consequently exceeding great But in answer to this I say First That purely Intellectual Joy leaves the Mind to its entire Liberty and takes up but very little of its Thinking Capacity wherein it differs from Sensible Joy which commonly disturbs the Reason and lessens the Liberty I answer Secondly That the Happiness of Adam at the first Instant of his Creation did not consist in a plenary and entire Possession of the Supreme Good it being possible for him to lose it and become miserable But herein his Happiness especially consisted That he suffer'd no Evil and was in the good Favour of Him who must have perfected his Felicity if he had persever'd in his State of Innocency Thus his Joy was not excessive nay it was or ought to have been temper'd with an Alloy of Fear for he ought to have been diffident of himself I answer Lastly That Joy does not always intend the Mind upon the true Cause that produces it As a Sense of Joy arises upon the Contemplation of one 's own Perfections it is natural to believe that Prospect is the Cause of it for when a Thing constantly follows from another 't is naturally look'd upon as one of its Effects Thus a Man considers himself as the Author of his own present Happiness he finds a secret Complacency in his Natural Perfections he loves himself and thinks not of Him who operates in him in an imperceptible manner 'T is true Adam more distinctly knew than the greatest of Philosophers that God alone was able to act in him and produce that Sense of Joy which he felt upon the Consideration of his Happiness and Perfections This he knew clearly by the Light of Reason when he attended to it but not by any Sensation which on the contrary taught him that his Joy was a Consequence of his Perfection seeing he had the constant Sense of it and that without any Application on his part And so this Sensation might lead him to consider his own Perfections and take pleasure in himself if he either forgot or any ways lost sight of Him whose Operations in us are not of a sensible Nature So far would this Joy have been from rendring him impeccable as is pretended that on the contrary it might probably be the Occasion of his Pride and Fall And 't is for this Reason that I say in this Chapter that Adam ought to have taken care not to have suffer'd the Capacity of his Mind to be fill'd with a presumptuous Joy kindled in his Soul upon Reflexion on his own Natural Perfections THE ILLUSTRATION UPON THE Fifth CHAPTER of the First BOOK Where I say That Preventing Delight is the Grace of JESUS CHRIST THough I say in this Chapter that Preventing Delight is the Grace which JESUS CHRIST has particularly merited for us and that I term it elsewhere absolutely The Grace of our LORD yet this is not said as if there were no other Grace besides this or as if there were any but what He has merited but I name it so to distinguish it from the Grace which GOD gave Adam in his Creation which commonly we call the Grace of the Creator For the Grace by which Adam might have persever'd in Innocence was chiefly a Grace of Light or Knowledge as I have explain'd in the foregoing Reflexion because being free of Concupiscence he had no need of Preventing Pleasures to resist it But the Grace which is at present necessary to support us in our Duty and to beget and keep Charity alive in us is Preventing Delectation For as Pleasure produces and cherishes the Love of the Things that cause or seem to cause it so Preventing Pleasures which Bodies occasionally administer produce and maintain in us our Cupidity So that Cupidity being entirely opposite to Charity if God did not beget and sustain in us the Latter by Preventing Delectations 't is plain that it would be enfeebled by the Preventing Pleasures of Concupiscence proportionably as Concupiscence was corroborated by them What I here say supposes that God leaves our Concupiscence to work in us and does not weaken it by an infus'd Abhorrence to sensible Objects which as a Result from Sin must necessarily tempt us I speak of Things according to ordinary procedure But supposing that God lessens Concupiscence instead of increasing Delectable Grace it comes to the same thing for it is plain that a Balance may be put two Ways in aequilibrio when one of the Scales is too heavy burthen'd either by adding Weight to the opposite Scale or retrenching the Excess of the over-weighted Nor do I suppose it is impossible to do any good Action without a Preventing Delectation Upon which Particular I have explain'd my self sufficiently in the Fourth Chapter of the Third Book And it seems too evident to be doubted that a Man having his Heart possess'd with the Love of God may by the Strength of his Love unassisted with Preventing Delight give for instance a Peny to a poor Man or patiently suffer some little Affront I am persuaded likewise that this Delight is not necessary except when the Temptation is strong or the Love for God weak However it may be said to be absolutely necessary to a Righteous Man whose Faith might one would think be resolute and his Hope strong enough to conquer very violent Temptations the Joy or Fore-taste of Eternal Happiness being capable of resisting the sensible Allurements of transitory Goods 'T is true Delectation or Actual Grace is necessary to every good Action if by these Words be meant Charity in which Sense St. Austin commonly took them For 't is evident that whatever is done without some Respect or other had to God is good for nothing But clearing the Terms of Equivocations and taking Delectation in the Sense I have given I cannot see how what I have said can be call'd in question But see wherein the Difficulty consists Pleasure and Love are suppos'd to be one and the same thing because seldom apart and St. Austin does not always distinguish them And on this Supposition they may reasonably say as they do and we may conclude with St. Austin Quod amplius nos delectat secundum id operemur necesse est For certainly we will what we love and so likewise it may be said that we cannot perform any good or meritorious Action without Delectation or Charity But I hope to make it appear in the Explanation I shall make upon the Tract concerning the Passions that there is as much difference between Pleasure and deliberate or indeliberate Love as there is between our Knowledge and our Love or to give a sensible Representation of this Difference between the Figure of a Body and its Motion THE ILLUSTRATION Upon what I have said at the Beginning of the Tenth CHAPTER of the First BOOK And in the Sixth CHAPTER of the Second BOOK CONCERNING METHOD That 't is very difficult to prove the Existence of Bodies What we ought to Esteem of the Proofs which are
have it so and consequently HE whose essential and necessary Will is always conformable to ORDER Which Will remaining immutably the same the Establish'd Order was subverted by the first Man's Disobedience because for the demerits of his Sin it was consonant to Order that he should be Lord of nothing It is not reasonable that the Sinner should suspend the Communication of Motions that the Will of God should conform to his or that any exceptions should be made to the Law of Nature on his Behalf In so much that Man is subject to Concupiscence his Mind depends on his Body he feels in himself indeliberate Pleasures and involuntary and rebellious Motions pursuant to that most just and exact Law which unites the two Parts of which he is compos'd Thus the formal Reason of Concupiscence no less than that of Sin is nothing real and positive being no more in Man than the loss of the Power he had to wave and suspend to the Communication of Motions on some occasions Nor are we to admit any positive Will in God to produce it For this loss which Man has sustain'd was not a consequence of Order or of the immutable Will of God which never swerves from it and is constantly the same but only a consequence of Sin which has rendred Man unworthy of an Advantage due only to his Innocence and Uprightness Wherefore we may say that not God but Sin only has been the Cause of Concupiscence Nevertheless God Works all that is Real and Positive in the Sensations and Motions of Concupiscence for God does every thing but all that has nothing of Evil. 'T is by the general Law of Nature that is by the Will of God that sensible Objects produce in Man's Body certain Motions and that these Motions raise in the Soul certain Sensations useful to the preservation of the Body or the Porpagation of the Species Who then dare presume to say these things are not good in themselves I know it is said that Sin is the Cause of certain Pleasures But do they that say it conceive it Can it be thought that Sin which is nothing should actually produce something Can nothing be suppos'd to be a real Cause However 't is so said but possibly for want of taking due pains of seriously considering what they say or because they are unwilling to enter on an Explication that is contrary to the Discourses they have heard from Men who it may be talk with more Gravity and Assurance than Reflexion and Knowledge Sin is the Cause of Concupiscence but not of Pleasure as Free Will is the Cause of Sin though not of the natural Motion of the Soul The Pleasure of the Soul is good as well as its Motion or Love and there is nothing good but what God does The Rebellion of the Body and the guilt of Pleasure proceed from Sin As the Adherency of the Soul to a particular Good or its Rest proceeds from the Sinner But these are only Privations and Nothings whereof the Creature is capable Every Pleasure is Good and likewise in some measure makes happy the Possessour at least for the time of the Enjoyment But it may be said to be evil because instead of elevating the Mind to Him that is the true Cause of it through the Errour of our Intellectual and corruption of our Moral Part it prostrates it before sensible Objects that only seem to produce it Again it is evil in as much as it is Injustice in us who are Sinners and consequently meriting rather to be punish'd than rewarded to oblige God pursuant to his Primitive Will to recompense us with pleasant Sensations In a word not to repeat here what I have said in other places it is evil because God at present forbids it by Reason of its alienating the Mind from himself for whom he hath made and preserves it For that which was ordain'd by God to preserve Righteous Man in his Innocence now fixes sinful Man in his Sin and the Sensations of Pleasure which he wisely establish'd as the easiest and most obvious Expedients to teach Man without calling off his Reason from his true Good whether he ought to unite himself with the invironing Bodies at present fill the Capacity of his Mind and fasten him on Objects incapable of acting in him and infinitely below him because he looks upon these Objects to be the true Causes of the Happiness he enjoys occasionally from them THE SECOND ILLUSTRATION UPON THE First CHAPTER of the First BOOK Where I say That the Will cannot diversly determine its Propensity to Good but by commanding the Vnderstanding to represent to it some particular Object IT must not be imagin'd that the Will commands the Understanding any other Way than by its Desires and Motions there being no other Action of the Will nor must it be believ'd that the Understanding obeys the Will by producing in it self the Ideas of Things which the Soul desires for the Understanding acts not at all but only receives Light or the Ideas of Things through its necessary Union with Him who comprehends all Beings in an intelligible manner as is explain'd in the Third Book Here then is all the Mystery Man participates of the Sovereign Reason and Truth displays it self to him proportionably to his Application and his praying to it Now the Desire of the Soul is a Natural Prayer that is always heard it being a natural Law that Ideas should be so much readier and more present to the Mind as the Will is more earnest in desiring them Thus provided our Thinking Capacity or Understanding be not clogg'd and fill'd up by the confus'd Sensations we receive occasionally from the Motions occurring in our Body we should no sooner desire to think on any Object but its Idea would be always present to our Mind which Idea Experience witnessing is so much more present and clear as our Desire is more importunate and our confus'd Sensations furnish'd to us by the Body less forcible and applicative as I have said in the foregoing Illustration Therefore in saying that the Will commands the Understanding to represent to it some particular Object I meant no more than that the Soul willing to consider that Object with Attention draws near it by her Desire because this Desire consequently to the efficacious Wills of God which are the inviolable Laws of Nature is the Cause of the Presence and Clearness of the Idea that represents the Object I could not at that time speak otherwise than I did nor explain my self as I do at present as having not yet prov'd God the sole Author of our Ideas and our particular Volitions only the occasional Causes of them I spoke according to the common Opinion as I have been frequently oblig'd to do because all cannot be said at once The Reader ought to be equitable and give Credit for some time if he would have Satisfaction for none but Geometricians pay always down in hand THE ILLUSTRATION UPON THE
and greatness worthy of the Wisdom and the Power of its Author Man then may be consider'd after his Sin without a Restorer but under the Expectation of one In considering him without a Restorer we plainly see he ought to have no Society with God that that he is unable of himself to make the least approaches to him that God must needs repel him and severely use him when he offers to leave the Body to unite himself to him that is to say that Man after the Sin must lose the power of getting clear of sensible impressions and motions of concupiscence He ought likewise to be annihilated for the foremention'd Reasons But he expects a Restorer and if we consider him under that Expectation we see clearly that he must subsist He and his Posterity whence his Restorer is to arise and thus it is necessary that Man after his Sin preserve still the power of diversely moving all those parts of the Body whose motion may be serviceable to his Preservation 'T is true that Men abuse daily the power they have of producing certain motions and that their power of moving their tongue for Example several ways is the cause of innumerable Evils But if it be minded that power will appear absolutely necessary to keep up Society to comfort one another in the Exigences of thiâ— present Life and to instruct them in Religion which affords hope of a Redeemer for whom the World subsists If we carefully examine what are the motions we produce in us and in what parts of our Body we can affect them we shall clearly see that God has left us the power of our Body no farther than is necessary to the preservation of Life and the cherishing and upholding civil Society For example the Beating of the Heart the Dilatation of the Midriff the peristaltick motion of the Guts the Circulation of the Spirits and Blood and the diverse motions of the Nerves in the Passions are produc'd in us without staying for the order of the Soul As they ought to be much what the same on all occasions nothing obliges God to submit them now to the will of Man But the motions of the Muscles imploy'd in stirring the Tongue the Arms and Legs being to change every minute according to the almost infinite diversity of good or evil Objects all about us it was necessary these motions should depend on the will of Men. But we are to remember That God acts always by the simplest ways and that the Laws of Nature ought to be general and that so God having given us the power of moving our Arm and Tongue he ought not to take away that of striking a Man unjustly or of slandering or reproaching him For if our natural Faculties depended on our Designs there would be no Uniformity nor certain Rule in the Laws of Nature which however must be most simple and general to be answerable to the Wisdom of God and suitable to Order So that God in pursuance of his Decrees chuses rather to cause the Materiality of Sin as say the Divines or to make use of the Injustice of Men as says one of the Prophets than by changing his Will to put a stop to the Disorders of Sinners But he defers his revenging the injurious Treatment which they give him till the time when it shall be permitted him to do it without swerving from his immutable Decrees that is to say when Death having corrupted the Body of the voluptuous God shall be freed from the necessity he has impos'd on himself of giving them Sensations and Thoughts relating to it OBJECTION against the Eleventh and Twelfth Articles Original Sin not only enslaves Man to his Body and subjects him to the Motions of Concupiscence but likewise fills him with Vices wholly Spiritual not only the Body of the Infant before Baptism being corrupted but also his Soul and all his Faculties stain'd and infected with Sin Though the Rebellion of the Body be the principle of some grosser Vices such as Intemperance and Vncleanness yet it is not the Cause of Vices purely Spiritual as are Pride and Envy And therefore Original Sin is something very different from Concupiscence which is born with us and is more likely the Privation of Grace or of Original Righteousness ANSWER I acknowledge That Children are void of Original Righteousness and I prove it in shewing That they are not born upright and that God hates them For methinks one cannot give a clearer Idea of Righteousness and Vprightness than to say a Will is upright when it loves God and that it is crooked and perverse when it draws towards Bodies But if by Righteousness or Original Grace we understand some unknown Qualities like those which God is said to have infus'd into the Heart of the first Man to adorn him and render him pleasing in his sight it is still evident that the Privation of this is not Original Sin for to speak properly that Privation is not hereditarily transmitted If Children have not these Qualities 't is because God does not give 'em them and if God does not bestow them 't is because they are unworthy to receive them and 't is that Vworthiness which is transmitted and which is the Cause of the Privation of Original Righteousness And so that Vnworthiness is properly Original Sin Now this Unworthiness which consists as I have shewn in this That the Inclinations of Children are actually corrupt and their Heart bent upon the Love of Bodies this I say is really in them 'T is not the Imputation of the Sin of their Father they are actually themselves in a disorder'd State In like manner as those who are justify'd by JESUS CHRIST of whom Adam was the Type are not justify'd by Imputation But are really restor'd to Order by an inward Righteousness different from that of our LORD though it be he that has merited it for them The Soul has but two natural or essential Relations the one to God and the other to her Body Now 't is evident That the Relation or Union which she has with God cannot vitiate or corrupt her and therefore she is neither vicious nor corrupt at the first instant of her Creation but by the relation she has to her Body Thus one of the two must needs be said either that Pride and other which we call Spiritual Vices can be communicated by the Body or that Children are not subject to them at the moment of their Birth I say at the moment of their Birth for I do not deny but these ill Habits are easily acquir'd Though pure Intelligences had no other relation than to God and at the instant of their Creation were subject to no Vice yet they fell into Disorder But the Cause of it was their making a wrong use of their Liberty whereof Infants have made no use at all For Original Sin is not of a free Nature But to come to the Point I am of Opinion That they err who think that the Rebellion
