and then declare to others his Wisdom Power Providence and Goodness than in sacrificing to him many Hecatombs And in the ignorance whereof there is greatest impiety rather than in ababstaining from Sacrifice Nor as he adds in the close of that excellent work is
matter into so useful and happy a conjuncture as that such a quality might result or to speak more suteably to the most How if you had not been shewn the way would you have thought it were to be done or which way would you have gone to work to turn meat and drink into flesh and bloud Nor is propagation of their own kind by the creatures that have that faculty implanted in them less admirable or more possible to be imitated by any humane device Such productions stay in their first descent Who can by his own contrivance find out a way of making any thing that can produce-another like it self What machine did ever man invent that had this power And the ways and means by which it is done are such though he that can do all things well knew how to compass his ends by them as do exceed not our understanding only but our wonder And what shall we say of spontaneous motion wherewith we find also creatures endowed that are so mean and despicable in our eyes as well as our selves that is that so silly a thing as a fly a gnat c. should have a power in it to move it self or stop its own motion at its own pleasure How far have all attempted imitations in this kind fallen short of this perfection and how much more excellent a thing is the smallest and most contemptible insect than the most admired machine we ever heard or read of as Archytas Tarintinus his Dove so anciently celebrated or more lately Regiomontanus his Fly or his Eagle or any the like Not only as having this peculiar power above any thing of this sort but as having the sundry other powers besides meeting in it whereof these are wholy destitute And should we go on to instance further in the several powers of sensation both external and internal the various instincts appetitions passions sympathies antipathies the powers of memory and we might add of speech that we find the inferiour orders of creatures either necessarily furnish'd with or some of them as to this last dispos'd unto How should we even over-do the present business and too needlesly insult over humane wit which we must suppose to have already yeilded the cause in challenging it to produce and offer to view an hearing seeing-engine that can imagine talk is capable of hunger thirst of desire anger fear grief c. as its own creature concerning which it may glory and say I have done this Is it so admirable a performance and so ungainsayable an evidence of skill and wisdom with much labour and long travel of mind a busie restless agitation of working thoughts the often renewal of frustrated attempts the varying of defeated trials this way and that at length to hit upon and by much pains and with a slow gradual progress by the use of who can tell how many sundry sorts of instruments or tools managed by more possibly than a few hands by long hewing hammering turning filing to compose one only single machine of such a frame and structure as that by the frequent re-inforcement of a skilful hand it may be capable of some and that otherwise but a very short-liv'd motion And is it no argument or effect of wisdom so easily and certainly without labour error or disappointment to frame both so infinite a variety of kinds and so innumerable individuals of every such kind of living creatures that cannot only with the greatest facility move themselves with so many sorts of motion downwards upwards many of them to and fro this way or that with a progressive or circular a swifter or a slower motion at their own pleasure but can also grow propagate see hear desire joy c. Is this no work of wisdom but only blind either fate or chance of how strangely perverse and odd a complexion is that understanding if yet it may be called an understanding that can make this judgment And they think they have found out a rare knack and that gives a great relief to their diseased minds who have learn'd to call the bodies of living creatures even the humane not excepted by way of diminution machines or engines too But how little cause there is to hug or be fond of this fansie would plainly appear If first we would allow our selves leasure to examine with how small pretence this appellation is so placed and applied And next if it be applied rightly to how little purpose it is alledg'd or that it signifies nothing to the exclusion of divine wisdom from the formation of them And for the first because we know not a better let it be considered how defective and unsatisfying the account is which the great and justly admired master in this faculty gives how divers of those things which he would have to be so are performed only in the mechanical way For though his ingenuity must be acknowledged in his modest exception of some nobler operations belonging to our selves from coming under those rigid necessitating laws yet certainly to the severe enquiry of one not partially addicted to the sentiments of so great a wit because they were his it would appear there are great defects and many things yet wanting in the account which is given us of some of the meaner of those functions which he would attribute only to organiz'd matter or to use his own expression to the conformation of the members of the body and the course of the spirits excited by the heat of the heart c. For howsoever accurately he describes the instruments and the way his account seems very little satisfying of the principle either of spontaneous motion or of sensation As to the former though it be very apparent that the muscles seated in that opposite posture wherein they are mostly found paired throughout the body the nerves and the animal spirits in the brain and suppose we that glandule seated in the inmost parts of it are the instruments of the motion of the limbs and the whole body yet what are all these to the prime causation or much more to the spontaneity of this motion And whereas with us who are acknowledged to have such a faculty independent on the body an act of will doth so manifestly contribute so that when we will our body is moved with so admirable facility and we feel not the cumbersome weight of an arm to be lift up or of our whole corporeal bulk to be moved this way or that by a slower or swifter motion Yea and when as also if we will we can on the sudden in a very instant start up out of the most composed sedentary posture and put our selves upon occasion into the most violent course of motion or action But if we have no such will though we have the same agile spirits about us we find no difficulty to keep in a posture of rest and are for the most part not sensible of any endeavour or urgency of those active particles as if they were hardly
we cannot conceive it because we cannot For though our conceptions of former things guide us in forming notions of what is future yet sure our conception of any thing as future is much another sort of conception from what we have of the same thing as past as appears from its different effects for if an object be apprehended good we conceive of it as past with sorrow as future with hope and joy If evil with joy as past with fear and sorrow as future And which above all the rest discovers and magnifies the intellectual power of the humane soul that they can form a conception howsoever imperfect of this absolute perfect Being whereof we are discoursing Which even they that acknowledge not its existence cannot deny except they will profess themselves blindly and at a venture to deny they know not what or what they have not so much as thought of They may take notice of their power of comparing things of discerning and making a judgment of their agreements and disagreements their proportions and disproportions to one another Of affirming or denying this or that concerning such or such things and of pronouncing with more or less confidence concerning the truth or falshood of such affirmations or negations And moreover of their power of arguing and inferring one thing from another so as from one plain and evident principle to draw forth a long chain of consequences that may be discerned to be linked therewith They have withal to consider the liberty and the large capacity of the humane