To consider the innumerable number of the Orbs the multitude of the Fixed Stars which may be called so many Suns and to think of their distances magnitude powers orders influences communications effects c. and how many millions of these for ought we know there may be besides those which are within our sight even though helped by the most perfect Telescopes it striketh the Soul with unspeakable admiration at the Power that created and maintaineth all this When we think of the unconceivable rapid orderly perfect constant motions of all these Orbs or at least of the Planets and circumjacent bodies in every Vortex All these thoughts do make the Deity or first Being to be just to the mind as the Sun is to the eye the most Intelligible of Beings but so Incomprehensible that we cannot endure to gaze too much or near upon his glory § 27. Whether the whole world be animated or inanimate Whether the whole have one constitutive Soul or not Whether each Orb have its particular Soul or not are things unrevealed and beyond the Certain knowledge of the natural mind But it is certain that the first Being is not the proper constitutive Form or Soul of the world but yet that he is much more to it than such a Form or Soul even the total perfect first Cause of all that it is and hath and doth He is not the constitutive Form or Soul of the Universe as it seems Cicero with the Academicks and Stoicks thought because then the Creator and the Creature should be the same or else the Creature should be nothing but dead passive matter and then Man himself who knoweth that he hath a Soul would either be God which his experience and the conscience of his frailty forbiddeth him to imagin or else he should be a Creature more noble than the Universe of which he is so small a part which his reason forbiddeth him also to believe But yet that God is much more to the world than a constitutive Soul is undeniable because he is the creating Cause which is more than a constitutive Cause and his continued causation in its preservation is as a continued creation As in Man the Soul is a dependent cause which can give nothing to the Body but what it hath received nor act but as it is acted or impowered by the first efficient And therefore though we call not God the Soul of Man because we would not so dishonour him nor confound the Creator and the creature yet we all know that he is to us much more than the Soul of Souls for in him we live and move and have our being So also it is as to God's causation of the Being Motion and Order of all the world God is incomparably more to it than its Form as being the total first Cause of Form and Matter To be the Creator is more than to be the Soul § 28. The glory of all being action and order in the creatures is no less due to God when he worketh by means than when he worketh by none at all For when no Means is a Means nor hath being aptitude force or efficacy but from himself he onely communicateth praise to his creatures when he thus useth them but giveth not away the least degree of his own interest and honour for the creature is nothing hath nothing and can do nothing but by him It useth no strength or skill or bounty but what it first received from him therefore to use such means can be no dishonour to him unless it be a dishonour to be a communicative Good As it is no dishonour to a Watch-maker to make that Engine which sheweth his skill instead of performing all the motions without that little frame of means But yet no similitude will reach the case because all creatures themselves are but the continued productions of the Creator's will and the virtue which they put forth is nothing but what God putteth into them And he is as neer to the effect when he worketh by means as when without § 29. Those that call these three faculties or Principles in the Divine Essence by the name of three Hypostases or Persons do seem to me to speak less unaptly than the Schools who call Deum seipsum intelligentem the Father and Deum ut a se intellectum the Son and Deum a se amatum the Holy Ghost For that in God which is to be conceived of us by Analogy to our essential faculties is with less impropriety called an Hypostasis or Person than that which is to be conceived by us in Analogy to our actus secundi or receptions § 30. And those that say the first faculty Omnipotency as eminently appearing in the frame of Nature may therefore be said to be specially therein personated or denominated the Creating Person speak nothing which derogateth from the honour of the Deity § 31. Though we cannot trace the vestigia the adumbration or appearances of this Trinity in Vnity through the whole Body of Nature and Morality because of the great debility and narrowness of our Minds Yet is it so apparent on the first and most notable parts of both as may make it exceeding probable that it runneth in perfect method through them all if our understandings were but able to follow and comprehend that wonderfull method in the numerous minute and less discernable particulars I shall now give no other instance than in two of the most noble Creatures The Soul of Man which is made after Gods Image from whence we fetch our first knowledge of him hath in the unity of a living Spirit the three foresaid faculties of vital and executive Power Vnderstanding and Will which are neither three species nor three parts nor three accidents of the Soul But three faculties certainly so far distinct as that the Acts from whence they are denominated really differ and therefore the faculties differ at least in their Virtual Relation to those acts and so in a well-grounded denomination To understand is not to will for I understand that which I have no will to even against my will for the Intellect may be forced Therefore the same Soul hath in it the virtue or power both of understanding and willing and so of executing which are denominated from the different acts which they relate to There is some Reason in the powers virtues or faculties of the real difference in the acts So in the Sun and all the superior Luminaries there is in the unity of their Essence a Trinity of Faculties or Powers 1. Motiva 2 Illuminativa 3. Calefactiva causing motion light and heat The doctrine of Motion is much improved by our late Philosophers when the doctrine of Light and Heat are so also and vindicated from the rank of common accidents and qualities the nature of the Luminaries and of Fire will be also better cleared The Sun is not to these Powers or Acts either a Genus a Totum or a Subjectum
if God brought them forth for his own Perfection it would follow that he was before imperfect and consequently not God and that his Perfections are mutable and perishing Therefore at least some other cause of these must be found out And as for the similitudes in the objection I answer 1. That the fructifying of a Tree is an act of Generation and the ends of it are partly the use for food to superiour sensitive Creatures especially man and partly the propagation of its species because it is mortall Fructification is indeed its perfection but that is because it is not made for it self but for another Sic vos non vobis may be written upon all But God is neither mortall needing a propagation of the species nor is he subservient to any other and finally for its use And as for the Soul it made not the matter of its own body but found it made though in the formation of it it might be so efficient as domicilium sibi fabricare But God made all matter of nothing and gave the World whatsoever it is or hath And therefore was Perfect himself before For an imperfect being could never have been the cause of such a frame Therefore he needed no domicilium for himself nor as an imperfect Part a form to concurr to the constitution of a whole But he is the efficient dirigent and final cause of the World and all things but not the constituent or essential for then the Creature and Creator were all one and God debased and the Creature deified But he is to them a supra-essential cause even more than a form and soul while he is a total efficient of all 3. If all that is in the Objection had been proved it would not at all shake the main design of my present discourse which is to prove that God is our Grand Benefactor and Chief Good and that he is mans ultimate end For if the World were his Body and he both its Efficient and its Soul he would be the cause of all its Good and the Cause would be more excellent than the Effect And if our Souls that never made the matter of our Bodies are yet the noblest part of us and far more excellent than the Body much more would God that made or caused all the Matter and Order in the World be more excellent than that World which he effected And as the Soul is not for the Body as its ultimate end though it be the Life of the Body and its great Benefactor but the Body is finally more for the Soul though the Soul need not the Body so much as the Body needeth the Soul and as the Horse is finally for the Rider and not the Rider for the Horse though the Horse needeth his Master more than the Master doth the Horse for the Horses life is preserved by the Master when the Master is but accommodated in his Journey by his Horse Even so though the World need God and he needeth not the World and God giveth being and life to the World which can give nothing at all to him yet the World is finally for God and not God for the World The noblest and first Being is still the End And the generated part of the World which is not formally eternal but doth oriri interire is it that our dispute doth most concern which the Objection doth no whit invalidate § 5. The same Will of God which was the free efficient is the End of all his Works ad extra Gods Essence hath no Efficient or final Cause but is the efficient and final cause of all things else They proceeded from his Power his Wisdom and his good-will and they bear the Image of his Power Wisdom and Good-will and he loveth his own Image in them and loveth them as they bear his Image and loveth his Image for Himself So that the act of his Love to Himself is necessary though voluntary and so is the act of his Love to his Image and to all the Goodness of the Creature while it is such But he freely and not necessarily made and continueth the Creature in his Image and needeth not the Glass or Image being self-sufficient so that his Creature is the mediate Object his Image on the Creature is the ultimate created Object his own perfections to which that Image relateth is the objectum simpliciter ultimatum his complacency or love is the Actus ultimus and that very act is the object of his precedent act of Creation or volition of the Creatures But all this is spoken according to the narrow imperfect capacity of man who conceiveth of God as having a prius posterius in his acts which is but respectively and denominatively from the order of the objects In short Gods free-will is the Beginning of his works ad extra and the complacency of that will in his works as Good in relation to his own perfections is the END And therefore he is said to Rest when he saw that all his works were Good § 6. Whatsoever is the fullest expression and Glorifying demonstration of God in the Creature must needs be the chief created excellency Because he loveth Himself first and the Creature for Himself And seeing the Creature hath all from him which is good and amiable in it it must needs follow that those parts are most amiable and best which have most of the impression of the Creators excellencies on them Not that he hath greater Perfections to imprint on one Creature than another but the impression of those Perfections is much greater on one than on another § 7. The Happier therefore God will make any Creature the more will be communicate to it of the Image and demonstration of his own goodness and so will both love it the more for his own Image and cause it to love him the more which is the chief part of his Image § 8. The Goodness of God is conceived of by our narrow mindes in three notions as it were in three degrees of altitude The Highest is The infinite perfections of his Essence as such The second is The infinite perfection of his Will as such which is called His Holiness and the Fountain of Morality The third is that one part of his Wills perfection which is his Benignity to his Creatures which we call his Goodness in a lower notion as relative to our selves because he is inclined by it to Do us good This is his Goodness in condescention § 9. Though all this is but one in God yet because our mindes are fain to receive it as in several parts or notions we may therefore not only distinguish them but compare them as the Objects of our Love § 10. Man usually beginneth at the lowest and loveth God first for his Benignity and Love to us before he riseth to the higher acts And this is not an irregular motion of a lapsed Soul in its return to God so be it we make haste in our
second Cause 2. That the Somatists themselves say that in the Generation of Plants and Animals which they suppose to be totally Corporeal there is not the least degree of substance produced de novo and therefore there is none but what was totally of God and the Parents do but cause instrumentally the uniting of matter prae-existent Therefore if in the Generating of Man the Parents do but instrumentally cause the uniting of substance which is totally from God though not prae-existent it little differenceth the Case as to the consequents 3. Especially considering that what God doth he doth by an establisht Law of Nature As in his making of the World he made the Sun a Causa Vniversalis constantly to send forth the emanation of Light Heat and moving force upon passive matter and thereby to produce effects diversifyed by the preparations and reception of that matter as to soften Wax to harden Clay to make a Dunghill stink and a Rose smell sweet to produce a poysonous and a wholsom Plant a Nightingale and a Toad c. and this without any dishonour to the Sun So if God the Father of Spirits the Central efficient of Souls have made it the original Law of Nature that he will accordingly afford his communicative Influx and that in Humane Generations such and such Preparations of matter shall be as Receptive of his emanations for such and such Forms or spiritual substances and that he will be herein but an Vniversal Cause of Souls as Souls and not of Souls as clean or unclean and that this shall depend upon the preparation of the Recipient whether it be the Body or a sensitive foregoing Principle still keeping at his pleasure as a Voluntary Agent the suspension or dispose of the effect this would make no great alteration neither as to the point of original sin nor any other weighty consequent OBJECTION XIII OMne quod oritur interit That which is not eternal as to past duration is not eternal as to future duration But the Soul is not eternal as to past duration Ergo. Answ I confess this argument will prove that the Soul is not mortal ex necessitate suae naturae without dependance on a Voluntary preserver And therefore Cicero after most other Philosophers who useth the Major for a contrary Conclusion mistook in this that he thought the Soul was as natural an Emanation from God as the beams or light is from the Sun and therefore that it was naturally eternall both à parte ante à parte post which made Arnobius and other Ancients argue as much against the Platonists Immortality of the Soul as against the Epicureans Mortality so that as I said before one would think that they were heretical in this point that doth not make them well But it is only this natural Eternity which they confute And when the Philosophers say that Omne quod oritur interit they can mean or at least prove no more but this that it is not Everlasting ex necessitate naturae But yet 1. It may be in its nature fitted to be perpetual 2. And by the will of the Creator made perpetual Every Creature did oriri de novo and yet every one doth not interire OBJECTION XIV AMong all your Arguments for the Souls Immortality there are none but Morall ones Answ Morality is grown so contemptible a thing with some debauched persons that a very argument is invalidated by them or contemned if they can but call it Moral But what is Morality but the modality of Naturals And the same argument may be Natural and Moral Indeed we call that a Causa Moralis oft-times which doth not necessitate the effect And yet sometimes even moral Causes do infalibly and certainly produce the effect But causation and argumentation are different things and so is an effect and a Logical consequence Will you call the consequents of Gods own Wisdom Justice Veracity Goodness c. uncertain as coming from a Morali Cause The Soul is an Intellectual free agent and adapted to Moral operations And this is its excellency and perfection and no disparagement to it at all And if you will better read them over you will finde that my Arguments are both Physical and Moral For I argue from the Acts or operations of the Soul to its Powers and Nature And from its Acts and Nature to its ends with many such like which are as truly Physical media as if I argued from the nature of Fire and Earth that one if not hindered will ascend and the other descend And other men have given you other Arguments in their Physicks and Metaphysicks OBJECTION XV. YOu seem to confess that you cannot prove the endless duration of the Soul by any Argument from Nature alone But only that it shall live another Life which you call a Life of Retribution Answ I told you that a great probability of it I thus prove God hath made the Soul of a Nature not corruptible but apt to perpetual duration Ergo he thereby declareth his will that he intendeth it for perpetual duration because he maketh nothing in vain either for substance or quality It may be some other will think that this argument will inferre not only a probability but a certainty And if you go back to your objection of Materiality I now only adde that Aristotle and his followers who think that the Heavens are corporeal yet think that they are a quinta essentia and simple and incorruptible and therefore that they shall certainly be everlasting And he taketh the the souls of Bruits to be analogous to the matter of the Starrs and so to be of that everlasting quintessence And can you in reason say less of Rational Souls 2. It is sufficient that I prove by natural evidence a Life of Retribution after this which shall fully make the miserable ungodly ones repent tormentingly of their sin and fill the righteous with such Joyes as shall fully recompense all their labour and suffering in a holy life And that I moreover prove that duration of this life and all the rest by supernatural evidence OBJECTION XVI BOth Soul and Body are like a Candle in fluxu continuo and we have not the same substance this Week or Year as we had the last there being a continual consumption or transition and accretion Ergo being not the same we are uncapable of a Life of future Retribution Will you reward and punish the man that is or the man that was Answ It is a foolish thing to carry great and certain Truths into the dark and to argue against them à minus notis from meer uncertainties As to your simile I confess that the Oyl of your Candle is still wasting so is the wick but not that new is added to make it another thing unless it be a Lamp I confess that the lucid fume which we call the flame is still passing away But whether the fiery Principle in its essence not visible but only in its
be more evident to reason than that something must be Eternal without beginning nothing being more evident than that Nothing hath no power no action no effects and so can make nothing And therefore if ever there had been a time when Nothing was Nothing could ever have been imagine that there were Nothing now and it is certain there never would be any thing Obj. Something may oriri de novo without any Cause as well as God be eternally without any Cause Answ It s impossible For he that is eternally hath all perfection eternally in himself and needeth no Cause being still in being and being the Cause of Causes But Nothing hath no perfection or being and therefore needeth an Omnipotent Cause to give it a being Obj. If the world may be created of nothing materially it may be what it is without any thing efficiently Answ Impossible Pre-existent matter is not necessary to the first created matter for Matter may be caused of Nothing by an Omnipotent Efficient as well as the wonderful frame of all things be made out of Matter But without an Efficient no Being can arise de novo So that it is most evident seeing any thing now is there hath been something eternally And if something it must needs be the first Cause which is chief in excellency and first in order of production and therefore of existence § 10. The first Cause must needs be independent in being perfections and operations and so be absolutely self-sufficient For it were not the first if there were any before it and being caused by nothing else it was eternally sufficient in and for it self otherwise that which it were beholden to would have the place of a Cause to it And if it caused not all or needed the help of any other it is not absolutely the first Cause to all others nor perfect in it self That which could be eternally without a cause and it self cause all things is self-sufficient and independent § 11. The first Cause must needs be free from all imperfection of Corporeity or Materiality Composition Passibility corruptibility Mutability and Mortality and all other imperfections of defendent beings There is such a thing as a Living Principle and a pure spiritual Nature in the created world and the Maker of it must be life and Spirit in a higher purer sense than it and therefore must be free from all its imperfections and having no cause hath no defect and having no beginning can have no end All this Reason doth certainly apprehend § 12. This perfect first Cause must be Immense or Infinite in Being Not by corporeal extension as if God as a Body were in a place and being more extensive than all place were called Immense But in the perfect Essence of an eternall Life and Spirit and Mind he is every where without Locality and all things live and move and be in him The thought of space is but a Metaphorical help to our conception of his Immensity § 13. Therefore he must needs be Omnipresent Not by extension quantitative but in a sort transcendent and more excellent according to the transcendent way of his Existence For if we must have conceived of him as no better than a Body and of Magnitude as an Excellency we might well have concluded that he hath made nothing greater than himself Nemo dat quod non habet and therefore he must be more extensive than all the world and consequently absent from no part of it Much more when his Being which surpasseth corporeity directeth us to acknowledge a more noble kind of Omnipresence than Extensive § 14. Therefore is he Incomprehensible as to humane understanding or any other created intellect Of our own incomprehension experience sufficiently convinceth us here and Reason evinceth the same of all created Intellects for the less cannot comprehend the greater and between finite and infinite there is no proportion We know nothing purely-intelligible so easily and certainly as that God is But there is nothing that we are so far from comprehending As we see nothing more easily and certainly than the Sun which yet we see not with a comprehensive but a partial and defective sight § 15. This Infinite Being can be but One. For if there were many they could not be Infinite and so indeed there would be none nor would there be any one first Cause of all things For if one caused one part of the World and another another part no one were the first Cause of all And if they joyned in causing all together they would all conjunctly make but one first cause and each one several be but part of the Cause If there be no one that is sufficient to make and govern all the World there is no perfect Being nor no God but the effect sheweth the sufficiency and the unity of the World the Orbs being one frame the unity of the first cause Perfection consisteth more in the unity of one all sufficient Being than in a voluntary concurrence of many Beings The most learned Heathens who thought there were many to be named Gods did mean but subordinate particular Gods that were under the one universal God whom the Stoicks and Academicks took to be the universal Soul and the subordinate Gods the Souls of the particular Orbs and Planets § 16. The Power of this God must needs be Omnipotency He that hath given so great Power to the creatures as is exercised by them especially the Sun and fixed Stars in their several Vortices or Orbs and he that could make such a World of nothing and uphold the being and maintain the order and cause and continue the rapid motions of all the Vortices or Orbs which are to us innumerable and each of incomprehensible excellency and magnitude is certainly to be accounted no less than Omnipotent By his Omnipotency I mean that by which in it self considered in primo instanti he can do all things possible that is which belong not to Impotency but to Power And by which in secundo instanti he can do all things which his Infinite Wisdom judgeth congruous and meet to be done And in tertio instanti can do all that he will do and are pleasing to him § 17. The understanding of the first Cause must needs be Omniscient and infinite Wisdom 1. He that hath given so much wisdom to such a Worm as Man must have more than all the men in the World Whatever knowledge is in the whole Creation being given by Him doth prove that formally or eminently he hath more Were it all contracted into one Intelligence it must be less than His that caused it He hath not given more wisdom than he had to give nor so much as he had or is himself For if he should make any thing equal to Himself there would be two Infinites and there would be a perfect self-sufficient being which yet had lately no sufficiency or being and there would be a being independent in facto
