which are all very lame and unsatisfactory in themselves as they are asserted without any proof But on the contrary what can be more natural and easy than to account for this by deducing Mankind from one common stock which had deviated from its Original Rectitude That the Soul was strangely degenerated from its Original stamp was a thing which all wise Men were sensible of but how this came to pass the Heathens to whom God had not vouchsafed his Revelations was a thing they could only guess and blunder at in the dark Hence Aristotle compares the state of the Soul in the Body to the Etruscan Robbers joining dead Bodies to living ones And Tully talks of the effects of Original Sin more like a Divine than a Philosopher For thus St. Austin in his 4th Book against Julian brings him in saying Cic. Lib. 3. de Repub. non à Matre sed à Novercâ naturâ editum esse hominem in vitam corpore nudo fragili infirmo animo anxio ad molestias humili ad timores molli ad labores prono ad libidines in quo tamen velut obrutus inesset ignis quidam divinus mentis That Man was not born of nature as of a Mother but as a Step-Mother with a Body naked frail and infirm with a mind anxious for Troubles dejected for Fears sluggish to Labour and prone to Lust in which that divine Fire of the Soul lies as it were smothered Upon which St. Austin remarks Non Author iste male viventium moribus dixit effectum sed naturam potius accusavit Rem vidit causam nescivit Latebat enim eum cur esset grave jugum super filios Adam quia sacris literis non eruditus ignorabat originale peccatum This Author did not speak of the unhappy effect occasioned by the disobedience of our first ill-living Parents but only accused nature He very well saw the Thing but was ignorant of the Cause The Reason was hid from him why so heavy a Yoke was laid upon the Sons of Adam because not being educated in the sacred Letters he was ignorant of Original Sin If these wise Men had but had the Advantage of reading the Mosaical Account they would never have taken up with such foolish Hypotheses to explain the Origin of Evil by They would quickly have concluded with our Saviour's Argument that a Corrupt Tree cannot bring forth Good Fruit Matt. 7.18 Because this Explication of the rise of Sin by an Original Lapse is freed from those Absurdities which the other Explications abound with 2. Another very good Argument His account the best of the Pudor circa res Veneris for the Excellency of the Mosaical Account of the Fall is because it gives a Rationale of the Pudor circa res venereas which is a Thing which all the reason of Mankind was never able to do For how strange is it to consider what an innate bashfulness there is implanted in all Mankind as to these things and they are looked upon Monsters in nature that can devest themselves of it and yet to consider how little natural reason is to be given for such a shame Nay I defy the whole Wit of Mankind to give any one tolerably satisfactory For there is no reason in the World why Mankind should not use publick commixtures in a lawful way as well as eat and drink in publick or why he should be ashamed of one more than the other For nothing in nature is really shameful but Vice And upon this account the Cynick Philosophers reasoned themselves into such Beasts as to throw off all shame of this nature and pretended it was only a vulgar Errour But notwithstanding this the generality of men find a mighty impulse of unaccountable shame over-ruling them in such matters and the most impudent are forced to struggle long with it before they can conquer it and which no one can give a natural reason for but must be beholding to the Mosaical Relation to account for And from hence all the difficulty is cleared up we from hence learn what Irregularities we fall into by the defect of that Original Grace forfeited by the first Parents and from the predominancy of our Animal Nature over our Spiritual and that this shame is not only a Note of our own Turpitude but a perpetual Mark and Brand of our shameful Origin from such a degenerate stock Of the pain of Child-birth 3. Another very good Argument for the excellence of the Mosaical Relation of the Fall is The Pain of Childbirth Aristotle in his Book of Animals long ago observed that Woman of all Creatures in the World was most vexed and tormented in bringing forth Now what an unaccountable thing is it that Woman which is the principal Female of the whole Creation should be dealt withal more unkindly by God than the meanest Creature upon Earth I defy the wisest Philosopher upon Earth to give a reason why other Females should bring forth with so much ease and why God should inflict such intolerable pain upon Woman alone To be sure God Almighty did not allot this out of humour and Caprice but he had a very good reason for it now never any tolerable reason was assigned besides that which Moses has given in his Relation of the Fall and this appears very satisfactory and rational and therefore is a very good Argument for the Truth and Excellency of this History 4. Another Argument is Of the barrenness of the Earth the Account Moses has given of the modern Sterility of the Earth It has perplexed the greatest Philosophers to account for this Barrenness and it has made such Impression upon some as to make them turn Atheists and deny Providence And