will which when it is its self rejects the dominion of any other than the supreme Lord and refuses satisfaction in any other than the supreme and most comprehensive good And upon even so hasty and transient a view of a thing furnished with such powers and faculties we have sufficient occasion to bethink our selves How came such a thing as this into being whence did it spring or to what original doth it owe it self More particularly we have here two things to be discoursed First that notwithstanding so high excellencies the soul of man doth yet appear to be a caused being that sometime had a beginning Secondly That by them it is sufficiently evident that it owes it self to a wise and intelligent cause As to the former of these we need say the less because that sort of Atheists with whom we have chiefly now to do deny not humane souls to have had a beginning as supposing them to be produced by the bodies they animate by the same generation and that such generation did sometimes begin That only rude and wildly moving matter was from eternity and that by infinite alterations and commixtures in that eternity it fell at last into this orderly frame and state wherein things now are and became prolifick so as to give beginning to the several sorts of living things which do now continue to propagate themselves The mad folly of which random fancy we have been so largely contending against hitherto The other sort who were for an eternal succession of generations have been sufficiently refuted by divers others and partly by what hath been already said in this discourse and we may further meet with them ere it be long We in the mean time find not any professing Atheism to make humane souls as such necessary and self-original beings Yet it is requisite to consider not only what persons of Atheistical perswasions have said but what also they possibly may say And moreover some that have been remote from Atheism have been prone upon the contemplation of the excellencies of the humane soul to over-magnifie yea and even no less than deifie it 'T is therefore needful to say somewhat in this matter For if nothing of direct and down-right Atheism had been The rash hyperboles as we will charitably call them and unwarrantable rhetorications of these latter should they obtain to be lookt upon and received as severe and strict assertions of Truth were equally destructive of Religion as the other more strangely bold and avowed opposition to it Such I mean as have spoken of the Souls of men as parts of God one thing with him a particle of Divine breath an extract or derivation of himself That have not feared to apply to them his most peculiar attributes or say that of them which is most appropriate and incommunicably belonging to him alone Nay to give them his very name and say in plain words they were God Now it would render a Temple alike insignificant to suppose no worshipper as to suppose none who should be worshipped And what should be the worshiper when our souls are thought the same thing with what should be the object of our worship But methinks when we consider their necessitous indigent state their wants and cravings their pressures and groans their grievances and complaints we should find enough to convince us they are not the self-originate or self-sufficient being And might even despair any thing should be plain and easie to them with whom it is a difficulty to distinguish themselves from God Why are they in a state which they dislike wherefore are they not full and satisfied why do they wish and complain is this God-like But if any have a doubt hanging in their minds concerning the unity of souls with one another or with the soul of the world let them read what is already extant And supposing them thereupon distinct Beings there needs no more to prove them not to be necessary independent uncaused ones than their subjection to so frequent changes their ignorance doubts irresolution and gradual progress to knowledge certainty and stability in their purposes their very being united with these bodies in which they have been but a little while as we all know whereby they undergo no small change admitting them to have been pre-existent and wherein they experience so many Yea whether those changes import any immutation of their very essence or no the repugnancy being so plainly manifest of the very terms necessary and changeable And inasmuch as it is so evident that a necessary being can receive no accession to it self than it must always have or keep it self after the same manner and in the same state that if it be necessarily such or such as we cannot conceive it to be but we must in our own thoughts affix to it some determinate state or other it must be eternally such and ever in that particular unchanged state Therefore be the perfection of our souls as great as our most certain knowledge of them can possibly allow us to suppose it 't is not yet so great but that we must be constrained to confess them no necessary self-criginate Beings and by consequence dependent ones that owe themselves to some cause Nor yet that we may pass over to the other strangely distant extreme is the perfection of our souls so little as to require less than an intelligent cause endow'd with the wisdom which we assert and
challenge unto the truly necessary uncaused Being Which because he hath no other rival or competitor for the glory of this production than only the fortuitous jumble of the blindly moving particles of matter our enquiry here will only be whose image the thing produced bears or which it more resembles stupid sensless unactive matter or at the best only supposed moving though no man upon the Atheists terms can imagine how it came to be so or the active intelligent Being whom we affirm the cause of all things and who hath peculiarly entituled himself the Father of Spirits That is we are to consider whether the powers and operations belonging to the Reasonable Soul do not plainly argue 1. That it neither rises from nor is meer matter whence it will be consequent it must have an efficient divers from matter 2. That it owes it self to an intelligent efficient As to the former we need not deal distinctly and severally concerning their original and their nature For if they are not meer matter it will be evident enough they do not arise from thence So that here all will be summ'd up in this enquiry whether Reason can agree to matter We shall therefore wave the consideration of their conceits concerning the manner of the first origination of men as that their whole being was only a production of the earth Whereof the Philosophical account deserves as much laughter instead of confutation as any the most fabulously Poetical That is how they were formed as also the other animals in certain little bags or wombs of the earth out of which when they grew ripe they broke forth c. And only consider what is said of the constitution and nature of the humane soul it self Which is said to be compos'd of very well polish'd the smoothest and the roundest atoms and which are of the neatest fashion and every way you must suppose the best condition'd the whole Country could afford of a more excellent make as there is added than those of the fire it self And these are the things you must know which think study contemplate frame syllogisms make Theorems lay plots contrive business act the Philosopher the Logician the Mathematician Statesman and every thing else only you may except the Priest for of him there was no need This therefore is our present theme whether such things as these be capable of such or any acts of reason yea or no And if such a matter may admit of serious discourse in this way it may be convenient to proceed viz. either any such small particle or atom for our business is not now with Des Cartes but Epicurus alone is rational or a good convenient number of them assembled and most happily met together It is much to be feared the former way will not do For we have nothing to consider in any of these atoms in its solitary condition besides its magnitude its figure and its weight and you may add also its motion if you could devise how it should come by it And now because it is not to be thought that all atoms are rational for then the stump of a tree or a bundle of straw might serve to make a soul of for ought we know as good as the best it is to be