esse which was dependent in fieri which are Contradictions 2. The effects in the admirable frame and nature and motions of the Creation declare that the Creator is infinitely wise The smallest insect is so curiously made and so admirably fitted and instructed to its proper end and uses The smallest Plants in wonderfull variety of shapes and colours and smells and qualities uses and operations and beautifull flowers so marvellously constituted and animated by an unseen form and propagated by unsearchable seminal vertue The smallest Birds and Beasts and creeping things so adorned in their kinds and so admirably furnished for their proper ends especially the propagation of their species in love and sagacity and diligence to their young by instinct equaling in those particulars the reasonable creature The admirable composure of all the parts of the body of Man and of the vilest Beast and Vermine The quality and operation of all the Organs humours and spirits The operations of the Minde of man and the constitution of Societies and over-ruling all the matters of the World with innumerable instances in the creature do all concurr to proclaim that man as mad as madness can possibly make him in that particular who thinketh that any lower cause than incomprehensible wisdom did principally produce all this And that by any bruitish or natural motion or confluence of Atomes or any other matter it could be thus ordered continued and maintained without the infinite wisdome and power of a first Cause superiour to meer natural matter and motion What then should we say if we had a sight into the inwards of all the Earth of the nature and cause of Minerals and of the forms of all things If we saw the reason of the motions of the Seas and all other appearances of Nature which are now beyond our reach Yea if we had a sight of all the Orbs both fixed Starrs and Planets and of their matter and form and order and relation to each other and their communications and influences on each other and the cause of all their wonderous motions If we saw not only the nature of the Elements especially the active Element Fire but also the constitution magnitude and use of all those thousand Suns and lesser Worlds which constitute the universal World And if they be inhabited if we knew the Inhabitants of each Did we know all the Intelligences blessed Angels and holy Spirits which possess the nobler parts of Nature and the unhappy degenerate Spirits that have departed from light and joy into darkness and horrour by departing from God yea if we could see all these comprehensively at one view what thoughts should we have of the wisdom of the Creator And what should we think of the Atheist that denyeth it We should think Bedlam too honourable a place for that man that could believe or durst say that any accidental motion of subtile matter or fortuitous concourse of Atomes or any thing below a Wisdom and Power infinitely transcending all that with Man is called by that name was the first Cause and is the chief continuer of such an incomprehensible frame § 18. The first Cause must needs be infinitely Good By Goodness I mean all essential Excellency which is known to us by its fruits and appearances in the Creature which as it hath a Goodness natural and moral so is it the Index of that transcendent Goodness which is the first cause of both This goodness is incomparably beyond that which consisteth in a usefulness to the creatures good or Goodness of Benignity as relative to Man And it is known better by the meer name as expressing that which Nature hath an intrinsick sense and notion of than by definitions As sensible qualities light colour sound odour sweet bitter c. are known by the name best which lead to the sensitive memory which informeth the Intellect what they are As the mention of things sensible entereth the definition of sense and the mention of sense doth enter the definition of things sensible and yet the object is in order of nature before the act And as Truth must enter the definition of Intellection and Intellection the definition of Truth and yet Truth is in order before Intellection and contemporary with the Intellect so is it between Goodness and the Will But if we speak of uncreated Good and of a created Will then Good is infinitely antecedent to that Will But the Will which is created hath a nature suited to it and so the notion of Excellency and Goodness is naturally in our estimative faculty and the relish of it or complacency in it is naturally in the Will so far as it is not corrupted and depraved As if I knew a man that had the wisdom and virtue of an Angel my estimation calleth him Excellent and Good and my Will doth complacentially cleave to him though I should never look to be the better for him my self or if I onely heard of him and never saw him or were personally beholden to him That God is thus infinitely Excellent and Good the Goodness of his Creatures proveth for all the goodness that is in Men and Angels Earth and Heaven proceedeth from him If there be any Natural Goodness in the whole Creation there must be more in the Creator If there be any Moral Goodness in Men and Angels there must be more in eminency in him For he can make nothing better than himself nor give to creatures what he hath not § 19. The Goodness of the first Being consisting in this infinite Perfection or Excellency containeth his Happiness his Holiness and his Love or Benignity § 20. The HAPPINESS of the first Being consisteth 1. In his BEING HIMSELF 2. In his KNOWING HIMSELF 3. In his LOVING and ENJOYING HIMSELF The most perfect Being must needs be the most Happy and that in Being what he is his own Perfection being his Happiness And as Knowledge in the Creature is both his Perfection and Delight so the transcendent Omniscience of the Creator must needs be both part of his Perfection as distinguished by our narrow minds and such felicity as may be called Eminently his Delight though what God's Delight is we know not formally And as Love or Complacency is the perfective operation of the Will and so of the Humane Nature in Man and is his highest final and enjoying acts of which all Goodness is the object so there must be something in the Perfection of the first Cause though not formally the same with Love in Man yet eminently so called as knowable to us by no other name And this complacency must needs be principally in Himself because He himself is the Infinite and onely Primitive Good and as there was primitively no Good but Himself to Love so now there is no Good but derived from Him and dependent on Him And as his Creature of which anon is obliged to love Him most so he must needs be most amiable to Himself Self-love and self-esteem in
It is not one part of the Sun that moveth and another which illuminateth and another which heateth But the whole Sun if it be wholly Fire or aethereal matter doth move the whole illuminateth and the whole doth heat And Motion Light and Heat are not Qualities inherent in it But Motion Illumination and Calefaction are Acts flowing immediately from its Essence as containing the faculties or powers of such acts He that could write a perfect method of Physicks and Morality would shew us Trinity in Unity through all its parts from first to last But as the Veins Arteries and Nerves the Vessels of the Natural Vital and Animal humours and spirits are easily discernable in their trunks and greater branches but not so when they are minute and multiplied into thousands so is it in this Method But I must desire the Reader to observe that though I here explain this Trinity of Active Principles in the Divine Essence which is so evident to Natural Reason it self as to be past all controversie Yet whether indeed the Trinity of Hypostases or Persons which is part of the Christian Faith be not somewhat distinct from this is a question which here I am not to meddle with till I come to the second part of the Treatise Nor is it my purpose to deny it but only to prepare for the better understanding of it Of which more shall there afterward be said § 32. And thus all Creatures and especially our selves declare that there is a first Being and Cause of them all who is a Substance Life a Spirit or Minde an Active Power Vnderstanding and Will perfect eternall independent and self-sufficient not compounded not passible not mutable corruptible or mortall Immense Omnipresent Incomprehensible only One Omnipotent Omniscient and most Good most Happy in Being Himself in Knowing himself and enjoying him most Holy transcending all the Creatures of a Perfect Will the Fountain of all Morall Good Love or Benigne having a Trinity of essential Transcendent Principles in unity of Essence which have made their adumbration or appearance on the World whereof though he be not the constitutive form or Soul He is to it much more the first Efficient Dirigent and ultimate final Cause of all That is THERE IS A GOD. CHAP. VI. Of GOD as RELATED to his Creatures especially to Man And I. as his OWNER PAssing by all that is doubtfull and controverted among men truly Rational and taking before me only that which is certain undenyable and clear and wherein my own Soul is past all doubt I shall proceed in the same method secundum ordinem cognoscendi non essendi The word GOD doth not only signifie all that I have been proving viz. The perfect nature of the first Cause but also his Relations to us his Creatures And therefore till I have opened and proved those Relations I have done but part of my work to prove that THERE IS A GOD. § 1. GOD having produced Man and all the World by his Power Vnderstanding and Will is by immediate resultancy Related to him as his CREATOR Though he made his Body of pre-existent Matter yet was that Matter made of nothing and therefore God is properly Mans CREATOR and not his Fabricator only And a CREATURE is a Relation which inferreth the Correlate a CREATOR as a Son doth a Father This therefore is Gods first grand Relation unto Man which hath no cause to produce it but his actual Creation which is its fundamentum § 2. This Grand prime Relation inferreth a Trinity of Grand Relations viz. That God is our OWNER our RVLER and our BENEFACTOR of which we are now to speak in order That these Three are justly distinguished from each other is past doubt to all that understand what is meant by the terms An Owner as such is not a Ruler or Benefactor a Ruler as such is not an Owner or a Benefactor A Benefactor as such is neither an Owner nor a Ruler And the enumeration is sufficient All humane affairs or actions of converse and society belong to Man in one of these three Relations or such as are subordinate to them and meer dependents on them or compounded of them They are in some respect the Genera and in some as it were the Elements of all other Relations And from the manner of men they are applyed to God with as much propriety of speech as any terms that man can use concerning him And he that could draw a true scheme or method of the Body of Morality or Theology for all is one with me would reduce all the dealings of God with Man which are subsequent to the fundamental Act of Creation to these three Relations and accordingly distinguish of them all Yet in the Mixt acts as most are such distinguishing only of the compounding Elements I mean the interest of these three Relations as making up the several acts § 3. A full Owner or Proprietor is called Dominus in the strictest sense and is one that hath a Jus possidendi disponendi utendi a right of having or possessing disposing and using without any copartner or superior Proprietor to restrain him The meaning is better known by the bare terms of denomination through common use than by definition We know what it meaneth when a man saith of any thing It is mine own There are defective half-proprieties of Co-partners and subordinate Proprietors which belong not to our present case The word Dominus Dominuim is sometime taken laxely as comprehending both Propriety and Rule and sometime improperly for Government or Command it self But among Lawyers it is most commonly taken properly and strictly for an OWNER as such But lest any be contentious about the use of the word I here put instead of it the word Owner and Proprietor as being more free from ambiguity § 4. GOD is jure Creationis Conservationis the most absolute Owner or Proprietor of Man and the whole Creation It is not possible that there should be a more full and certain title to propriety than Creation and total conservation is He that giveth the World all its Being and that of nothing and continueth that being and was beholden to no pre-existent matter nor to any co-ordinate concause nor dependent on any superiour cause in his causation but is himself the first independent efficient total cause of being and well-being and all the means thereto must needs be the absolute Owner of all without the least limitation or exception It is not the supereminency of Gods nature excelling all created beings that is the foundation of this his Propriety in the creature For Excellency is no title to Propriety And yet he that is unicus in capacitate possidendi that is so transcendently excellent as to have no Copartner in a claim might by Occupation be sole Proprietor in that kinde of Propriety secundum quid which Man is capable of Because there is no other whom he can be said to wrong But GOD hath a
to assure us that he will never create any thing hereafter Cannot a workman look on his house and see that it is well done and say I have finished it without obliging him never to build another nor to make any reparations of that as there is cause May not God create a new Heaven and Earth may he not create a new Star or a new Plant or Animal if he please without the breaking of any word that he hath spoken For my part I never saw a word which I could discern to have any such signification or importance The argument from Genes 1. is no better than theirs who from Christ's consummatum est do gather that his death and burial which followed that word were no part of his satisfactory meritorious humiliation On the contrary there have been both Philosophers and Divines who have thought that God doth in omni instanti properly create all things which he is said to conserve of whom the one part do mean only that the being of the creatures is as dependant on his continual causation as the life of the branches is on the tree but that the same substance is continued and not another daily made But there are others who think that all creatures who are in fluxu continuo not per locomotum but ab entitate ad nihilum and that they are all but a continual emanation from God which as it passeth from him tendeth to nothing and new emanations do still make such a supply as that the things may be called the same as a River whose waters pass in the same Channel As they think the beams or light of the Sun doth in omni instanti oriri festinare ad nihilum the stream being still supplied with new emanations Were it not for the overthrow throw of individuation personality rewards and punishments that hence seemeth to follow this opinion would seem more plausible than theirs who groundlesly prohibit God from causing any more new beings But though no doubt there is unto all beings a continual emanation or influx from God which is a continued causation it may be either conservative of the being first caused or else restorative of a being continually in decay as he please for both ways are possible to him as implying no contradiction though both cannot be about one and the same being in the same respect and at the same time And our sense and reason tell us that the conservative influx is his usual way 2. But it is commonly and not without reason supposed that generation produceth things de novo in another sense not absolutely as creation doth but secundum quid by exalting the seminal virtue into act and into perfection New individuals are not made of new matter now created but the corporeal part is only pre-existent matter ordered compounded and contempered and the incorporeal part is both quoad materiam suam metaphysicam formam vel naturam specificam the exaltation and expurgency of that into full and perfect existence which did before exist in semine virtuoso When God had newly created the first man and woman he created in them a propagating virtue and fecundity this was as it were semen seminis by this they do first generare semen separabile which suppositis supponendis hath a fecundity fit to produce a new suppositum vel personam and may be called a person seminally or virtually but not actually formally and properly and so this person hath power to produce another and that another in the same way And note that the same creating word which said Let there be light and Let us make man did say also to man as well as to other creatures Increase and multiply not create new souls or bodies but by generation Increase and multiply which is the bringing of many persons out of two and so on as out of a seminal pre-existence or virtual into actual formal existence He knoweth not the mysteriousness of this wonderful work of God nor the ignorance of mankind who knoweth not that all generation of man bruits or plants hath much that is to us unsearchable And they that think it a dishonour to a Philosopher not to undertake or pretend to render the just causes of this and all other the Phaenomena in nature do but say I will hide the dishonour of my ignorance by denying it that is by telling men that I am ignorant of my ignorance and by aggravating it by this increase and the addition of pride presumption and falsity This much is certain 1. That whatsoever distinct parts do constitute individuals which are themselves of several natures so many several natures in the world we may confidently assert though we understand not whether they all exist separatedly or are found only in conjunction with others 2. We certainly find in the world 1. An intelligent nature 2. A sensitive nature 3. A fiery active vegetative nature 4. A passive matter which receiveth the influx of active natures which is distributed into air and water and earth 3. The most active nature is most communicative of it self in the way of its proper operations 4. We certainly perceive that the Sun and fiery nature are active upon the air water and earth which are the passive Elements And by this activity in a threefold influx Motion Light and Heat do cause the sensible alterations which are made below and so that it is as a kind of life or general form or soul to the passive matter 5. We also find that Motion Light and Heat as such are all different totâ specie from sensation and therefore as such are not the adequate causes of it And also that there is a sensitive nature in every animal besides the vegetative 6. Whether the vegetative nature be any other than the fiery or solar is to man uncertain But it is most probable that it is the same nature though it always work not to actual vegetation for want of prepared matter But that the Sun and fiery nature is eminenter vegetativè and therefore that vegetation is not above the nature of fire or the Sun and so may be an effect of it 7. In the production of vegetatives by generation it is evident that as the fiery active nature is the nearest cause efficient and the passive is the matter and recipient So that this igneous nature generateth as in three distinguished subjects three several ways 1. As in Parentibus semine into which God ab origine in the creation hath put not only a spark of the active virtucus fiery nature in general but also a certain special nature differencing one creature from another 2. The Sun and superiour globes of the fiery nature which cast a paternal though but universal influx upon the foresaid semen 3. The calor naturalis telluris which may be called as Dr. Gilbert and others do its soul or form which is to the seed as the anima matris is to the infant And all these three the