indeed from natural Light there is no reason to be given for it For indeed it is very surprising to consider what ungrateful returns oftentimes the stubborn ground yields to the care of the Husbandman how prolifick it is of its own accord of noxious and useless Herbs and how sparingly it produces those we want what a great part of the World is uninhabitable Deserts and Barren Heaths that are uncapable of any Tillage and bring forth hardly any thing profitable to Mankind Now this which has puzzled the Wit of all the Heathen World is fairly accounted for in Moses his History when he relates this as a punishment for the disobedience of our first Parents I could yet urge farther in behalf of this History of the Fall the slowness of the Education of Children and their natural Imbecillity above all other Creatures the subjection of the Woman to the Man our Antipathy to Viperous Animals if you can have patience to hear them and which can never be accounted for but by the Mosaick History Phil. You need not bespeak my Patience Sir at any time for your Discourse but I think by the Arguments you have brought upon this subject you have proved it strenuously enough And the Night draws on and therefore I must hasten away My hearty thanks Sir for the pains you have taken towards converting a poor Infidel and at your leisure I will take another opportunity to be further Catechized I. Chaos of the Sun and seaven Planets 1 Days work II. Let there be Light c. Gen. 1.3 2 Days work III. And God divided the Waters which were under the firmament c. Gen. 3.7 3. Days work IV. Let the Waters be gathered to gether c. Gen. 1.9 Let the Earth bring forth Grass c. v. 11. 4. Days work V. And God said let there be Lights c. v. 14. VI.
never go down with me For Moses then seems to make the whole World to be stocked with one pair of Animals of each sort or to be sure he makes but one Man and one Woman to People all the Earth which is monstrously absurd For any common Observer of Nature may take notice how careful she is for the propagation of Kinds that she is rather guilty of a superfoetation than a Parsimony this way How many millions of Acorns doth one single Oak produce during the time of its standing any one of which is capable of renewing its Species Not to mention the Polypodium and such other super-abundantly fruitful Plants there is not an Apple or a Pear-Tree but what produces ten thousand times more Kernels than what is absolutely necessary And if the Hypothesis of Mr. Lewenhoeck be true as I never saw any good reason to the contrary that the Foetus is produced from an Animalcule in the sperm of the Male what myriads of these are produced every concoction Therefore whereas Nature is so over and above careful in the propagation of kinds when she is in a manner profuse in the production of Seeds that she may be sure to obviate all manner of Contingencies and Lets which could possibly happen how can we suppose that she acted by such contrary Methods in the first formation of things If there were but two of a sort created upon what miserable uncertainties did the perfection of the Universe depend If any one Male or Female had died before it had produced its kind there had been a species lost for ever Nay a Lion a Bear or a Wolf might have eaten up half a score of some Species for a Breakfast If Adam had been as much a Villain as his Son Cain he might have served his Wife as Cain did his Brother They might each or both have been devoured by some wild Beast they might have fell from a Tree or a Precipice or into a River they might have been Poisoned by some venomous Plant or Animal or lastly Eve might have died in her first Child-Birth Now if any of these things had happened the Deity had been put to the trouble of a new Creation Most certainly therefore since God-Almighty does take such abundant care for the propagation of each single Individuum he would never leave a whole species to such a number of Casualties If such a number of superfluous Animalcules are produced for the formation of one Foetus when nature takes such mighty care to produce with the more certainty one single Effect how can we suppose that she should leave the whole human species liable to be destroyed by so many Accidents This is not at all reasonable Credentius let your Bibles say what they will Besides I cannot imagine how all the World should be Peopled by these two How could their Progeny get into America whose Inhabitants seem coaeval with the Land it self How could the Blacks and Whites have one common Parent They seem to be divers kinds of Men and a White can no more beget a Black than a Bull can beget a Boar. Pray Sir afford us a Cast of your subtilty to evade these Difficulties Cred. I confess Philologus there is in this Argument a Philosophical prettiness and that is all such as will take with some of the Vertuoso part of the World who prefer an Experiment to a Revelation but it does not so with me for I have learned to make my Philosophy strike sail to my Faith and to think that Omnipotency can do that which ordinary nature is at a loss for But as I have observed before you Philosophical Gentlemen do not argue justly when you argue from the ordinary and Conservative God acted by other Methods in the Creation than now to the Creative Power of God that God must have done so and so in the Formation