considered by which of those properties an atom shall be entituled to the priviledge of being rational and the rational atoms be distinguished from the rest Is it their peculiar magnitude or size that so far ennobles them Epicurus would here have us believe that the least are the fittest for this turn Now if you consider how little we must suppose them generally to be according to his account of them That is that looking upon any of those little motes a stream whereof you may perceive when the Sun shines in at a window and he doubts not but many Myriads of even ordinary atoms go to the composition of any one of these scarcely discernable motes how sportful a contemplation were it to suppose one of those furnished with all the powers of a reasonable soul though its likely they would not laugh at the jest that think thousands of souls might be conveniently plac'd upon the point of a needle And yet which makes the matter more admirable that very few except they be very carefully pickt and chosen can be found among those many myriads but will be too big to be capable of rationality Here sure the fate is very hard of those that come nearest the size but only by a very little too much corpulency happen to be excluded as unworthy to be counted among the rational atoms But sure if all sober reason be not utterly lost and squandered away among these little entities it must needs be judged altogether imcomprehensible why if upon the account of meer littleness any atom should be capable of reason all should not be so And then we could not but have a very rational world At least the difference in this point being so very small among them and they being all so very little methinks they should all be capable of some reason and have only less or more of it according as they are bigger and less But there is little doubt that single property of less magnitude will not be stood upon as the characteristical difference of rational and irrational Atoms and because their more or less gravity is reckon'd necessarily and so immediately to depend on that for those Atoms cannot be thought porous but very closely compacted each one within it self this it is likely will as little be depended on And so their peculiar figure must be the more trusted to as the differencing thing And because there is in this respect so great a variety among this little sort of people or Nation as this Author somewhere calls them whereof he gives so punctual an account as if he had been the Generalissimo of all their Armies and were wont to view them at their Rendzevous to form them into Regiments and Squadrons and appoint them to the distinct services he found them aptest for No doubt it was a difficulty to determine which sort of figure was to be pitcht on to make up the rational regiment But since this power was absolute and there was none to gain-say or contradict the round figure was judged best and most deserving this honour Otherwise a reason might have been asked and it might have been a greater difficulty to have given a good one why some other figure might not have done as well unless respect were had to fellow-Atoms and that it was thought they of this figure could better associate for the present purpose and that we shall consider of by and by we now proceed on the supposition that possibly a single Atom by the advantage of this figure might be judg'd capable of this high atchievement And in that case it would not be impertinent to enquire whether if an Atom were perfectly round and so very rational but by an
our selves if they or any as fluid finer matter were the immediate subjects of it It is therefore however sufficiently evident and out of question that the humane soul be its own substance what it will must have an efficient divers from matter which it was our present intendment to evince And so our way is clear to proceed to The second enquiry whether it be not also manifest from the powers and operations which belong to it as it is reasonable that it must have had an intelligent efficient That is since we find and are assured that there is a sort of Being in the world yea somewhat of our selves and that hath best right of any thing else about us to be called our selves that can think understand deliberate argue c. And which we can most certainly assure our selves whether it were pre-existent in any former state or no is not an independent or uncaused Being and hath therefore been the effect of some cause whether it be not apparently the effect of a wise Cause And this upon supposition of what hath been before proved seems not liable to any the least rational doubt For it is already apparent that it is not it self matter and if it were it is however the more apparent that its cause is not matter Inasmuch as if it be it self matter its powers and operations are so much above the natural capacity of matter as that it must have had a cause so much more noble and of a more perfect nature than that as to be able to raise and improve it beyond the natural capacity of matter which it was impossible for that it self to do Whence it is plain it must have a cause divers from matter Wherefore this its immaterial cause must either be wise and intelligent or not so But is it possible any man should ever be guilty of a greater absurdity than to acknowledge some certain immaterial Agent destitute of Wisdom the only cause and fountain of all that wisdom that is or hath ever been in the whole race of mankind That is as much as to say that all the wisdom of mankind hath been caused without a cause For it is the same thing after we have acknowledged any thing to be caused to say it was caused by no cause as to say it was caused by such a cause as hath nothing of that in it whereof we find somewhat to be in the effect Nor can it avail any thing to speak of the disproportion or superiour excellency in some effects to their second or to their only partial causes As that there are sometimes learned children of unlearned parents For who did ever in that case say the parents were the productive causes of that learning or of them as they were learned Sure that learning comes from some other cause But shall it then be said the souls of men have received their being from some such immaterial Agent destitute of wisdom and afterward their wisdom and intellectual ability came some other way by their own observation or by institution and precept from others whence then came their capacity of observing or of receiving such instruction Can any thing naturally destitute even of seminal reason as we may call it or of any aptitude or capacity tending thereto ever be able to make observations or receive instructions whereby at length it may become rational And is not that capacity of the soul of man a real something or is there no difference between being capable of reason and uncapable what then did this real something proceed from nothing or was the soul it self caused and this its capacity uncaused or was its cause only capable of intellectual perfection but not actually furnished therewith But if it were only capable surely its advantages for the actual attainment thereof have been much greater than ours Whence it were strange if that capacity should never have come into act And more strange that we should know or have any ground to pretend that it hath not But that there was an actual exercise of wisdom in the production of the reasonable soul is most evident For is it a necessary being that we have proved it is not It is therefore a contingent and its being depended on a free cause into whose pleasure only it was resolvable that it should be or not be And which therefore had a dominion over its own acts If this bespeak not an intelligent Agent what doth And though this might also be said concerning every thing else which is not necessarily and so might yield a more general argument to evince a free designing cause yet it concludes with greater evidence concerning the reasonable soul whose powers and operations it is so manifestly impossible should have proceeded from matter And therefore even that vain and refuted pretence it self that other things might by the necessary laws of its motion become what they are can have less place here Whence it is more apparent that the reasonable soul must have had a free and intelligent cause that used liberty and counsel in determining that it should