neerest to GOD that we have any knowledge of And therefore Reason will not teach us to look to any intermediate universal or superiour Cause because there is no created superiour Nature to the Intellectual And it 's absurd to goe to the Inferior to be the Cause of the superior If any will needs think that under God there is some Vniversal Intellect not of the whole Universe for that 's plainly improbable but of our Systeme or Vortex they must take it to be some Angelical Intelligence as Aristotle or the Sun No man can prove either of these to have any such office And for the Sun it is certain that it is not possible unless it self be an Intelligence And though to humane Reason it seem very likely that so glorious a corporeal Nature as the Sun should not be destitute of as noble a form as a lump of Clay a humane body doth possess that so there may be a proportion in Gods works between the nobility of matter and form yet all this to man is utterly uncertain nor doth any man know whether the Luminaries are animated with either sentient or intelligent Souls or not He that most confidently asserteth either and scorneth the Contradicter doth but tell you that he is ignorant of his ignorance But if it should prove true as many of the Fathers thought and Mammertus ubi supra asserteth that Angels have fiery Bodies which they animate and so that the Sun is animated with an Intelligence it would not follow that as fiery or as sensitive but only as intellective it were a subordinate universal Cause of compleat humane Generations and that Sol Homo generant hominem save only quoad Corpus which is but secundum quid But that God is the Vniversal Cause is unquestionable whether there be any subordinate or not 16. And here it is no wonder if the doubts arise which were in the cases of the forementioned Generations Whether God as the universal cause produce new-metaphysical matter for new forms Whether millions of Souls since generated have not more such metaphysical matter than the soul of Adam and Eve alone How Souls may be said to have more or less such matter or substance Whether he educe all Souls è virtute foecunditate primarum by giving them a power without any division or diminution of themselves to bring forth others by multiplication and so cause his Creature to participate of his own foecundity or power of causing Entities c. But such difficulties as these which arise not from uncertainties in Theology but are the meer consequents of the imperfection of humane Intellects and the remoteness depth and unrevealedness of these mysterious works of God should turn no man from the holding of other plain revealed truths As that man generateth man that God is the chief specifying Cause by his first making of man and giving him the power and blessing of propagation which he still maintaineth and with which he doth concurre That Man is the second specifying Cause in the exercise of that power of Generation which God gave him That God is the chief universal Cause and to the production of an Intellectual nature as such doth unspeakably more than man That the mother as cherishing the semen utriusque Parentis is the maternal universal Cause c. We know not fully how it is that one Light causeth a thousand without division or diminution of it self and what it is that is caused de novo It is easie to say that it is but the motion of one part of the atomes or materia subtilis moving another which was all pre-existent But few men that can see through a smoke or dust of atomes will believe that the Sun and other fiery bodies which shew themselves so wonderfully to us by Motion Light and Heat have no peculiar Nature Power or Virtues to cause all this but meer magnitude and figure And that those Corpuscles which have so many hundred degrees of magnitude and figures should not fall into as many hundred such Bodies as we call Elements rather than into two or four Suppose which we may ad verum exquirendum that there were no more Fire in the Universe than one Candle It having the same nature as now it hath that Candle would turn Cities and all combustible matter into Fire But of the Generation of man quoad animam I referre the Reader to Sennertus his Hypomnemata to omit all others And now I would know what there is in Generation that should be against the Immortality of the Soul will you say it is because the Soul hath a Beginning I have answered before that so have all Creatures Is it because it proveth the Soul material 1. If it did I have shewed that you your selves hold a perpetuity of matter 2. But it doth not so If you say that Incorporeal Spirits generate not I answer That is but a naked unproved assertion If you say that Angels do not I answer that 1. that is not because they are unable or unapt if God thought it fittest for them nor 2. can any man prove de facto whether they do or not Christ saith They marry not but he saith not whether they at all propagate their species or not I know the negative is taken for certain and I say not that it is not true but that it is not certain not at all known and therefore an unfit supposition to argue from against the Immortality of the Soul And I must confess that for my part as I have oft read Formae se multiplicant and that the Fire can more multiply or encrease it self than Earth and as I know that the more noble any Nature is the more like it is to God and therefore more potent more active more fecund and productive so I should farr rather think that the Angelical Nature can propagate it self than the Humane if God had not told me the later and said nothing pro or contra of the former And therefore make no doubt but if it do not which no man knoweth it is not because things material are more able but for other reasons unknown to us Whether because God will have this lower World to be the Nidus vel Matrix Coelorum and the Seminary of Heaven and all multiplication to be here or what it is we know not But if it be on the other side concluded that the whole substance of a Soul doth proceed directly and immediately from God it doth make no great alteration in this case or any of the coincident cases about humane propagation if you consider 1. That it is impossible that there should be any substance which is not totally from God either immediately or mediately And that what is said to be mediately from Him hath in it as much of his Causation as if there were no medium For God is not a partial Cause but a total in suo genere and he is as neer to the effect as if there were no
sort we do believe to keep drowsie hearts awaken 8. The way of taking Religion upon trust without rising up to make it our own hath filled the Church so full of Hypocrites who have no better than an humane Faith that thereby the complexion of it is much changed from its primitive beauty And thousands do perish by felf-deceit And though some of their Gifts be serviceable to the Gospel others of them do more effectually serve the Devil against the Cause and Servants of Christ than they could have done if they were professed Infidels 9. It makes me blush and stirrs my Indignation to read and hear abundance of hot and vehement Disputes and tedious or Critical discourses about many small lesse needfull things by those men that never studyed the Foundation nor can with Sense and Reason defend their Christianity against an Infidel Such preposterous methods are perverse and nauseous 10. I am much afraid lest many of those ignorant zealous Christians who now turn to that Sectary whom they cannot answer would turn to the Infidel at last when they finde themselves unable to confute them through their own insufficiency and ungroundednesse in the Truth 11. But if they do not Apostatize what a shame will it be to the Church of God to have our Religion thus betrayed by such as are not able to defend it And how many others may it tempt to Infidelity to hear an Ignorant Christian baffled 12. I am too sure that too many Teachers that should be Champions for the Truth are lamentably unfurnished for such a Conflict by neglecting the study of the Foundation and bestowing all their thoughts on the Superstructure 13. I know that it is Gods method to cause the growth of Faith at the root in proportion to its growth in tallnesse and in fruit It is his mercifull Providence to keep those whose Faith hath weaker roots from the strong temptations which others undergoe As the Plant that is little doth bear but little of the stroke of the windes which else would quickly overturn it but the root growing downward as the top groweth upward the radication and the assaults are still proportioned So Faith must grow equally in its Roots and Branches while we live Had I felt as strong assaults against my Faith while I was young as I have done since I am not sure it would have scap'd an overthrow 14. I have in the anatomizing of the Controversies which most hazard the Church of Christ found so much latent Atheisme and Infidelity that I think among many that do not observe it the true root of all the difference is Whether there be a God and a Life to come And whether the Scriptures be true And I think that A sound agreement in these would do more to the ending of such Controversies and to the healing of our Wounds than any disputing of the Controverted points 15. We have had hot and scandalous Disputes among Christians de Resolutione Fidei each Party invalidating the others Foundations as if it had been our work to perswade the Infidel World that they are in the right And I thought it the only way to end that Controversie to open all the Causes of our Faith The Roman Party may here perceive our Grounds and better know into what we resolve our Faith than if we named only one sort of Cause and said I resolve it into this As if all the Frame had but one Wheel Faith hath variety of Causes and Objects into which respectively it may be said to be resolved by those that will not use an insignificant Word to make People believe there is a difference where there is none and to keep men from understanding the matter it self Augustine saith of his Friend Nebudius Ep. 23. Bonif. That he exceedingly hated a short Answer to a great Question and took it ill where he might be free of any that did expect it from him Answer me in a word is the Command of an ignorant or a slothfull person or of a Deceiver when a Word is not capable of the necessary Answer 16. There is no more desireable work in the World than the converting of Idolaters and Infidels to God and to the Christian Faith And it is a work which requireth the greatest judgement and zeal in them that must perform it It is a dolefull thought that five parts of the World are still Heathens and Mahometans And that Christian Princes and Preachers do no more to their Recovery but are taken up with sad Contentions among themselves And that the few that have attempted it have hitherto had so small successe The opening of the true method for such a Work is the highest part of my design In which though many others have excellently laboured especially Savonarola Campanella Ficinus Vives Micraelius Duplessis Grotius and our Stillingfleet my Zeal for the saving of Mens Souls hath provoked me to try whether I might adde any thing to their more worthy Labours in point of Method and perspicuity of Proof 17. Lastly I have long agoe written much on this Subject which is dispersed and buryed in the midst of other Subjects except my Book of the Unreasonableness of Infidelity And I thought it more Edifying to set it in order together by it self If these Reasons justifie not my undertaking I have no better The Lord have mercy on this dark distracted sensual World Christians watch pray love live hope rejoyce and patiently suffer according to this Holy Faith which you professe and you shall be blessed in despight of Earth and Hell Octob. 31. 1666. Your Brother in this Life of Faith Richard Baxter Virtus Fidei in Periculis secura est securitate periclitatur Chrysost in Mat. 20. To the Doubting and the Vnbelieving READERS THE natural love to knowledge and to my self which belong to me as I am a Man have commanded me to look beyond this life and diligently to enquire whether there be any certainty of a better and which is the way to it and to whom it doth of right belong And what I have certainly discovered in this search the love of Mankind and of Truth and of God oblige me to communicate But it was not a cursory glance at Truth nor a look towards it afar off in my state of ignorance and diversion which brought the satisfying light into my mind nor can you reasonably expect it should do so by you I saw that in one Savonarola Campanella Ficinus Vives Mornay Grotius Cameron Micraelius which I now see might satisfie all the world if it were duly received But it was not a bare reading of one or all of these and others which was a due reception I found that truth must be so long retained and faithfully elaborated by a diligent and willing mind till it be concocted into a clear methodical understanding and the Scheme or Analysis of it have left upon the soul its proper image by an orderly and deep impression yea till the Goodness of the matter become
it Accordingly while we see God but in this Glass we must conceive that his Principle of Vnderstanding and Power stand in the foresaid order as to his WILL and his Omnipotence and Omniscience to that eminently-moral Goodness which is the perfection of his will The natural goodness of his Essence filling all Therefore here note that this Attribute of God his GOODNESS doth make Him our Chief Good in a two-fold respect both EFFICIENTLY and FINALLY In some sort it is so with the other Attributes His Power is Efficiently the spring of our being and actions and finally and objectively it terminateth our submission and our trust His Wisdom is the principle of his Laws and also the object and end of our enquiries and understandings But his Goodness is the EFFICIENT of all our good in its perfection of causality and that END of our Souls which is commonly called ULTIMATE ULTIMUS So that to submit to his Power and to be ruled by his Wisdom is as I may say initially our end But to be pleasing to his good-will and to be pleased in his good-will that is to Love Him and to be beloved by Him is the absolute perfection and end of man Therefore under this his Attribute of Goodness God is to be spoken of both as our BENEFACTOR and our END which is to be indeed our summum bonum § 1. Man hath his Being and all the good which he possesseth from God as the sole first Efficient by Creation § 2. Therefore God alone is the Vniversal Grand BENEFACTOR of the world besides whom they have no other but meerly subordinate to him No creature can give us any thing which is originally its own having nothing but what it hath received from God Therefore it is no more to us but either a gift of God or a Messenger to bring us his gift they have nothing themselves but what they have received nor have we any sort of Good either Natural Moral of Mind or Body or Fortune or Friends but what is totally from the Bounty of our Creator and as totally from him as if no creature had ever been his instrument § 3. As God's Goodness is that by which he communicateth Being and all Good to all his Creatures and is his most completive Attribute in point of Efficiency so is it that Attribute which is in genere causae finalis the finis ultimate ultimus of all his works God can himself have no ultimate end but Himself and his rational creatures can have no other lawful ultimate End And in Himself it is his Goodness which is completely and ultimately that End Here I am to shew I. That God himself can have no ultimate end but Himself II. That Man should have no other III. That God as in his Goodness is ultimate ultimus the End of Man I. 1. That which is most Beloved of God is his ultimate End but God Himself is most beloved of Himself Therefore he is his own ultimate End The reason of the major Proposition is Because to be the ultimate end and to be maxime amatum is all one Finis quaerentis hath respect to the Means of attainment and is that cujus amore media eliguntur applicantur This God is not capable of speaking in propriety because he never wanteth his End Finis fruitionis is that which amando fruimur which we love complacentially in full attainment And so God doth still enjoy his end and to have it in Love is to enjoy it The Minor is past controversie Obj. But if God have not finem quaerentis then in every instant he enjoyeth his end and if so then he useth no means at all for what need any means be used for that end which is not sought but still enjoyed And consequently where there is no means there is no end Answ As finis signifieth nothing but effectum viz. perfectionem operis which is but finis terminativus so it is not always at present attained and God may be said to use means that is subordinate efficients or instruments to accomplish it But as it signifieth causam finalem scil cujus amore res fit so far as it may without all imperfection be ascribed to him he must be said continually to enjoy it And yet to use means for it but not as wanting it but in the same instant using and enjoying that is He constantly communicateth himself to his creatures and constantly loveth himself so communicated He is the first efficient and ultimate end without any interposing instant of Time were Eternity divisible but in order of Nature he is the Efficient before he is the End enjoyed but not before the End intended He still sendeth forth the beams of his own Glory and still taketh pleasure in them so sent forth His works may be increased and attain perfection called finem operis by some but his Complacency is not increased or perfected in his works but is always perfect As if the Sun took constant pleasure in its own emitted light and heat though the effects of both on things below were most various God is still pleased in that which still is in all his own works though his works may grow up to more perfection Or if any think fit to say that God doth quaerere finem and that he may enjoy more of it at one time than another yet must he confess that nothing below the complacency of his own will in his own emitted beams of Glory shining in his works is this his ultimate end 2. That which is the Begining must be the End But God is the Beginning of all his works therefore he is the End of all He himself hath no Beginning or Efficient and consequently no final cause of himself but his works have himself for the Efficient and for their End that is He that made them intended in the making of them that they should be illustrious with his communicated beams of Glory and thereby amiable to his will and should all serve to his complacency If the End were lower than the Beginning there would be no proportion and the Agent would sink down below himself 3. If any thing besides God were his ultimate End it must thereby be in part Deifi'd or his actions debased by the lowness of the End but these are impossibilities The Actions are no nobler than their End and the End is more noble than the Means as such 4. The ultimate End is the most amiable and delectable The Creature is not to God the most amiable and delectable Therefore the Creature is not his ultimate end The first Argument was from the Act this from the Object 5. The ultimate end is that in which the Agent doth finally acquiesce God doth not finally acquiesce in any creature Therefore no creature is his ultimate end 6. That which is God's ultimate End is loved simply for it self and not as a means to any higher end The Creature is not loved by him simply for it self
but as a means to a higher end viz. his complacency in his glory shining in it Ergo it is not his ultimate end The ultimate end hath no end but the creatures have an end viz. the complacency of God in his glory shining in the creature Obj. But you confound the final Object and the final Act God's complacency of love is his final Act but our enquiry is of the final Object Answ The finis cui or personal end is most properly the ultimate he for whose sake or for whom the thing is done But this is God only and therein he is both the act and object He that did velle creaturas did velle eas ad complacentiam propriae voluntatis The question is not of the actus complacentiae but of the actus creandi vel volendi creaturarum existentiam which he doth propter voluntatis impletionem inde complacentiam which is the final act and the final object of the creating act But for the actus complacentiae it is not actus intentionis but fruitionis and therefore hath no end above it self And the final object of that Complacency is not the Creature it self but the Impletion of the Divine will in the Creature yea the Image of his Omnipotency Wisdom and Goodness shining in the Creation is not loved propter se ultimately but for the sake of that Divine Essence and Perfection of which it is the Image as we love the Image of our friend for his sake so that when all is done God himself is his own end in all his works so farr as very improperly he may be said to intend an end Or if you could prove the Creature to be the Objectum finale that proveth him not to be properly the finis ultimus For that is a difference between Mans agency and Gods Man is an Agent made and acting for his final Object and more ignoble than his Object as the eye of a Flie that beholdeth the Sun But God is an Agent more noble than the Object who gave the Object it self its being and made it of nothing for himself and so the Object is for his final Act. Obj. But God being Perfect needeth nothing nor can receive any addition of perfection or blessedness and therefore it is not any addition of Good to himself which he intendeth in the Creation and consequently it is his ultimate end to do the Creature good Answ All the antecedent part is granted and is anon to be further asserted But the last consequence is denyed because there is no other end beside the addition of Good to himself which God may intend so farr as he may be said to intend an end He doth all the Good to the Creature which it receiveth but not ultimately for the Creatures sake II. That man should have no ultimate End but God that is ultimate ultimus as its called is proved in what is said and the fuller opening of it belongeth to the next Chapter III. It is God in all his Perfections Omnipotency Wisdom and Goodness that is mans ultimate end but it is the last which supposeth both the other and to which mans will which must perform the most perfect final act is most fully suited And therefore is in a special sort our ultimate end The Omnipotency of God is truly the efficient dirigent and final Cause of all things but it is most eminent in Efficiency The Wisdom of God is truly the efficient dirigent and final cause of all things but it is most eminent in Direction and Government The Goodness of God is truly the efficient dirigent and final cause But it is most eminent in being the perfective efficient and final Cause § 4. Gods ultimate end in Creation and Providence is not any supply or addition of Perfection or Blessedness in himself as being absolutely perfect in himself and capable of no addition But those who think that God doth produce all things ex necessitate naturae from Eternity say that as the Tree is not perfect without its fruits so neither is God without his works They say with Balbus in Cicero and other Stoicks that the World is the most excellent Being and that God is but the soul of the World and though the Soul be a compleat soul if it had no body yet it is not a compleat Man and as the Tree is compleat in genere causae without the fruit yet not as a Totum containing those effects ab essentia which are its Part and End So say they God may be perfect without the World as he is only the Soul and part of the World but he is not a compleat world nor in toto Answ 1. That God is not the soul or constitutive cause of the World but somewhat much greater is proved before And also that it was not from Eternity and consequently that he created it not by naturall necessity The foundation therefore being overthrown the building falleth Those that hold the foresaid opinion must hold that God is in point of duration an eternall efficient matter form and end and that in order of Nature he is first an Efficient principle causing matter and secondly he is an efficient with matter and in the third instant he is the form of the effected matter and in the fourth instant he is the end of his operations herein And if you call the efficient Principle only by the name of God then you grant what I prove and you seemed to deny But if he be not God as the meer efficient and end but also as the matter then you make every stone and Serpent and every thief and murderer and devil to be part of God and make him the subject of all the sin and evil all the weakness folly and mutations which be in the World with the other absurdities before mentioned And if you say that he is God as efficient form and end and not as matter then you contradict your self because the form and matter are parts of the same being And whether you call him God as the form only and so make him but part of Being and consequently imperfect and consequently not God or as matter and form also and so make him a compounded being still you make him imperfect in denying his simplicity or unity and as guilty of all the imperfections of matter and of composition And you make one part of God more imperfect than the rest as being but an effect of it All which are inconsistent with the nature of God and with the nature of Man and every Creature who is hereby made a part of God 2. If this had been true of the World as consisting of its constitutive causes that it is God in perfection and eternal c. yet it could not be true of the daily-generated and perishing beings There are millions of men and other animals that lately were not what they are Therefore as such they were no eternall parts of God because as such they were not eternall Therefore