Experience of the ablest Physicians THE ILLUSTRATION UPON THE Third CHAPTER of the Fifth BOOK That Love is different from Pleasure and Joy THE Mind commonly confounds things that are very different when they happen at the same time and are not contrary to each other As I have shown by many Instances in this Work because herein chiefly consist our Errors in Respect of what passes within us Being we have no clear Idea of â—hat constitutes the Nature or Essence of our Mind nor of any of the Modification it can receive it often falls out that to our confounding different things they need but happen in us at the same time For we easily confound what we know not by a clear and distinct Ideâ— It is not only impossible clearly to conceive wherein consists the difference of our Internal Motions it is even difficult to discover any difference between them For to do this we must turn our Eyes inward and retire into our selves not to consider them with reference to Good and Evil which we do willingly enough But to contemplate our selves with an abstract and barren consideration which costs us great trouble and distraction of Thought We easily conceive that the Roundness of a Body differs from its Motion and though we know by Experience that a Bowl on a plane cannot be press'd without being mov'd and so Motion and Roundness are found together Yet we use not to confound them with one another because we conceive Motion and Figure by clear and distinct Ideas But 't is not so with Pleasure and Love which we almost always confound together Our Mind grows as it were Moveable by Pleasure as a Bowl by it's roundness and because it is never void of an impression towards Good it immediately puts it self in Motion towards the Objects which causes or seems to cause the Pleasure So that the Motion of Love happening in the Soul at the very time of it's feeling this Pleasure is sufficient to make her undistinguish or confound them because she has no clear Idea of her Love and Pleasure as she has of Figure and Motion And for this Reason some are perswaded that Pleasure and Love are not different and that I distinguish too many things in each of our Passions But that it may clearly appear that Pleasure and Love are two very different things I divide Pleasures into two sorts the one sort precedes Reason as are agreeable Sensations and go commonly by the Name of the Pleasures of the Body The other sort neither precede Reason nor the senses and are generally call'd the Pleasures of the Soul Such is the Joy that arise in us in pursuance of a clear knowledge of confus'd sensation we have of some Good that either does or shall accrue to us For Example a Man in tasting a Fruit which he does not know finds pleasure in eating it if it be good for Nourishment Which is a preceding or preventing Pleasure for since he feels it before he knows whether the Fruit be good 't is evident it prevents his Reason An Huntsman when hungry expects to find or actually finds something Eatable which gives him an actual sense of Joy Now this Joy is a Pleasure which follows the knowledge of his present or future good It is perhaps evident by this distinction of Pleasure into that which follows and that which prevents Reason that neither of them but differs from Love For preventing pleasure undoubtedly precedes Love since it precedes all Knowledge which some way or other is always suppos'd by Love On the contrary Joy or the Pleasure which supposes foregoing Knowledge presupposes likewise Love since Joy supposes either a confus'd Sensation or a clear Knowledge of the present or future Possession of what we Love For if we possess'd a thing for which we have no Love we should receive no Joy from it Therefore Pleasure is very different from Love since that which prevents Reason prevent and causes Love and that which follows Reason necessarily supposes Love as an Effect supposes the Cause Moreover if Pleasure and Love were the same thing there could be no Pleasure without Love nor Love without Pleasure otherwise a thing could be without it self Nevertheless a Christian Loves his Enemy and a well-educated Child his Father though never so irrational and unkind The Sight of their Duty the Fear of God the Love of Order and Justice causes them to Love not only without Pleasure but even with a sort of Horrour those Persons that are no ways delightful I own they sometimes have the Sense of Pleasure or Joy upon the Reflection that they perform their Duty or upon the Hopes of being rewarded as they do deserve But besides that this Pleasure is very manifestly different from the Love they bear to their Father and Enemy though perhaps it may be the Motive of it it sometimes is not so much as the Motive of their acting but 't is only an abstract View of Order or a Notion of Fear which preserves their Love In one sense it may be truly said they have a Love for these Persons even whilst they do not think of them For Love remains in us during the Avocations of Thought and in Sleep But I conceive that Pleasure has no longer a Substance in the Soul than she is aware of it Thus Love or Charity remaining in us without Pleasure or Delectation cannot be maintain'd to be the very same thing Since Pleasure and Pain are two contraries if Pleasure were the same with Love Pain would not differ from Hatred But 't is evident that Pain is different from Hatred because it often subsists without it A Man for Instance who is wounded unawares suffers a most real and cutting Pain whilst he is free from Hatred For he knows not even the Cause of his Pain or the Object of his Hatred or rather the Cause of his Pain not deserving his Hatred cannot raise it Thus he Hates not that Cause of his Pain though his Pain moves or disposes him to Hatred 'T is true he deservedly Hates Pain but the Hatred of Pain is not Pain but supposes it Hatred of Pain does not Merit our Hatred as does Pain For the former is on the contrary very agreeable in that we are pleased in Hating it as we are displeased in Suffering it Pain therefore not being Hatred the Pleasure which is contrary to Pain is not Love which is contrary to Hatred and consequently the Pleasure which is precedaneous to Reason is not the same thing as Love I prove likewise that Joy or the Pleasure which pursues Reason is distinguish'd from Love Joy and Sorrow being contraries if Joy were the same thing with Love Sorrow and Hatred would be all one But it is evident that Sorrow differs from Hatred because it sometimes has a separate Subsistence A Man for Example by chance finds himself depriv'd of things that he has need of this is enough to make him sorrowful But it cannot provoke him to Hatred Either
Glory Sin which introduc'd into the World the Miseries of Life and Death which follows it were necessary that Men after their Trial upon Earth might be legitimately crown'd with that Glory the Variety and Order whereof shall make the Beauty of the future World XXXIII 'T is true that Concupiscence which we feel in us is not necessary to our Meriting For Jesus Christ whose Merits are infinite was not subject to it But though He absolutely controll'd it He was willing to admit in Himself the most vexatious Motions and Sensations that He might merit all the Glory that was prepar'd for Him Of all Sensations that which is most repugnant to a Soul willing and deserving to be happy is Pain wbich yet He was willing to suffer in the most excessive degree Pleasure makes actually Happy the Person that actually enjoys it which yet he willingly deny'd Himself Thus he has offer'd like us innumerable Sacrifices through a Body which he took like ours But these Sacrifices were of a different kind from those of the greatest Saints because he voluntarily rais'd in Himself all those painful Sensations which in the rest of Men are the necessary Consequences of Sin which being thus perfectly voluntary were therefore more pure and meritorious XXXIV If I had a clear Idea of the Blessed Spirits who are not embody'd I perhaps could clearly resolve a Difficulty that arises from their Consideration For it may be objected either that there is very little Variety in the Merits or Rewards of Angels or that it was to ill purpose for God to unite Bodies to Spirits which are whilst united so dependant on them I confess I do not see any great Diversity in the Rewards answering the Merits of purely intelligible Substances especially if they have merited their Recompence by one sole Act of Love For being not united to a Body which might be an Occasion to God's giving them by most Simple and General Laws a Train of different Thoughts and Sensations I see no Variety in their Combats or Victories But possibly another Order has been establish'd which is unknown to me and therefore I ought not to speak of it And 't is sufficient that I have establish'd a Principle from whence may be concluded that God ought to create Bodies and unite Minds to them that by the most simple Laws of Union of these two Substances He might give us in a general constant and uniform manner that great Variety of Sensations and Motions which is the Principle of the Diversity of our Merits and Rewards XXXV Lastly 't was requisite that God alone should have all the Glory of the Beauty and Perfection of the future World This Work which infinitely excels all others ought to be a Work of pure Mercy It was not for Creatures to glory in having any other part in it than that the Grace of Jesus Christ had given them In a word 't was fit that God should suffer all Men to be involv'd in Sin that He might shew them Mercy in Jesus Christ. XXXVI Thus the first Man being impower'd by the Strength of His Charity to persevere in Original Righteousness God ought not to have fix'd him to his Duty by preventing Pleasures for having no Concupiscence to conquer God ought not to prevent his Free Will by the Delectation of His Grace In short having all in general that was necessary to his meriting his Reward God who works nothing in vain ought to leave him to himself though He foresaw His Fall since He design'd to raise him up in Jesus Christ put Free Will to confusion and manifest the Greatness of His Mercy Let us now endeavour to discover the Ways whereby God executes His Eternal Purpose of the Sanctification of His Church XXXVII Though God in the Establishment of the future World acts in Ways very different from those by which He preserves the present yet it ought not to be imagin'd that difference is so great as to take from the Laws of Grace the Character of the Cause that made them As it is the same God who is the Author both of the Order of Grace and Nature these two Orders must agree in all those included Symptoms which discover the Wisdom and Power of their â—ounder Therefore since God is a General Cause whose Wisdom has no Bounds He must needs for the Reasons before given act as such in the Order of Grace as well as in that of Nature and His own Glory being His End in the Construction of His Church He must establish most Simple and General Laws and which have the greatest Proportion of Wisdom and Fertility with their design'd Effect XXXVIII The more wise an Agent is the more comprehensive are his Wills A very limited Understanding is constantly taking fresh Designs and in the Execution of any one of them employs more Means than are useful In a word a straitned Capacity does not sufficiently compare the Means with the End the Force and the Action with the Effect to be produc'd by them On the contrary a Mind of great Reach and Penetration collates and weighs all things forms not Designs except upon the Knowledge of the Means to dispatch them and when it has observ'd in these Means a certain Proportion of Wisdom with their Effects he puts them in practice The more simple are the Machines and more different their Effects the more Marks they bear of an intelligent Workman and more worthy they are to be esteem'd The great Number of Laws in a State are commonly a Proof of the want of Insight and Extent of Thought in their â—ounders it being rather the Experience of their Exigency than a wise Fore-sight that establish'd them God therefore whose Wisdom is infinite ought to employ the simplest and most comprehensive Means in the Formation of a future World as well as in the Preservation of the present He ought not to multiply His Wills which are the executive Laws of His Designs save when Necessity obliges Him to it but must act by General Wills and so settle a Constant and Regular Order by which He foresees through the infinite Comprehension of His Wisdom that a Work so admirable as His must needs be form'd Let us see the Consequences of this Principle and the Application we may make of it in the Explication of those Difficulties which seem very puzzling and perplex'd XXXIX Holy Writ on one hand teaches us that God wills all Men should be sav'd and come to the Knowledge of the Truth and on the other that He does whatever He wills and yet Faith is not given to all Men and the Number of those that perish is greater than that of the Predestinate How can this be reconcil'd with His Power XL. God foresaw from all Eternity Original Sin and the Infinite Number of those whom Sin should cast into Hell and nevertheless created the First Man in a State from whence He knew He must fall and likewise has appointed such Relations betwixt this Man and his
were true that God acted by particular Wills since Miracles are such only from their not happening by General Laws Therefore Miracles suppose these Laws and prove the Opinion I have establish'd But as to ordinary Effects they clearly and directly demonstrate General Laws or Wills If for Instance a Stone be dropp'd upon the Head of Passengers it will continually fall with equal speed not distinguishing the Piety or Quality or Good or Ill Disposition of those that pass If we examine any other Effect we shall see the same Constancy in the Action of the Cause of it But no Effect proves that God acts by particular Wills though Men commonly fancy God is constantly working Miracles in their Favour That way they would have God to act in being consonant to their own and indulgent to self-Self-love which centers all things on themselves and very proportionate to their Ignorance of the Complication of Occasional Causes which produce extraordinary Effects naturally falls into Mens Thoughts when but greenly studied in Nature and consult not with sufficient Attention the abstract Idea of an Infinite Wisdom of an Universal Cause of a Being Infinitely Perfect CONCERNING Nature and Grace DISCOURSE II. Of the Laws of GRACE in particular and of the Occasional Causes which regulate and determine their Efficacy PART I. Of the Grace of JESVS CHRIST I. SINCE none but GOD can act immediately and by himself on Minds and produce in them all the various Motions they are capable of 'T is he alone who sheds his Light within us and inspires us with certain Sensations which determine our diverse Volitions And therefore none but he can as a True Cause produce Grace in our Souls For Grace or that which is the Principle or Motive of all the Regular Motions of our Love is necessarily either a Light which instructs us or a confus'd Sensation that convinces us that God is our Good since we never begin to love an Object unless we see clearly by the Light of Reason or feel confusedly by the tast of Pleasure that this Object is good I mean capable of making us happier than we are II. But since all Men are involv'd in Original Sin and even by their Nature infinitely beneath the Majesty of God 'T is Jesus Christ alone that can by the Dignity of his Person and the Holiness of his Sacrifice have access to his Father reconcile him to us and merit his Favours for us and consequently be the meritorious Cause of Grace These Truths are certain But we are not seeking the Cause which produces Grace by its own Efficacy nor that which merits it by its Sacrifice and Good Works We enquire for that which regulates and determines the Efficacy of the General Cause and which we may term the Second Particular and Occasional III. For to the end the General Cause may act by General Laws or Wills and that his Action may be regular constant and uniform 't is absolutely necessary there should be some Occasional Cause to determine the Efficacy of these Laws and to help to fix them If the Collision of Bodies or something of like Nature did not determine the Efficacy of the General Laws of the Communication of Motions it would be necessary for God to move Bodies by particular Wills The Laws of Union of the Soul and Body become efficacious only from the Changes befalling one or other of these two Substances For if God made the Soul feel the Pain of pricking tho' the Body were not prick'd or though the same thing did not happen in the Brain as if it were he would not act by the General Laws of Union of the Soul and Body but by a particular Will If Rain fell on the Earth otherwise than by a necessary Consequence of the General Laws of Communication of Motions the Rain and the Fall of every Drop that composes it would be the Effect of a particular Will So that unless Order requir'd it should rain that Will would be absolutely unworthy of God 'T is necessary therefore that in the Order of Grace there should be some Occasional Cause which serves to fix these Laws and to determine their Efficacy And this is the Cause we must endeavour to discover IV. Provided we consult the Idea of intelligible Order or consider the sensible Order which appears in the Works of God we shall easily discover that Occasional Causes which determine the Efficacy of General Laws and are of use in fixing them must necessarily be related to the Design for which God has establish'd them For Example Experience evidences that God has not made and Reason certifies that he ought not to make the Courses of the Planets the Occasional Causes of the Union of our Soul and Body He ought not to will that our Arm should be mov'd in such or such a manner or that our Soul should feel the Tooth-ake when the Moon shall be in conjunction with the Sun if so be this Conjunction acts not on the Body God's Design being to unite our Soul to our Body he cannot in prosecuting that Design give the Soul Sensations of Pain save when there happen some Changes in the Body repugnant to it Wherefore we are not to seek out of our Soul or Body the Occasional Causes of their Union V. Hence it follows that God designing to form his Church by Jesus Christ could not according to that Design seek the Occasional Causes which serve to settle the General Laws of Grace by which the Spirit of Jesus diffus'd through his Members communicates Life and Holiness to them except in Jesus Christ and in the Creatures united to him by Reason Thus the Rain of Grace is not deriv'd to our Hearts by the diverse situations of the Stars nor by the Collision of certain Bodies nor even according to the different Courses of the animal Spirits which give us Motion and Life All that Bodies can do is to excite in us Motions and Sensations purely Natural For whatever arrives to the Soul through the Body is only for the Body VI. Yet as Grace is not given to all that desire it nor as soon as they desire it and is granted to those who do not ask it it thence follows that even our Desires are not the Occasional Causes of Grace For this sort of Causes have constantly and most readily their Effect and without them the Effect is not produc'd For Instance the Collision of Bodies being the Occasional Cause of the Change which happens in their Motion if two Bodies did not meet their Motions would not alter and if they alter'd we may be assur'd they met The general Laws which shed Grace upon our Hearts find nothing therefore in our Wills to determine their Efficacy as the general Laws which regulate the Rains are not founded on the Dispositions of the Places rain'd upon For it indifferently rains upon all Places on hollow and manur'd Grounds even on the Sands and the Sea it self VII We are therefore reduc'd to confess that
produce in us contrary Pleasures and Aversions to those of Concupiscence Pleasures for the True and Aversions or Dislikes for sensible Goods Thus the Grace whereof Jesus Christ is the Occasional Cause and which he incessantly sheds on us as Head of the Church is not a Grace of Light though he has merited that Grace likewise for us and sometimes may communicate it as I shall say by and by But 't is a Grace of Sensation 't is the preventing Delectation which begets and nurses Charity in our Hearts For Pleasure naturally produces and cherishes the Love of those Objects which cause or seem to cause it 'T is likewise the Disgust which sometimes sensible Objects give us which create an Aversion to them and capacitate us to guide the Motions of our Love by Light or Knowledge XXXII We must oppose the Grace of Sensation to Concupiscence Pleasure to Pleasure Dislike to Dislike that the Influence of Jesus Christ may be directly opposite to the Influence of the First Man The Remedy must be contrary to the Disease that it may cure it For illuminating Grace cannot heat an Heart that is wounded by Pleasure this Pleasure must cease or another succeed it Pleasure is the Weight of the Soul and naturally bears it along with it and sensible Pleasures weigh it down to Earth In order to her determining her self these Pleasures must vanish or delectable Grace must raise her up towards Heaven and instate her well-nigh in Equilibrio Thus it is the New Man may war against the Old the Influence of our Head may resist that of our Progenitor and Jesus Christ may conquer in us all our Domestick Enemies The First Man being free from Concupiscence before his Sin needed not to be invited to the Love of the True Good by preventing Delectation He knew clearly that God was his Good and there was no Necessity he should have the Sense of it 'T was not fit he should be allur'd by Pleasure to the Love of him since nothing withstood this Love and he knew him perfectly deserving it But after the Sin the Grace of Delectation was necessary to counterpoize the continual Struggle of Concupiscence Therefore Light is the Grace of the Creator Delectation is that of the Restorer Light is communicated by Jesus Christ as Eternal Wisdom Delectation is given by him as Wisdom Incarnate Light in its Original was mere Nature Delectation has ever been Pure Grace Light after the Sin was granted us only for the Merits of Jesus Christ. Delectation is granted both for the Merits and by the Efficacy of the same Jesus Lastly Light is shed into our Souls according to our own several Volitions and various Applications as I shall explain by and by But the Delectation of Grace is infus'd into our Hearts according to the diverse Desires of the Soul of Jesus Christ. XXXIII 'T is true Pleasure produces Light because the Soul is more attentive to Objects that give her Pleasure Since most Men despise or neglect the Truths of Religion because abstract or unaffecting it may be said that the Delectation of Grace instructs them For that rendring these Truths more sensible they more easily learn them by the Attention they afford And for this Reason St. John says That the Unction we receive from Jesus Christ teaches all things and that those who have receiv'd it have need of no Instructor XXXIV Yet it must be observ'd That this Unction does not produce Light immediately and by its self it only excites our Attention which is the Natural or Occasional Cause of our Knowledge So we see that Men of the greatest Charity are not always the most Understanding All Men being not equally capable of Attention all the Receivers of the same Unction are not equally instructed by it Therefore though Light may be shed on the Soul by a supernatural Infusion and Charity often produces it yet we are always to look upon this kind of Grace but as a Natural Effect For ordinarily Charity produces not Light in the Mind save in proportion to the Inducement it gives the Soul to desire the Knowledge of what she loves For in fine the diverse Desires of the Soul are the Natural or Occasional Causes of the Discoveries we make on any Subject whatsoever But these things we must explain more at large in the Second Part of this Discourse PART II. Of the Grace of the CREATOR XXXV I Know but two Principles that directly and of themselves determine the Motion of our Love Light and Pleasure Light to discover our several Goods and Pleasure to make us tast them But there is a great difference betwixt Light and Pleasure the former leaves us absolutely to our selves and makes no Intrenchment on our Liberty It does not efficaciously carry us to Love nor produce in us Natural or Necessary Love but only induces us to carry our selves to the loving with a Love of choice the Objects it discovers or which is the same thing only causes us to determine to particular Goods the general Impression of Love God constantly gives us for the General But Pleasure effectually determines our Will and as it were conveys us to the Object which causes or seems to cause it It produces in us a Natural and Necessary Love weakens our Liberty divides our Reason and leaves us not perfectly to our own Conduct An indifferent Attention to the Sense we have of our internal Motions will convince us of these Differences Thus Man before the Sin being perfectly free and having no Concupiscence to hinder him from prosecuting his Light in the Motions of his Love and knowing clearly that God was infinitely amiable ought not to be determin'd by preventing Delight as I have already said or by any other Graces of Sensation which might have lessen'd his Merit and induc'd him to love by Instinct the Good which should only be lov'd by Reason But after he had sinned he besides the Grace of Light had need of that of Sensation to resist the Motions of Concupiscence For Man having an invincible Desire for Happiness cannot possibly sacrifice his Pleasure to his Light his Pleasure which makes him actually Happy and subsists in him in spight of his Resistance to his Light which subsists but by a painful Application of Thought and dies at the presence of the least actual Pleasure and lastly which promises no solid Happiness till after Death which to the Imagination seems a perfect Annihilation Light therefore is due to Man to conduct him in the quest of Happiness and belongs to Natural Order and supposes neither Corruption nor Reparation in Nature But Pleasure which relates to the true Good is pure Grace For naturally the true Good ought not to be belov'd otherwise than by Reason Therefore the Occasional Causes of the Graces of Sensation ought to be found in Jesus Christ because he is the Author of this Grace But the Occasional Causes of Light ought to be ordinarily found in the Order of Nature because Light is