be and especially that it should be such a sort of thing as we find it is For when we see how aptly its powers and faculties serve for their proper and peculiar operations who that is not besides himself can think that such a thing was made by one that knew not what he was doing or that such powers were not given on purpose for such operations And what is the capacity but a power that should sometime be reduced into act and arrive to the exercise of reason it self Now was it possible any thing should give that power that had it not any way that is in the same kind or in some more excellent and noble kind For we contend not that this Agent whereof we speak is in the strict and proper sense rational taking that term to import an ability or faculty of inferring what is less known from what is more For we suppose all things equally known to him which so far as is requisite to our present design that is the representing him the proper object of Religion or of that honour which the dedication of a Temple to him imports we may in due time come more expresly to assert And that the knowledge which is with us the end of reasoning is in him in its highest perfection without being at all beholden to that means that all the connexion of things with one another lie open to one comprehensive view and are known to be connected but not because they are so We say is it conceivable that mans knowing power should proceed from a cause that hath it not in the same or this more perfect kind And may use those words to this purpose not for their authority which we expect not should be here significant but the convincing evidence they carry with them He that teacheth man knowledge shall not he know That we may derive this matter to an issue 't is evident
the soul of man is not a necessary self-originate thing And had therefore some cause We find it to have knowledge or the power of knowing belonging to it Therefore we say so had its cause We rely not here upon the credit of vulgar maxims whereof divers might be mentioned but the reason of them or of the thing it self we alledge And do now speak of the whole entire cause of this being the humane soul or of whatsoever is causal of it or of any perfection naturally appertaining to it It is of an intelligent nature Did this intelligent nature proceed from an unintelligent as the whole and only cause of it That were to speak against our own eyes and most natural common sentiments And were the same thing as to say that something came of nothing For it is all one to say so and to say that any thing communicated what it had not to communicate Or which is alike madly absurd to say that the same thing was such and not such intelligent and not intelligent able to communicate an intelligent nature for sure what it doth it is able to do and not able for it is not able to communicate what it hath not at the same time It is hardly here worth the while to spend time in countermining that contemptible Refuge which is as uncapable of offending us as of being defended that humane souls may perhaps only have proceeded in the ordinary course of Generation from one another For that none have ever said any thing to that purpose deserving a confutation except that some sober and pious persons for the avoiding of some other difficulties have thought it more safe to assert the traduction of humane souls who yet were far enough from imagining that they could be total or first causes to one another And doubted not but they had the constant necessary assistance of that same Being we are pleading for acting in his own sphere as the first cause in all such as well as any other productions Wherein they nothing oppose the main design of this discourse And therefore it is not in our way to offer at any opposition unto them But if any have a mind to indulge themselves the liberty of so much dotage as to say the souls of men were first and only causes to one another Either they must suppose them to be material beings And then we refer them to what hath been already said shewing that their powers and operations cannot belong to matter nor arise from it Or immaterial and then they cannot produce one another in the way of generation For of what pre-existent substance are they made Theirs who beget them of that they can part with nothing separability at least of parts being a most confessed property of matter Or some other where will they find that other spiritual subsubstance that belong'd not inseparably to some individual being before And besides if it were pre-existent as it must be if a soul be generated out of it then they were not the first and only causes of this production And in another way than that of generation how will any go about to make a soul Let experience and the making of trial convince the undertakers By what power or by what art will they make a reasonable soul spring up out of nothing It might be hoped that thus without disputing the possibility of an eternal successive production of souls this shift may appear vain But if any will persist and say that how or in what way soever they are produc'd 'T is strange if they need any nobler cause than themselves for may not any living thing well enough be thought capable of producing another of the same kind or no more than equal perfection with it self To this we say besides that no one living thing is the only cause of another such Yet if that were admitted possible what will it avail For hath every soul that hath ever existed or been in being been produced in this way by another This it were ridiculous to say for if every one were so produced there was then some one before every one Inasmuch as that which produces must surely have been before that which is produced by it But how can every one have one before it A manifest contradiction in the very terms For then there will be one without the compass of every one And how is it then said to be every one There is then it seems one besides or more than all And so all is not all And if this be thought a sophism let the matter be soberly considered thus The soul of man is either a thing of that nature universally and consequently every individual soul as that it doth exist of it self necessarily and independently or not If it be Then we have however a wise intelligent being necessarily existing The thing we have been proving all this while Yet this concession we will not accept for though it is most certain there is such a being we have also proved the humane soul is not it Whence it is evidently a dependent being in its own nature that could never have been of it self had it not been put into being by somewhat else And being so in its own nature it must be thus with every one that partakes of this nature And consequently it must be somewhat of another nature that did put the souls of men into being Otherwise the whole stock and lineage of humane souls is said to have been dependent on a productive cause and yet had nothing whereon to depend And so is both caused by another and not caused And therefore since it is hereby evident it was somewhat else and of another nature than an humane soul by which all humane souls were produced into being We again say that distinct Being either was a dependent caused Being or not If not it being proved that the soul of man cannot but have had an intelligent or wise cause we have now what we seek An independent necessary intelligent Being If it do depend or any will be so idle to say so That however will infallibly and very speedily lead us to the same mark For though some have been pleased to dream of an infinite succession of individuals of this or that kind I suppose we have no dream as yet ready formed to come under confutation of infinite kinds or orders of beings gradually superiour one above another the inferiour still depending on the superiour and all upon nothing And therefore I conceive we may fairly take leave of this argument from the humane soul as having gained from it sufficient evidence of the existence of a necessary Being that is intelligent and designingly active being guided by wisdom and counsel in what it doth We might also if it were needful further argue the same thing from a power or ability manifestly superiour to and that exceeds the utmost perfection of humane nature viz. that of Prophesie or the prediction of future contingencies yea and