they were before notwithstanding their long converse with Christ in person it being his pleasure to illuminate them by supernatural infusion that it might appear to be no contrived design to deceive the world And they were enabled to preach the word with power and by this Spirit were infallibly guided in the performance of the work of their Commissions to settle Christ's Church in a holy order and to leave on record the doctrine which he had commanded them to teach Also they themselves did heal the sick and cast out devils and prophesie and by the laying on of their hands the same holy Spirit was ordinarily given to others that believed so that Christians had all one gift or other of that Spirit by which they convinced and converted a great part of the world in a short time and all that were sincere had the gift of sanctification and were regenerate by the Spirit as well as by Baptismal water and had the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the holy Ghost which was given them A holy and heavenly mind and life with mortification contempt of the world self-denial patience and love to one another and to all men was the constant badge of all Christ's followers The first Sermon that Peter preached did convert three thousand of those sinful Jews that had crucified Christ And after that many thousands of them more were converted One of their bloody persecutors Saul a Pharisee that had been one of the murderers of the first Martyr Stephen and had haled many of them to prisons as he was going on this business was struck down by the high-way a light from Heaven shining round about him and a voice saying to him Saul Saul why persecutest thou me And he said Who art thou Lord And the Lord said I am Jesus whom thou persecutest it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks And he trembling and astonished said Lord what wilt thou have me to do And the Lord said Arise and go into the City and it shall be told thee what thou must do And the men that journeyed with him stood speechless hearing a voice but seeing no man And so Saul was led blind to Damascus where one Ananias had a vision commanding him to Baptize him and his eyes were opened This Convert called Paul did hence-forward preach the Gospel of Christ from Country to Country in Syria in Asia at Rome and a great part of the world in marvellous unwearied labours and sufferings abuses and imprisonments converting multitudes and planting Churches in many great Cities and Countries and working abundance of miracles where he went His History is laid down in part of the New Testament There are also many of his Epistles to Rome to Corinth Galatia Ephesus Philippi Coloss Thessalonica to Timothy to Titus and to Philemon and the Hebrews as is supposed There are also the Epistles of Peter James John and Jude with the Revelation of John containing many mysterious Prophesies An Eunuch who was of great power under the Queen of Ethiopia was converted by Philip and carried the Gospel into his Country The rest of the Apostles and other Disciples carried it abroad a great part of the world especially in the Roman Empire and though every where they met with opposition and persecution yet by the power of the holy Ghost appearing in their Holiness Languages and Miracles they prevailed and planted abundance of Churches of which the most populous were at Jerusalem Antioch Rome and Alexandria And though they were all dispersed abroad the world and out of the reach of mutual converse yet did they never disagree in their Doctrine in the smallest point but proceeded through sufferings in Unity and Holiness in the work of saving Souls till most of them were put to death for the sake of Christ having left the Churches under the Government of their several Pastors according to the will of Christ This is the abstract of the History of the holy Scriptures § 14. The summ of the Doctrine of Christianity is contained in these Articles following consisting of three general Heads I. Things to be known and believed II. Things to be willed and desired and hoped III. Things to be done I. 1. There is one only GOD in Essence in Three Essential Principles POWER UNDERSTANDING and WILL or OMNIPOTENCY OMNISCIENCE and GOODNESS in Three Subsistences or Persons the FATHER the SON and the HOLY SPIRIT who is a Mind or Spirit and therefore is most Simple Incorruptible Immortal Impassionate Invisible Intactible c. and is Indivisible Eternal Immense Necessary Independent Self-sufficient Immutable Absolute and Infinite in all Perfections The Principal Efficient Dirigent and Final Cause of all the world The CREATOR of all and therefore our Absolute OWNER or Supreme RULER and our Total BENEFACTOR and CHIEF GOOD and END 2. GOD made Man for himself not to supply any want of his own but for the pleasing of his own Will and Love in the Glory of his Perfections shining forth in his works In his own Image that is with Vital Power Understanding and Free-will Able Wise and Good with Dominion over the Inferiour Creatures as being in subordination to God their OWNER their GOVERNOUR and their BENEFACTOR and END And he bound him by the Law of his Nature to adhere to GOD his MAKER by Resignation Devotion and Submission to him as his OWNER by Believing Honouring and Obeying him as his RULER and by Loving him Trusting and Seeking him Delighting in him Thanksgiving to him and Praising him as his Grand BENEFACTOR chief Good and ultimate end to exercise Charity and Justice to each other and to Govern all his inferiour faculties by Reason according to his Makers will that he so might please him and be Happy in his Love And to try him he particularly forbad him to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil upon pain of death 3. Man being tempted by Satan to break this Law of God did believe the Tempter who promised him impunity and advancement in Knowledge and who accused God as false in his threatning and as envying Man this great advancement And so by wilfull sinning against him he fell from God and his uprightness and happiness under the displeasure of God the penalty of his Law and the power of Satan And hence we are all conceived in sin averse to good and prone to evil and condemnation is passed upon all and no meer Creature is able to deliver us 4. God so loved the World that he gave his only SON to be their REDEEMER who being the Eternal WISDOM and WORD of God and so truly GOD and one in Essence with the FATHER did assume our Nature and became Man being conceived by the HOLY SPIRIT in the Virgin Mary and born of her and called JESVS CHRIST who being Holy and without all sin did conquer the Tempter and the World fulfilling all righteousness He enacted and preached the Law or
themselves as being wholly his own 3. It absolutely subjecteth the Soul to God and sitteth up his Authority as absolute over our thoughts and words and all our actions And maketh the Christians life a course of careful obedience to his Laws so far as they understand them 4. It taketh up a Christians mind with the thankful sense of his Redemption so that the pardon of his sins and his deliverance from hell and his hopes of everlasting glory do form his soul to a holy gratitude and make the expressions of it to be his work 5. It giveth man a sense of the love of God as his gracious Redeemer and so of the goodness and mercifulness of his Nature It causeth them to think of God as their greatest Benefactor and as one that loveth them and as LOVE it self and so it reconcileth their estranged alienated minds to him and maketh the love of God to be the very constitution and life of the Soul 6. It causeth men to believe that there is an everlasting Glory to be enjoyed by holy Souls where we shall see the glory of God and be filled with his love and exercised in perfect love and praise and be with Christ his Angels and Saints for evermore It causeth them to take this felicity for their portion and to set their hearts upon it and to make it the chief care and business of all their lives to seek it 1. It causeth them to live in the joyful hopes and foresight of this blessedness and to do all that they do as means thereunto and thus it sweetneth all their lives and maketh Religion their chief delight 8. It accordingly employeth their thoughts and tongues so that the praises of God and the mention of their everlasting blessedness and of the way thereto is their most delightful conference as it beseemeth travellers to the City of God and so their political converse is in heaven 9. And thus it abateth the fears of death as being but their passage to everlasting life And those that are confirmed Christians indeed do joyfully entertain it and long to see their glorified Lord and the blessed Majesty of their great Creator 10. It causeth men to love all sanctified persons with a special love of complacency and all mankind with a love of benevolence even to love our neighbours as our selves and to abhor that selfishness which would engage us against our neighbours good 11. It causeth men to love their enemies and to forgive and forbear and to avoid all unjust and unmerciful revenge It maketh men meek long-suffering and patient though not impassionate insensible or void of that anger which is the necessary opposer of sin and folly 12. It employeth men in doing all the good they can it maketh them long for the holiness and happiness of one another's souls and desirous to do good to those that are in need according to our power 13. This true Regeneration by the Spirit of Christ doth make those Superiours that hath it even Princes Magistrates Parents and Masters to Rule those under them in holiness love and justice with self-denial seeking more the pleasing of God and the happiness of their Subjects for soul and body than any carnal selfish interest of their own and therefore it must needs be the blessing of that happy Kingdom Society or Family which hath such a holy Governour O that they were not so few 14. It maketh subjects and children and servants submissive and conscionable in all the duties of their Relations and to honour their Superiours as the Officers of God and to obey them in all just subordination to him 15. It causeth men to love Justice and to do as they would be done by and to desire the welfare of the souls bodies estates and honour of their neighbours as their own 16. It causeth men to subdue their adpetites and lusts and fleshly desires and to set up the government of God and sanctified Reason over them and to take their flesh for that greatest enemy in our corrupted state which we must chiefly watch against and master as being a Rebel against God and Reason It alloweth a man so much sensitive pleasure as God forbiddeth not and as tendeth to the holiness of the soul and furthereth us in God's service and all the rest it rebuketh and resisteth 17. It causeth men to estimate all the wealth and honour and dignities of the world as they have respect to God and a better world and as they either help or hinder us in the pleasing of God and seeking immortality and as they are against God and our spiritual work and happiness it causeth us to account them but as meer vanity loss and dung 18. It keepeth men in a life of watchfulness against all those temptations which would draw them from this holy course and in a continual warfare against Satan and his Kingdom under conduct of Jesus Christ 19. It causeth men to prepare for sufferings in this world and to look for no great matters here to expect persecutions crosses losses wants defamations injuries and painful sicknesses and death and to spend their time in preparing all that furniture of mind which is necessary to their support and comfort in such a day of trial that they may be patient and joyful in tribulation and bodily distress as having a comfortable relation to God and Heaven which will incomparably weigh down all 20. It causeth men to acknowledge that all this grace and mercy is from the love of God alone and to depend on him for it by faith in Christ and to devote and refer all to himself again and make it our ultimate end to please him and thus to subserve him as the first Efficient the chief Dirigent and the ultimate final Cause of all of whom and through whom and to whom are all things to whom be Glory for ever Amen This is the true description of that Regenerate Sanctified state which the Spirit of Christ doth work on all whom he will save and that are Christians indeed and not in Name only And certainly this is the Image of God's Holiness and the just constitution and use of a reasonable Soul And therefore he that bringeth men to this is a Real Saviour of whom more anon II. And it is very considerable by what means and in what manner all this is done It is done by the preaching of the Gospel of Christ and that in plainness and simplicity The curiosity of artificial oratory doth usually but hinder the success as painting doth the light of windows It was a few plain men that came with spiritual power and not with the entising words of humane wisdom or curiosities of vain Philosophy who did more in this work than any of their successors have done since As in Naturals every thing is apt to communicate its own nature and not anothers heat causeth heat and cold causeth cold so wit by communication causeth wit and common learning causeth common
title to their Crowns and all men their Estates by the records or testimony of others 9. It is impudent arrogancy for every Infidel to tie God to be at his beck to work Miracles as oft as he requireth it To say I will not believe without a Miracle and if thou work never so many in the sight of others I will not believe unless I may see them my self § 12. There need not be new Revelations and Miracles to confirm the former and oblige men to believe them For then there must be more Revelations and Miracles to confirm the former and oblige men to believe those and so on to the end of the World And then God could not govern the World by a setled Law by Revelations once made which is absurd § 13. Therefore the only natural way to know all such matters of fact is sensible apprehension to those that are present and credible report tradition or history to those that are absent as is aforesaid which is the necessary medium to convey it from their sense to our understandings And in this must we acquiesce as the natural means which God will use § 14. We are not bound to believe all history or report Therefore we must be able to discern between the credible and the incredible neither receiving all nor rejecting all but making choice as there is cause § 15. History is more or less credible as it hath more or less evidence of truth 1. Some that is credible hath only evidence of probability and such is that of meer Humane Faith 2. Some hath evidence of certainty from Natural causes concurring where the conclusion is both of knowledge and of Humane Faith 3. And some hath evidence of certainty from supernatural attestation which is both of Humane Faith and of Divine § 16. That history or report which hath no more evidence than the meer wisdom and honesty of the author or reporter supposing him an imperfect man is but probable and the Conclusion though credible is not infallible and can have no certainty but that which some call Morall and that in several degrees as the wisdom and honesty of the reporter is either more or less § 17. II. Where there is an evident impossibility that all the witnesses or reporters should lie or be deceived there the Conclusion is credible by humane Faith and also sure by a natural certainty § 18. Where these things concurre it is impossible that that report or history should be false 1. When it is certain that the reporters were not themselves deceived 2. When it is certain that indeed the report is theirs 3. When they took their salvation to lie upon the truth of the thing reported and of their own report 4. When they expected Worldly ruin by their testimony and could look for no commodity by it which would make them any reparation 5. When they give full proof of their honesty and conscience 6. When their testimony is concordant and they speak the same things though they had no opportunity to conspire to deceive men yea when their numbers distance and quality make this impossible 7. When they bear their testimony in the time and place where it might well be contradicted and the falsity detected if it were not true and among the most malicious enemies and yet those enemies either confess the matter of fact or give no regardable reason against it 8. When the reporters are men of various tempers countreys and civil interests 9. When the reporters fall out or greatly differ among themselves even to separations and condemnations of one another and yet none ever detecteth or confesseth any falshood in the said reports 10. When the reporters being numerous and such as profess that Lying is a damnable sin and such as laid down their liberties or lives in asserting their testimonies did yet never any of them in life or death repent and confess any falshood or deceit 11. When their report convinceth thousands in that place and time who would have more abhorred them if it had been untrue Nay where some of these concurre the conclusion may be of certainty some of these instances resolve the point into natural necessity 1. It is of natural necessity that men love themselves and their own felicity and be unwilling of their undoing and misery The Will though free is quaedam natura and hath its natural necessary inclination to that good which is apprehended as its own felicity or else to have omnimodam rationem boni and its natural necessary inclination against that evil or aversation from it which is apprehended as its own undoing or misery or to have omnimodam rationem mali Its liberty is only servato ordine finis And some acts that are free are nevertheless of infallible certain futurition and of some kinde of necessity like the Love and Obedience of the Saints in Heaven 2. Nothing can be without a cause sufficient to produce it But some things here instanced can have no cause sufficient to produce them if the thing testified were false As the consent of enemies their not gainsaying the concurrence of so many and so distant and of such bitter Opposites against their own common worldly interest and to the confessed ruine of their souls and the belief of many thousands that could have disproved it if false and more which I shall open by and by There is a natural certainty that Alexander was the King of Macedonia and Caesar Emperour of Rome and that there is such a place as Rome and Paris and Venice and Constantinople And that we have had Civil Warrs between the King and Parliament in England and between the Houses of York and Lancaster and that many thousands were murdered by the French Massacre and many more by the Irish and that the Statutes of this Land were made by the Kings and Parliaments whose names they bear c. Because that 1. There is no cause in Nature which could produce the concurrence of so many testimonies of men so distant and contrary if it were not true 2. And on the contrary side there are natural causes which would infallibly produce a credible contradiction to these reports if they were false § 19. III. When they that testifie such matters of fact do affirm that they do it by Gods own command and prove this by multitudes of evident uncontrolled Miracles their report is both humane and divine and to be believed as most certain by a divine belief This is before proved in the proof of the validity of the testimony of Miracles and such Miracles as these § 20. The Testimonies of the Apostles and other Disciples of Christ concerning his Resurrection and Miracles were credible by all these three several sorts of credibility 1. They were credible and most credible by a humane belief as they were the testimony of honest and extraordinarily honest men 2. They were credible as reported with concauses of natural certainty 3. They were credible as attested by God