they had committed in murthering our Saviour it was fit that Jesus Christ should come into the World about the Reign of Herod supposing that People by the necessary Consequence of the Order of Nature was to be divided about that time that Civil Wars and perpetual Seditions were to weaken them and that lastly the Romans were to ruine and disperse them with the total Destruction of their City and Temple 'T is true there seems to be something extraordinary in the Desolation of the Jews But as it shews greater Wisdom in God to produce so surprizing Effects by the most simple and general Laws of Nature than by particular Wills which are always Miracles I question whether on that Occasion we are to fly unto a Miracle But for my part I dispute it not here since 't is a Fact that we cannot easily nor need we explain our selves upon And I produce this Instance only to make some Application of my Principles and to make them more easily intelligible to others I have I think said enough of Nature and Grace to satisfie all equitable and moderate Persons about an infinite Number of Difficulties which disturb only their Minds who must needs judge of God by themselves For if Men would consult the Idea of an Infinitely Perfect Being of a General Cause of an Infinite Wisdom and if they would consent to the Principles I have establish'd conformable to that Idea I believe they would neither be surpriz'd nor offended at the Conduct of GOD and that they would change their Murmurs and Censures into Wonder and Adoration CONCERNING Nature and Grace DISCOURSE III. Of the Manner of GRACE's acting in us PART I. Concerning Liberty I. THERE is nothing more rude and unform'd than the Substance of Spirits if we separate it from God For what 's a Mind void of Understanding and Reason destitute of Motion and Love Yet it is the Word and Wisdom of God which is the universal Reason of Minds and 't is the Love whereby God loves himself that gives the Soul the Motion she has towards Good If the Mind knows Truth 't is by its Natural and Necessary Union with Truth it self If it is reasonable 't is so through supreme Reason Lastly If it be a Spirit or Intelligence 't is in one sense because its Substance is enlightned penetrated and perfected by the Light of God himself These Truths I have explain'd in another Place So likewise the Substance of the Soul is not capable of loving Good save by its Natural and Necessary Union with the Eternal and Substantial Love of the Supreme Good it advances not towards Good any farther than convey'd by God it is volent only from the Motion it continually receives from him it lives only through Charity and wills merely through the Love of Good which God makes it participate though it abuses it For in fine God making and preserving Minds only for himself inclines them towards him as long as he preserves their Being and communicates the Love of Good to them whilst they are capable of receiving it Now that natural and continual Motion of the Soul towards Good in general towards Good indefinite towards God is what I here call Will Since 't is that Motion which capacitates the Substance of the Soul to love different Goods II. This Natural Motion of the Soul towards Good in general is invincible for 't is not in our Power not to will to be happy We necessarily love what we clearly know and lively feel to be our Good All Minds love God by the Necessity of their Nature and if they love any thing else by a Free Choice of their Will 't is not because they seek not God or the Cause of their Felicity but because they are deceiv'd 'T is because perceiving by a confus'd Sensation that surrounding Bodies make them happy they consider them as good and by an Ordinary and Natural Consequence love them and unite to them III. But the Love of all these particular Goods is not naturally invincible Man consider'd in his Original State might supersede loving those Goods that fill'd not the whole Capacity of his Affection There being but one Good which includes all others he might sacrifice every other Love to the Love of this For God having made Minds only for himself cannot invincibly carry them to the loving any thing besides him or without relation to him Lastly our own inward Consciousness informs us that we can reject a Fruit though we are inclin'd to take it Now that Power of loving or not loving particular Goods the Non-invincibility which is found in the Motion which carries Minds to the loving what does not seem every way inclusive of all Goods That Power or Non-invincibility is what I call Liberty Thus placing the Definition instead of the thing defin'd that Expression our Will is free signifies that the Natural Motion of the Soul towards Good in general is not invincible in point of Good in particular To the Word Free the Idea of Voluâ—tary is commonly annex'd but in the Sequel of this Discourse I shall take the Word in the Sense I have observ'd as being the most Natural and Ordinary IV. The Word Good is equivocal and may signifie either Pleasure which makes formally happy or the true or seeming Cause of Pleasure In this Discourse I shall constantly take the Word Good in the second Sense because indeed Pleasure is imprinted on the Soul that she may love the Cause that makes her happy that she may advance towards it by the Motion of her Love and may strictly unite to it to be perpetually happy When the Soul loves nothing but her own Pleasure she in effect loves nothing distinct from her self For Pleasure is only a Condition or Modification of the Soul which renders her actually happy and content But whilst the Soul cannot be the Cause of her own Pleasure she 's unjust ungrateful and blind if she loves her Pleasure and forgets to pay the Love and Devotion which is due to the true Cause that produces it in her As none but God can act immediately and by himself on the Soul and make her sensible of Pleasure by the actual Efficacy of his all-potent Will so he alone is truly Good However I term the Creatures Good which are the seeming Causes of the Pleasures we feel occasionally from them For I am unwilling to deviate from the customary way of Speaking any farther than is necessary to explain my self clearly All Creatures though Good in themselves or Perfect with reference to the Designs of God are not Good with reference to us They are not our Good nor the true Cause of our Pleasure or Felicity V. The natural Motion which God constantly imprints on the Soul to carry it to love him or to make use of a Term which is the Abridgement of several Ideas and can be no longer equivocal or confus'd after the Definition I have given of it the Will is determin'd towards particular Goods either
the Light of Reason that God is its Good and has a lively Sense of him by the Tast of Pleasure 't is not possible to avoid loving him For the Mind desires Happiness and then nothing hinders it from following the agreeable Motions of its Love It feels no Remorses which oppose its present Felicity nor is it withheld by Pleasures contrary to that which it enjoys The Delight of Grace is then invincible nor is the Love it produces meritorious unless it be greater than its Cause I say that the Love which is merely a Natural or Necessary Effect of the Delectation of Grace has nothing meritorious though it be good in it self For whilst we move no farther than we are driven or rather when we advance no longer than we are paid in hand we have no Claim to any Recompence When we love God but so far as we are attracted or because we are attracted we love him not by Reason but by Instinct we love him not on Earth as he requires and deserves from us But we merit only when we love God by Choice by Reason by the Knowledge we have of his being amiable We merit in proceeding on as I may say towards Good when Pleasure has determin'd the Motion of Love XXV This sole Reason demonstrates either that the first Man was not invited to the Love of God by the blind Instinct of Pleasure or at least that this Pleasure was not so lively as what he felt in reflecting on his own Natural Perfections or in the actual use of sensible Goods For 't is evident such a Pleasure would have made him impeccable it would have put him in a State like that of the Blessed which merit no longer Not because they are out of a Wayfaring State for Merit always follows from meritorious Actions and God being Just must necessarily reward them But they merit not because the Pleasure they find in God is equal to their Love that they are throughly imbued with it and that being freed from all sort of Pain and all Motions of Concupiscence they have nothing left to sacrifice to God XXVI For that which makes us impeccable is not precisely that which incapacitates us to merit Jesus Christ was impeccable and yet he merited his Glory and that of the Church whereof he is the Head Being perfectly free he lov'd his Father not by the Instinct of Pleasure but by Choice and Reason He lov'd him because he intuitively saw how amiable he was For the most perfect Liberty is that of a Mind which has all possible Light and is not determin'd by any Pleasure because all Pleasure preventing or other naturally produces some Love and unless we resist it it efficaciously determines towards the agreeable Object the Natural Motion of the Soul But Light though conceiv'd never so great leaves the Mind perfectly free supposing this Light be consider'd alone and separate from Pleasure XXVII As Jesus Christ is nothing but the Word or Reason Incarnate certainly he ought not to love Good with a blind Love with the Love of Instinct with the Love of Sensation but by Reason He ought not to love an infinitely amiable Good and which he knew perfectly worthy of his Love as we love Goods that are not amiable and which we cannot know as worthy of Love He ought not to love his Father by a Love in any respect like that wherewith we love the vilest Creatures wherewith we love Bodies His Love to be pure at least to be perfectly meritorious ought to be no wise produc'd by preventing Pleasures For Pleasure may and must be the Recompence of a Legitimate Love as in effect it is in the Saints and Jesus Christ himself But it cannot be the Principle of Merit nor ought it to precede Reason unless debilitated But Reason in Jesus Christ was no ways weakned Supreme Reason supported the Created Jesus Christ who was free from the Motions of Concupiscence had no need of preventing Delight to counterbalance sensible Pleasures which surprize us Nay it may be he refus'd to tast the Pleasure of Joy which was a natural Result of the Knowledge he had of his Vertue and Perfections that being deprived of all sorts of Pleasures his Sacrifice might be more holy more pure and more disinteress'd Lastly Beside the Privation of all Pleasures preventing and others 't is likely he inwardly suffer'd unspeakable Droughts not better expressible by Souls fill'd with Charity than by the Dereliction of God according to these Words of our Saviour on the Cross My God my God why hast thou forsaken me But if we will absolutely have it that Jesus Christ was carried by preventing Pleasures to the Love of his Father 't is necessary to say according to the Principles I have laid down either that his Love was more intense than his Pleasure since Natural Love produc'd by the Instinct of Pleasure is no ways meritorious or at least we must say he merited by sensible Pains by the continual Sacrifice which he freely and voluntarily offer'd to his Father For 't was necessary he should suffer to enter in Possession of his Glory as we are taught by Scripture XXVIII Though the Delectation of Grace without relation to any contrary Pleasure infallibly gains the Consent of the Will yet it is not so with the Pleasures of Concupiscence These Pleasures consider'd in themselves without respect to other actual Pleasures are not always insurmountable The Light of Reason condemns them the Remorse of Conscience makes us abhor them and we may commonly suspend our Consent Therefore the Grace of Jesus Christ is stronger than Concupiscence and we may call it Victorious since the former always masters the Heart when equal to the latter For when the Balance of our Heart is perfectly in Equilibrio by the even Weights of contrary Pleasures that which is most solid and reasonable has the Advantage because Light adds some Grains to its efficacy and the Remorses of Conscience withstand the Influence of a counterfeit Pleasure XXIX We must conclude from what we have said that we always merit when we love the true Good by Reason and that we merit not at all when we love it by Instinct We merit always when we love the true Good by Reason because Order will have the true Good lov'd in that manner and that mere Light does not convey us or invincibly determine us to the Good discover'd by it We merit not when we love the true Good by Instinct or as much as we are invincibly mov'd and determin'd by Pleasure Because Order requires that the true Good or the Good of the Mind should be lov'd by Reason by a free Love a Love of Choice and Judgment whilst the Love which is produc'd by Pleasure is a Blind Natural and Necessary Love I own that when we advance farther than Pleasure forces us we merit But that 's because we therein act by Reason and in the way that Order would have us For Love so much as it
our Love For to restore a Balance to an even poize or to change its propension we need not augment the lesser Weight but only retract from the over-loaden Scale Thus there are Graces of Sensation of several sorts and every sort is capable of infinite degrees For there are Pleasures Aversions and Dislikes greater and lesser ad infinitum What I have hitherto said of Delectation may be easily apply'd to other Species of the Grace of Sensation I only made choice of Pleasure or Delectation as a particular Example to explain my self clearly and without Ambiguity If there be any other Principle of our Determinations to Good besides the Grace of Sensation and that of Light I confess I am utterly ignorant of it and therefore I have resolv'd to explain the Effects of Grace necessary to the Conversion of Heart but by these two Principles for fear of incurring the blame of discoursing in general Terms that of themselves excite only confus'd Ideas which thing I avoid with all possible Care But though I have explain'd my self in Terms understood by all Mankind since there is no body but knows that the Knowledge and Sense of Good are Principles of our Determinations yet I presume not to impugn those who sticking not to these clear Ideas say in general that God operates the Conversion of our Souls by a particular Action different it may be from all I have here and elsewhere said that God works in us Experiencing in my self no other Motion than towards Good in general and that determin'd by Knowledge or Sensation I ought to suppose nothing more if by this alone I can account for all that the Scripture and Councils have determin'd about the present Subject In a word I am well assur'd that Light and Sensation are the Principles of our Determinations but I declare that I cannot tell but there may be some other whereof I have no Knowledge XXXV Besides Grace of it self efficacious and that the Effect whereof entirely depends on the good Dispositions of the Mind besides the Grace of Sensation and the Grace of Light the Righteous have moreover an Habitual Grace which makes them agreeable to God and capacitates them to work Actions meritorious of Salvation This Grace is Charity the Love of God or the Love of Order a Love which is not properly Charity unless it be stronger and greater than every other Love As it is commonly Pleasure which produces the Love of the Object that 's the true or apparent Cause of it so 't is the Delectation of Grace which produces the Love of God 'T is the Enjoyment of Sensible Pleasures which heightens Concupiscence and 't is the Grace of Sensation which encreases Charity Concupiscence diminishes by the deprivation of Sensible Pleasures and then Charity is easily preserv'd and nourish'd And whilst Charity faints by the privation of the actual Grace of Jesus Christ Concupiscence speedily thrives and grows upon it For these two Loves Charity and Cupidity constantly war with one another and gather Strength from the Weakness of their Enemy XXXVI Whatever participates of Charity is well-pleasing to God but Charity is not always active in the Just themselves In order to its working 't is necessary at least it be Illuminate For Knowledge is needful to determine the Motion of Love Thus the Grace necessary to every Good Work relating to Salvation is that of Sensation in those who begin their Conversion is that of Light at least or some Motion of Faith or Hope in those who are animated with Charity For though the Righteous may do Good Works without the Grace of Delectation they have always need of some actual Assistance to determine the Motion of their Charity But although Charity without Delectation is sufficient to conquer many Temptations yet the Grace of Sensation is necessary on many Occasions For Men cannot without the continual Help of the Second Adam resist the continual Action of the First They cannot persevere in Righteousness unless frequently assisted with the particular Grace of Jesus Christ which produces augments and maintains Charity against the continual Efforts of Concupiscence XXXVII The Effects of Pleasure and of all the Sensations of the Soul have a thousand several Dependencies on the actual Dispositions of the Mind The very same Weight has not always the same Effects It depends in its Action on the Structure of the Machine by which it is applied to the contrary Weight If a Balance be unequally suspended the force of the Weights being unequally applied the lighter may overweigh the heavier So it fares with the Weight of Pleasures They act one on another and determine the Motion of the Soul according as they are diversly applied Pleasure ought to have a greater Influence on the Person who has already a Love for the Object which causes it than on another who has an Aversion or that loves opposite Goods Pleasure forcibly determines a Person who clearly knows or vividly imagines the Advantages of Good which seems to cause it and acts feebly on the Mind of him who knows this Good but confusedly and is distrustful of it Lastly It acts with its whole Force on him who blindly follows all that gratifies Concupiscence and perhaps will have no Effect on him who has acquir'd some Habit of suspending the Judgment of his Love Now since the different degrees of Light Charity Concupiscence and the different degrees of Liberty are perpetually combining infinite ways with the different degrees of actual Pleasures which Pleasures are operative but according to their relation to the Dispositions of the Mind and Heart 't is manifest that no finite Mind can with any certainty pronounce of the Effect a particular Grace ought to produce in us For besides that there 's an infinite Combination in the things concurring to the Efficacy of Grace or the Production of its Effect this Combination is not like that of moving Springs and Forces which have always infallible and necessary Effects Therefore 't is impossible for any finite Mind to discover what passes in the Heart of Man XXXVIII But whereas God has an infinite Wisdom 't is visible that he clearly knows all the Effects that can result from the Mixture and Combination of all these things and that penetrating the Heart of Man he infallibly discovers even the Effects which depend on an Act or rather on a free Consent of our Wills Nevertheless I confess I cannot conceive how God can discover the Consequences of Actions which derive not their Infallibility from his absolute Decrees But I have no Mind to insist on Metaphysicks at the Expence of Morality and to affirm as undeniable Truths Opinions that are contrary to my own inward Consciousness of my self or in fine to speak to the Ears a certain Language which affords no clear Idea to the Mind I know well that such Objections may be made as would be too hard for me to answer satisfactorily and clearly But it may be these Objections are naturally