time that there is however a necessary Being unto which all the perfections whereof we have any foot-steps or resemblances in the Creation do originally and essentially belong is undeniably evident Now that we may proceed what can felfessentiate underived Power Wisdom Goodness be but most perfect Power Wisdom Goodness Or such as than which there can never be more perfect For since there can be no Wisdom Power or Goodness which is not either original and self-essentiate or derived and participated from thence Who sees not that the former must be the more perfect Yea and that it comprehended all the other as what was from it in it self And consequently that it is simply the most perfect And the reason will be the same concerning any other perfection the stamps and characters whereof we find signed upon the creatures But that the Being unto which these belong is absolutely and universally perfect in every kind must be further evidenced by considering more at large the notion and import of such a self-originate necessary Being Some indeed both more anciently and of late have inverted this course and from the supposition of absolute perfection have gone about to infer necessity of existence as being contained in the Idaea of the former But of this latter we are otherwise assured upon clearer and less exceptionable terms And being so are to consider what improvement may be made of it to our present purpose And in the general this seems manifestly imported in the notion of the necessary Being we have already evinced that it have in it some way or other in what way there will be occasion to consider hereafter the entire sum and utmost fulness of Being beyond which or without the compass whereof no perfection is conceivable or indeed which is of the same import nothing Let it be observed that we pretend not to argue this from the bare terms necessary Being only but from hence that it is such as we have found it Though indeed these very terms import not a little to this purpose For that which is necessarily of it self without being beholden to any thing seems as good as all things and to contain in it self an immense fulness being indigent of nothing Nor by indigence is here meant cravingness or a sense of want only in opposition whereto every good and virtuous man hath or may attain a sort of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or self-fulness and be satisfied from himself which yet is a stamp of Divinity and a part of the image of God or such a participation of the Divine Nature as is agreeable to the state and condition of a creature But we understand by it what is naturally before that want it self really and not in opinion as the covetous is said to be poor On the other hand we here intend not a meerly rational much less an imaginary but a real self-fulness And so we say what is of that nature that it is and subsists wholly and only of it self without depending on any other must owe this absoluteness to so peculiar an excellency of its own nature as we cannot well conceive to be less than whereby it comprehends in it self the most boundless and unlimited fulness of Being life power or whatsoever can be conceived under the name of a perfection For taking notice of the existence of any thing whatsoever some reason must be assignable whence it is that this particular Being doth exist and hath such and such powers and properties belonging to it as do occur to our notice therein when we can now resolve its existence into some cause that put it into Being and made it what it is we cease so much to admire the thing how excellent soever it be and turn our admiration upon its cause concluding that to have all the perfection in it which we discern in the effect whatsoever unknown perfection which we may suppose is very great it may have besides And upon this ground we are led when we behold the manifold excellencies that lie dispers'd among particular Beings in this universe with the glory of the whole resulting thence to resolve their existence into a common cause which we design by the name of God And now considering him as a wise Agent which hath been proved and consequently a free one that acted not from any necessity of nature but his meer good pleasure herein we will not only conclude him to have all that perfection and excellency in him which we find him to have display'd in so vast and glorious a work but will readily believe him supposing we have admitted a conviction concerning what hath been discoursed before to have a most unconceivable treasure of hidden excellency and perfection in him that is not represented to our view in this work of his And account that he who could do all this which we see is done could do unspeakably more For though speaking of natural and necessitated Agents which always act to their uttermost it would be absurd to argue from their having done some lesser thing to their power of doing somewhat that is much greater Yet as to free Agents that can choose their own act and guide themselves by wisdom and judgment therein the matter is not so As when some great Prince bestows a rich largess upon some mean person especially that deserved nothing from him or was recommended by nothing to his royal favour besides his poverty and misery we justly take it for a very significant demonstration of that princely munificence and bounty which would encline him to do much greater things when he should see a proportionable cause But now if taking notice of the excellencies that appear in caused Beings and enquiring how they come to exist and be what they are we resolve all into their cause which considering as perfectly free and arbitrary in all his communications We do thence rationally conclude that if he had thought fit he could have made a much more pompous display of himself and that there is in him besides what appears a vast and most abundant store of undiscovered perfection When next we turn our enquiry and contemplation more entirely upon the cause And bethink our selves But how came he to exist and be what he is Finding this cannot be refunded upon any superiour cause And our utmost enquiry can admit of no other result but this that he is of himself what he is We will surely say then he is all in all And that perfection which before we judged vastly great we will now conclude alltogether absolute and such beyond which no greater can be thought Adding I say to what pre-conceptions we had of his greatness from the works which we see have been done by him for why should we lose any ground we might esteem our selves to have gain'd before the consideration of of this necessary self-subsistence And that no other reason is assignable of his being what he is but the peculiar and incommunicable excellency of his own
nature Whereby he was not only able to make such a world but did possess eternally and invariably in himself all that he is and hath We cannot conceive that all to be less than absolutely universal and comprehensive of whatsoever can lie within the whole compass of Being For when we find that among all other Beings which is most certainly true not only of actual but all possible Beings also how perfect soever they are or may be in their own kinds none of them nor all of them together are erver can be of that perfection as to be of themselves without dependence on somewhat else as their productive yea and sustaining cause we see besides that their cause hath all the perfection some way in it that is to be found in them all There is also that appropriate perfection belonging thereto that it could be and eternally is yea and could not but be only of it self by the underived and incommunicable excellency of its own Being And surely what includes in it all the perfection of all actual and possible Beings besides its own for there is nothing possible which some cause yea and even this cannot produce unconceivably more must needs be absolutely and every way perfect Of all which perfections this is the radical one that belongs to this common Cause and Author of all things that he is necessarily and only self-subsisting For if this high Prerogative in point of Being had been wanting nothing at all had ever been Therefore we attribute to God the greatest thing that can be said or thought and not what is wholly divers from all other perfection but which contains all others in it when we affirm of him that he