matter of fact indeed by common sense but their sufficiency and gifts by which they carried on their ministry were suddenly given them by the holy Ghost when Christ himself was ascended from them And Paul that had conferred with none of them yet preached the same Gospel being converted by a voice from heaven in the heat of his persecution 3. Their doctrine containeth so many and mysterious particulars that they could never have concorded in it all in their way 4. And their labours did so disperse them about the world that many new emergent cases must needs have cast them into several minds or ways if they had not agreed by the unity of that Spirit which was the common Teacher of them all § 25. 7. That the Disciples of Christ divulged his Miracles and Resurrection in the same Place and Age where the truth or falshood might soon have been search'd out and yet that the bitterest enemies either denied not or confuted not their report is apparent partly by their confessions and partly by the non-existence of any such confutations That the Disciples in that Age and Country did divulge these Miracles is denied by none for it was their employment and by it they gathered the several Churches and their writings not long after written declare it to this day That the enemies confuted not their report appeareth 1. not only in the Gospel-history which sheweth that they denyed not many of his Miracles but imputed them to conjuration and the power of Satan but also by the disputes and writings of the Jews in all Ages since which do go the same way 2. And if the enemies had been able to confute these Miracles no doubt but they would have done it having so much advantage wit and malice Object Perhaps they did and their writings never come to our knowledge Answ The unbelieving Jews were as careful to preserve their writings as any other men and they had better advantage to do it than the Christians had and therefore if there had been any such writings yea or verbal confutations the Jews of this age had been as like to have received them as all the other antient writings which they yet receive Josephus his testimony of Christ is commonly known and though some think it so full and plain that it is like to be inserted by some Christian yet they give no proof of their opinion and the credit of all copies justifieth the contrary except only that these words are like to have been thrust in This is Christ which some Annotator putting into the Margin might after be put into the Text. And that the Jews wanted not will or industry to confute the Christians appeareth by what Justin Martyr saith to Tryphon of their malice That they sent out into all parts of the world their choicest men to perswade the people against the Christians that they are Atheists and would abolish the Deity and that they were convict of gross impiety § 26. 8. The great diversity of believers and reporters of the Gospel Miracles doth the more fully evince that there was no conspiracy for deceit There were learned and unlearned Jews and Gentils rich and poor men and women some that followed Christ and some as Paul that perhaps never saw him and for all these to be at once inspired by the holy Ghost and thenceforth unanimously to accord and concur in the same doctrine and work doth shew a supernatural cause § 27. 9. There were dissentions upon many accidents and some of them to the utmost distance which would certainly have detected the fallacy if there had been any such in the matters of fact so easily detected 1. In Christ's own family there was a Judas who betrayed him for mony This Judas was one that had followed Christ and seen his Miracles and had been sent out to preach and wrought miracles himself If there had been any collusion in all this what likelier man was there in the world to have detected it yea and his conscience would never have accused but justified him he need not to have gone and hanged or precipitated himself and said I have sinned in betraying the innocent bloud The Pharisees who hired him to betray his Master might by mony and authority have easily procured him to have wrote against him and detected his fraud if he had been fraudulent it would have tended to Judas his justification and advancement But God is the great defender of truth 2. And there were many baptized persons who were long in good repute and communion with the Christians who fell off from them to several Sects and Heresies not denying the dignity and truth of Christ but superinducing into his doctrine many corrupting fancies of their own such as the Judâ—izâ—rs the Simonians the Nicolaitans the Ebonites the Cerinthians the Gnosticks the Valentinians Basilidians and many more And many of these were in the days of the Apostles and greatly troubled the Churches and hindred the Gospel insomuch as the Apostles rise up against them with more indignation than against the Infidels calling them dogs wolves evil workers deceivers bruit beasts made to be taken and destroyed c. They write largely against them they charge the Churches to avoid them and turn away from them and after a first and second admonition to reject them as men that are self-condemned c. And who knoweth not that among so many men thus excommunicated vilified and thereby irritated some of them would certainly have detected the deceit if they had known any deceit to have been in the reports of the afore-said Miracles Passion would not have been restrained among so many and such when they were thus provoked 3. And some in those times as well as in all following ages have forsaken the faith and apostatized to open infidelity and certainly their judgment their interest and their malice would have caused them to detect the fraud if they had known any in the matters of fact of these Miracles For it is not possible that all these causes should not bring forth this effect where there was no valuable impediment If you again say It may be they did detect such frauds by words or writings which come not to our knowledge I answer again 1. The Jews then that have in all ages disputed and written against Christianity would certainly have made use of some such testimony instead of charging all upon Magick and the power of the devil 2. And it is to me a full evidence that there were no such deniers of the Miracles of Christ when I find that the Apostles never wrote against any such nor contended with them nor were ever put to answer any of their writings or objections When all men will confess that their writings must needs be written according to the state and occasion of those times in which they wrote them and if then there had been any books or reasonings divulged against Christ's miracles they would either have wrote purposely against them
much doubted of that the vaster and more glorious parts of the Creation are not uninhabited but that they have Inhabitants answerable to their magnitude and glory as Palaces have other inhabitants than Cottages and that there is a connaturality and agreeableness there as well as here between the Region or Globe and the inhabitants But whether it be the Globes themselves or only the inter-spaces or other parts that are thus inhabited no reason can doubt but that those more vast and glorious spaces are proportionably possess'd And whether they are all to be called Angels or Spirits or by what other name is unrevealed to us but what ever they are called I make no question but our number to theirs is not one to a million at the most Now this being so for ought we know those glorious parts may have inhabitants without any sin or misery who are filled with their Makers love and goodness and so are fitter to be the demonstration of that love and goodness than this sinful mole-hill or dungeon of ignorance is If I were sure that God would save all mankind and only leave the devils in their damnation and forsake no part of his Creation but their Hell it would not be any great stumbling to my faith Or if Earth were all God's creation and I were sure that he would condemn but one man of a hundred thousand or a million and that only for final impenitency in the contempt of the mercy which would have saved him this would be no great difficulty to my faith Why then should it be an offence to us if God for their final refusal of his grace do for ever forsake and punish the far greater part of this little dark and sinful world while he glorifieth his Benignity and Love abundantly upon innumerable Angels and blessed Spirits and inhabitants of those more large and glorious seats If you would judge of the Beneficence of a King will you go to the Jail and the Gallows to discern it or to his Palace and all the rest of his Kingdom And will you make a few condemned malefactors the measure of it or all the rest of his obedient prosperous subjects If Hell be totally forsaken of God as having totally forsaken him and if Earth have made it self next to Hell and be forsaken as to the far greater part because that greater part hath forsaken him as long as there may be millions of blessed ones above to one of these forsaken ones on earth it should be no offence to any but the selfish guilty sinner I confess I rather look on it as a great demonstration of God's holiness and goodness in his Justice that he will punish the rebellious according to his Laws and a great demonstration of his Goodness in his Mercy that he will save any of such a rebellious world and hath not forsaken it utterly as Hell And when of all the thousands of Worlds or Globes which he hath made we know of none forsaken by him but Hell and part of the Earth all the Devils and most of Men we should admire the glory of his bounty and be thankful with joy that we are not of the forsaken number and that even among sinners he will cast off none but those that finally reject his mercy But selfishness and sense do make men blinde and judge of Good and Evil only by self-interest and feeling and the malefactor will hardly magnifie Justice nor take it to be a sign of Goodness But God will be God whether selfish rebels will or not Obj. That any thing existeth besides God cannot be known but by sense or history Have you either of these for those Inhabitants And if we may go by Conjectures for ought you know there may as many of those Worlds be damned as of earthly men Ans 1. Some men are so little conscious of their humanity that they think that nothing is known at all But he that knoweth by sense that He is himself and that there is a World about him and then by Reason that there is a God may know also by Reason that there are other Creatures which he never saw Neither sense nor history told us of the inhabitants of the then unknown parts of the World and yet it had been easie to gather at least a strong probability that there are such He that knoweth that an intelligent Nature is better than a non-intelligent and then knoweth that God hath made man intelligent and then thinketh what difference there is in matter magnitude and glory between the dirty body of Man with the Earth he liveth in and those vast and glorious Ethereal spaces will quickly judge that it is a thing incredible that God should have no Creatures nobler than man nor imprint more of his Image upon any in those more glorious Regions than on us that dwell as Snails in such a shell or that there should be such a strange disproportion in the works of God as that a punctum of dirty earth only should be possessed of the Divine or Intellectual nature and the vast and glorious Orbs or Spaces be made only to look on or to serve these mortal Worms But proofs go according to the preparation of the Receivers minde Nothing is a proof to the unprepared and prejudiced 2. We have sense by the Telescope to tell us that the Moon hath parts unequal and looketh much like the habitable Earth And we have sense to tell us that there are Witches and Apparitions and consequently other kinde of intellectual Wights than we And we have History to tell us of the appearances and offices of Angels And if there be certainly such wights our eyes may help us to conjecture at their Numbers compared to us by the spaces which they inhabit 3. There is a proportion and harmony in all the works of God And therefore we that see how much the superiour Orbs do in glory excell this dirty Earth have reason to think that the nature of the Inhabitants is suited to their Habitations and consequently that they are more excellent Creatures than we and therefore less sinfull and therefore more happy 4. Yet after all this I am neither asserting that all this is so nor bound to prove it I only argue that you who are offended at the numbers that sin and perish do wrangle in the dark and speak against you know not what Conjecture is enough for me to prove that you do foolishly to argue against experience of the sin and misery of the most upon meer uncertainties You will not censure the actions of a Prince or Generall when your ignorance of their Counsels maketh you uncertain of the cause yea and of the matter of fact it self The proof lyeth on your part and not on mine You say our doctrine is incredible because so few are saved and yet confess that for ought you know taking all together it may be many millions for one that perisheth I think by proving you uncertain of this
must give light to Christianity and prepare men to receive it And they think to know what is in Heaven before they will learn what they are themselves and what it is to be a man Cond 4. Get a true Anatomy Analysis or Description of Christianity in your minds for if you know not the true nature of it first you will be lamentably disadvantaged in enquiring into the truth of it For Christianity well understood in the quiddity will illustrate the mind with such a winning beauty as will make us meet its evidence half-way and will do much to convince us by its proper light Cond 5. When you have got the true method of the Christian doctrine or Analysis of faith begin at the Essentials or primitive truths and proceed in order according to the dependencies of truths and do not begin at the latter end nor study the conclusion before the premises Cond 6. Yet look on the whole scheme or frame of causes and evidences and take them entirely and conjunct and not as peevish factious men who in splenish zeal against another sect reject and vilifie the evidence which they plead This is the Devils gain by the raising of sects and contentions in the Church he will engage a Papist for the meer interest of his sect to speak lightly of the Scripture and the Spirit and many Protestants in meer opposition to the Papists to sleight Tradition and the testimony of the Church denying it its proper authority and use As if in the setting of a Watch or Clock one would be for one wheel and another for another and each in peevishness cast away that which another would make use of when it will never go true without them all Faction and contentions are deadly enemies to truth Cond 7. Mark well the suitableness of the remedy to the disease that is of Christianity to the depraved state of man and mark well the lamentable effects of that universal depravation that your experience may tell you how unquestionable it is Cond 8. Mark well how connaturally Christianity doth relish with holy souls and how well it suiteth with honest principles and hearts so that the better any man is the better it pleaseth him And how potently all debauchery villany and vice befriendeth the cause of Atheists and unbelievers Cond 9. Take a considerate just survey of the common enmity against Christianity and Holiness in all the wicked of the world and the notorious war which is every where managed between Christ and the Devil and their several followers that you may know Christ partly by his enemies Cond 10. Impartially mark the effects of Christian doctrine where ever it is sincerely entertain'd and see what Religion maketh the best men and judge not of serious Christians at a distance by false reports of ignorant or malicious adversaries And then you will see that Christ is actually the Saviour of souls Cond 11. Be not liars your selves lest it dispose you to think all others to be liars and to judge of the words of others by your own Cond 12. Be-think you truly what persons you should be your selves and what lives you should live if you did not believe the Christian doctrine or if you doe not believe it mark what effect your unbelief hath on your lives For my own part I am assured if it were not for the Christian doctrine my heart and life would be much worse than it is though I had read Epictetus Arrian Plato Plotinus Jamblichus Proclus Seneca Cicero Plutarch every word and those few of my neighbourhood who have fallen off to infidelity have at once fallen to debauchery and abuse of their nearest relations and differed as much in their lives from what they were before in their profession of Christianity though unsound as a leprous body differeth from one in comeliness and health Cond 13. Be well acquainted if possible with Church-History that you may understand by what Tradition Christianity hath descended to us For he that knoweth nothing but what he hath seen or receiveth a Bible or the Creed without knowing any further whence and which way it cometh to us is greatly disadvantaged as to the reception of the faith Cond 14. In all your reading of the holy Scriptures allow still for your ignorance in the languages proverbs customs and circumstances which are needful to the understanding of particular Texts and when difficulties stop you be sure that no such ignorance remain the cause He that will but read Brugensis Grotius Hammond and many other that open such phrases and circumstances with Topographers and Bochartus and such others as write of the Animals Utensils and other circumstances of those times will see what gross errors the opening of some one word or phrase may deliver the Reader from Cond 15. Vnderstand what excellencies and perfections they be which the Spirit of God intended to adorn the holy Scriptures with and also what sort of humane imperfections are consistent with these its proper perfections that so false expectations may not tempt you into unbelief It seduceth many to infidelity to imagine that if Scripture be the word of God it must needs be most perfect in every accident and mode which were never intended to be part of its perfection Whereas God did purposely make use of those men and of that style and manner of expression which was defective in some points of natural excellency that so the supernatural excellency might be the more apparent As Christ cured the blind with clay and spittle and David slew Goliah with a sling The excellency of the means must be estimated by its aptitude to its end Cond 16. If you see the evidences of the truth of Christianity in the whole let that suffice you for the belief of the several parts when you see not the true answer to particular exceptions If you see it soundly proved that Christ is the Messenger of the Father and that his word is true and that the holy Scripture is his word this is enough to quiet any sober mind when it cannot confute every particular objection or else no man should ever hold fast any thing in the world if he must let all go after the fullest proof upon every exception which he cannot answer The inference is sure If the whole be true the parts are true Cond 17. Observe well the many effects of Angels ministration and the evidences of a communion between us and the spirits of the unseen world for this will much facilitate your belief Cond 18. Over-look not the plain evidences of the Apparitions Witches and wonderful events which fall out in the times and places where you live and what reflections they have upon the Christian cause Cond 19. Observe well the notable answers of Prayers in matters internal and external in others and in your selves Cond 20. Be well studied at home about the capacity use and tendency of all your faculties and you will find that your very nature pointeth you up to
another life and is made only to be happy in that knowledge love and fruition of God which the Gospel most effectually leads you to Cond 21. Mark well the prophesies of Christ himself both of the destruction of Jerusalem and the successes of his Apostles in the world c. and mark how exactly they are all fulfilled Cond 22. Let no pretence of humility tempt you to debase humane nature below its proper excellency lest thence you be tempted to think it uncapable of the everlasting sight and fruition of God The devils way of destroying is oftentimes by over-doing The proud devil will help you to be very humble and help you to deny the excellency of reason and natural free-will and all supernatural inclinations when he can make use of it to perswade you that man is but a subtil sort of bruit and hath a soul but gradually different from sensitives and so is not made for another life Cond 23. Yet come to Christ as humble learners and not as arrogant self-conceited censurers and think not that you are capable of understanding every thing as soon as you hear it Cond 24. Judge not of the main cause of Christianity or of particular texts or points by sudden hasty thoughts and glances as if it were a business to be cursorily done but allow it your most deliberate sober studies your most diligent labour and such time and patience as reason may tell you are necessary to a learner in so great a cause Cond 25. Call not so great a matter to the trial in a case of melancholy and natural incapacity but stay till you are fitter to perform the search It is one of the common cheats of Satan to perswade poor weak and melancholy persons that have but half the use of their understandings to go then to try the Christian Religion when they can scarce cast up an intricate account nor are fit to judge of any great and difficult thing And then he hath an advantage to confound them and fill them with blasphemous and unbelieving thoughts and if not to shake their habitual faith yet greatly to perplex them and disturb their peace The soundest wit and most composed is fittest for so great a task Cond 26. When upon sober trial you have discerned the evidences of the Christian verity record what you have found true and judge not the next time against those evidences till you have equal opportunity for a full consideration of them In this case the Tempter much abuseth many injudicious souls when by good advice and soberest meditation they have seen the evidence of truth in satisfying clearness he will after surprise them when their minds are darker or their thoughts more scattered or the former evidence is out of mind and push them on suddenly then to judge of the matters of immortality and of the Christian cause that what he cannot get by truth of argument he may get by the incapacity of the disputant As if a man that once saw a mountain some miles distant from him in a clear day should be tempted to believe that he was deceived because he seeth it not in a misty day or when he is in a valley or within the house Or as if a man that in many days hard study hath cast up an intricate large account and set it right under his hand should be called suddenly to give up the same account anew without looking on that which he before cast up when as if his first account be lost he must have equal time and helps and fitness before he can set it as right again Take it not therefore as any disparagement to the Christian truth if you cannot on a sudden give your selves so satisfactory an account of it as formerly in more clearness and by greater studies you have done Cond 27. Gratifie not Satan so much as to question well resolved points as oft as he will move you to it Though you must prove all things till as learning you come to understand them in their proper evidence time and order yet you must record and hold fast that which you have proved and not suffer the devil to put you to the answer of one and the same question over and over as often as he please this is to give him our time and to admit him to debate his cause with us by temptation as frequently as he will which you would not allow to a ruffian to the debauching of your wife or servants and you provoke God to give you up to errour when no resolution will serve your turn After just resolution the tempter is to be rejected and not disputed with as a troublesome fellow that would interrupt us in our work Cond 28. Where you find your own understandings insufficient have recourse for help to some truly wise judicious Divine Not to every weak Christian nor unskilful Minister who is not well grounded in his own Religion but to those that have throughly studied it themselves you may meet with many difficulties in Theology and in the Text which you think can never be well solved which are nothing to them that understand the thing No Novice in the study of Logick Astronomy Geometry or any Art or Science will think that every difficulty that he meeteth with doth prove that his Author was deceived unless he be able to resolve it of himself but he will ask his Tutor or some one versed in those matters to resolve it and then he will see that his ignorance was the cause of all his doubts Cond 29. Labour faithfully to receive all holy truths with a practical intent and to work them on your hearts according to their nature weight and use For the doctrine of Christianity is scientia affectiva practica a doctrine for Head Heart and Life And if that which is made for the Heart be not admitted to the Heart and rooted there it is half rejected while it seemeth received and is not in its proper place and soil If you are yet in doubt of any of the supernatural Verities admit those truths to your hearts which you are convinced of else you are false to them and to your selves and forfeit all further helps of grace Object This is but a trick of deceit to engage the affections when you want arguments to convince the judgment Perit omne judicium cum res transit in affectum Answ When the affection is inordinate and over-runs the judgment this saying hath some truth but it is most false as of ordinate affections which follow sound judgment For by suscitation of the faculties such affections greatly help the judgment and judgment is but the eye of the soul to guide the man and it is but the passage to the will where humane acts are more compleat If your wife be taught that conjugal love is due to her husband and your child that filial love and reverence is due to his father such affections will not blind their judgments but contrarily they do