of the World because he does so in the Conservation of it For the Reasons of both these are very different Then Omnipotence chiefly employ'd it self but here is the Province for Wisdom then God acted absolutely by an uncontroulable Power but now he has in some measure given the reins out of his own Hand he has in many degrees made over his Original Power to his Creatures and left it to the Determination of Free-Will and oftentimes to the lets and impediments of what we call Casual Events So that it was very wisely contrived of the Deity after the Alienation of this Original Power to be more abundantly cautious in the Production of Species when the Power of Production was delivered up to other hands Whilst God-Almighty made all things by his Absolute Creative Power his Almighty Fiat could not but produce a necessary Effect but when he delivered this over to second Causes which acted but weakly and sometimes corruptly there was then need that he should make more ample provision for the propagation of Species and for the prevention of miscarriages in their Production when the immediate causes were not Omnipotent To make this plainer yet to you by a familiar Instance You know Sir you have the happiness to be an exquisite Mathematician and particularly you understand the Art of Gunnery He then took an immediate care of the Species so as you can unless some extraordinary chance does intervene hit or come very nigh the mark you shall design by the discharge of a piece of Ordnance Now you being so excellent this way you would not perhaps provide for your self more than one single Ball for this purpose but if you was to order a young Practitioner or one perfectly ignorant of this Art to do this one that knew nothing of the Bore or the length of his Piece or the strength of his Powder one that could make no estimate of the distance or heighth of the object or the renitency of the Medium you must allow him a far larger quantity of Ball and Powder that he by random shots may effect that which you do at once by demonstration The application is easy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is the Mathematician he in the first Creation of the World acted himself in lieu of nature till nature came to be setled and was able to shift for it self his Omnipotent Uncontroulable Power did not withdraw it self but continued with a particular over-ruling Providence to take care of the Species till such time as by their numbers they were able to encounter with extraordinary contingencies And this is evident from the great care God took of the first Pair of Mankind Adam and Eve by placing them before the Fall in a Garden so delicately adorned and afterwards by providing them Coats of Skins Gen. 3.21 Now when God-Almighty designed to take such particular care of the Archetypal Pair he might easily enough secure their productions from all casualties and stock the World as well by one pair as by ten thousand but when he thought fit to withdraw this peculiar Providence and leave Generation to
the Collection of these Wonderful Beings The All or the Universe is what I call God 'T is he in whom we live move and have our being and the writer of your Pentateuch calls him very well the JAM or the Being because nothing else besides him is we are nothing but some little pulvisculi of his immense nature which appear in this or that Figure according to his pleasure who himself is one eternal Proteus exhibiting himself sometimes in this form and sometimes in that Now you may call this great infinite Being either Matter or the Vniverse or God or what you please it is much the same and it is all one whether you say God is Eternal or the World or Vniverse is so Cred. The ridiculousness of making the World God I find this is an Argument which takes mightily with some Atheistical Men of late who rather than own such a God as all Pious and Wise Men in all Ages have Worshipped they will make a God of Stocks and Stones and of all the vilest things in Nature But we will prove that this All or the Vniverse cannot be God from those Affections or Properties which we generally call Attributes which all Men that have believed the Deity have acknowledged to be in him I shall argue first from his Immutability which all Philosophers and Wise Men have attributed to him because a Whimsical Changeable God are terms incompatible the Idea of one of which does perfectly destroy the other Now if we make the World to be God we must make him to vary and change every moment to be turned into this thing and that thing to have this and that quality to be Hot and Cold and Moist and Dry to be High and Low and Little and Great to be a Man and a Horse to be a Tree and a Fish this would be to render God the sport of every Wise Man who must needs laugh at the shiftings of such an odd Capricious Deity For if all things be God what need of this Spectrous Fantastick Exhibition of himself he can make himself known to no body but himself and therefore he had as good keep himself to his own Original Nature Phil. But pray Sir why should it argue more Imperfection and Inconstancy for God thus to change the Representation of his Nature and to exhibit himself in a new manner than for him to Create things a new or to produce them The one is a change made by God as well as the other and then the Whimsy and Caprice