is necessarily of himself For though when we have bewildered and lost our selves as we soon may in the contemplation of this amazing subject we readily indulge our wearied minds the case and liberty of resolving this high excellency of self or necessary existence in a meer negation and say that we mean by it nothing else than that he was not from another Yet surely if we would take some pains with our selves and keep our slothful shifting thoughts to some exercise in this matter though we can never comprehend that vast fulness of perfection which is imported in it for it were not what we plead for if we could comprehend it Yet we should soon see and confess that it contains unspeakably more than a negation even some great thing that is so much beyond our thoughts that we shall reckon we have said but a little in saying we cannot conceive it And that when we have stretcht our understandings to the utmost of their line and measure though we may suppose our selves to have conceived a great deal there is infinitely more that we conceive not Wherefore that is a sober and most important truth which is occasionally drawn forth as is supposed from the so admired D. Cartes by the urgent objections of this very acute friendly adversary That the inexhaustible power of God is the reason for which he needed no cause And that since that unexhausted power or the immensity of his essence is most highly positive therefore he may be said to be of himself positively i. e. not as if he did ever by any positive efficiency cause himself which is most manifestly impossible but that the positive excellency of his own being was such as could never need nor admit of being caused And that seems highly eternal which is so largely insisted on by Doctor Jackson and divers others that what is without cause must also be without limit of being Because all limitation proceeds from the cause of a thing which imparted to it so much and no more which argument though it seem neglected by Des Cartes and is opposed by his Antagonist Yet I cannot but judge that the longer one meditates the less he shall understand how any thing can be limited ad intra or from it self c. As the Author of the Tentam. Phys. Theol. speaks But that we may entertain our selves with some more particular considerations of this necessary Being which may evince that general assertion of its absolute plenitude or fulness of essence It appears to be such As is first at the greatest imaginable distance from non-entity For what can be at a greater than that which is necessarily which signifies as much as whereto not to be is utterly impossible Now an utter impossibility not to be or the uttermost distance from no Being seems plainly to imply the absolute plenitude of all Being And if here it be said that to be necessarily and of it self needs be understood to import no more than a firm possession of that being which a thing hath be it never so scant or minute a portion of being I answer without insisting upon the ambiguity of the words to be it seems indeed so If we measure the signification of this expression by its first and more obvious appearance But if you consider the matter more narrowly you will find here is also signified the nature and kind of the Being possessed as well as the manner of possession viz. that it is a Being of so excellent and noble a kind as that it can subsist alone without being beholden which is so great an excellency as that it manifestly comprehends all other or is the foundation of all that can be conceived besides Which they that fondly dream of necessary matter not considering unwarily make one single atom a more excellent thing than the whole frame of heaven and earth That being supposed simply necessary this the meerest piece of hap-hazard the strangest chance imaginable and beyond what any but themselves could ever have imagined And which being considered would give us to understand that no minute or finite being can be necessarily And hence we may see what it is to be nearer or at a further distance from not-being For these things that came contingently into being or at the pleasure of a free cause have all but a finite and limited being whereof some having a smaller portion of being than others approach so much the nearer to not-being Proportionably what hath its being necessarily and of it self is at the farthest distance from no-being as comprehending all being in it self Or to borrow the expressions of an elegant Writer translated into our own Language We have much more non-essence than essence If we have the essence of a man yet not of the Heavens or of Angels We are confined and limited within a particular essence but God who is what he is comprehendeth all possible essences Nor is this precariously spoken or as what may be hoped to be granted upon courtesie But let the matter be rigidly examined and discussed and the certain truth of it will most evidently appear For if any thing be in this sense remoter than other from no-Being it must either be what is necessarily of it self or what is contingently at the pleasure
possibility For how is that cause said to have infinite power which can never produce its proportionable effect or that effect have infinite possibility which can never be produced It would follow then that power and possibility which are said to be infinite are neither power nor possibility and that infinite must be rejected as a notion either repugnant to it self or to any thing unto which we shall go about to affix it I answer it only follows They are neither power or possibility whereof there is any bound or end or that can ever be gone through And how absurd is it that they shall be said as they cannot but be to be both very vast if they were finite and none at all for no other reason but their being infinite And for the pretended repugnancy of the very notion of infinite it is plain that though it cannot be to us distinctly comprehensible yet it is no more repugnant than the notion of finiteness Nor when we have conceived of power in the general and in our own thoughts set bounds to it and made it finite is it a greater difficulty nay they that try will find it much easier again to think away these bounds and make it infinite And let them that judge the notion of infiniteness inconsistent therefore reject it if they can They will feel it re-imposing it self upon them whether they will or no and sticking as close to their minds as their very thinking power it self And who was therefore ever heard of that did not acknowledge some or other infinite Even the Epicureans themselves though they confined their Gods they did not the universe Which also though some Peripatetique Atheists made finite in respect of place yet in duration they made it infinite Though the notion of an eternal world is incumbred with such absurdities and impossibilities as whereof there is not the least shadow in that of an every way infinite Deity Briefly it consists not with the nature of a contingent being to be infinite For what is upon such terms only in being is reducible to nothing at the will and pleasure of its maker but 't is a manifest repugnancy that what is at the utmost distance from nothing as infinite fulness of being cannot but be should be reducible thither Therefore actual infinity cannot but be the peculiar priviledge of that which is necessarily Yet may we not say that it is not within the compass of infinite power to make a creature that may be infinite For it argues not want of power that this is never to be done but a still infinitely abounding surplufage of it that can never be drained or drawn dry Nor that the thing it self is simply impossible It may be as is compendiously exprest by that most succinct and polite Writer D. Boyle in fieri not in facto esse That is it might be a thing always in doing but never done Because it belongs to the infinite perfection of God that his power be never actually exhausted and to the infinite imperfection of the creature that its possibility or capacity be never filled up To the necessary self-subsisting being to be always full and communicative to the communicated contingent Being to be ever empty and craving One may be said to have that some way in his power not only which he can do presently all at once but which he can do by degrees and supposing he have sufficient time So a man may be reckoned