they have done fair though afterwards they consider not that interest of his in all operations which their own concessions necessarily infer 10. Lastly I perceive that they proceed not methodically in their collections but confound all by mixing certainties with uncertainties Whereas the first the great the most discernable truths should be first congested as CERTAINTIES by themselves and the uncertainties should not be pleaded against them nor suffered to stand in contest with them Perceiving all these general Reasons to distrust this sort of Philosophers above others though I resolve to be impartial I cannot willingly be so foolish as to over-look their disadvantage in the present cause II. The particular reasons which disswade me from believing the Epicurean sufficiency of Matter and Motion are these following 1. They all with whom I have now to do are constrained to confess an incorporeal intellectual substance even that there is a God and that GOD is such Epicurus himself doth not deny it yea seemeth to speak magnificently of God and in honour to him would excuse his providence from the minding of inferiour things For 1. They know that matter did not make it self and motion is but its mode and therefore matter cannot be made by its own motion It s being is in order of nature before its motion And matter is in it self so dull a thing and by the adversaries stripped of all forms which are not caused by motion that if it were said to be from eternity in its duration they will confess it could be but as an eternal effect of some nobler cause So that at the first word they grant that matter hath an incorporeal cause 2. And motion as it is found in matter could not cause it self though it be but of the mode of matter it is such a mode as must have a cause And the passive matter yet unmoved is supposed by themselves to be void of all antecedent moving power So that they are all fain to say that God made the matter and gave it the first push And so all matter and motion is reduced to a first efficient who is incorporeal And therefore an incorporeal being is acknowledged 2. I meet with none of them who dare deny this God to be an intellectual free Agent so that though it be granted them that intelligere velle be not in God the same thing formally as it is in man yet is it something which eminently must be so called man having no fitter conception or expression of it than from these acts of his own soul Epicurus will not make God defectively ignorant impotent or bad When themselves divide all things into such as have understanding and such as have none of which part do they suppose GOD to stand Things that are void of understanding formally or eminently are below the dignity of things that have understanding So that they confess there is existent an incorporeal intelligent free Agent 3. As they confess that this intellectual Agent is the first cause both of matter and motion so they cannot deny that he still causeth both by his continued influx or causing efficacy For there can be no effect without a cause and therefore when the cause ceaseth the effect must cease The material part of a moral cause may cease and yet the effect continue But that moral causation continueth which is proportioned to the effect The Parent may die while the child surviveth but there is a continued cause of the life of the child proportioned to the effect Matter is not an independent being To say that God hath made it self-sufficient and independent is to say that he hath made it a God Suppose but a total cessation of the Divine emanation influx and causation and you must needs suppose also the cessation of all Beings If you say that when God hath once given it a Being it will continue of it self till his power annihilate it I answer if it continue without a continuing causation it must continue as an independent self-sufficient being But this is a contradiction because it is a creature GOD is no effect and therefore needeth no cause of subsistence but the creature is an effect and cannot subsist a moment without a continued cause As the beams or communicated light cannot continue an instant if there were a total cessation of the emanation of the luminary because their being is meerly dependent and they need no other positive annihilation besides the cessation of the causation which did continue them It was from one of your own Poets that Paul cited In him we live and move and have our being for we are his off-spring And nothing is more abhorrent to all common reason than that this stone or dirt which was nothing as yesterday should be a God to it self even one independent self-sufficient being as soon as it is created and so that God made as many demy-gods as atoms We see past doubt that one creature cannot subsist or move without another on which it is dependent how much less can any creature subsist or move without its continued reception of its Creator's influx If you could suppose that for one moment there were no God you must suppose there would be nothing If I thought any would deny this besides those inflated vertiginous brains that are not to be disputed with I would say more for the illustration of it Object But though matter subsist not without a continued divine causation or emanation or efficacious volition yet motion may continue when all divine causation of it ceaseth Because when God hath given it one push that causeth a motion which causeth another motion and that another and so in infinitum if there were no stop Answ 1. If this were so it must be on supposition of a vis motiva communicata vel impressa for if there had been no such the first motion would have not been or all have presently ceased for want of a continued cause As there is no motion sine vi motiva so none can be communicated but by the communication of that force Action is not nothing nor will be caused by nothing As the delapsus gravium would presently cease if we could cause the pondus or gravity to cease so is it in all other motions If there be no vis or strength communicated along with the motion there would be nothing in that motion to cause another motion nor in that to cause another And if it were by way of traction if the cause cease which is the prima trahens all the motion ceaseth and so also if it be by way of pulsion So that in every motion there is something more than matter and motion 2. All motion of things below within our reach hath many impediments and therefore would cease if the first cause continued not his powerful efficacy It is tedious and needless to enumerate instances 3. The moving power of the noblest creatures is not purely active but partly passive and partly
active and must receive the influx of the highest cause before it can act or communicate any thing Therefore as soon as the first mover should cease the rest would be soon stop'd though some active power was communicated to them As we see in a Clock when the poise is down and in a Watch when the spring is down the motion ceaseth first where it first began 4. Can you constrain your reason to imagine that God is the sole principal active cause for the first touch and as it were for one minute or instant while he causeth the first motus and is an unactive being or no cause ever after save only reputativè because he caused the first This is to say that God was God till he made the world and ever since he hath done nothing but left every atom or creature to be God Is God so mutable to do all for one instant and to do nothing ever after 5. The infiniteness and perfection of God fully proveth that all continued motion is by the continuance of his efficiency For it is undeniable that he who made all things is every where or present to all his creatures in the most intimate proximity And it is certain that he cannot but know them all and also that his Benignity maintaineth all their beings and well-beings and therefore that he is not an unactive being but that his power as well as his wisdom and Goodness is continually in act How strangely do these Epicureans differ from Aristotle who durst not deny the Eternity of the World lest he should make God an unactive Being ad extra from Eternity till the Creation When-as these men feign him to have given but one instantaneous push and to have been coetera otiosus or unactive from Eternity Seeing then it cannot by sober reason be denyed that God himself is by a continued Causation the Preserver and intimate first mover of all things it must needs thence follow that matter and motion are still insufficient of themselves and that this is to be none of the Controversie between us but only whether it be any created Nature Power or other Cause by which God causeth motion in any thing or all things or whether he do it by his own immediate Causation alone without the use of any second Cause save meer motion it self so that the insufficiency of Matter and Motion to continual alterations and productions must be confessed by all that confess there is a God 4. It is also manifest in the effect that it is not a meer motion of the first Cause which appeareth in the being and motions of the Creature There is apparently a tendency in the Creatures motion to a certain end which is an attractive Good and there is a certain Order in all motions to that end and certain Laws or Guidances and overrulings to keep them in that Order so that Wisdom and Goodness do eminently appear in them all in their beings natures differences excellencies order and ends as well as Motion the effect of Power 1. It is certain that God who is unmoved himself is the first mover of all 2. And if God were not unmoved but by self-motion caused motion yet he exerteth Wisdom and Goodness in his Creation and Providence as well as Motion 1. He that is Infinite and therefore not properly in any place or space or at least is limited in none can himself by Locomotion move himself in none which methinks none should question And they that make the World infinite or at least indefinite as they call it methinks should not deny the Infinitenesse of God And they acknowledge no motion themselves but Locomotion or migratio a loco in locum But saith Gassendus Vol. 1. pag. 337. Et certè captum omnem fugit ut quippiam quantumvis sit alteri praesens conjunctumque ipsum moveat si in seipso immotum maneat c. Itaque necesse omnino videtur ut cum in serie moventium quorum moventur alia ab aliis procedi in infinitum non possit perveniatur ad unum primum non quod immotum moveat sed quod ipsum per se moveatur Answ You gather from hence that it is the contexture of the most subtile Atomes which is the form and first mover in physical beings But you granted before that God moved those Atomes and also put a moving inclination into them And atomes are far from being unum or primum You said before sufficiat Deum quidem esse incorporeum ac pervadere fovereq universam mundi machinam And if so then movere etiam as well as fovere Either you mean as you speak in confessing a God or not If not it is unworthy a Philosopher to dissemble for any worldly respects whatsoever If you do then Is it beyond your capacity to conceive that God being unmoved moveth all things or not If not why should it be beyond your capacity to conceive the same in a second Order of a second spiritual being The reason as to motion is of the same kinde If yea then either you believe God is the first Mover or not If not withdraw your former Confession If yea what Locomotion for you deny all other can you ascribe to God who is unbounded and infinite what place is he moved from and what place is he moved into And is his motion rectus vel circularis is it one or multifarious or rather will you not renounce all these 2. And as God moveth being unmoved so he doth more than move He moveth Orderly and giveth Rules and Guidances to motion and moveth graciously to the felicity of the Creature and to a desireable end A Horse can move more than a man for he hath more strength or moving power But he moveth not so regularly nor to such intended ends because he hath not wisdom and benignity or goodness as Man hath He that buildeth a House or Ship or writeth such Volumes as Gassendus did doth somewhat more than barely move which a Swallow or a Hare could have done as swiftly And he that looketh on the works of God even to the Heavens and Earth as Gassendus hath himself described them and seeth not the effects of Wisdom and Goodness in the Order and tendency and ends of motion as well as Power in motion it self did take his survey but in his dream saith Balbus in Cicero de Nat. Deor. l. 2. p. 62. Hoc qui existimat fieri potuisse that is for the World to be made by meer fortuitous motion of atomes c. non intelligo cur non idem putet si innumerabiles unius viginti formae literarum aliquo coniciantur posse ex his in terram excussis Annales Ennii ut diâ—inceps legi possint effici quod nescio an in uno quidem versu possit tantum valere fortuna Quod si mundum efficere potest concursus atomorum cur porticum cur templum cur domum cur navem non potest quae sunt minus
operosa multo quidem faciliora Certè ita temere de mundo effutiunt ut mihi quidem nunquam hunc admirabilem coeli ornatum qui locus est proximus suspexisse videantur Where he brings in this passage as from Aristotle that if we should imagine men to have lived in some Dungeon or Cavern in the Earth and never to have seen the Sun or Light or World as we do and if there should be a doubt or dispute among them whether there be a God and if you should presently bring up these men into our places where they might look above them and about them to the Sun and Stars and Heaven and Earth they would quickly by such a sight be convinced that there is a God But as he truly addeth Assiduitate quotidiana consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi neque admirantur neque requirunt rationes earum rerum quas semper vident perinde quasi novitas nos magis quam magnitude rerum debeat adexquirendas causas excitare But I suppose it will be granted me that the first mover doth more than meerly move the effects of Wisdom and Goodness being so legible on all the World but you 'l say that to do it wisely and to attain good ends by it c. is but the modus of action with the effect and therefore matter and motion rightly ordered may be nevertheless sufficient to all effects To which I answer that the Creatures motion requireth not only that the Creator move them but that he place and order them and move them rightly and that he remove and overcome impediments c. Therefore there is necessary in the first mover both Wisdom and Love as well as Power And neither his Power Wisdom or Love are Locomotion in himself And this much being proved that in every motion there is Divine Power Wisdom and Love which is more than matter and motion it self I proceed next to enquire 5. Do you think there is any thing existent in the World besides matter and motion or not As to meer site and figure and other such order or modes of matter I know you will not deny them to have now a being as well as motion But is there no different tendency to motion in the parts of matter Is there not in many Creatures a Power an Inclination or aptitude to motion besides motion it self Is there not a reason à priore to be given why one Creature is more agile and active than another and why they act in their various wayes Why is fire more active than earth and a Swallow than a Snail If you say that the different ratio motus is in some extrinsecal agent only which moveth them you will hardly shew any possibility of that when the same Sun by the same virtue or motion as you will say is it that moveth all And if it were so you must go up to the first Cause to ask for the different motions of those movers when our enquiry now is de natura moventium motorum Creatorum If you say that it is the Ratio recipiendi in the different magnitudes or positions of the parts of matter which is the cause of different motions I would know 1. Whether this difference of magnitude and figure and site being now antecedently necessary to different motions was not so heretofore as well as now If you say No you feign without proof a state of things and order of Causes contrary to that which all mens sense perceiveth to be now existent And who is the wiser Philosopher he that judgeth the course and nature of things to be and have been what he now findeth it till the contrary be proved or he that findeth it one thing and feigneth it sometime to have been another without any proof That which is now antecedently necessary to diversity of motion it 's like was so heretofore 2. And then how could one simple equal act of God setting the first matter into motion cause such an inequality in motions to this day if it be true that you hold that only that which is moved or in motion it self can move and that motion is all that is necessary to the diversity 3. Either the first matter was made solid in larger parcels or all conjunct or in Atomes If it was made first in Atomes then Motion caused not Division If it was made conjunct and solid then motion caused not conjunction and solidity And if the first division or conjunction site and figure of matter was all antecedent to motion and without it we have no reason to think that it is the sole Cause of all things now But surely quantity figure and site are not all that now is antecedent to motion Doth not a man feel in himself a certain Power to sudden and voluntary motion He that sate still can suddenly rise and go And if you say that he performeth that sudden motion by some antecedent motion I answer that I grant that but the question is whether by that alone or whether a Power distinct from motion it self be not as evidently the Cause For otherwise the antecedent motion would proceed but according to its own proportion It would not in a minute make so sudden and great an alteration I can restrain also that motion which some antecedent motion e.g. passion urgeth me to Surely this Power of doing or not doing is somewhat different from doing it self A power of not-moving is not motion And what is the Pondus which Gassendus doth adde to magnitude and figure as a third pre-requisite in Atomes I perceive he knoweth not what to make of it himself But in conclusion it must be no natural Gravity by which the parts are inclined to the whole in themselves but the meer effect of pulsion or traction or both At the first he was for both conjunct pulsion of the Air and traction of the Atomes from the Earth But of this he repented as seeing impulsionem aeris nullam esse and was for the traction of Atoms alone Than which his Friends conceit of the pulsive motion of the Sun in its Diastole or whatever other motion is the cause doth seem less absurd But that man that would have me believe that if a Rock were in the air or if Pauls Steeple should fall the descent would be only by the traction of the hamuli of invisible Atomes or by the pulsion of Air and Sun conjunct must come neerer first and tell me how the hamuli of atomes can fasten upon a marble rock and how they come to have so much strength as to move that rock which no man can move in its proper place if there be no such thing as strength or power besides actual motion and why it is that those drawing atomes do move so powerfully Earthwards when at the same time it is supposed that as many or more atomes are moving upwards by the Suns attraction and more are moved circularly with the Earth why do not these stop or
hinder one another and why doth not the Rock as well go upward with the ascending atomes And when the Rock descendeth doth it carry down none of the ascendants with it As likely as for the descendants to carry down it Are those atomes that carry down the Rock more powerfull than an hundred thousand men who could not lift it up at all much less so swiftly And why do not the same partial atomes bear down a Feather or the Birds that fly quietly in the air And why feel we not the power of their motion upon us How easily can some men believe any thing while they think that their increase of wisdom lyeth in believing no more than evidence constraineth them to If Gassendus his instance of the Load-stone put under the ballance to increase the pondus of the Iron prove any thing it will prove something more than a traction of the hooked atomes even the traction of Nature that needeth no hooks And mark I pray you what Gassendus granteth when he saith Vnum omnino supponere par est viz. quantacunque fuit atomis mobilitas ingenita tanta constanter perseverare so that saith he they may be hindered from moving but not from endeavouring to move and free themselves from their restraint What need we more than this or what more do we plead for It is granted us then that when a moveable or active being is stopt from motion it doth not thereby lose its mobile or active nature or disposition And so that it is not only motion that causeth motion But that there is in atomis mobilitas ingenita which continueth when the motion ceaseth You 'l say perhaps that he meaneth only a passive receptivity by which one thing is easier moved by an exterior cause than another But you mistake him for he taketh not mobilitas ingenita only passively but also actively and therefore saith that it endeavoureth to move and free it self And lib. 5. c. 2. he saith Non motus sed impetus ab initio perseverat vel nisus perpetuus which is as much as I desire now For then there is somewhat besides matter and motion even as Impetus Nisus which must also come from a Power which per nisum impetum doth shew it self And indeed it doth not only overpass our Reason but contradict it that meer subtilty of matter or smallness of particles should be all the cause of motion that is found in the matter it self Must we believe that an Alcohol impalpalile of Marble or Gold if it could but be anatomized more would be as moveable as fire or would thereby turn to fire it self or as active as the Vital and Intellectual Creatures yea turned to such a thing it self If all matter was Atomes at first then all was fire and all was of one kinde and equally moveable And what hath made the difference since And if you will feign that God made some parts Atomes and some parts more gross or that he distinguished matter ab initio into Cartesius his materia subtilis globuli aetherei and grosser matter why may not we better say that the same Creator hath distinguished matter by different natures and powers which we finde them possessed of And by what proof do you distinguish matter into those three degrees or sorts any more than into two or four or six or ten or ten hundred who can choose but shake the head to see wise Philosophers thus impose upon the world and at the same time say It is the first duty of a man that would be wise to believe no more than by evidence he is forced to Yea and at the same time to say These are but our Hypotheses which saith one I acknowledge to be false and saith another I cannot say is true and yet they are our foundation and from these our Philosophical Verities result which must make you wise who must believe nothing without proof Alas what is man And I would know whether they can prove against Gassendus that Impetus Nisus vel conatus is ipse motus when the heaviest poise is at a Clock that standeth still the poise doth not move but it doth niti vel conari Hold but a Weight of an hundred pounds of Lead in your hand as immoveable as possible I am of opinion you will feel that it doth incline to motion though it move not Is not this inclination then somewhat different from motion If you tell me again of nothing but the invisible tractive hooked atomes I advise you to involve a thousand pound of Lead in a sufficient Case of Feathers which it seems are charmed from the power or touch of atomes and try then whether it be no heavier than the Feathers are The same I may say of a Spring of Steel which is wound up in a standing Watch or other Engine There is no proof of any motion and yet there is a Conatus different from motion You 'l say perhaps that the particles in the Steel are all in motion among themselves but when will you prove it and prove also that they are so in the Lead or Rock that by Gravity inclineth to descent and prove also that the particles are moved by an extrinsick mover only and have no principle of motion in themselves Moreover what think you is the nature of all our Habits Is there nothing in a Habit but actual motion Suppose that you sleep without a dream or that a Lethargy intercept your intellectual motion or that other business alienate your thoughts Do you think that all your Learning is thereby obliterated Or that you are after as unapt for your arts and trades as if you had never learnt them Let a Musician an Astronomer a Physician try whether they will not return more expert than an Ideot what then is this Habit It is not actual motion it self Else it would be totally extinct when the motion is but for an hour intercepted If you say that there is other motion in us still to renew it I answer why should that other e.g. the motion of the Lungs or Heart or the Circulation of the blood make you an Artist the next morning any more than your Neighbour if that were all You 'l grant I suppose that a Habit is somewhat distinct from Motion but it is the Effect of it only and one of the Phaenomena which we say that matter and motion are sufficient for To which I answer Do you deny that a Habit doth it self conduce to future motion or not If not it is no Habit If yea then as to future actions there is more than matter and motion needfull and the Principles are more And then what reason have you to contradict us who finding some Principles in Nature which conduce to motion as much and more than Habits do do assert such Principles And how know you that former motion proceedeth not from such Natures or Principles when you confess that later motions do so If you say that Habits