will lie hard upon you too Cred. The difference is very wide Sir in these two Cases in the one God changes in the other he is changed It implies no imperfection in the Deity God does not chang himself by new Exhibitions bu his Creatures by new Productions to make a change in his Creatures because there is no real alteration made in him but only a new exercise of his Power which is Perfection and not Imperfection But for God himself to be changed implies weakness for all change is either for better or for worse to change for the better argues the Deity Imperfect before and to change for worse implies both a weakness in his former Knowledge and a Diminution in his Subsequent Power But it is not so when a change is made by the Divine Nature in its Creatures for that is but agreeable to the Excellence of that Admirable Being whose Goodness and Bounty seem necessarily to require it For if there were no change to be made in the Creatures it would hinder that large communication of the Divine Goodness to his Creatures and would hedge in God's Bounty within narrow bounds For if there never was to be but one set of Individuums in the World and they only were to live along to Eternity not the thousandth part of Beings would enjoy that communication of Happiness which now they do So that I conclude a change in the Creature is consonant to the Wisdom and Goodness of God but a change in God himself would be Weakness and Folly Such change of the Deity not voluntary But I will charge this yet homer upon you For when you say that God is changed into this variety of Figures we behold in the World you must either assert that this mutation is caused by the Will of God or by Necessity both which Assertions are equally absurd For to make the World God and to say these alterations are caused voluntarily by him is to make the nature of God to depend upon his Will which all Men who understand what they say must make necessary For who ever said that God was because he would be They rather say God is because he must be there is a necessity that there should be some primary Cause of things which was necessarily of himself and could not but be but all other things depend upon his Will and are because he would have them be And so it is in all the attributes of the Divine Nature God-Almighty is necessarily omnipotent not because he has a mind to be so He is Pure and Just and Merciful because he cannot be otherways But to make the nature of God consist in this series of Voluntary Mutations is to be guilty of the most absurd and manifest contradiction because it is to assert an Effect Prior to its Cause For to say the nature of God is so because he will have it so is to make an Act of Volition which is the Effect of the Divine Nature or Understanding to be the cause of it the act of Willing supposes an understanding nature before and the nature Willed supposes it yet not to be Neither can these changes of the Deity or this successive nature of God which is here asserted be necessary neither Nor necessary There is but one thing in the World of it self necessary and that is God and all other things which are necessary are so because his Will has determined them God necessarily is because he can have no cause but we cannot say so of any thing else We cannot say that such particular Men or Horses or Trees are necessarily because we can assign a cause of their production namely God who might if he pleased not have produced them Nay though 't is only probable that God produced them or if 't were only possible they might not have been produced by him it were argument enough against the necessity of their Being But farther to make all these Beings to be only the necessary Emanations of the Deity is not only to destroy all Religion but even Free-will and common sence For why should I praise God and honour him for this noble Being I enjoy and for the comforts of this Life which according to this opinion he could not but afford me any more than I should thank the Clouds for letting down those Rains which they could not keep up I am as sure that I have a Free will as I am sure of any
she made a Day of the Night whilst all the other Stars did not make a Twilight Cic. de nat Deorum Lib. 2. Aeschylus calls her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Ancient the Governess or Mother of the Stars Aesc 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Apollinaris upon the Psalms calls her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Queen of the nightly Paths And Synesius in his Hymns stiles her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Princess of the Nocturnal Gods Which is agreeable to Horace his Lucidum coeli decus Syderum regina bicornis audi Roma puellas Hor. Ep. 18. Virgil calls her likewise Astrorum Decus The Ornament of the Stars Virg. Aen. 6. Seneca in his Hippolytus terms her obscuri Dea clara mundi The bright Goddess of the obscure World and presently after Clarumque Coeli sydus noctis Decus The bright Star of Heaven and the Grace of the night Statius terms her arcanae moderatrix Cynthia noctis The Moon the Governess of silent Night Theb. Lib. 10. So Manilius Astr Lib. 2. Phoeben imitantem lumina Fratris Semper in proprio regnantem tempore noctis Phoebe that imitates her Brothers light And reigns with her own Scepter of the Night Now if we lay all this