able to do that as the uttermost adequate effect of his wohle power which it is only possible to him to have effected with the expiration of his lifes-time Gods measure is eternity What if we say then this is a work possible to be accomplished even as the ultimate proportionable issue of Divine Power if it were his will upon which all contingent being depends that the creature should be ever growing in the mean while at the expiration of eternity If then you be good at suppositions suppose that expired and this work finished both together Wherefore if you ask why can the work of making created being infinite never be done The answer will be because eternity in every imaginable instant whereof the inexhaustible power of God can if he will be still adding either more creatures or more perfection to a creature can never be at an end We might further argue the Infinity of the necessary Being from what hath been said of its undiminishableness by all its vast communications It s impossibility to receive any accession to it self by any its so great productions both which are plainly demonstrable as we have seen of the necessary Being even as it is such and do clearly as any thing can bespeak infinity But we have thence argued its absolute perfection which so evidently includes the same thing that all this latter labour might have been spared were it not that it is the genius of some persons not to be content that they have the substance of a thing said unless it be also said in their own terms And that the express asserting of Gods simple infiniteness in those very terms is in that respect the more requisite as it is a form of expression more known and usual There are yet some remaining difficulties in the matter we have been discoursing of which partly through the debility of our own minds we cannot but find and which partly the subtilty of sophistical wits doth create to us It will be requisite we have some consideration of at least some of them which we will labour to dispatch with all possible brevity Leaving those that delight in the sport of tying and loosing knots or of weaving snares wherein cunningly to entangle themselves to be entertained by the School-men among whom they may find enough upon this subject to give them exercise unto weariness and if their minds have any relish of what is more savory I may venture to say unto loathing It may possibly be here said in short But what have we all this while been doing we have been labouring to prove that necessary Being comprehends the absolute fulness of all Being And what doth this signifie but that all being is necessary That God is all things and so that every thing is God That we hereby confound the being of a man yea of a stone or whatever we can think of with one another and all with the Being of God And again how is it possible there should be an infinite self-subsisting Being For then how can there be any finite since such infinite Being includes all Being and there can be nothing beyond all Here therefore it is requisite having hitherto only asserted and endeavoured to evince that some way necessary Being doth include all being to shew in what way And it is plain it doth not include all in the same way It doth not so include that which is created by it and depends on it as it doth its own which is uncreated and independent The one
some of them think it highly improbable but from others of them plainly impossible that the history of this appearance should have been a contrived piece of falshood Yea and though as was said the view of such a thing with ones own eyes would make a more powerful impreson upon our phansie or imagination yet if we speak of rational evidence which is quite another thing of the truth of a matter of fact that were of this astonishing nature I should think it were much at least if I were credibly told that so many hundred thousand persons saw it at once as if I had been the single unaccomcompanied spectator of it my self Not to say that it were apparently in some respect much greater could we but obtain of our selves to distinguish between the pleasing of our curiosity and the satisfying of our reason So that upon the whole I see not why it may not be concluded with the greatest confidence that both the supposed existence of a Deity is possible to be certainly known to men on earth in some way that is sutable to their present state that there are no means fitter to be ordinary than those we already have and that more extraordinary additional confirmations are partly therefore not necessary and partly not wanting Again it may be further demanded as that which may both immediately serve our main purpose and may also shew the reasonableness of what was last said Is it sufficiently evident to such Subjects of some great Prince as live remote from the Royal Residence that there is such a one now ruling over them To say no is to raze the foundation of civil Government and reduce it wholly to domestical by such a Ruler as may ever be in present view Which yet is upon such terms never possible to be preserved also It is plain many do firmly enough believe that there is a King reigning over them who not only never saw the King but never saw the splendor of his Court the pomp of his attendance or it may be never saw the man that had seen the King And is not all dutiful and loyal obedience wont to be challenged and paid of such as well as his other Subjects Or would it be thought a reasonable excuse of disloyalty that any such persons should say they had never seen the King or his Court Or a reasonable demand as the condition of required subjection that the Court be kept sometime in their Village that they might have the opportunity of beholding at least some of the Insignia of Regality or more splendid appearances of that Majesty which claims subjection from them much more would it be deemed unreasonable and insolent that every Subject should expect to see the face of the Prince every day otherwise they will not obey nor believe there is any such person Whereas it hath been judged rather more expedient and serviceable to the continuing the veneration of Majesty and in a Monarchy of no mean reputation for wisdom and greatness that the Prince did very rarely offer himself to the view of the people Surely more ordinary and remote discoveries of an existing Prince and Ruler over them the effects of his power and the influences of his government will be reckoned sufficient even as to many parts of his Dominions that possibly through many succeeding generations never had other And yet how unspeakably less sensible less immediate less constant less necessary less numerous are the effects and instances of regal humane power and wisdom than of the Divine which latter we behold which way soever we look and feel in every thing we touch or have any sense of and may reflect upon in our very senses themselves and in all the parts and powers that belong to us And so certainly that if we would allow our selves the liberty of serious thoughts we might soon find it were utterly impossible such effects should ever have been without that only cause That without its influence it had never been possible that we could hear or see or speak or think or live or be any thing nor that any other thing could ever have been when as the effects that serve so justly to endear and recommend to us civil Government as peace safety order quiet possession of our rights we cannot but know are not inseparably and incommunicably appropriate or to be attributed to the person of this or that particular and mortal Governour but may also proceed from another yea and the same benefits may for some short time at least be continued without any such government at all Nor is this intended meerly as a rhetorical scheme of speech to beguile or amuse the unwary Reader But without arrogating any thing or attributing more to it than that it is an altogether inartificial and very defective but true and naked representation of the very case it self as it is 'T is professedly propounded as having somewhat solidly argumentative in it That is that whereas there is most confessedly sufficient yet there is unspeakably less evidence to most people in the world under civil government that there actually is such a government existent over them and that they are under obligation to be subject to it than there