are nothing but a Cursus motuum as of water that by running in a certain Channell is inclined to run that way again I answer They are certainly something that remain when the action ceaseth and therefore are an Inclination ad agendum as well as a cursus actionum And they are something that are active Principles and not only so many Channels which the Spirits have made themselves in the brains and nerves Otherwise the numberless variety of objects would so furrow and channel the brain that they would consume it as gutta cavat lapidem c. 6. And do you know what you oblige your selves to when you undertake to solve all phaenomena by matter and motion only and how have you satisfied the studious and impartial World herein I hope you will not put off all questions that are put to you with these same two general words only when we ask you what causeth the descensus gravium do not tell us It is matter and motion but tell us the differences in the motion or matter which cause this effect as different from others What is the reason in motion that Fire ascendeth what is the reason that the motus projectorum doth continue why doth the Ant take one course and the Bee another and the Fly another c. what different motions are they that are the cause what motion is it that causeth the Hen to sit on her Eggs in fasting and patience and to know her Chickens and to cherish them till they are mature and then beat them away And so almost of all other Birds and Beasts What is the difference in motion that causeth one Creature to love this food and another that that one eateth Grass and another Flesh that every seed doth bring forth only its proper species what are the differences in motion which cause the difference in odour and taste and virtue and shape of leaves and flowers and fruits c. between all the Plants that cover the Earth that all that come of one seed have an agreement in leaf and flower and fruit and odour and taste and virtue e.g. Germander Betony Peony c. what are the different motions that cause all these differences even in the very seeds themselves To tell us only in general that the difference is all made by motion is to put an end to learning and studies and to give one answer to all the questions in the world and one description of all beings in the world You may as well tell us that you salve all the Phaenomena to tell us that all things are Entities and made and moved by God It is a fair advancement of Knowledge indeed to cast away and deny all the noblest parts of the world and to tell us that all the rest is matter of various magnitude and figure variously moved and placed This is short Philosophy And the particular specifying differences you do not you cannot tell us according to your Principles Gassendus § 1. l. 3. c. 2. denyeth the transmutation of Elements Others of the Atomists tell us that every Hour changeth the Elements and that continual motion is continually turning one into another And that Fire e.g. is but that part of matter which falleth under such or such a motion And that the same matter which is Fire this moment while it moveth is something else the next when that motion ceaseth And that whatever matter falleth under the same motion be it Stone or Earth or any thing it is presently by that motion turn'd to Fire as Fire may be into Stone or Earth But that which we expect from them is to tell us what motion it is that maketh the different Elements and what doth constitute them and what transmuteth them and not to put us off with two general words when they boast of solving all the Phaenomena We expect also to hear from them how Density and Solidity come to be the effects of motion And how the Cohesion of the particles of Gold or Marble or Glew is caused by the meer magnitude and figure of Matter or by the motion of it without any other material properties And they must give us a better account than they have yet done of the true cause of sense in matter and motion They know our argument but I could never yet understand how they answer it We say that Nihil dat quod non habet vel formaliter vel eminenter All the objections against this Maxim they may find answered besides others in Campanella de sensu rerum Atoms as matter have no sense they smart not they see not they feel no delight c. Formaliter you will not imagine that they have sense and they cannot have it eminenter being not above it but below it and shewing us nothing that doth transcend it or is like it And motion is no substance but a mode of matter and therefore hath it self no sense Object Doth not Campanella Telesius c. argue that all things have sense Answ 1. Their fanaticisms are no part of our Physical Creed 2. They mean when all is done but this much that there is some Image or Participation of Life in Inanimates of Sense in Vegetatives of Reason in Sensitives and of Angelical Intellection in Rationals 3. As it is said in the Mystic Aegypt Chald. Philos ascribed to Aristotle Et si quibusdam videtur quod elementa habent Animam illa est aliena adventitiaque eis Cumque sint viva vita illis est accidentaria non naturalis alioquin forent inalterabilia l. 12. c. 11. So the Sticks deifi'd the fire and made it Intellectual but it was not as it is matter but as they supposed it animated with an intellectual form So many of the ancients thought that the Angels were compounded of an intellectual form or soul and of a fiery or aethereal body But it is only the body that we are now enquiring of Have atoms sense doth matter feel or see as such Object We say not that all matter or atoms have sense but only some part of it which by motion is subtilized Answ Still nihil dat quod non habet you grant then that matter as such hath no sense at all Else the argument would hold ad omnem And if it have none as matter motion can give it none as meer motion for motion hath not sense to give Let motion attenuate the matter and subtilize it it is but matter still and it can be no less than atoms Therefore shew us how materia subtilis or atoms should feel or see because of the subtility or parvity and by its magnitude or grossness lose that sense Tell us how and why the change of meer magnitude and figure should make a thing feel that felt not before If you difference not matter by some natural difference of forms or properties and virtues you will never speak sense in proving sense to be in matter by meer atomizing it or moving it The alkohol of
and motion give us an account of light and heat that I find no need nor willingness to be at the labour of confuting them Call but for their proofs and you have confuted them all at once And if no better a solution be given us of the nature of Light and Heat what shall we expect from them about Intellection and Volition do atoms understand or will or doth motion understand or will If not as sure they do not as such then tell us how that which hath no participation of understanding or will should constitute an agent that doth understand and will Set to this work as Philosophers and make it intelligible to us if you are in good earnest 7. But to proceed a little further with you I take it for granted that you confess that an intellectual incorporeal being there is while you confess a God and that this sort of being is more excellent than that which is corporeal sensible and gross I would next ask you Do you take it for possible or impossible that God should make any secondary Beings which are incorporeal and intellectual also If you say It is impossible give us your proof If possible I next ask you whether it be not most probable also You acknowledge what a spot or punctum in the world this earthly Globe is you see here that man whose flesh must rot and turn to dust hath the power of Intellection and Volition you look up to the more vast and glorious Regions and Globes and I am confident you think not that only this spot of earth is inhabited And surely you think that the glory of the inhabitants is like to be answerable to the glory of their habitations You make your Atoms to be invisible and so you do the Air and Winds when yet our earth and dirt is visible Therefore you take not crassitude nor visibility or sensibility to have the preeminence in excellency Judge then your selves whether it be not likely that God hath innumerable more noble and excellent creatures than we silly men are And will you reduce all their unknown perfections or their known intelligence to matter and motion only Moreover when you observe the wonderful variety of things in which God is pleased to take his delight what ground have we to imagine that he hath no greater variety of substances but corporeal only nor no other way of causation but by motion when no man can deny but he could otherwise cause the variety which we see and fix in the creatures ab origine their differing natures properties and vertues what reason then have you to say that he did not do so And can you believe that the goodness of that God who hath made this wonderful frame which we see would not appear in making some creatures liker and nearer to himself than matter and motion is But to talk no more of probabilities to you we have certain proof that man is an intellectual free agent whose soul you can never prove to be corporeal and whose power of intellection and volition is distinct from corporal motion And we have proof that there are superior Intelligences more noble than we by the operations which they have exercised upon things below And what should move you who seem not to be overmuch Divine and who seem to observe the order and harmony of the creatures to imagine that God doth himself alone without any instrument or second cause move all the corporeal matter of the world If you are serious in believing that God himself doth move and govern all why do you question whether he make use of any nobler natures next him to move things corporeal And why do you against your own inclinations make every action to be done by God alone I doubt not but he doth all but you see that he chooseth to communicate honour and agency to his creatures He useth the Sun to move things on earth Therefore if you believe that corporeal beings stand at so infinite a distance from his perfections you may easily judge that he hath some more noble and that the noblest are the most potent and active and rule the more ignoble as you see the nobler bodies as the Sun to have power upon the more ignoble Therefore to violate the harmony of God's works and to deny all the steps of the ladder save the lowest is but an unhappy solving of Phaenomena Nay mark what you grant us you confess God to have Power Wisdom and Will and that he is incorporeal and moveth all and you confess that man hath in his kind Power Vnderstanding and Will and is there any thing below that 's liker God If not do you not allow us to take these faculties for incorporeal and that those are so that are higher than we 8. And you seem to us by your Philosophy to write of Nature as the Atheist writeth of God instead of explaining it you deny it What is Nature but the principium motus quietis c. And you deny all such principia and substitute only former motion so that you leave no other nature but what a stone receiveth from the hand that casteth it or the childrens tops from the scourge which driveth them or rather every turn is a nature to the next turn and so the nature of things is mostly out of themselves in the extrinsick mover And so you level all things in the world you deny all specifick forms or natural faculties and virtues The Sun and a clod have no natural difference but only magnitude and figure and motion as if so noble a creature had no differencing peculiar nature of its own nor any natural power or principle of its own motion and so it moved but as a stone is moved Yea you make all motion to be violent and deny all proper natural motion at all for that which hath no active principle of motion in its nature hath no proper natural motion as distinct from violent Hereby also you deny all vital powers you make a living creature and a dead to differ but in the manner of motion which whether you can at all explain we know not why may not the arrow which I shoot or the watch which I wind up be said to live as well as you It hath matter and motion and some inanimates the Air and Fire perhaps have as subtil matter and as speedy motion as is in you Why doth not the wind make the air alive and the bellows the fire In a word you deny all Intelligences all Souls all Lives all Natures all active Qualities and Forms all Powers Faculties Inclinations Habits and Dispositions that are any principles of motion and so all the natural excellency and difference of any creature above the rest A short way of solving the Phaenomena Lastly with Nature you deny the being of Morality For if there be no difference of Beings but in quantity figure motion and site and all motion is Locomotion which moveth by natural
195. that Omnibus creatis levior est ignis naturâ ideoq Angeli etiam hanc sortiti sunt Qui facit Angelos suos spiritus Ministros suos ignis flammam And Qu. 107. he faith that the Starre which led the Magi to Christ was an Angel It would be tedious to cite all out of Tertullian Lactantius and all the Ancients that was written to assert that Angels quoad formam were corpor a tenuiora and out of those that came after them and confuted them who yet wrote that they were the Souls of fiery bodies And abundance of our writers of Physicks Metaphysicks and Logick do tell us that Angels have Materiam metaphysicam and in a certain sense may be called corporeal And the summ of all is when they determine the questions about their locality extension or quantity that they have their ubi their quantity and extension which are the properties of bodies sou modo vel modo metaphysico as bodies have them modo sou physico being not immense or infinite no more than bodies How far the name of Nature belongeth to them see Fortunius Licetus de natura primo-movente And Schibler with others maketh the difference of extension to be this that Angels can contract their whole substance into one part of space and therefore have not partes extra partes Whereupon it is that the Schoolmen have questioned how many Angels may sit upon the point of a Needle For my part I profess that as my understanding is fully satisfied by the operations and effects that there are such invisible potent substances which we call Angels and Spirits so it is utterly unsatisfied in the common properties of Penetrability and Impenetrability Extension or discerptibility and indiscerptibility or indivisibility as the Characters to know them by And as I think that Materia had been as fit a name as another for that part or notion of spiritual substances which is distinguished from their form if Custom had so pleased to use it so I think that such Substances as we call Spirits or immaterial may be well said to be compounded of Metaphysical or spiritual matter and form and this in consistency with such simplicity as belongeth to a Creature And I remember not what apt word we have instead of matter to supply its place in Latine which taketh not in the notion of the Form For the word Matter signifieth no real Being but only a partial inadequate Conception of Real Beings quoad hoc which have all something more which is essential to them There is no such thing existent as matter without form or peculiar nature And the matter and form are such partes intelligibiles as can neither of them exist alone Therefore as it is not fit to make too eager a Controversie de nomine materiae vel materialis so I think that it is little that we know of any substances at all but what their accidents and effects reveal Matter we know by the quantity figure colour heat or cold density or rarity hardness or softness levity or weight c. And forms or differencing natures we know by their operations But that either matter or form is known to us immediately by it self and is the objectum sensus per se immediatè I cannot say by any observed experience of mine own Would you have me to go further yet I shall then adventure to say That as I feel no satisfying notion to difference the highest simple Being called Material from the lowest next it called Immaterial but what is in and from the forms so I think that it is too slippery a ground for any man to satisfie himself or others by to say only that one is material and the other immaterial Matter as I said being but a pars intelligiâ—ilis or inadequate conception of a thing is not to be a Genus in any predicament And if substance express the adequate conception it must comprehend something answerable to Matter with that defferencing nature called the form And what name besides matter to give to that part of the conception of a substance which is contradistinct from the form Philosophers are yet but little agreed in some name there must be when we speak of any created substances For the name of substance must not confound these distinct Conceptions Therefore materia metaphysica vel spiritualis is the term that hitherto men are fain to use Moreover it is the form that doth difference and denominate How then can you sufficiently difference corporeal and incorporeal from the material Cause by calling one Physical and the other Hyperphysical or Metaphysical Doth any mans understanding perceive the true positive difference by these words Is Matter as opposed to Nihil reale and is Ens creatum or as it expresseth our half-conception both of corporeal and incorporeal substances differenced so discernably or toto genere vel tota specie without a form to make the difference Doth mole immunis mole praedita speak a formal difference or not If not what place hath it in arbore Porphyrii vel Gassendi And if it do not you make the matter of substances ab origine differenced in se without any forms to difference them that is the Physical and the Metaphysical matter But if those words do express a formal difference you should finde some other to expound them by For sure mole praedita expresseth no form intelligibly And mole immunis is but a meer negation of quantity Differences therefore that are fetcht from matter here or the material part of substance are hardly made intelligible And we have so little acquaintance with spiritual substances in their naked matter for unless you will take 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is better than substance I know not how else to call it that we speak but by rote when we talk of Indivisibility and unextensiveness and impenetrability as the notifying differences because they are things beyond our understandings Is there a difference between Intellectual and Spiritual Beings among themselves or not Doubtless there is as the case of Angels Devils and the Souls of men declare Is this difference among any of them specifical and formal It is commonly so concluded as between Angels and men Is there then any agreement in substance or in another essential part where there is a formal difference I know none that notifie the other essential difference of the substance of mens Souls and Angels but they commonly confess that both are Spirits not differenced materially otherwise than in degrees of purity and dignity which how far it belongeth to the form I pretermit But there can be no specifical difference in the matter considered without that form which specifieth At least some agreement there is and of Spirits which are of different forms or species there must be some one name for that in which they still agree If you say that it is in substance you must then take substance as we do matter for an inadequate conception or only the