amiss to declare that no fault is to be found with these Terms of Form and Essential Difference Honey is doubtless Honey by its Form and thus it is that it differs essentially from Salt but this Form or this Essential Difference consists only in the different Configuration of its Parts 'T is this different Configuration which makes Honey to be Honey and Salt to be Salt And though it be accidental to Matter in general to have the Configuration of the parts of Honey or Salt and so to have the Form of Honey or Salt yet it may be said to be essential to Honey or Salt that they may be what they are to have such or such a Configuration in their parts just as the Sensations of Cold of Heat of Pleasure and Pain are not essential to the Soul but only to the Soul which feels them in as much as by these Sensations she is said to feel Heat Cold Pleasure and Pain CHAP. XVII I. Another Instance taken from Morality which shews that our Senses offer us nothing but false Goods II. That GOD alone is our true and proper Good III. The Origine of the Error of the Epicureans and Stoicks I HAVE I think brought sufficient Arguments to prove that this Prejudice That our Sensations are in the Objects is a most fruitful Principle of Errors in Natural Philosophy It is my Business at present to bring others drawn from Morality wherein the same Prejudice joyn'd with this other That the Objects of our Senses are the true and sole Causes of our Sensations is most highly dangerous There is nothing so common in the World as to see Men devoted to sensible Goods some love Musick some Banquetting and others have a Passion for other things Now this is the way of Reasoning these Men must have taken to perswade themselves that these Objects are their Goods All the pleasant Tasts we are delighted with in Feasting the Sounds which gratifie the Ear and those other Pleasures we are sensible of upon other occasions are doubtless contain'd in sensible Objects or at least these Objects give us the Sensation of them or lastly are the only means of Conveying them to our Senses Now it is impossible to doubt that Pleasure is good and Pain evil We receive a Conviction from within and consequently the Objects of our Passions are most real goods to which we must cleave if we will be happy This is the Reasoning we generally fall into almost without being aware of it Thus because we believe that our Sensations are in Objects or that the Objects are of themselves capable of giving us the Sensation of them we consider these things as our own Goods though we are infinitely exalted above them since they are able to act only upon our Bodies and to produce some Motion in their Fibres but are incapable of acting upon our Souls or making us sensible either of Pleasure or Pain Certainly if our Soul acts not upon her self on occasion of what happens in the Body it is GOD alone who hath that Power And if she be not the Cause of her own Pleasure and Pain according to the Diversity of the Vibrations of the Fibres of her Body as it is most highly probable she is not since she feels Pleasure and Pain without consenting thereunto I know no other Hand potent enough to make her sensible thereof except that of the Author of Nature Certainly it is GOD alone who is our true Good He only is able to fill us with all the Pleasures we are capable of enjoying and it is only by the Knowledge of Him and Love of Him He has resolv'd to make us sensible of them Such as He has affixt to the Motions which happen in our Body to make us the more sollicitous for its Preservation are very little in themselves very weak as to their Capacity and very short in their Duration Notwithstanding in the estate Sin has reduc'd us to we are as it were become their Vassals But those which He shall make His Elect sensible of in Heaven will be infinitely greater since He hath Created us that we might know and love Him For whereas ORDER requires the Perception of the greatest Pleasures in the Possession of the greatest Goods GOD being infinitely above all other things the Pleasure of those who shall enjoy Him will certainly exceed all other Pleasures What we have said of the Cause of our Errors in respect of Good gives us a sufficient Knowledge of the falsity of the Opinions the Epicureans and Stoicks embrac'd touching the Sovereign Good The Epicureans placed it in Pleasure and because a Man is sensible of this no less in Vice than in Vertue and more generally in the former than in the other it has been commonly thought they let loose the Reins to all sorts of Sensible Pleasures Now the first cause of their Error is this That judging falsly there is something pleasant and agreeable in the Objects of their Senses or that they were the real Causes of the Pleasures they felt and being moreover convinc'd by an Internal Sensation which they naturally had that Pleasure was good for them at least for the time wherein they enjoy'd it they let themselves loose to all sorts of Passions from which they had no Apprehensions of receiving any dammage in the Consequence Whereas they ought to have consider'd that the Pleasure they reap'd from sensible things could not exist in those things as their true Causes nor any other way and consequently that sensible Goods could not be Goods in respect of the Soul and they should have thought of the things we have already explain'd The Stoicks on the other hand being perswaded that sensible Pleasures were only seated in and fitted for the Body and that the Soul ought to have a peculiar Good of her own plac'd Felicity in Vertue see then the Origine of their Errors Viz. They believ'd that Sensible Pleasure and Pain were not in the Soul but in the Body only and made use of this their false Judgment as a Principle for other false Conclusions as that Pain was not an Evil nor Pleasure a Good That the Pleasures of the Senses were not Good in their own Nature that they were common to Men and Beasts c. Notwithstanding it is easie to see that though the Epicureans and Stoicks were in the wrong in many things they were in the right in some for the Happiness of the Blessed consists only in a perfect and accomplish'd Vertue that is to say in their Knowledge and Love of GOD and in a most exquisite Pleasure that never fails to accompany them Let it then be well remembred That External Objects contain nothing either Pleasant or Troublesome in themselves that they are not the Causes of our Pleasures that we have no reason either to fear or love them but it is GOD alone whom 't is our duty to fear and our duty to love since 't is only He that has Power
instance who enter upon the Study of Algebra or Analyticks are incapable of taking Algebraick Demonstrations without a great deal of pains and when they have once master'd them they retain them but a short time because Squares for example Parallelograms Cubes Solids and the like being exprest by aa ab a 3 abc c. the Traces whereof have no Natural Connection with their Idea's the Mind finds no hold to fasten the Idea's to and to examine the Relations of them by But those who begin to Study Common Geography most clearly and readily conceive the little Demonstrations that are explain'd to them provided they distinctly understand the Terms made use of Because the Idea's of a Square a Circle or the like are Naturally Connected with the Traces of the figures they see describ'd before their Eyes And it often happens that the meer shewing of the figure used in the Demonstration makes them sooner comprehend it than the Discourses made to explain it Because words being Connected to Idea's by an arbitrary institution only excite not these Idea's readily and distinctly enough to make us easily understand their Relations For 't is chiefly upon that account there is so much difficulty found in learning the Sciences By the way it may be discover'd from what I have been saying that those Writers who coin abundance of new Words and Figures to explain their Notions by spend much pains to very little purpose They think to make themselves intelligible when indeed they take the way of becoming incomprehensible We define say they all our Terms and all our Characters and others ought to agree to them It is true others agree to them with their Will but their Nature is repugnant They cannot fasten their Idea's to these Novel Terms because to that is required custom and long practice The Authors perhaps have attain'd that custom but the Readers have not And when a Man endeavours to instruct the Mind 't is necessary he first know it since he ought to conform to Nature and offer her nothing provoking or offensive Yet we ought not to condemn the Industry and Care Mathematicians take in defining their Terms for Definition is evidently necessary to take away Equivocation But the ordinary and receiv'd Terms ought to be imploy'd as far as possibly they can or such whose common signification is not very remote from that which they pretend to introduce which is a thing not constantly observ'd among the Mathematicians Nor do we pretend by what has been said to condemn Algebra especially such as Mr. Des-Cartes has restor'd and left it to us For though the Novelty of some Expressions in that Science give the Mind some trouble at first yet there is so little variety and confusion in these Expressions and the Assistances the Mind receives from them so much out-weigh the Difficulty found in them that I am of Opinion 't is impossible for a Man to invent a way of Reasoning and Expressing his Reasonings more suited or better accomodated to the Nature of the Mind or that can carry it farther in the Discovery of unknown Truths The Expressions of that Science do not distract the Capacity of the Mind they burden not the Memory they contract and abridge in a wonderful manner all our Idea's and our Reasonings and even render them in some measure sensible by Practice In fine their usefulness is much greater than the Natural Expressions of the delineated Figures of Triangles Squares and others of like Nature which are inserviceable to the Disquisition and Unfolding of Truths any whit intricate and obscure But so much for the Connection of Idea's with the Traces of the Brain 'T is seasonable to say something of the Connection of Traces with one another and consequently of the Connection between the Idea's corresponding to these Traces This Connection consists in this that the Traces of the Brain are so firmly connected to one another as 't is impossible to excite them again without the whole retinue which were imprinted at the same time If a Man for instance happens to be in some publick Solemnity in case he observes all the Circumstances and all the Principle Persons that assisted at the time the place the day and all other Particularities the remembrance only of the Place or some other less observable Circumstance of the Ceremony will be sufficient to bring the Representation of all the other to his Mind 'T is upon this account that when we can't recollect the Principal Name of a thing we sufficiently specifie it by making use of a Name which signifies some Circumstance of that thing as not being able to call to Mind the proper Name of a Church we can make use of another Name signifying a thing that has some Relation to it We can say 'T is that Church where there was such a Throng where Mr. such a one Preach'd where we went on Sunday And thus not having the proper Name of a Person ready at hand or when it is more convenient to denote him in another manner we can do it by saying He whose Face was disfigured by the Small-pox the Portly and well-made Gentleman the little crooked Man according as we stand affected towards him though to express a Man in terms of contempt is neither a sign of good Nature nor good Manners Now the mutual Connection of these Traces and consequently of their Idea's one with another is not only the foundation of all the Figures of Rhetorick but also of infinite other things of greatest concernment in Morality and Politicks and in all Sciences in general which are any ways related to Man and consequently of many things we shall treat of in the sequel of our Discourse The cause of the Connection of many Traces together is the Identity of time wherein they were imprinted on the Brain For 't is enough for many Traces to have been produc'd at the same time to cause that they should never afterwards be excited but in company of one another because the Animal Spirits finding the Channel of these Co-temporary Traces gaping and half open continue their courses in them by reason of their meeting with a more free passage through them than through the other parts of the Brain This is the cause of Memory and the Corporeal Habits which are common to us with Beasts The Connections of the Traces are not always conjoyn'd with the Emotions of the Spirits because all the things we see do not always appear either Good or Evil These Connections too may change or break because being not of perpetual necessity for the preservation of Life there is no need they should always be the same But there are certain Traces in our Brain which have a Natural Connection with one another as also with certain Commotions of the Spirits that being necessary to the Preservation of Life And this Connection can't be broken at least not easily because 't is convenient it should always be the same For instance the trace of a
Communication of the Disorders and Distempers of the Imagination But these Truths deserve to be farther Illustrated by the Examples and known Experience of the World CHAP. II. General Instances of the Strength of Imagination CHILDREN in respect of their Fathers but especially Daughters in regard of their Mothers afford us very frequent Instances of this Communication of the Imagination The same things do Servants in relation to their Masters Maids in respect of their Mistresses Scholars of their Teachers Courtiers of their Kings and generally all Inferiours in respect of their Superiours supposing only that Fathers Masters and the rest of the Superiours have any Strength of Imagination themselves For otherwise 't is possible for Children and Servants to remain untouch'd or very little infected with the languid Imagination of their Fathers and Masters The Effects of this Communication may be likewise observ'd in Equals but that more rarely for want of that submissive Respect among them which qualifies and disposes the Mind for the Reception of the Impressions of strong Imaginations without examining them Last of all they are to be seen in Superiours also with respect to their Inferiours who sometimes are impower'd with so Lively and Authoritative an Imagination as to turn the Minds of their Masters and Superiours which way they please 'T will be easie to conceive how Fathers and Mothers make so very strong Impressions on the Imagination of their Children if it be consider'd that the Natural Dispositions of our Brain whereby we are inclin'd to imitate those we live with and to participate of their Sentiments and Passions are stronger in Children with respect to their Parents than in any others whereof several Reasons may be given The first is their being of the same Blood For as Parents commonly transmit to their Children the Seeds and Dispositions for certain Hereditary Distempers such as the Gout Stone Madness and generally all those that were not of Accidental Acquirement or whose sole and only Cause was not some extraordinary Fermentation of the Humours as Fevers and some others for of such 't is plain there can be no Communication So they imprint the Dispositions of their own Brain on the Brain of their Children and give a certain Turn to their Imagination that makes them wholly susceptible of the same Sentiments The second Reason is the little Acquaintance and Converse Children generally have with other Men who might sometimes stamp different Impresses on their Brain and in some measure interrupt the bent and force of the Paternal Impression For as a Man that was never abroad commonly Fancies that the Manners and Customs of Strangers are quite contrary to Reason because contrary to the usage of his Native Town or Custom of his Country whilst he yields to be carry'd by the current so a Child who was never from his Father's Home imagines his Parents Sentiments and Ways of Living to be Universal Reason or rather thinks there are no other Principles of Reason or Vertue to be had besides the Imitation of them Which makes him believe whatever he hears them say and do whatever he sees them do But this Parental Impression is so strong as not only to influence the Child's Imagination but to have its Effect on the other parts of the Body So that a young Lad shall Walk and Talk and have the same Gestures as his Father And a Girl shall Mimick the Mother in her Gate Discourse and Dress If the Mother Lisps the Daughter must Lisp too if the Mother has any odd fling with her Head the Daughter takes the same In short Children imitate their Parents in every thing even in their Bodily Defects Grimace and Faces as well as their Errors and Vices There are still many other Causes which add to the Effect of this Impression The chief of which are the Authority of the Parents the Dependence of Children and the mutual Love between them But these Causes are as common to Courtiers Servants and in general to all Inferiours as to Children I therefore choose to explain them by the Instance of the Court-Gentlemen There are those who judge by what 's in sight of that which is unapparent of the Greatness Strength and Reach of Wit and Parts which they see not by the Gallantry Honours and Riches which they know and measure the one by the other And that Dependency Men are in to the Great the Desire of partaking of their Greatness and that sensible Lustre that surrounds them makes them ascribe Honours Divine if I may so speak to Mortal Men. For GOD bestows on Princes Authority but Men attribute to them Infallibility Such an Infallibility as has no Boundaries prescrib'd to it on any subject or any occasion nor is confin'd to certain Ceremonies For the Great know all things naturally they are ever in the Right even in the Decision of Questions which they do not understand None attempt to examine their Positions but those who want Experience and the Art of Living and 't is Presumption and want of Respect to doubt of them But 't is no less than Rebellion at least down-right Folly Sottishness 〈◊〉 Madness to condemn them But when we are Honour'd with a Place in the Favour and Esteem of Great Men 't is no longer plain Obstinacy Conceitedness and Rebellion 't is a Crime of a deeper dye Ingratitude and Perfidiousness not to surrender implicitly to their Opinions 'T is such an unpardonable Offence as utterly incapacitates us for any of their future Favours Which is the Reason that Courtiers and by a necessary consequence the generality of the World indeliberately subscribe to the Sentiments of their Sovereign even so far as to Model their Faith by and make the Truths of Religion subservient to his Fantastic Humour and Folly England and Germany furnish us but with too many Instances of the blind and exorbitant Submission of the People to the Wills of their Irreligious Princes wherewith the Histories of the late Times abound And some Men of a considerable Age have been known to have chang'd their Religion four or five times by reason of the diverse changes of their Princes The Kings and even the Queens of England have the Government of all the States of their Kingdoms whether Ecclesiastical or Civil in all Causes 'T is they that are the Approvers of the Liturgies of the Festival Services of the way wherein the Sacraments ought to be Administred and Received They appoint for instance that our LORD shall not be adored in the Eucharist though they oblige to the Receiving it on the Knees according to the Ancient Custom In a word they arbitrarily change the whole Substance of their Liturgies to suit them to the New Articles of their Faith and together with their Parliamâ—nt have equal Right of judging of these Articles as a Pope with a Councel as may be seen in the Statutes of England and Ireland made at the beginning of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth Lastly we may add that the
procure them which Union engages us in infinite Errors and excessive Miseries though we are not always sensible of these Miseries no more than we are of the Errors that occasion them I give here a remarkable Instance The Union that we had with our Mothers in their Womb which is the strictest possible to be had with Mankind was the Cause of two of the greatest Evils namely Sin and Concupiscence which are the Original of all our Miseries And yet for the forming of our Body it was necessary that Union should be so close and strict as it is This Union which was broken at our Birth was succeeded by another whereby Children are con-sociated to their Parents and their Nurses This second Union was not so strict as the former and therefore did us not so much mischief having only inclin'd us to believe and imitate all that our Parents and Nurses do and say 'T is plain this second Union was farther necessary not as the first for the forming but the preserving of our Body that we might know all the things useful or advantagious to it and might accommodate it to such Motions as are necessary to obtain them Last of all the Union which we have at present with all Men is unavoidably the cause of a great deal of Evil to us though it be not so strait as being less necessary to the Preservation of our Body For 't is upon the score of this Union we live by Opinion that we esteem and love what is esteem'd and lov'd in the World in spight of the Remorse of our Consciences and the true Idea's that we have of things I speak not here of the Union we have with the Mind of other Men in behalf of which it may be said we receive instruction from it I speak only of the sensible Union that is between our Imagination and the Air and Manner of those that speak to us We see then how all the Thoughts we have by the Dependance on the Body are false and so much the more dangerous to the Soul as they are the more useful to the Body Which being so let us try to rid our selves by degrees of the Delusions of our Sense of the Vision and Chimera's of our Imagination and of the Impression made by other Men's Imaginations on our Mind Let us carefully reject all the confus'd Idea's we have contracted through the Dependance we are in to our Body and let us only admit the clear and evident Idea's which the Mind receives through its necessary Union with the Divine Logos or with Eternal Wisdom and Truth as we shall explain in the following Book which treats Of the Vnderstanding or Pure Mind F. MALEBRANCHE'S TREATISE CONCERNING The Search after TRUTH BOOK the THIRD Concerning The UNDERSTANDING OR The Pure Intellect CHAP. I. I. Thought is only essential to the Mind Sensation and Imagination are only the Modifications of it II. We know not all the Modifications our Soul is capable of III. They are different from our Knowledge and our Love nor are they always Consequences of them THE Subject of this Third Book is somewhat dry and barren In which we enquire into the Mind consider'd alone and without any reference to the Body in order to discover the Infirmities peculiar to it and the Errors deriving only from it The Senses and Imagination are exuberant and inexhaustible Sources of Error and Deception But the Mind acting by it self is not so subject to straying and misconduct It was a difficult thing to put an end to the two last Treatises and 't is no less difficult to begin this not that there is not enough to be said on the Nature and Properties of the Mind but because we enquire not here so much into its Properties as its Weaknesses 'T is not therefore to be wonder'd if this Tract is not so large nor discovers so many Errors as the two fore-going nor ought it to be complain'd of for being somewhat Dry Abstract and Applicative For 't is impossible in all Discourses to move the Senses and Imaginations of others nor ought it always to be done A Subject of an abstract Nature in becoming sensible commonly grows obscure and 't is enough to be made intelligible So that nothing is more unjust than the usual Complaints of those who would know every thing and yet take pains for nothing who take pet if you desire them to be attentive who would ever be touch'd and mov'd and have their Senses and their Passions eternally gratify'd But we confess our selves unable to give them Satisfaction Writers of Comedies and Romances are oblig'd to please and to procure Attention but for us it 's sufficient if we can instruct even those that labour to make themselves attentive The Errors of the Senses and Imagination proceed from the Nature and Constitution of the Body and are expos'd to view by considering what Dependency the Soul 's in to it But the Errors of the Pure Understanding cannot be discover'd but by considering the Nature of the Mind it self and of the Idea's that are necessary to its knowing Objects And therefore to penetrate into the Causes of the Errors of the Pure Understanding 't will be necessary to insist in this Book on the consideration of the Nature of the Mind and of Intellectual Idea's In the first place I shall treat of the Mind consider'd in its own Nature without any Relation to the Body to which it is united So that what I shall say on this point will extend to pure Intelligences and by stronger Reason to what we call Pure Understanding For by the Word Pure Vnderstanding I mean only to design that Faculty the Mind has of knowing External Object without forming Corporeal Images of them in the Brain to represent them by After which I shall discourse of Intellectual Idea's by means of which the Pure Vnderstanding perceives Exteriour Objects I am perswaded no Man can doubt after he has seriously thought on it but the Essence of the Mind consists only in Thought as the Essence of Matter consists only in Extension and that according to the different Modifications of Thought the Mind one while Wills and another while Imagines or has many other particular Forms as according to the different Modifications of Extension Matter is sometimes Water sometimes Wood and sometimes Fire or has abundance of other particular Forms I only advertise thus much That by the word Thought I understand not here the particular Modifications of the Soul that is this or that particular Thought but Thought capable of all sorts of Modifications or of all sorts of Thoughts as by Extension is not meant this or that Extension round or square for instance but Extension capable of all sorts of Modifications or of Figures And this Comparison would have no difficulty in it but that we have not so clear an Idea of Thought as we have of Extension for we only know Thought by Internal Sentiment or Conscience as I make