is of the existence of a Deity and the consequent reasonableness of Religion If therefore the ordinary effects and indications of the former be sufficient which have so contingent and uncertain a connexion with their causes while those which are more extraordinary are so exceeding rare with the most why shall not the more certain ordinary discoveries of the latter be judged sufficient though the most have not the immediate notice of any such extraordinary appearances as those are which have been before mentioned Moreover I yet demand further whether it may be thought possible for any one to have a full rational certainty that another person is a reasonable creature and hath in him a rational soul so as to judge he hath sufficient ground and obligation to converse with him and carry towards him as a man without the supposition of this the foundation of all humane society and civil conversation is taken away And what evidence have we of it whereunto that which we have of the being of God as the foundation of religious and godly conversation will not at least be found equivalent Will we say that meer humane shape is enough to prove such a one a man A Philosopher would deride us as the Stagyrites Disciples are said to have done the Platonick man But we will not be so nice We acknowledge it is if no circumstances concurr as suddain appearing vanishing transformation or the like that plainly evince the contrary so far as to infer upon us an obligation not to be rude and uncivil that we use no violence or carry our selves abusively towards one that only thus appears an humane creature Yea and to perform any duty of Justice or Charity towards him within our power which we owe to a man
that be the case if we suppose future contingencies to lie conceal'd from the penetrating eye of God For whatsoever is future will some time be present and then we will allow such contingencies to be known to him That is that God may know them when we our selves can And that nothing of that kind is known to him which is not at least knowable some way or other to our selves at least successively and one thing after another We will perhaps allow that prerogative to God in point of this knowledge that he can know these things now fall'n out all at once we but by degrees while yet there is not any one that is absolutely unknowable to us But why should it be thought unreasonable to attribute an excellency to the knowledge of God above ours as well in respect of the manner of knowing as the multitude of objects at once known we will readily confess in some creatures an excelency of their visive faculty above our own that they can see things in that darkness wherein they are to us invisible And will we not allow that to the eye of God which is as a flame of fire to be able to penetrate into the abstrusest darkness of futurity though we know not the way how it is done when yet we know that whatsoever belongs to the most perfect being must belong to his And that knowledge of all things imports more perfection than if it were lessened by the ignorance of any thing Some who have thought the certain foreknowledge of future contingencies not attributable to God have reckoned the matter sufficiently excused by this that it no more detracts from the Divine omniscience to state without the object of it things not possible or that imply a contradiction as they suppose these to do to be known than it doth from his omnipotency that it cannot do what is impossible or that implies a contradiction to be done But against this there seems to lie this reasonable exception that the two cases appear not sufficiently alike Inasmuch as the supposition of the former will be found not to leave the blessed God equally entitled to omnisciency as the latter to omnipotency For all things should not be alike the object of both And why should not that be understood to signifie the knowledge of simply all things as well as this the power of doing simply all things Or why should all things included in these two words signifie so very diversly that is there properly all things here some things only And why must we so difference the object of omnisciency and omnipotency as to make that so much narrower than this And then how is it all things when so great a number of things will be left excluded Whereas from the object of omnipotency that we may prevent what would be reply'd there will be no exclusion of any thing Not of the things which are actually already made for they are still momently reproduc'd by the same power Not of the actions and effects of free causes yet future for when they become actual God doth certainly perform the part of the first cause even by common consent in order to their becoming so which is certainly doing somewhat though all be not agreed what that part is Therefore they are in the mean time to be esteemed within the object of omnipotency or to be of the things which God can do viz. as the first cause virtually including the power of the second But more strictly all impossibility is either natural and absolute or moral and conditional What is absolutely or naturally impossible or repugnant in it self is not properly any thing Whatsoever simple being not yet existent we can form any conception of is producible and so within the compass of omnipotency for there is no repugnancy in simplicity That wherein therefore we place natural impossibility is the inconsistency of being this thing whose notion is such and another wholly and entirely whose notion is divers at the same time that which more barbarously than insignificantly hath been wont to be called incompossibility But surely all things are properly enough said to be naturally possible to God while all simple beings are producible by him of which any notion can be formed yea and compounded so as by their composition to result into a third thing So that it is not an exception to say that it is naturally impossible this thing should be another thing and yet be wholly it self still at once that it should be and not be or be without it self There is not within the compass of actual or conceivable being such a thing Nor is it reasonable to except such actions as are naturally possible to other Agents but not to him As to walk for instance or the like Inasmuch as though the excellency of his nature permits not they should be done by him yet since their power of doing them proceeds wholly from him he hath it virtually and eminently in himself As was formerly said of the infiniteness of his Being And for moral impossibility as to lye to do an unjust act That God never does them proceeds not from want of power but an eternal aversion of will It cannot be said he is not able to do such a thing if he would but so is his will quallified and conditioned by its own unchangeable rectitude that he most certainly never will or such things as are in themselves evil are never done by him not through the defect of natural power but from the permanent stability and fulness of all moral perfection And it is not without the compass of absolute omnipotency to do what is but conditionally impossible The absence of which restrictive condition would rather bespeak impotency and imperfection than omnipotency Therefore the object of omnipotence is simply all things Why not of omniscience as well It may be said all things as it signifies the object of omniscience is only restrained by the act or faculty signified therewith in the same word so as to denote the formal object of that faculty or act viz. all knowable things But surely that act must suppose some Agent whereto that knowable hath reference Knowable to whom to others or to God himself If we say the former it is indeed a great honour we put upon God to say he can know as much as others if the latter we speak absurdly and only say he can know all that he can know It were fairer to deny omniscience than so interpret it But if it be denied what shall the pretence be why that it implies a contradiction future contingents should be certainly known For they are uncertain and nothing can be otherwise truly known than as it is And it must be acknowledged that to whom any thing is uncertain it is a contradiction that to him it should be certainly known But that such things are uncertain to God needs other proof than I have met with in what follows in that cited Author or elsewhere All