fiery nature of the semen of the Sun and of the calor naturalis telluris are generally the same and by their agreeableness do meet in co-operation for generation 8. Herein all three as conjunct are the cause of Life as Life the Sun the seed and the calor telluris communicating conjunctly what in their natures they all contain that is an active nature having a power by motion light and heat to cause vegetation and its conjunct effects But the calor motus solis and the calor telluris are but universal causes of life as life but the virtus seminalis is both a cause of life in genere and a specifying cause of this or that sort of Plants in specie the reason why e. g. an Oak an Elm a Rose-tree and every plant is what it is in specie being to be fetch'd from the seed alone and the Creator's will 9. Though the seed be the chief or only specifying cause why this is Adeantum and that Betonica and that Calendula c. yet the Sun and Earth the universal causes do contribute much more to the life as life than the seed it self 10. This fiery or solar active nature is so pure and above the full knowledge of mortals that we have no certainty at all whether in all this generative influx it communicate to vegetatives from it self a pre-existent matter and so draw it back to it self again by circulation or whether it do only by the substantial contact of its active streams cherish and actuate and perfect the substance which it findeth in semine materiâ passivâ or whether per influxum virtutis it operate only by that which is commonly called Quality without any communication or contact of substance 11. In all this operation of the Solar or fiery nature in generation it is quid medium between the passive matter and the animal nature and is plainly an image of the animal nature and its operations so like it that it hath tempted many to ascribe all animal operations only to the Solar or fiery nature and hath caused wise men to doubt whether this nature be to be numbred with things corporeal or incorporeal and to place it between both as participating in several respects of both 12. If the sensitive nature be really above or specifically different from the fiery we may in what is said conjecture much at the order of the generation of things sensitive viz. by a three-fold cause co-operating one specifying and two universal and cherishing The specifying is the virtus seminalis maris foeminae conjunct and of neither alone the same God which bless'd the single seed of a plant with the gift of multiplication bless'd only the conjunct seeds of male and female animals with that gift The superiour universal cause is either some anima universalis ejusdem naturae or God immediately By an Anima universalis I mean not an anima totius mundi but of that superiour vortex or part which this earth belongs to Either this is the Sun or some invisible soul If it be the Sun it is not by its simple fiery nature before mentioned because sensation seemeth to be somewhat totâ specie different from motion light and heat and then it must prove that the Sun is compound and hath a superiour form and nature which either formaliter or eminenter is sensitive and that by this it is that it animateth inferiour sensitives But of this we mortals have no certainty It seemeth very improbable that a worm or flie should have a nature superiour to any that the Sun hath but probabilities are not certainties there are things highest and things lowest in their several kinds But remember that if it should be the Sun it is by that nature superiour to fire by which it doth it The maternal universal Cause of the sensitive life is the Mother Whether the spirits of a sensitive Creature have more in them than the spirits of a Plant and do more by nutrition than cause Vegetation whether they nourish sensitive Life as such is doubtfull But if they do so they be but an universal and not a specifying Cause that is the Cause of Life as Life but not of the vita bovis equi canis felis aquilae qua talis And therefore if the late-discovered trick of passing all the blood of one animal into another be prosecuted to the utmost tryal possibly it may do much to the advantage of Life and Sense as such but never to the alteration of the species to turn a Dog into a Swine or any other sort of Animal 13. Whether the sensitive nature be most refined-corporeal or totally incorporeal is past the reach of man to be assured of 14. The foresaid difficulty is greater here than in the Vegetative Generation viz. Whether in the multiplication of sensitive souls there be an addition of substance communicated from the Universal Causes or a greater quantity or degree of matter physical or metaphysical propagated and produced into existence by generation than there was before It seemeth hard to say that a pair of Animals in Noahs Ark had as much matter or substance in their souls as the millions since proceeding from them But whether such souls have quantitive degrees or by what terms of gradation the souls of millions are distinct from one besides the number or whether God in the blessing of multiplication hath enabled them to increase the quantity of matter which shall serve for so many more forms are things which we cannot fully understand 15. In the like manner we may rise up and conceive of the Generation of Mankind We are sure that he hath an intelligent nature much nobler than the sensitive And we know that homo generat hominem And we know that in his Generation there is an Vniversal Cause and a specifying Cause for though there be but one species of men yet there are more of Intelligences and that one may have an Vniversal Cause producing that and other effects and an Univocal special Cause We know that because he is Generated the specifying Cause is the fecundity or propagating power of the Parent generating a separable seed which seed in conjunction as aforesaid suppositis supponendis is semen hominis and is man seminally and virtually but not actually that is Hath both Passive and Active Power and virtue by reception of the influx of the universal Cause to become a man The universal inferior or feminine Cause is the Mothers Body and Soul or the whole Mother in whom the Infant is generated and cherished I call it Vniversal For it is only the semen that specifieth And therefore by a false or bruitish semen a woman may produce a Monster The Vniversal Paternal Cause is certainly GOD ut prima and it is probable also ut sola For he made Mans Soul at first by that immediate communication which is called Breathing it into him And the Intellectual nature though specified into Angels and Men is the
even so the bruitish grossness of the Somatists driveth some Philosophers into Platonick dreams and the Platonick fictions harden the Epicureans in a far worser way Lactantius de ira Dei cap. 13. thinks that Epicurus was moved to his opinion against Providence by seeing the hurt that good men and Religious endure from the woâ—ser sort here in this world But why should you run out on one side the way because other men run out on the other why do you not rather argue from the doctrine in the sober mean that it is true than from the extreams that the truth is falshood When reason will allow you to conclude no more than that those extremes are falshood But surely I had rather hold Plato's Anima mundi or Aristotle's Intellectus agens and his moving Intelligences than Epicurus his Atoms and motion only And I had rather think with Alexander Arphad that omnis actio corporis est ab incorporeo principio yea or the Stoicks doctrine of Intellectual Fire doing all than Gassendus his doctrine that no incorporeal thing can move a corporeal or that Atoms and their motion only do all that we find done in nature When I look over and about me I find it a thing quite past my power to think that the glorious parts above us are not replenished with much nobler creatures than we And therefore if the Platonists and the ancient Platonick Fathers of the Church did all think that they lived in communion with Angels and had much to do with them and that the superiour intelligences were a nobler part of their studies than meer bodies they shall have the full approbation of my reason in this though I would not run with them into any of their presumptions and uncertain or unsound conceits Saith Aeneas Gazaeus pag. 778. when he had told us that Plato Pythagoras Plotinus and Numenius were for the passing of men's souls into bruits but Porphyry and Jamblichus were against it and thought that they passed only into men Ego quidem hac ipsa de causa filium aut famulum ob id quod commiserint peccatum puniens antequam de ipsis supplicium sumam praemoneo ut meminerint ne posthac unquam in eadem mala recurrant Deus autem quando ultima supplicia decernit non edocet eos qui poenarum causas sed scelerum memoriam omnem tollet vide pag. 382. For this reason and many others we assume not their conceit of the soul's pre-existence and think all such unproved fancies to be but snares to trouble the world with We think not that God punisheth men for sin in another world while he totally obliterateth the memory of the other world and of their sin When he hath told us that In Adam all die and By one mans disobedience many are made sinners and so condemnation passed upon all Rom. 5. Nor will we with Origen thus tempt men to look for more such changes hereafter which we can give them no proof of Nor will we distribute the Angelical Hierarchy into all the degrees which the pseudo-Dionysius doth nor with the Gnosticks Basilidians Saturninians Valentinians and abundance of those antient Hereticks corrupt Christianity with the mixture of fanatick dreams about the unrevealed Powers and worlds above us either worshipping Angels or prying into those things which he hath not seen and are not revealed vainly puft up by his fleshly mind or without cause puffed up by the imagination of his own flesh as Dr. Hammond translateth it Col. 2.18 Nor will we make a Religion with Paracelsus Behmen the Rosicrucians or the rest described by Christ Beckman Exercit. of the Philosophical whimsies of an over-stretch'd imagination And yet we will not reject the saying of Athenagoras Apol. pag. 57. Magnum numerum Angelorum Ministrorum Dei esse fatemur quos opifex architectus mundi Deus Verbo suo tanquam in classes ordinavit centuriavitque ut elementa coelos mundum quae in mundo sunt vicesque ordinem omnium moderarent Though we may adde with Junilius Africanus that Whether the Angels meddle with the government of the world of stablished creatures is a difficult question OBJECTION XIX IF the soul do continue individuate yet its actings will not be such as they are now in the body because they have not spirits to act by And as Gassendus thinketh that the reason of oblivion in old men is the wearing out of the vestigia of the former spirits by the continual flux or transition of matter so we may conceive that all memory will cease to separated souls on the same account and therefore they will be unfit for Rewards or Punishments as not remembring the cause Answ 1. Iâ— Gassendus his opinion were true men should forget all things once a year if not once a month considering how many pounds of matter are spent every 24 hours And why then do we better when we are old remember the things which we did between nine or ten years old and twenty than most of the later passages of our lives as I do for my part very sensibly 2. What is mans memory for with bruits we meddle not but scientia praeteritorum Is not remembring a knowing of things past surely we may perceive that it is and that it is of the same kind of action with the knowing of things present And therefore we may make not memory a third faculty because it is the same with the understanding 3. We have little reason to think that the surviving soul will lose any of its essential powers and grow by its change not only impotent but another thing Therefore it will be still an intelligent power And though remote actions and effects such as writing fighting c. are done by instruments which being removed we cannot do them without yet essential acts are nothing so which flow immediately from the essence of the agent as light heat and motion of the fire If there be but due objects these will be performed without such instruments Nor will the Creator who continueth at an active intelligent power continue it so in vain by denying it necessaries for its operations There is like to be much difference in many respects between the soul's actings here and hereafter but the acts flowing from its essence immediately as knowledge volition complacency called Love and Displacencie c. will be the same How far the soul here doth act without any idea or instrument I have spoken before And the manner of our acting hereafter no man doth now fully understand But that which is essentially an intellectual volitive power will not be idle in its active essence for want of a body to be its instrument If we may so far ascribe to God himself such Affections or Passions as the ingenious Mr. Samuel Parker in his Teutam Phil. l. 2. c. 8. p. 333 c. hath notably opened we have no reason to think that scientia praeteritorum is not to be ascribed
to a soul when it is separated from the corporeal spirits Or if the soul out of the body were as liable as it is by diseases of the body while it is in it to the loss of memory yet all those arguments which prove the Life of Retribution hereafter do fully prove that God will provide it a way of exercise and prevent all those hinderances of memory which may make his Judgment and Retribution void Again therefore I say To argue ab ignotis against clear evidence in matters that our own everlasting joy or sorrow is concerned in so deeply is a folly that no tongue can express with its due aggravations OBJECTION XX. THe belief of the immortality of souls doth fill men with fears and draw them to superstition and trouble the peace of Kingdoms by unavoidable sects in the prosecution of those things which are of such transcendent weight when otherwise men might live in quietness to themselves and others and in promoting of the publick good Answ This is the maddest objection of all the rest but in our days there are men found that are no wiser than to make it I have answered it fully in divers popular Treatises as that called A Saint or a Bruit c. 1. The greatest and best things are liable to the worst abuses Thus you may argue against Reason that it doth but fill mens brains with knavish craft and enable them to do mischief and to trouble the world and to live themselves in cares and fears c. Upon many such reasons Cotta in Cic. de Nat. Deor. doth chide God for making man a rational creature and saith he had been happier without it And were it not for this wit and reason we should have none of these evils which you have here now mentioned Why then is not reason as well as Religion on that account to be rejected On the same reason Philosophy and Learning may be accused as it is with the Turks and Moscovites What abundance of sects and voluminous contentions and tired consuming studies have they caused witness all the volumes of Philosophers and School-men On the same account you may cry down Kings and Civil Government and Riches and all that is valued in the world for what wars and bloudshed hath there been in the world for Crowns and Kingdoms what hatred and contention for honour and wealth If you could make all men swine they would not stir for gold or pearls or if they were dogs they would not fight for Kingdoms and if they be blind and impious worldlings they will not be zealous about Religion unless to dis-spirit it and to reduce it to the service of their fleshly interest which is the hypocrites zeal No man will contend for that which he valueth not But 2. Consider that though dogs will not fight for Crowns they will fight for bones and some times need men of reason to stave them off And though swine fight not for gold they will fight for draff and burst their bellies if they be not governed And though unbelievers and Atheists trouble not the world to promote Religion they set Families Towns and Countries and Kingdoms together by the ears for their worldly pelf and fleshly interest Enquire whether the wars of the world be not most for carnal interest even where Religion hath been pretended and hearken in Westminster-hall and at the Assizes whether most of the contendings there are such as are caused by Religion or by the love of the world and of the flesh And where Religion seemeth to be a part of the cause it is the Atheists and ungodly that are commonly the chief contenders who think it not enough to hope for no life to come themselves but they cannot endure other men that do it because they seem wiser and better and happier than they and by their holiness gall their consciences and condemn them 3. The extremity of this objections impudency appeareth in this above all that it is most notorious that there is no effectual cure for all the villanies of the world but true Religion and shall the cure be made the cause of that disease 1. Read and judge in Nature and Scripture whether the whole matter of Religion be not perfectly contrary to the vices of the world Will it trouble Kingdoms or disquiet souls to love God above all and to honour and obey him and be thankful for his mercies and to trust his promises and to rejoice in hope of endless glory and to love our neighbours as our selves and to do no injustice or wrong to any to forbear wrath and malice lust adultery theft and lying and all the rest expressed in this treatise 2. Is it not for want of Religion that all the vices and contentions of the world are Would not men be better subjects and better servants and better neighbours if they had more Religion Would not they lie and deceive and steal and wrong others less Do you think he that believeth a life to come or he that believeth it not is liker to cut your purse or rob you by the high way or bear false witness against you or be perjured or take that which is not his own or any such unrighteous thing Is he liker to live as a good subject or servant who looketh for a reward in heaven for it or he that looketh to die as a beast doth Is he liker to do well and avoid evil who is moved by the effectual hopes and fears of another life or he that hath no such hopes and fears but thinketh that if he can escape the Gallows there is no further danger Had you rather your servant that is trusted with your estate did believe that there is a life to come or that there is none Nay why doth not your objection militate as strongly against the thief's believing that there will be an Assize For if the belief of an Assize did not trouble him he might quietly take that which he hath a mind to and do what he list but this fills his heart with fears and troubles 3. Compare those parts of the world Brasil and Soldania c. which believe not a life to come if any such there be with those that do and see which belief hath the better effects 4. What is there of any effectual power to restrain that man from any villany which he hath power to carry out or policy to cover who doth not believe a life to come 5. And if you believe it not what will you do with Reason or any of your faculties or your time How will you live in the world to any better purpose than if you had slept out all your life What talk you of the publick good when the denying of our final true felicity denyeth all that is truely Good both publick and private But so sottish and malignant an objection deserveth pity more than confutation Whatever Religious persons did ever offend these men with any reall Crimes I can assure
duration yet it is after God in order of being as caused by Him as the shadow is after the substance and as the beams and light are after the Sun or rather as the leaves would be after the life of the Tree if they were conceived to be both eternal One would be an eternal Cause and the other but an eternal Effect 2. It is certain that this present World containing the Sun and Moon and Heavens and Earth which are mentioned Genes 1. is not from Eternity And indeed Reason it self doth make that at least very probable as Revelation makes it certain Which will appear when I have opened the Philosophers opinions on the other side 2. Among your selves there are all these differences and so we have several Cases to state with you 1. Some think that this present Systeme of compounded beings is from Eternity 2. Others think that only the Elements and Heavens and all simple Beings are from Eternity 3. Others think that Fire or Aether only as the Active Element is from Eternity or the incorruptible matter of the Heavens 4. Others think that matter and motion only were from Eternity 5. Others think that only spiritual purer beings Intelligences or Mindes were from Eternity and other things produced immediately by them 6. And there have been those Heathen Philosophers who held that only God was from Eternity Among all this variety of opinions why should any one think the more doubtfully of Christianity for denying some of them which all the other deny themselves Is it a likely thing that any individual mixt body should be eternall when we know that mixt bodies incline to dissolution and when we see many of them oriri interire daily before our eyes And if Man and Beast as to each individual have a beginning and end it must be so as to the beginning of the species for the species existeth not out of the Individuals and some individual must be first And as Bp. Ward argueth against Mr. Hobs If the World be eternal there have infinite dayes gone before e. g. the birth of Christ and then the whole is no greater than the parts or infinity must consist of finite parts The Heavens and the Earth therefore which are compounded beings by the same reason are lyable to dissolution as man is and therefore had a beginning So that the truth is there is no rational probability in any of your own opinions but those which assert the Eternity of some Simple Beings as Matter or Intelligences or an Anima Vniversalis Now consider further that if ever there was a moment when there were no Individuals or mixt Beings but only some universal Soul or Matter then there was an Eternity when there was nothing else For Eternity hath no beginning And then will it not be as strange to your selves to think that God should from all Eternity delight himself in Matter unformed if that be not a contradiction or in an Anima simplex unica without any of all the variegated matter and beings which we now finde besides in Nature as that he should eternally content himself with Himself alone If all individuals of compound beings were not from Eternity what was Either the Egge or the Hen must be first as the old instance is If you will come to it that either Anima unica or Atoms unformed were eternal why should not God as well be without these as be without the formed Worlds What shall a presumptuous minde now say to all these difficulties why return to modesty Remember that as the Bird hath wit given her to build her nest and breed her young as well as man could do it and better but hath no wit for things which do not concern her so man hath reason for the ends and uses of reason and not for things that are not profitable to him and that such looks into Eternity about things unrevealed do but over-whelm us and tell us that they are unrevealed and that we have not one reason for such employments And what is the end of all that I have said Why to tell you that our Religion doth not only say nothing of former worlds but 2. that it also forbiddeth us to say Yea or Nay to such questions and to corrupt our minds with such presumptuous searches of unrevealed things And therefore that you have no reason to be against the Scripture on this account for it doth not determine any thing against your own opinion if you assert not the eternity of this present world or system but it determineth against your presumption in medling with things which are beyond your reach And withall it giveth us a certainty that as in one Sun there is the Lux Radii Lumen so in one God there is Father Son and holy Spirit eternally existent and self-sufficient which quieteth the mind more than to think of an eternity of an Anima or Materia which is not God All this I have here annexed because these Philosophical self-deceivers are to be pitied and to have their proper help And I thought it unmeet to interrupt the discourse with such debates which are not necessary to more sober Readers but only for them who labour of this disease and I know that when they read the first leafe of the book which proveth that man hath a Soul or Mind they will rise up against it with all the objections which Gassendus Mr. Hobs c. assault the like in Cartesius with and say You prove not this Mind is any thing but the subtiler part of Matter and the temperament of the whole To whom I now answer 1. That it is not in that place incumbent on me nor seasonable to prove any more than I there assert 2. But I have here done it for their sakes more seasonably though my discourse is entire and firm without it And I desire the unbelieving Reader to observe that I am so far from an unnecessary incroaching upon his liberty and making him believe that Christianity condemneth all those conjectures of Philosophers which it asserteth not it self that I have taken the liberty of free conjecturing in such cases my self not going beyond the evidence of probability or the bounds of modesty and that I think them betrayers of the Christian cause or very injurious to it who would interess it in matters with what it medleth not and corrupt it by pretending that it condemneth all the opinions in Philosophy which themselves are against Nor am I one that believe that Christianity will allow me that zeal which too hastily and peremptorily condemneth all that in such points do hold what I dislike I do not anathematize as Hereticks all those who hold those opinions which either Stephanus or Guilielm Episc Parisienses condemned in their Articul Contra varios in fide errores though I think many of them dangerous and most very audacious e. g. Quod intelligentia motrix coeli fluit in animas rationales sicut