six hours a day they sometimes study six different things 'T is visible that this fault proceeds from the same Cause as the others I have been speaking of For there is great probability that if those who studied in this manner knew evidently how disproportion'd it was to the Capacity of their Mind and that it was more apt to fill it with Error and Confusion than with true Science they would not let themselves be transported with the disorderly motives of their Passion and Vanity For indeed this is not the way to be satisfy'd in our pursuits but the most ready means to know nothing at all CHAP. IV. I. The Mind cannot dwell long upon Objects that have no Relation to it or that include not something of Infinity in them II. The Inconstancy of the Will is the Cause of that want of Application and consequently of Error III. Our Sensations take us up more than the Pure Idea's of the Mind IV. Which is the Source of the Corruption of our Morals V. And of the Ignorance of the Vulgar sort of Men. THE Mind of Man is not only subject to Error for want of being Infinite or for being of less Extent than the Objects of its Consideration as has been explain'd in the two last Chapters But because it is Inconstant and nothing Resolute in its Action and unable to keep the View fixt and steady on the Object long enough to examine all the parts of it The better to conceive the Cause of this Inconstancy and Levity of the Mind we must know that the Will is the Directress of its Action that the Will applies it to the Objects which it loves and that the same Will is it self in perpetual fluctuation and disquietude whereof I assign this to be the Cause 'T is not to be doubted but GOD is the Author of all things and has made them only for Himself and that he draws the Heart of Man towards him by a Natural and Invincible Impression which he perpetually influences him withal 'T is impossible for GOD to have will'd that there should be any Will that did not love Him or that lov'd Him less than any other Good if there could be any other besides Himself it being impossible for Him to ordain that a Will should not love that which was supreamly Amiable or should love that more which was less lovely And thus Natural Love must needs carry us to GOD as proceeding from GOD and nothing being able to stop the motions thereof unless GOD Himself that impresses them There is then no Will whatever but necessarily follows the motions of this Love The Righteous and the Wicked the Blessed and the Damned love GOD with this Love and 't is this Love in one sense that is the Cause of the Misery of the latter For this Natural Love we have for GOD being the same thing with the Natural Impression which carries us towards Good in general towards Infinite Soveraign Good 't is manifest that all Minds love GOD with this Love since there is no other that is the Universal the Infinite the Soveraign Good For lastly All Spirits and even the Divels passionately desire to be Happy and to possess the Soveraign Good and they desire it without Choice Deliberation and Liberty by the bent and necessity of their Nature Being therefore made for GOD for an Infinite Good for a Good that comprehends in Himself all Goods the Natural Motion of our Heart can never stop till we arrive to the possession of this Good The Will then labouring thus with a perpetual thirst being toss'd and agitated with Desires Eagerness and Restless longings for that Good it is not in Possession of cannot but with much Uneasiness suffer the Mind to dwell any time upon Abstract Truths which don't affect it and which it judges incapable of making it Happy It therefore pushes the Mind forward continually to the Research of other Objects and when in this hurry and agitation communicated to it by the Will it meets with any Object that carries the Mark of Good I mean that by approaching the Soul makes it sensible of some internal Delight or Satisfaction then this Thirst of the Heart rises anew these Desires Eagernesses and Fervencies are re-kindled and the Mind oblig'd to wait on them fixes it self only on the Object that either is or seems to be the cause of them to approximate it to the Soul that regales and feeds upon it for some time But the Emptiness of the Creatures being unable to fill the Infinite Capacity of the Heart of Man these little Pleasures instead of extinguishing its Thirst only provoke and inflame it and give the Soul a foolish and vain Hope of being satisfy'd in the multiplicity of Earthly Pleasures which produces a far greater Inconstancy and an inconceivable Levity in the Mind which ought to make the Discovery to the Soul of all these Goods It 's true when the Mind falls by chance upon an Object of an Infinite Nature or which includes something great and mighty in it its unsettledness and casting about ceases for some time For finding that this Object bears the badge and character of that which the Soul desires it dwells upon it and closes in with it for a considerable time But this closing and adhesion or rather obstinacy of the Mind to examine Subjects infinite or too vast and unweildy is as useless to it as that Levity wherewith it considers those that are proportion'd to its Capacity since 't is too weak to accomplish so difficult an Enterprise and in vain it endeavours to effect it That which must render the Soul happy is not as I may speak the Comprehension of an Infinite Object this she is not capable of but the Love and Fruition of an Infinite Good whereof the Will is capable through the Motion of Love continually impress'd on it by GOD Himself Which being thus we need not wonder at the Ignorance and Blindness of Mankind because their Mind being subjected to the Inconstancy and Levity of their Heart which incapacitate it from considering any thing with a serious Application is unable to penetrate into a subject any whit perplex'd and difficult For in short the Attention of the Mind is to intelligible Objects what a steady View of the Eyes is to those of Sight And as a Man that can't fix his Eyes on the Bodies that are about him can never see them well enough to distinguish the differences of their least parts and to discover all the Relations those little parts have to one another So a Man who cannot fix the Eye of his Mind upon the things desir'd to be known can never have a sufficient Knowledge to distinguish all the parts and to observe all the Relations that may possibly be between themselves or themselves and other subjects Yet it is certain that all our Knowledge consists in a clear View of the Relations things stand in to one another So that when it happens as
constantly impresses on our Will is The Love of our selves and Our own Preservation We have already said That GOD loves all his Works and that it is only his Love which preserves them in their Being and that 't is his Will that all Created Spirits should have the same Inclination with his own 'T is his Will therefore that they all have a natural Inclination for their own Preservation and that they love themselves So that Self-love is reasonable because Man is really amiable in as much as GOD loves us and would have us love our selves but it is not reasonable to love our selves better than GOD since GOD is infinitely more lovely than we are It is injust for us to place our ultimate End in our selves and to centre our Love there without reference to GOD since having no real Goodness or Subsistence of our selves but only by the participation of the Goodness and Being of GOD we are no farther amiable than we stand related to him Nevertheless the Inclination we should have for GOD is lost by the Fall and our Will now has only an infinite Capacity for all Goods or Good in general and a strong Inclination to possess them which can never be destroy'd But the Inclination which we ought to have for our own Preservation or our Self-love is so mightily increas'd that 't is at last become the absolute Master of our Will It has even chang'd and converted the Love of GOD or the Inclination we have for Good in general and that due to other Men into its own nature For it may be said that the Love of our selves at present ingrosses all because we love all things but with relation to our selves whereas we should love GOD only first and all things after as related to him When Faith and Reason certifie us that GOD is the sovereign Good and that he alone can fill us with Pleasures we easily conceive it our Duty to love him and readily afford him our Affections but unassisted by Grace Self-love always is the first Mover All pure and defecate Charity is above the strength of our corrupt Nature and so far are we from loving GOD for himself that Humane Reason cannot comprehend how 't is possible to love him without Reference to our selves and making our ultimate End our own Satisfaction Self-love therefore is the only Master of our Will ever since the Disorders of Sin and the Love of GOD and our Neighbour are only Consequences of it since we love nothing at present but with the hopes of some Advantage or because we actually receive some Pleasure therein This Self-love branches into two sorts viz. Into the Love of Greatness and the Love of Pleasure or into the Love of ones Being and the Perfection of it and into the Love of Well-being or Felicity By the Love of Greatness we affect Power Elevation Independency and a Self-subsisting Being We are after a sort ambitious of having a Necessary Being and in one sense desire to be as Gods for GOD only has properly Being and Necessary Existence for that every Depending Nature exists only by the Will of its Upholder Wherefore Men in desiring the Necessity of their Being desire Power and Independency which may set them beyond the reach of the Power of others But by the Love of Pleasure they desire not barely Being but Well-being Pleasure being the best and most advantageous Mode of the Soul's Existence For it must be noted That Greatness Excellency and Independency of the Creature are not Modes of Existence that render it more happy of themselves for it often happens that a Man grows miserable in proportion to his growing great But as to Pleasure 't is a Mode of Existence which we cannot Actually receive without being Actually more happy Greatness and Independency are commonly External Modes consisting in the relation we have to things about us But Pleasures are in the very Soul are real Modes which modifie her and are naturally adapted to content her And therefore we look upon Excellency Greatness and Independency as things proper for the Preservation of our Being and useful sometimes by the order of Nature to the continuance of our Well-being But Pleasure is always a Mode of the Mind's Existence which of it self renders it Happy and Content So that Pleasure is Well-being and the Love of Pleasure the Love of Well-being Now this Love of Well-being is sometimes more powerful and strong than the Love of Being and Self-love makes us desire Non-existence because we want Well-being This Desire is incident to the Damn'd for whom it were better according to the Saying of our SAVIOUR not to be at all than to be so ill as they are because these Wretches being the declar'd Enemies of him who contains in himself all Goodness and who is the sole Cause of all the Pleasures and Pains we are capable of 't is impossible they should enjoy any Satisfaction They are and will be eternally miserable because their Will shall ever be in the same Disposition and Corruption self-Self-love therefore includes two Loves that of Greatness Power and Independence and generally of all things thought proper for the preservation of our Being and that of Pleasure and of all things necessary to our Well-being that is to our being Happy and Content These two Loves may be divided several ways whether because we are compounded of two different parts of a Soul and Body by which they may be divided or because they may be distinguish'd or specify'd by the different Objects that are serviceable to our Preservation But I shall insist no longer upon this because designing not a Treatise of Morality there is no need of making an exact Disquisition and Division of all the things relating to us as our Goods Only this Division was necessary to reduce into some order the Causes of our Errours First I shall speak to the Errours that are caus'd by the Inclination we have for Greatness and whatever sets our Being free from Dependence upon others In the next place I shall treat of those which proceed from our Inclination to Pleasure and whatever meliorates our Being as much as possible and contents us most CHAP. VI. I. Of the Inclination we have for whatever elevates us above others II. Of the false Judgments of some Religious Persons III. Of the false Judgments of the Superstitious and Hypocrites IV. Of Voetius Mr. Des Cartes's Enemy WHatever tends to exalt us above others by making us more perfect as Science and Vertue or gives us Authority over them by rendring us more powerful as Honours and Riches seems to put us in a sort of Independence All those that are below us reverence and fear us are always prepar'd to execute what we please for our Preservation and are afraid of offending us or resisting our Desires which makes Men constantly endeavour to be Masters of these Advantages which elevate them above others for they don't consider that their Being and
see not GOD as we see and touch this Fruit nay we do not so much as think on him nor perhaps on our selves And so we judge not that GOD is the true Cause of that Sweetness nor that it is a Modification of our Soul but impute both the Cause and Effect to the Fruit we eat What I have said of Sensations relating to the Body may be understood of those which have no relation to it such are those which are incident to pure Intelligences A Spirit contemplates it self and finds nothing wanting to its Happiness or Perfection or else sees that it is not in possession of what it desires Upon the View of its Happiness it feels Joy upon the sight of its Misery it feels Sorrow It immediately imagines that 't is the sight of its Happiness which produces in it self this Sensation of Joy because this Sensation still accompanies this Perception and fancies likewise that the sight of its Misery is what produces in it the Sensation of Sorrow because the latter is a constant Attendant of the former The true Cause of these Sensations which is GOD alone does not appear to it nor does it it may be think on GOD. For GOD acts in us in an imperceptible manner GOD rewards us with a Sense of Joy when we find our selves in the state we ought to be in to the intent we may continue in it that our Anxiety may cease and that we may fully enjoy our Happiness without suffering the Capacity of our Mind to be taken up with any thing else But he produces in us a Sensation of Sorrow when we know we are not in our convenienâ— state to the end we may not stay in it but restlesly seek out for the Perfection which we want For GOD continually drives us towards Good when we know that we do not possess it but gives us a powerful Check when we see we are fully possess'd of it Wherefore 't is evident to me that the Sensations of Intellectual Joy and Sorrow no less than Sensible are not the voluntary Productions of the Mind Our Reason then should constantly teach us to discover that invisible Hand which fills us with Good and which lies disguis'd to our Mind under Sensible Appearâ—nces This Hand we are to adore and to love and also to fear since though it loads us with Pleasures it can likewise over-whelm us with Pains We ought to love it with a Love of Choice an enlightned Love a Love worthy of GOD and our selves Our Love is worthy of GOD when it proceeds from our Knowledge of his being Amiable and this Love is worthy of our selves for that being Reasonable Creatures we ought to bestow our Love on that which Reason teaches us is worthy of it But we love sensible Things with a Love unworthy our selves and undeserv'd by them whilst being reasonable we love them without any Reason for it as not clearly knowing them to be lovely and on the contrary knowing they are not But we are betray'd by Pleasure to the Love of them the blind and irregular Love of Pleasure being the true Cause of the false Judgments of Men in Subjects of Morality CHAP. XI Of the Love of Pleasure with Reference to Speculative Sciences I. How it disables us from discovering Truth II. Some Instances OUR Inclination for Sensible Pleasures being misgovern'd is not only the Original of those dangerous Errours we are guilty of in Subjects of Morality and the general Cause of the Corruption of our Manners but likewise one of the main Causes of the Depravation of our Reason And it insensibly engages us in most gross but less dangerous Errours in point of Subjects purely Speculative because it disables us from bringing a sufficient Attention to comprehend and judge well of things that do not affect us We have spoken several times already of the Difficulty we find to apply our selves to Subjects somewhat Abstract the Subject of our Discourse requiring it As towards the End of the First Book where we shew'd that Sensible Ideas more affecting the Soul than Ideas purely Intellectual she was more taken up with the out-side manners than the Things themselves So again in the Second where treating of the Tenderness of the Fibres of the Brain we shew'd whence the Softness of certain Effeminate Minds proceeded Lastly in the Third when speaking of the Attention of the Mind it was necessary to shew that it was very careless of things Speculative but very attentive to such as affected her and made her feel Pleasure or Pain Our Errours have most commonly several Causes contributing to their Rise so that it ought not to be thought it is for want of Order that we repeat almost the same things and assign several Causes of the same Errours it is really because they have so many I still speak of Occasional Causes for we have often declar'd they have no other true and real Cause than the wrong use of our Liberty which wrong use consists in our not using it so much as we might as we have explain'd at the beginning of this Treatise We are not therefore to be blam'd if in order to make it fully conceiv'd how for Instance the Sensible Manners Things are involv'd in surprize and lead us into Errour we were oblig'd by way of Anticipation to speak of our Inclination for Pleasures in the other Books which seems fitter to have been reserv'd for this wherein we purposely treat of the Natural Inclinations and the same may be said of other things in other places All the harm that will come of it is this that we may dispense with many things here which we had been oblig'd to explain if it had not been done elsewhere All things in the Humane Nature are so link'd and twin'd to one another that we find our selves often as it were over-whelm'd with the Number of things necessary to be said at the same time to set our Conceptions in an open and clear Light We are sometimes forc'd to let things go unseparated which Nature has join'd together and to proceed against our own prescrib'd Method when this Method throws us in Confusion as it inevitably does on some Occasions And yet after all it is impossible to make others take in all our Conceptions All that can commonly be pretended to is to put others in a Capacity of discovering with Pleasure and Ease what we have discover'd our selves with great Pains and Fatigation And since 't is impossible to make any Discovery without Attention our Studies should be chiefly employ'd on Means of making others Attentive This is what we have essay'd to do though we must acknowledge but weakly perform'd and we are the willinger to confess we have been defective that the Confession may provoke our Readers to supply themselves what is wanting in us to make them attentive in order to penetrate the Bottom of Subjects which deserve to be thorowly consider'd Infinite are the Errours wherein our Inclination for Pleasures and in general