together we can hardly suppose any other sense of the Words than that God made this lesser Light the Moon to be to us the Governess of the night and the Chief or Principal of the Stars So that Sir now you see here is no complaint to be made of the narrow spirited doctrine of us Friends to Moses and the Deity 's chewing the Cud upon his own happiness from all Eternity as a Friend of yours unmannerly expresses it O. R. You see now you are not stinted for Worlds for the communication of the Divine Goodness so that you may make half a dozen out of every fixed Star if you think fit Phil. I thank you kindly for your offer but I never design to set up for a World-maker for it is a very difficult Trade and I am sorry there are so many Pretenders to it But by the way I am afraid that this little piece of Criticism of yours will not hold Water I do not pretend to be any great Critick in the Hebrew Tongue but I think I am one good enough to understand that Text you have mentioned The words you have descanted upon are Veeth hacocavim Now I suppose any one that understands Hebrew knows that the particle Eth is a sign of the Accusative Case and therefor Eth hacocavim must follow the Verb jangash made which goes before and not have any Relation to lemem sheleth which is a substantive and signifies to the dominion Now the construction is very natural lemem sheleth halailah for the dominion of the night but the particle Eth makes the word Hacocavim quite of another case so that it must be referred to another part of the sentence which can be no other than the verb made therefore the Stars are here said to be made and not to be governed as you would have them Cred. Well Sir Objection against this Interpretation answered I see you have raised the only Objection which I was aware of And I will endeavour toward off the blow as well as I can It is very true that the particule 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth most commonly signify the person suffering or is a sign of the Accusative Case but not always for it is very often used otherways Sometimes the word Eth is perfectly redundant and signifies just nothing As Jer. 2.37 you shall go meeth-ze from hence which is the same as mizze Sometimes it is joined with the Nominative Case as Jer. 38.4 Let eth-haish that man die Sometimes it has the signification of the Preposition To. As Job 26.4 Eth-mi To whom hast thou uttered words Sometimes it signifies From as Gen. 44.4 They were gone eth-hangir out of or from the City Often-times is signifies with as 2 Sam. 15.11 Eth-Absalom With Absalom there went two hundred men So Is 7.17 With the King of Assyria And Is 23.17 Shall commit fornication eth with all the Kingdoms of the World And in this last sense I take the Particle to be used in the Text. For the government of the night veeth-hacocavim together with the Stars or and the Stars Which answers exactly to the like Construction Neh. 9.33 We have done wickedly veeth-malachenu together with our Kings or We and our Kings have done wickedly This seems to me to be an Interpretation natural enough and I doubt not but ancient Interpreters would have made use of it had they been acquainted with those improvements which have been made by modern Philosophy Phil. I find Credentius you entertain some nostrums in Divinity as well as I do Well! I would not be in your Coat for a good deal if you should vent these notions to the World And yet I could not choose but laugh to see what a pack of Systematical Divines you would have about your Ears They would worry you into as Arrant an Atheist as they do me The Stars no part of the Mosaick Creation Bless us here is Divinity enough to raise up the Ghosts of old Zanchy and John Calvin 'T is well Credentius you live in a Philosophick Age and a time of Free-Thinking or else we should see you in as sorrowful a pickle as the poor Bishop that was a Martyr for asserting the Antipodes Cred. Pray Sir This Interpretation not prejudicial to Religion leave off your Banter we may be pleasant upon a more proper Subject I do assure you Sir I abhor advancing any notion which should do the least disservice to Religion or which should turn to the least diminution of God's Glory but I think this interpretation does neither but rather the contrary if it does not please others I cannot help it and if they will give me better information I am ready with all humbleness and submission to receive it Phil. The next thing which dislikes me in the Mosaical account is this That he makes Light before the Sun which is a monstrous absurdity For the first thing which he makes the Deity do is to give out his Fiat for Light upon this notable contrivance * O. R. p. 68. I 'll warrant you for fear God should be thought to work great part of the Week in the dark But how unintelligible a thing is this Light without a Sun We may as well talk of Colours without Light of Shadow without a Body of an Accident without a Subject of an Effect without a Cause as to make Light in the World without a Sun But to what manner of purpose should it be Certainly God knew how to work without a Candle and there was nothing else made according to this account to see by it Pray Sir unriddle this for me for I assure you this is one of the greatest prejudices I have against the Mosaick account Cred. Light before the Sun is the Clearing