since it rather respects Morals and Politicks than our Subject And whereas this Inclination is always accompany'd with the Passions it might perhaps be more appositly treated of in the next Book But 't is not of so great concern to be so nicely methodical in this Case That we may rightly comprehend the Cause and Effects of this Natural Inclination it is requisite to know that GOD loves all his Works and that he strictly unites them to one another for their mutual Preservation For Loving incessantly the Works he produces it being his Love that produces them he also continually impresses on our Heart a Love for his Works that is he produces constantly in our Heart a Love like his own And to the intent the Natural Love we have for our selves might not swallow up or too much infringe upon that which we have for exteriour things but on the contrary that these two Loves which GOD puts in us might cherish and strengthen each other he has so artfully united us with all things about us and especially with those Beings of the same Species as our selves that their Evils naturally afflict us their Joy rejoyces us their Rise their Fall or Diminution seem to augment or diminish respectively our own Being The new Honours of our Relations or Friends the fresh Atchievements of those who have the nearest Engagements to us The Conquests and Victories of our Prince and even the late Discoveries of the New World give as it were an additional growth to our Substance Belonging to all these things we rejoyce at their Grandure and Extent We gladly would that even the World was without Bounds and that Notion of some Philosophers that the Works of GOD are infinite not only seems worthy of GOD but most agreeable to Man who can conceive nothing nobler than the being a part of Infinity whilst as inconsiderable as he is in himself he fancies he feels himself infinitely enlarg'd by an expansion of Thought into the infinite Beings that surround him 'T is true the Union we have with all those Bodies that rowl in the vast spaces is not very binding and consequently insensible to the greatest part of Men and there are some who interess themselves so little in the Discoveries made in the Heavens that one would think they had no natural Union to them did we not know that it was for want of Knowledge or for their too applicative Adherencies to other things The Soul though united to the Body which she animates is not always sensible of the Motions that occur in it or if she be yet she does not always actually consider them The Passion whereby she 's acted being often greater than the Sensation wherewith she 's affected makes her seem to have a stricter Adherence to the Object of her Passion than to her own Body For 't is chiefly by the Passions that the Soul expands her self abroad and finds she is actually related to all surrounding Beings as it is especially by Sensation that she expands through her own Body and finds she is united to all the Parts that compose it But as we are not to conclude that the Soul of a Man in a Passion is not united to his Body because he exposes himself to Death and is unconcern'd for his own Preservation so it ought not to be imagin'd we are not naturally engag'd to all things because there are some we are not at all concern'd for Would you know for instance whether Men have any Adhesions to their Prince or their Country Enquire out such as are acquainted with the Interests of them and have no particular Engagements of their own to take them up and you will then see how earnest they are for News how impatient to hear of Battels how joyful for a Victory and how melancholy upon a Defeat And this will convince you how strictly Men are united to their Prince and their Country In like manner would you know whether Men are united to China Japan the Planets or Fix'd Stars Enquire out or only imagine to your self some whose Country or Family enjoy a settl'd Peace who have no particular Passions and that are not actually sensible of the Union that binds them to nearer Objects than the Heavens and you will find if they have any Knowledge of the Magnitude and Nature of these Stars they will rejoyce at the Discovery of any of them will consider them with Pleasure and if they have Art enough will willingly be at the pains of observing and calculating their Motions Such as are in the hurry of Business have little Curiosity for the Appearance of a Comet or the Incidence of an Eclipse but Men that have no such Dependencies to nearer things find themselves considerable Employment about such Events because indeed there is nothing but what we are united to though we have not always the Sense of this Union as a Man does not always feel the Soul united I don't say to his Arm or Hand but to his Heart and Brain The strongest Natural Union which GOD has establish'd between us and his Works is that which cements and binds us to our Fellow-Brethren Men. GOD has commanded us to love them as our Second-selves and to the end that Elective Love with which we prosecute them might be resolute and constant he supports and strengthens it continually with a Natural Love which he impresses on us and for that purpose has given us some invisible Bonds which bind and oblige us necessarily to love them to be watchful for their as our own Preservation to regard them as parts necessary to the whole which we constitute together with them and without which we could not subsist There is nothing more admirably contriv'd than those Natural Correspondencies observable between the Inclinations of Men's Minds between the Motions of their Bodies and again between these Inclinations and these Motions All this secret Chain-work is a Miracle which can never be sufficiently admir'd nor can ever be understood Upon the Sense of some sudden surprizing Evil or which a Man finds as it were too strong for him to overcome by his own Strength he raises suppose a loud Cry This Cry forc'd out frequently without thinking on it by the disposition of the Machine strikes infallibly into the Ears of those who are near enough to afford the Assistance that is wanted It pierces them and makes them understand it let them be of what Nation or Quality soever for 't is a Cry of all Nations and all Conditions as indeed it ought to be It makes a Commotion in the Brain and instantly changes the whole Disposition of Body in those that are struck with it and makes them run to give succour without so much as knowing it But it is not long before it acts upon their Mind and obliges their Will to desire and their Understanding to contrive means of assisting him who made that Natural Petition provided always that urgent Petition or rather Command be just and according
is very efficacious to the keeping up Society But there is a strange Corruption in these Inclinations no less than in Friendship Compassion Good-will and others which tend to the uniting Men together What ought to hold up a Civil Society is commonly the Cause of its Disunion and Downfal and not to depart from my Subject is often the Cause of the Communication and Establishment of Errour Among all the Inclinations necessary to Civil Society those which subject us most to Errour are Friendship Favour Gratitude and whatever induce us to speak too advantageously on others in their Presence We set no Bounds to our Love of the Person of our Friends together with them we love whatever after any sort appertains to them and whereas they commonly express their Vehemence and Passion for the Defence of their Opinions they insensibly incline us to believe approve and defend them with as great or greater Obstinacy and Passion than themselves because it would often look but ill in them to be hot in maintaining their Opinions whereas we might defend them without being blam'd for it For in them it would be Self-love in us Generosity Our Affection for other Men proceeds from as many Accounts as they may please and serve us several ways Likeness of Humours of Inclinations Employments their Air their Behaviour their Vertue Estate the Affection or Esteem they express for us the Services they have formerly done or those we hope from them and many other particular Reasons determine us to love them If it fortune then that any one of our Friends that is some Person who has the same Inclinations an handsome Deportment delightful Discourse a vertuous Repute or is of great Quality who testifies an Esteem and Affection for us who has done us any former Service or from whom we hope any future or in fine whom we love for any other particular Reason If such a Person I say chances to advance any Proposition we greedily embrace it without consulting our Reason We maintain his Opinion insollicitous for the Truth of it and even sometimes against the Conviction of our Conscience according as we are determin'd by either the Obscurity and Confusion of our Mind the Corruption of our Heart or the Advantages we hope to reap from our False Generosity There is no need of bringing particular Examples of what I say since we rarely can be in Company an Hour together without observing several if we make but a little Reflexion Favour and Laughter according to the Common Saying are seldom on the side of Truth but almost always on the side of those we love 'T is a Well-bred and Obliging Gentleman that speaks he is certainly therefore in the right If what he says be only probable it 's look'd upon as true if absolutely impertinent and ridiculous it will at least amount to a Probability If it be a Man that loves me esteems me has done me some Kindness or is dispos'd or capacitated to do it has maintain'd my Opinion on other Occasions I shall be both ungrateful and unwise if I oppugn his or even fail to applaud him Thus Truth is sported with and made to truckle to our Interest and we caress the false Opinions of each other A worthy Man ought not to take it ill to be inform'd or instructed if it be done by the Rules of good Manners but if our Friends are disgusted when we modestly represent to them their Mistake we must permit them to love themselves and their Errours since they will have it so and because we have no Power to command them nor to change their Mind But a true Friend ought never to approve the Errours of his Friend for we ought to consider that we do them greater Injury than we imagine when we defend their Opinions without distinction Our Applauses serve only to swell their Heart and strengthen them in their Errours whereby they grow incorrigible and act and decide at last as if they were infallible Whence comes it that the most Rich the most Powerful the most Noble and generally all that are above others believe themselves commonly infallible and deport themselves as if they had more Reason than Men of a Lower and Meaner Condition but from a servile Approbation indifferently given to all their Thoughts So likewise the Approbation we give our Friends insensibly leads them to believe themselves wiser than others which makes them arrogant presumptuous and imprudent and obnoxious to the grossest Errours without perceiving them For which Reason it is that our Enemies often do us better Service and open our Mind more by their Oppositions than our Friends by their Applauses because the former keep us to our Guard and make us give heed to what we advance which one thing suffices to acquaint us with our Ramblings but the latter lull us to sleep and give us an ungrounded Confidence that makes us Vain and Ignorant Men should never therefore admire their Friends and submit to their Opinions out of an Affection as they ought not out of Disaffection to oppose their Enemies But they ought to divest themselves of the Spirit of Flattery and Contradiction that they may grow sincere and approve the Evidence of Truth where ever they find it We ought moreover to fix it well in our Mind that most Men are dispos'd to Flatter or Compliment us through a kind of Natural Inclination either to shew their Parts or to obtain the good Favour of others from the Hope of a Return or lastly out of a kind of Invidiousness and Raillery And we ought never to let our Brains be turn'd with any thing they can say to us Is it not a thing of daily Practice to see Men that are unacquainted cry up each other to the Heavens upon the very first Intercourse And what more common than for Men to give excessive Praises and to express even Extatick Admiration to a Person upon a Publick Performance even in the Company of those with whom they have ridiculed him just before Whenever a Man cries out and turns pale with Admiration as if astonish'd at what he hears 't is no good Proof that the Speaker utters Wonders but rather that he has a flattering Auditory that he has Friends or it may be Enemies that give themselves diversion That he talks in an engaging strain that he is Rich or Powerful or if you will 't is a good Proof that his Discourse is founded on the confus'd and obscure but very moving and agreeable Notions of the Senses or that he has a lively Imagination since Praises are bestow'd on Friendship Riches Honours Probabilities but rarely upon Truth 'T will perhaps be expected that having treated in general of the Inclinations of the Mind I should now descend to an exact Discussion of all the particular Motions it is sensible of upon the Sight of Good and Evil viz. That I should explicate the Nature of Love Hatred Joy Sorrow and all the Intellectual Passions whether General or Particular
and those which have been fixed and determined by the Will of God which is not subject to change To say that these Truths are immutable by their Nature what is it more than to say they are immutable because immutable unless this signifies they are essentially so without any external assistance But if these Truths were necessary in this manner how were they determin'd by the Will of God since God being free as the Author will not deny he might if he had pleas'd have not determin'd them to be immutable e And if so they are immutable only by Grace because God will'd it so and determin'd them to that state of immutability This being so how come they to be immutable by their Nature since it was possible for them to be liable to change But if it were not possible for them to be subject to change how could they be determin'd by God to be immutable and how could he have fix'd them by the operation of his Will The Author may explain himself upon this Point if he think convenient mean time it is no little concern to know whether God can change the Essences of things and make two Contradictories true at the same time for as a celebrated Divine of our Age has said upon the same words that are now under examination Is God the Author of the Truth of his own Existence Or ought we to affirm that we can form a right-lined Triangle whose three Angles shall be greater than two Rights or that shall have one Side longer than the other two In a word if it be possible for Contradictories to be true and false at the same time what will become of humane Reasoning And what shall we say to those Theological Conclusions which assure us that God is not Corporeal that he is not subject to Change that he has always been f c. g Might we not say in following this Hypothesis that its possible for him to have been eternally and not to have been eternally that he is liable and not liable to change I mean not to pronounce upon so difficult a Question but I may affirm the Author had no right to do it especially in the Circumstances he has done it and without alleadging sufficient Proofs Yet methinks I perceive a shew of Reasoning in these words and by the Will of God which is not subject to change He seems to consider the Will of God as the Cause of the Necessity of these Truths But if so he proves too much in the place where we complain he proves nothing at all for if what God wills be immutable because his Will is not subject to change it follows that whatever he wills must have an equal immutability since it is the same Will which is the Cause of it Mean while it is certain he wills things which are subject to change when he determines the Existence or Non-existence of Creatures in the Vicissitude of times h Thus though God should have fix'd these Truths but for some Ages his Will thereby would be no less immutable than for his producing daily all those admirable changes which make the Beauty of the Universe But the Author will say God wills that these Truths should be immutable for ever But how could he know this had he any particular Revelation yet he speaks as possitively as if he was very certain It may be he bottoms upon this that if these Truths seem immutable to us whilst they are subject to change we should err in pretending to Science l But if it were so all that could thence be concluded is that the first Philosophers the Academicks and Pyrronists have better Philosophiz'd than the Peripateticks Cartesians and other Dogmatists and I do not believe the Author would establish his Philosophy upon such a Sophism unless there were necessary Truths we could have no true Science therefore there are necessary Truths m But though we might suppose there were necessary Truths in Physick Medicine c. and might determine about this Question without being utterly excluded from the knowledge of Truth Though these Truths were necessary by their Nature and their immutability by some new Mystery was still an effect of the free determination of the Will of God Though the necessity of these Truths proceeded from the immutability of this Will whilst yet it is the Cause of all the Changes happening in the Universe Though we should be moreover assur'd that God had resolv'd to preserve these Truths in an entire immutability We must still suppose in order to enter into his Opinion the knowledge of the Existence of God and of his Will of his Liberty and of his Power n Which obliges me to make some Reflexions upon what he has borrowed from Faith to add to Reasons Philosophical which is what we may look upon as his third Supposition After having prov'd that we must yield only to Evidence except in matters of Faith which are not submitted to the disquisition of Reason I conclude with these words Mysteries then of Faith must be distinguished from things of Nature we ought equally to submit to Faith and to Evidence but in the concernments of Faith we must not look for Evidence as in those of Nature we ought not to take up with Faith that is with the Authority of Philosophers In a word to be a Believer 't is required to assent blindly but to be a Philosopher it is necessary to see plainly Mysteries of Faith must be distinguished from things of Nature Thus judiciously speaks the Author and concludes with these words which might even pass for o a Proverb To be a Believer 't is requir'd to assent blindly but to be a Philosopher 't is necessary to see plainly Mean while I wonder he observes not in his Book the Resolution he made of not p mingling the concerns of Religion with the decisions of Philosophy for it 's too visible that one half of his Book is nothing but Reflexions upon original Sin deprav'd Manners and corrupt Inclinations which Christian Morality is to correct q I blame not his Piety in this nor believe it a thing unbecoming a Christian to labour upon these Subjects But that ought to be reserv'd for Sermons r Or if he had design'd to take the occasion of insinuating these Morals as knowing that the true way of moving the Heart pathetically is to do it by discovering to the Mind the Truths that are of nearest concernment to it he might have satisfied that laudable desire but should have contriv'd for that purpose particular Chapters which he has done too in some places But once more a very little thing will serve to confound the Light we begin to receive in the Search after Truth s We cannot at the same time satisfie both Reason and Faith since Reason obliges us to open our Eyes and Faith commands us to shut them t And yet I find he has so interwoven his principal Propositions with the Credenda of Religion that he seems to talk
affords us the Enjoyment of him as far as we are capable of it in this Life whereas the Blindness of the Mind and the Depravation of the Heart make our Imperfection and are the Results of the Union of our Soul and Body as I have proved in several Places shewing that we never know the Truth nor love the real Good when we follow the Impressions of our Senses Imaginations and Passions All this is evident and yet Men who all passionately desire the Perfection of their Being care but little to increase the Union which they have with God nay they are continually at work to strengthen and enlarge that which they have with sensible things The Cause of that surprizing Disorder cannot be too much explain'd The Possession of Good must naturally produce two Effects in the Possessour at once must render him more perfect and more happy however it does not always fall out so 'T is impossible indeed that the Mind should actually enjoy a Good without being actually more perfect but it may happen that it actually enjoys it without being actually happier Those that know Truth best and love most the most lovely Goods are always actually more perfect than those that live in blind Ignorance and disorderly Practice but they are not always actually happier It is even so with Evil it ought at once to make both imperfect and unhappy but though it always makes Men more imperfect yet it does not always make them more unhappy or at least makes them not unhappy proportionably to its making them imperfect Vertue is often bitter and distastful whereas Vice is sweet and pleasant so that it is especially by Faith and Hope that pious Men are truly happy whilst the wicked have the actual Enjoyments of Pleasures and Delights It ought not to be so indeed but however it is so Sin has brought forth that Disorder as I said in the foregoing Chapter and that Disorder is the principal Cause not only of the Corruption of our Morals but also of the Ignorance and Darkness of our Mind By that Disorder it is that our Imagination persuades it self that Bodies may be the Good of the Mind For Pleasure as I have often said is the sensible Character or Mark of Good But now of all the Pleasures we enjoy upon Earth the most sensible are those which we imagine to receive by the Body We judge though too inconsiderately without doubt that Bodies can be and are effectually our Good And 't is so hard to oppose the Instinct of Nature and to withstand the Arguments of the Senses that the design of it does not so much as come into our Mind We think not on the Disorders introduc'd by Sin We consider not that Bodies can act upon the Mind but as occasional Causes that the Mind cannot immediately or by it self enjoy any Corporeal thing and that all the ways it has of uniting to an Object are by its Knowledge and Love that God only is superiour to it can reward or punish it by Sensations of Pleasure or Pain that can enlighten and move it in a word act upon it Those Truths though most evident to attentive Minds are not however so powerful to convince us as is the deceiving Experience of a sensible Impression When we consider something as part of our selves or look on our selves as a part of that thing we judge it our Good to be united to it we love it and this love is so much the greater as the thing whereunto we think our selves united seems to be a more considerable part of the whole we make up together with it Now there are two sorts of Proofs which persuade us that a thing is part of our self viz. the Instinct of Sensation and the Evidence of Reason By the Instinct of Sensation I am persuaded that my Soul is united to my Body or that my Body makes part of my Being but I have no full Evidence of it since I know it not by the light of Reason but by the Pain or Pleasure I feel at the presence and impression of Objects My Hand is prick'd I suffer Pain thence I conclude that my Hand makes part of my self my Cloaths are rent and I endure nothing therefore I say my Cloaths are not my self my Hair is cut without Pain but cannot be pluck'd up without smart that puzzles the Philosopher and he knows not what to determine In the mean while this perplexity shows that even the wisest rather judge by the instinct of Sensation than by the light of Reason that such or such things belong or belong not to themselves For should they determine them by Evidence and the light of Reason they would quickly know that the Mind and the Body are two sorts of Beings altogether opposite that the Mind cannot be united to the Body by it self and that the Soul is wounded when the Body is struck only because of her Union with God 'T is then only by the Instinct of the Sensation that we look on our Body and all the sensible things to which we are united as part of our selves that is as belonging to that which thinks and feels in us For what is not cannot be known by evident Reason since Evidence discovers Truth alone But on the contrary 't is by the light of Reason that we know the Relation we have with Intellectual things We discover by a clear View of the Mind that we are united to God in a more strict and essential manner than to our Body that without him we are nothing and neither can doe nor know neither will nor be sensible of any thing that he is our All or if we may so speak that we make up a whole with him of which we are but an infinitely small part The light of Reason discovers us a thousand Motives to love God only and to dispise Bodies as unworthy of our Love But we are not naturally sensible of our Union to God nor persuaded that he is our All by the Instinct of sense 't is only the Grace of our Lord which produces in some Men that spiritual sense to help them to overcome the contrary Sensations by which they are united to their Body For God as the Author of Nature inclines Minds to the love of him by a Knowledge of Illumination and not of Instinct and in all probability 't is but since the Fall that God as the Author of Grace has superadded Instinct to Illumination because our light is at present so mightily impair'd as to be incapable of bringing us to God being besides continually weakn'd by contrary pleasure or instinct and rendred ineffectual We therefore discover by the light of the Mind that we are united to God and to the intellectual World which he contains and are convinced by Sensation that we are united to our Body and by it to the material and sensible World God has Created But as our Sensations are more lively moving frequent and lasting than our Illuminations so 't
is not strange that our Sensations should agitate us and quicken our love for sensible things whereas our Light dissipates and vanishes without producing any zeal and ardency for Truth 'T is true that several Men are persuaded that God is their real Good love him as their All and earnestly desire to strengthen and increase their Union with him But few evidently know that by meditating on the Truth we unite our selves to God as far as natural strength can attain that it is a sort of Enjoyment of him to contemplate the true Ideas of things and that that abstracted view of some general and immutable Truths on which all the particulars depend are flights of a Mind that sequesters it self from the Body to unite it self to God Metaphysicks speculative Mathematicks and all those universal Sciences which regulate and contain the particular as the Universal Being comprehends all particular Beings seem to be Chimerical to most Men as well to the pious as to those that do not love God So that I dare hardly make bold to say that the study of those Sciences is the most pure and perfect Application to God that the Mind may be naturally capable of and that it is by the sight of the Intellectual World which is their Object that God has produced and still knows this sensible World from which Bodies receive their Life as Spirits live from the other Those that purely follow the Impressions of their Senses and motions of their Passions are not capable of relishing the Truth because it flatters them not And even the Vertuous who constantly oppose their Passions when they proffer them false Goods do not always resist them when they conceal from them the Truth and make it despicable because one may be pious without being a Man of parts To please God we need not exactly know that our Senses Imagination and Passions always represent things otherwise than they are since it appears not that our Lord and his Apostles ever intended to undeceive us of several Errours upon this matter which Descartes has discover'd to us There is a great difference betwixt Faith and Understanding the Gospel and Philosophy the greatest Clowns are capable of Faith but few can attain to the pure Knowledge of Evident Truth Faith represents to vulgar Men God as the Creator of Heaven and Earth which is a sufficient motive of Love and Duty towards him whereas Reason knowing that God was God before he was Creator not only considers him in his Works but also endeavours to contemplate him in himself or in that immense Idea of the infinitely perfect Being which is included in him The Son of God who is the Wisdom of his Father or the Eternal Truth made himself Man and became sensible that he might be known by Men of Flesh and Blood by gross material Men that he might instruct them by that which was the Cause of their Blindness and draw them to the love of him and disengage them from sensible goods by the same things that had enslav'd them for having to doe with Fools he thought fit to take upon him a sort of Folly whereby to make them wise So that the most pious Men and truest Believers have not always the greatest Understanding They may know God by Faith and love him by the help of his Grace without understanding that he is their All in the sense Philosophers understand him and without thinking that the abstracted Knowledge of Truth is a sort of a Union with him We ought not therefore to be surprized if so few Persons labour to strengthen their natural Union with God by the Knowledge of Truth since to this there is required a continual opposition of the Impressions of the Senses and Passions in a very different way from that which is usual with the Vertuous who are not always persuaded that the Senses and Passions abuse them in the manner that has been explain'd in the foregoing Books The Sensations and Thoughts in which the Body has a share are the sole and immediate Cause of the Passions as proceeding from the Concussion of the Fibres of the Brain raising some particular Commotion in the Animal Spirits And therefore Sensations are the only sensible proofs of our dependence on some things which they excite us to love but we feel not our Natural Union with God when we know the Truth and do not so much as think upon him because he is and operates in us so privately and insensibly as to be imperceptible to our selves And this is the Reason that our natural Union with God raises not our Love for him But it goes quite otherwise with our Union to sensible things All our Sensations prove it and Bodies appear before our Eyes when they act in us Their Action is visible and manifest Our Body is even more present to us than our Mind and we consider the former as the best part of our Selves So that our Union to our Body and by it to sensible Objects excites in us a violent Love which increases that Union and makes us depend on things that are infinitely below us CHAP. VI. Of the more general Errours of the Passions with some particular Instances 'T IS the part of Moral Philosophy to discover the particular Errours concerning Good in which our Passions engage us to oppose irregular affections to restore the Integrity of the Heart and to rule the Course of our Life But here we chiefly aim at giving Rules to the Mind and finding out the Causes of our Errours in reference to Truth so that we shall not proceed farther in those Matters that relate to the Love of true Good We are tending to the Instruction of the Mind and only take the Heart in the way in as much as the Heart is its Master We search into Truth it self without a special Respect to our selves and we consider its Relation with us only because that Relation is the Spring of Self-love's disguising and concealing it from us for we judge of all things by our Passions whence it is that we mistake in all things the Judgments of Passions never agreeing with the Judgments of Truth 'T is what we learn in these excellent Words of St. Bernard Neither Love nor Hatred know how to make a Judgment according to Truth Will you hear a true Judgment As I hear I judge says our Lord he says not as I hate as I love or as I fear Here you have a Judgment of Hatred We have a Law say the Jews and by that Law he ought to die Here a Judgment of Fear If we let him alone say the Pharisees the Romans shall come and take away our Place and Nation Here another of Love as that of David speaking of his Parricide Son Spare the young Man Absalom Our Love Hatred and Fear cause us to make false Judgments only Nothing but the pure Light of Truth can illuminate our Mind nothing but the distinct Voice of our common Master can cause us to make
true Judgments provided we only judge of what he says and as he says in Imitation only of our Lord as I hear I judge But let 's see how it is that our Passions seduce us that we may the easier resist them The Passions are so nearly related to the Senses that remembring what hath been said in the first Book it will not be difficult to explain how they lead us into Errour because the general Causes of the Errours of the Passions are altogether like to those of the Errours of the Senses The most general Cause of the Errours of the Senses is as we there have shewn our attributing to external Objects or to the Body the proper Sensations of our Soul annexing Colours to the Superficies of Bodies diffusing Light Sounds and Odours in the Air and fixing Pain and Titillation to those Parts of our Body that receive some Changes by the Motion of other contiguous Bodies Almost the same thing may be said of the Passions we too rashly ascribe to the Objects that cause or seem to cause them all the Dispositions of our Heart our Goodness Meekness Malice Sowreness and all the other Qualities of our Mind The Object that begets some Passion in us seemes afrer a sort to contain in it self the Passion produced in us when we consider it as sensible things seem to contain in themselves the Sensations which their Presence excites in us When we love any Person we are naturally inclin'd to believe that he loves us and can hardly imagine that he designs to hurt us or to oppose our Desires But if Hatred succeed in the place of Love we cannot Persuade our selves that he has any Affection for us we interpret all he does in the worst Sense we are always distrustful and upon our Guard though he thinks not upon us or perhaps intended to doe us Service In short we unjustly attribute to the Person that stirs up a passion in us all the Dispositions of our Heart and with as much Imprudence as we ascribe to the Objects of the Senses all the Qualities of our Mind Moreover by the same Reason that we believe other Men receive the same Sensations from the same Objects as we do we think they are agitated with the same Passions for the same Subjects if they are in a State of being susceptible of them We suppose them to love and desire the same things as we our selves do whence proceed secret Jealousies and Hatreds if the desired Good cannot be enjoyed entire by several for the contrary happens in Goods that can be possessed without Division by several Persons as Science Vertue the Sovereign Good and the like We also suppose that they hate fear or fly from the same things that we do whence proceed secret Plots or publick Associations according to the nature and state of the thing hated by which means we hope to rid our selves of our Miseries We therefore ascribe to the Objects of our Passions the Commotions they produce in us thinking that all other Men and even sometimes Beasts are agitated as we are and besides judge yet more rashly the Cause of our Passions which is often but imaginary is really in some Object When we have a passionate Love for any Body his Grimace and Faces are charming his Ugliness is not distastful his ill-composed Motions and Gestures are regular or at least natural If he never speak he is wise if he be a great Talker he is witty if he speak upon all adventures he 's Universal if he continually interrupt others it is because he 's full of Fire of Life and Spirit if he pretend to top and sway every where 't is because he deserves it Thus can Passion cover or dissemble the Imperfections of Friends and advantagiously set off their most inconsiderable Qualities But when that Friendship which only proceeds as other Passions do from the Agitation of the Blood and Animal Spirits comes to cool through want of Heat and Spirits fit to nourish it when Interest or some false Relation alters the Disposition of the Brain then Hatred succeeding Love is sure to represent to us in that Object of our Passion all the Defects that are capable of stirring up our just Aversion We perceive in him Qualities quite contrary to those we admired before We are asham'd of having lov'd him and the ruling Passion never fails to justifie it self and to ridicule that which it has follow'd The Power and Injustice of Passions are not included within such narrow Limits as those we have described but extend infinitely farther not only disguising their principal Object but also whatever has any reference to it They make us love not only the Qualities of our Friends but also most part of those of the Friends to our Friends And in those who are endued with any strength and extent of Imagination the Passions have so vast a reach and out-let that it is not possible to determine their Limits Those Things I have mention'd are such general and fruitful Principles of Errour Prejudice and Injustice that it is impossible to observe all the Consequences of them Most of the Truths or rather Errours entertained in some Places Times Commonalties and Families proceed from thence What is followed in Spain is rejected in France what is true at Paris is false at Rome what is certain amongst the Dominicans is uncertain amongst the Franciscans and what appears undoubted to the Black Fryars seems an Errour to the White The Dominicans believe themselves obliged to stick to St. Thomas Why Because that Doctor was one of their Order Whereas the Franciscans follow the Opinion of Scotus because he was a Black Fryar There are likewise Truths and Errours proper to certain Times The Earth turned two thousand Years ago then it remain'd unmovable till our Days wherein it has began to turn again Aristotle was formerly burnt and a Provincial Council approved by the Pope most wisely forbad his Physicks to be taught He was admired ever since and falls now again into Contempt Opinions that are now publickly received in the Schools were formerly rejected as Heresies and their Assertors excommunicated by the Bishops because Passions stirring up Factions Factions establish those sorts of Truths or Errours that are as inconsistent as the Principle they proceed from Men may indeed be indifferent as to the Unmovableness of the Earth or the Essence of Bodies consider'd in themselves but they are no longer so when they look on those Opinions as defended by their Adversaries Thus Hatred kept up by a confused sense of Piety breeds an indiscreet Zeal that kindles by degrees and at last produces such Events as are not so surprizing to all the World till a great while after their arrival We can hardly imagine that Passions should reach so far because we know not that their Impetuosity extends to whatever may satisfie them Perhaps Hâ—man would have done no harm to the Jewish People but because Mordecai a Jew forbore to salute him he
great and solid Truth which they have rendred familiar and which bears 'em up and strengthens them in all Occasions CHAP. IX Of Love and Aversion and their principal Species LOve and Hatred are the Passions that immediately succeed Admiration for we dwell not long upon the Consideration of an Object without discovering the Relations it hath to us or to something we love The Object we love and to which consequently we are united by that Passion being for the most part present as well as that which we actually admire our Mind quickly and without any considerable Reflection makes the necessary Comparisons to find out the Relations they have to each other and to us or else is naturally aware of them by a preventing Sense of Pleasure and Pain Then it is that the Motion of Love we have for our selves and for the beloved Object extends to that which is admired if the Relation it has immediately to us or to something united to us appear advantageous either by Knowledge or Sensation Now that new Motion of the Soul or rather that Motion of the Soul newly determin'd join'd to that of the Animal Spirits and followed with the Sensation that attends the new Disposition that the same new Motion of the Spirits produces in the Brain is the Passion we call here Love But when we feel by any Pain or discover by a clear and evident Knowledge that the Union or Relation of the admired Object would prove disserviceable to us or to something united to us then the Motion of the Love we have for our selves or for the Thing united to us terminates in us or cleaves to the united Object without following the View of the Mind or being carried to the admired Thing But as the Motion towards Good in general which the Author of Nature continually imprints on the Soul carries her to whatever is known and felt because what is either intelligible or sensible is Good in it self so it may be said that the Resistance of the Soul against that natural Motion which attracts it is a kind of voluntary Motion which terminates in Nothingness Now that voluntary Motion of the Soul being join'd to that of the Spirits and Blood and followed by the Sensation that attends the new Disposition which that Motion of the Spirits produces in the Brain is the Passion we call here Aversion or Hatred That Passion is altogether contrary to Love and yet 't is never without Love It is altogether contrary to it because Aversion separates and Love unites the former has most commonly Nothingness for its Object and the latter has always a Being The former resists the natural Motion and makes it of no effect whereas the latter yields to it and makes it victorious However Aversion is never separated from Love because Evil the Object of the former is the Privation of Good so that to fly from Evil is to fly from the Privation of Good that is to say to tend to Good And therefore the Aversion of the Privation of Good is the Love of Good But if Evil be taken for Pain the Aversion of Pain is not the Aversion of the Privation of Pleasure because Pain is as real a Sensation as Pleasure and therefore is not the Privation of it But the Aversion of Pain being the Aversion of some internal Misery we should not be affected with that Passion should we not love our selves Lastly If Evil be taken for what causes Pain in us or for whatever deprives us of Good then Aversion depends on Self-love or on the Love of something to which we desire to be united So that Love and Aversion are two Mother-Passions opposite to each other but Love is the First the Chief and the most Universal As at that great Distance and Estrangement we are from God since the Fall we look upon our Being as the Chief Part of the Things to which we are united so it may be said in some sense that our Motion of Love for any thing whatsoever is an Effect of Self-love We love Honours because they raise us our Riches because they maintain and preserve us our Relations Prince and Country because we are concern'd in their Preservation Our Motion of Self-love reaches to all the Things that relate to us and to which we are united because 't is that Motion which unites us to them and spreads our Being if I may so speak on those that surround us proportionably as we discover by Reason or by Sensation that it is our Interest to be united to them And therefore we ought not to think that since the Fall Self-Love is only the Cause and Rule of all other Affections but that most part of other Affections are Species of self-Self-love For when we say that a Man loves any new Object we must not suppose that a new Motion of Love is produc'd in him but rather that knowing that Object to have some Relation or Union with him he loves himself in that Object and that with a Motion of Love coeval to himself For indeed without Grace there is nothing but Self-love in the Heart of Man The Love of Truth of Justice of God himself and every other Love that is in us by the first Institution of Nature have ever since the Fall been a Sacrifice to Self-love There is no doubt however but the most wicked and barbarous Men Idolaters and Atheists themselves are united to God by a natural Love of which consequently Self-love is not the Cause for they are united to him by their Love to Truth Justice and Vertue they praise and esteem good Men and do not love them because they are Men but because they see in them such Qualities as they cannot forbear to love because they cannot forbear to admire and judge them amiable And therefore we love something besides our selves but Self-love over-rules all the rest and Men forsake Truth and Justice for the smallest Concerns For when by their natural Force they venture their Goods and Lives to defend oppress'd Innocence or on any other Occasion their greatest Spur is mere Vanity and the hopes of getting a Name by the seeming Possession of a Vertue which is reverenc'd by all the World They love Truth and Justice when on their side but never against themselves because without Grace they cannot obtain the least Victory over Self-love There are many other sorts of natural Love We naturally love our Prince Country Relations those that have any Conformity of Humour Designs and Employments with us But all those sorts of Love are very weak as well as the Love of Truth and Justice and Self-love being the most violent of all conquers them so easily as to find no other Resistance but what it creates against it self Bodies that strike against others lose their Motion proportionably as they communicate it to the stricken and after having moved many other Bodies may at last entirely lose their own Motion It is not so with Self-love It determines every
Brutal They find Pleasure in living by the Impressions of their Passion and suffer inward Pain in resisting it which is sufficient to make Reason that commonly descends to be the Slave to Pleasure to argue in such a manner as may best defend the Cause of it If therefore it be true that all Passions justifie themselves 't is evident that Desire must of it self move us to judge favourably of its Object if it be a Desire of Love and unkindly if it be a Desire of Aversion The Desire of Love is a Motion of the Soul raised by the Spirits that provoke it to the Enjoyment or Use of such things as are not in its power for we desire even the Continuation of our Enjoyment because future things depend not on us 'T is then necessary for the Justification of that Desire that the Object which produces it be esteemed good in it self or in reference to something else the contrary must be said of that Desire which is a kind of Aversion I grant we cannot judge any thing to be good or bad without some Reason but Passions have no Object which is not good in some sense And if it may be said there are some which contain no real Goodness and therefore cannot be contemplated as Good by the Mind yet no one can say but they may be enjoyed as Good since they are supposed to agitate us and that Commotion Enjoyment or Sense is more than sufficient to move the Soul to entertain a kind Opinion of the Object If we so easily judge that Fire contains in it self the Heat we feel and Bread the Savour we relish because of the Sensation those Bodies excite in us though that be never so incomprensible to the Mind which cannot conceive Heat and Savour as Modifications of a Body thence it follows That there is no Object of our Passions how vile and contemptible soever it appears but we may judge it good when the Enjoyment of it affects us with pleasure For as we imagine that Heat goes out of Fire when we feel it so we blindly believe that the Objects of the Passions cause the pleasure which we receive in their Enjoyment and that therefore they are good since they are able to doe us good The like may be said of the Passions that have Evil for their Object But as I said just before there is nothing but deserves either Love or Aversion either by it self or by something else to which it relates and when we are agitated with some Passion we quickly discover in its Object the Good or Evil that may nourish the same It is therefore easie to know by Reason the Judgments which our Passions make whilst agitating us For if a Desire of Love move us we may well conceive that it will not fail to justifie it self by the favourable Judgments it shall make of its Object We easily perceive that those Judgments will have more Extent as the Desire shall be more violent and that they will be sometimes absolute and without exception though but a very small part of the thing appears good We may without difficulty understand that those favourable Judgments will reach all things that shall have or seem to have any Connection with the principal Object of the Passion proportionably to the strength of the Passion and the Extent of the Imagination The contrary will happen if it be a Desire of Aâ—version the Reasons of which are as easily comprehended and perfectly confirmed and made good by Experience But let us make these Truths more sensible and familiar by some Instances Men naturally desire Knowledge because all Minds are created for Truth But that Desire how just and reasonable soever it may be in it self often becomes a dangerous Vice by the false Judgments that attend it Curiosity frequently offers to the Mind vain Objects of its Study and Lucubrations ascribes to them false Ideas of Greatness ennobles them with the deceiving Lustre of Rarity and dresses them up with such gay and splendid Apparel that one can hardly forbear to Contemplate them with too much Pleasure and Application There is no Trifle but will wholly take up some Persons whose fruitless Toil is still justified by the false Judgments that arise from their vain Curiosity For instance those that bestow their time in Learning Tongues imagine that all the Sciences consist in the Knowledge of Terms and find out a Thousand Reasons to justifie themselves and the Veneration those pay them whom an unknown Term confounds is none of the weakest though the least reasonable Some Persons employ their whole lives in learning to speak who ought perhaps to hold their Peace all the while since 't is evident he ought to be silent who has nothing worth the hearing to say But 't is not that which they propose from their Learning They should know that he must think well use his Understanding to exactness discern Truth from Falshood clear Ideas from obscure those of the Mind from those of the Imagination that will speak accurately They imagine themselves fine and uncommon Wits because they know how to please the Ear with an Elegant Harmony how to flatter the Passions by Figures and â—aking Gestures how to rejoyce the Imagination by lively and sensible Expressions whilst they leave the Mind empty of Ideas void of Light and Understanding Some probable reason may justifie their Passion that spend a great deal of time in the study of their own Tongue since they make use of it all their Life but as to those who indifferently apply themselves to all sorts of Languages I know not what to say in their behalf The Passion of those who make a complete Library of all sorts of Dictionaries may be excusable as well as the Curiosity of those who make a collection of Coins and Medals of all Countries and Times that may be useful in some occasions and if it doe them not much good at least it does them no harm a Store-house of such Curiosities being not cumberâ—ome since they carry not with them either their Books or Medals But how may the Passion of those be justifiable that make their Head a Library of Dictionaries that neglect their Affairs and Essential Duties for words of no use They are smatterers in their own Tongue frequently mingling strange and unknown words in their Discourses and never paying their Countreymen with Current Money Their Reason seems not to be better guided than their Tongue for all the Corners and Recesses of their Memory are so full of Etymologies that their Minds must lie as stifl'd under the innumerable number of words that are perpetually flying about it However it must be granted that Philologers and Linguists will not stick for Reasons to justifie their capricious Studies Which to know you need but to listen to the Judgments those pretenders to Science make of Tongues or suppose some Opinions that are taken amongst them for undoubted Axioms together with the Inferences that may be deduc'd from
Men pay their Worship to the Sun and is still the universal Cause of the Disorders of their Mind and the Corruption of their Heart Why say they by their Actions and sometimes by their Words should we not love Bodies since they are able to afford us Pleasure And why are the Israelites blam'd for lamenting the Loss of the Garlick and Onions of Egypt since the Privation of those things which enjoyed afforded them some Happiness made them in some sort unhappy But the Philosophy that is mis-call'd New and represented as a Bugbear to frighten weak Minds that is despised and condemned without hearing that New Philsosophy I say since it must have that name destroys all the Pretences of the Libertines by the establishing its very first Principle that perfectly agrees with the first Principle of the Christian Religion namely That we must love and fear none but God since none but He alone can make us happy As Religion declares that there is but one true God so this Philosophy shews that there is but one true Cause As Religion teaches that all the Heathen Divinities are but dead Metals and immovable Stone so this Philosophy discovers that all the second Causes or Divinities of the Philosophers are but unactive Matter and ineffective Wills As Religion commands not to bow to those Gods that are not Gods so this Philosophy teaches not to prostrate our Minds and Imagination before the phantastick Grandeur and Power of pretended Causes which are not Causes which we ought neither to love nor to fear nor be taken up with but think upon God alone see and adore love and fear him in all things But that 's not the Inclination of some Philosophers they will neither see God nor think upon him for ever since the Fall there is a secret Opposition betwixt God and Man They delight in Gods of their own Invention in loving and fearing the Contrivances of their Heart as the Heathens did the Works of their Hands They are like those Children who tremble at the sight of their Play-Fellows after they have dawb'd and blacken'd them Or if they desire a more noble Comparison though perhaps not so just they resemble those famous Romans who reverenced the Fictions of their Mind and foolishly adored their Emperours after they themselves had let loose the Eagle at their Canonization CHAP. IV. An Explication of the Second Part of the General Rule That the Philosophers observe it not but that Des Cartes has exactly followed it WE have been shewing to what Errours Men are liable when they reason upon the false and confused Ideas of the Senses and their rambling and undetermin'd Notions of Logick whence it appears that to keep to Evidence in our Perceptions 't is absolutely necessary exactly to observe that Rule we have prescrib'd and to examine which are the clear and distinct Ideas of things that we may only argue by deduction from them In that same general Rule concerning the Subject of our Studies there is yet a remarkable Circumstance namely That we must still begin with the most simple and easie things and insist long upon them before we undertake the Enquiry after the more composed and difficult For if to preserve Evidence in all our Perceptions we must only reason upon distinct Ideas 't is plain that we must never meddle with the Enquiry of compound things before the simple on which they depend have been carefully examin'd and made familiar to us by a nice Scrutiny since the Ideas of compound things neither are nor can be clear as long as the most simple of which they are composed are but confusedly and imperfectly known We know things imperfectly when we are not sure to have considered all their Parts and we know them confusedly when they are not familiar enough to the Mind though we may be certain of having consider'd all their Parts When we know them but imperfectly our Argumentations are only probable when we perceive them confusedly there is neither Order not Light in our Inferences and often we know not where we are or whither we are going But when we know them both imperfectly and confusedly which is the commonest of all we know not so much as what we would look for much less by what Means we are to find it So that it is altogether necessary to keep strictly to that Order in our Studies Of still beginning by the most simple Things examining all their Parts and being well acquainted with them before we meddle with the more composed that depend on the former But that Rule agrees not with the Inclination of Man who naturally despises whatever appears easie his Mind being made for an unlimited Object and almost incomprehensible cannto make a long Stay on the Consideration of those simple Ideas which want the Character of Infinite for which he is created On the contrary and for the same Reason he has much Veneration and an eager Passion for great obscure and mysterious Things and such as participate of Infinity Not that he loves Darkness but that he hopes to find in those deep Recesses a Good and Truth capable of satisfying his Desires Vanity likewise gives a great Commotion to the Spirits stirring them to what is great and extraordinary and encouraging them with a foolish Hope of hitting right Experience teaches that the most accurate Knowledge of ordinary Things gives no great Name in the World whereas to be acquainted with uncommon Things though never so confusedly and imperfectly always procures the Esteem and Reverence of those who willingly conceive a great Idea of whatever is out of their depth of Understanding And that Experience determines all those who are more sensible to Vanity than to Truth which certainly make up the greatest Number to a blind-fold Search of a specious though chimerical Knowledge of what is great rare and unintelligible How many are there that reject the Cartesian Philosophy for that ridiculous Reason That its Principles are too simple and easie There are in this Philosophy no obscure and mysterious Terms Women and Persons unskill'd in Greek and Latin are capable of learning it It must then be say they something very inconsiderable and unworthy the Application of great Genius's They imagine that Principles so clear and simple are not fruitful enough to explain the Effects of Nature which they supposed to be dark intricate and confused They see not presently the Use of those Principles that are too simple and easie to stop their Attention long enough to make them understand their Use and Extent They rather chuse to explain Effects whose Causes are unknown to them by unconceivable Principles than by such as are both simple and intelligible For the Principles these Philosophers are wont to explain obscure Things by are not only obscure themselves but utterly incomprehensible Those that pretend to explain Things extremely intricate by Principles clear and generally receiv'd may easily be refuted if they succeed not since to know whether what they say
this That if two Bowls of Lead or of any other less Elastick Matter meet they rebound not after their Collision but proceed almost according to the Rules before establish'd which they keep to so much more exactly as they are less springing Bodies therefore rebound after their Percussion because they are hard that is as I have explain'd because there is an extremely agitated Matter which compresses them and which passing through their Pores with an extreme Violence repel the Bodies which strike against them But it ought to be suppos'd that the Percutient Bodies break not those which they dash against by a Motion over-powering the Resistance the little Parts of the subtile Matter are capable of making as when we discharge a Musket against a piece of Wood. 'T is true the subtile Matter compresses soft Bodies and passes with a rapid Course through their Pores no less than through those of hard and yet these soft Bodies have no Elasticity The Reason whereof is this that the Matter passing through soft Bodies can with a great deal of Ease open it self new Passages by reason of the Minuteness of the Parts composing them or of some other particular Configuration proper for that Effect which hard Bodies will not admit by reason of the Largeness and Situation of their Parts which are contrary to the same Thus when a hard Body strikes another that is soft it alters all the Roads the subtile Matter us'd to pass through which is commonly visible as in a Musket-Bullet which flattens when it is smitten But when a hard Body strikes against another like it it either makes none or very few new Paths and the subtile Matter in its Pores is oblig'd to return upon the same Ground or else must repel the Body which blocks up its little Avenues Lastly It seems evident that every mov'd Body continually endeavouring to tend in a Right Line and declining from it as little as is possible when it meets Resistance ought never to rebound since by that Motion it extremely deviates from a Right 'T is necessary therefore either that Bodies should grow flat or that the stronger should conquer the weaker and make it bear it company But because Bodies are springing and hard they cannot go in company since if A pushes a a repels A and so they must recede from one another Notwithstanding if two Bodies were in a Vacuum though never so hard they would go in company because having no Body to surround them they could have no Elastick Force the Striker making no Resistance to the Striking but Air Gravitation c. resisting the great Motion which the striking Body gives the stricken the stricken resists the striking and hinders it from following For Experience teaches us that Air and Gravity resist Motion and that this Resistance is so much greater as the Motion is more violent 'T is easie to discover from what I have been saying how it comes to pass that in the Percussion of different Bodies encompass'd with Air or Water c. sometimes the Smiting rebounds sometimes communicates all its Motion and remains as it were unmoveable and sometimes it follows the Smitten but always with less Degrees of Swiftness if one or other of them be not perfectly soft For all this depends on the Proportion that is found between the Magnitude the Hardness and the Weight of one and the other supposing them mov'd with an equal Swiftness If they are very hard the Smiting rebounds more because the Elaterium is stronger If the Smiting is very little the Smitten very large and weighty the Smiting rebounds still much because of the Weight and the great Mass of Air surrounding the Smitten which withstands the Motion Last of all If the Force of the Hardness is as it were abated by the little Volume of Air answering the Littleness of the stricken Body or the contrary it may happen that the Smiting may remain as immoveable after the Percussion We need therefore but compare the Hardness of percutient Bodies and the Air which the Percuss'd ought to agitate anew at the time of Percussion whereby to move to give a pretty exact Conjecture concerning what must happen in the Percussion of different Bodies I still suppose an equal Swiftness in the striking for the Air more resists a great Motion than a little one and there is as much Motion in a Body twice as little as in another when proceeding twice as fast as that other Thus the Smitten being driven as fast again may be consider'd as having a Volume of Air twice as big to repel in order to its moving But it ought still to be observ'd that at the Moment of one Body's striking another the Parts of this same Body have two contrary Motions for those on the Fore-side have a backward Tendency by reason of the Collision when at the same time those behind tend forwards on the Account of the first Motion and 't is that Counter-motion which flattens soft Bodies and is the Cause that some hard Bodies break in pieces but when Bodies are very hard this Counter-stroke which vibrates some of the Parts and makes a sort of Trepidation in them as appears from the Sound they give always produces some Changes in the Communication of Motion which are very difficult to be known for many Reasons and 't is in my Mind to little purpose to examine them in particular Would a Man meditate on all these things I believe he would easily answer some Difficulties which might still be rais'd upon the Subject but if I thought that what I have said were insufficient to shew that Rest has no Force to resist Motion and that the Rules of the Communication of Motions given by Monsieur des Cartes are in part false I would here make out that it is impossible by his Supposition to move our selves in the Air And that which makes the Circulation of Motion in Fluid Bodies possible without recurring to a Vacuum is that the first Element easily divides it self in several different manners the Repose of its Parts having no Force to resist Motion The CONCLUSION of the Three last BOOKS I Have if I mistake not sufficiently shewn in the Fourth and Fifth Books that Men's natural Inclinations and Passions frequently occasion their falling into Errour because they induce them more to a precipitate Judgment than a careful Examination of Things I have shewn in the Fourth Book that our Inclination for Good in general is the Cause of the Restlesness of the Will that this Restlesness of the Will puts the Mind in continual Agitation and that a Mind continually agitated is utterly unfit for the Discovery of any the least intricate and hidden Truths That the Love of new and extraordinary Things frequently prepossesses us in their behalf and that whatever bears the Character of Infinite is capable of confounding our Imagination and mis-leading us I have explain'd how our Inclination for Greatness Elevation and Independency insensibly engage us in a falsly-pretended
brought of their Existence MEN are commonly perfectly ignorant of what they presume best to understand and have a good Knowledge of other things whilst they imagine they have not so much as their Ideas When their Senses have to do in their Judgments they submit to what they do not comprehend at least to what they know but imperfectly and confusedly And when their Ideas are purely intellectual give me leave to use such Expressions they will hardly admit undeniable Demonstrations What Notion for Instance have the generality of Men when we prove to them most of Metaphysical Truths when we demonstrate the Existence of a God the Efficacy of his Will the Immutability of his Decrees That there is but one God or true Cause that works all in all things but one Supreme Reason which all Intelligent Beings participate but one necessary Love which is the Principle of all created Wills They think we pronounce Words without Sense that we have no Ideas of the things advanc'd and that we had better say nothing Metaphysical Truths and Arguments are not of a sensible Nature they have nothing moving and affecting and consequently leave not Conviction behind them Nevertheless abstract Ideas are certainly the most distinct and Metaphysical Truths the most clear and evident of all other Men sometimes say they have no Idea of God nor any Knowledge of his Will and commonly believe too what they say but 't is for want of knowing what they know it may be best For where 's the Man that hesitates in answering to the Question Whether God is Wise Just or Powerful Whether he is Divisible Triangular Movable or subject to any kind of Change whatever Whereas we cannot answer without scruple and fear of being mistaken whether certain Qualities do or do not belong to a Subject which we have no Idea of So again Who is it dares say that God acts not by the most simple Means That he is irregular in his Designs That he makes Monsters by a positive direct and particular Will and not by a kind of Necessity In a word That his Will is or may be contrary to ORDER whereof every Man knows something more or less But if a Man had no Idea of the Will of GOD he might at least doubt whether he acted according to certain Laws which he clearly conceives he is obliged to follow on Supposition HE will act Men therefore have the Ideas of things purely Intelligible which Ideas are much clearer than those of sensible Objects They are better assured of the Existence of a God than of that of Bodies and when they retire into themselves they more clearly discover certain Wills of God by which he produces and preserves all Beings than those of their best Friends or whom they have studied all their Lives For the Union of their Mind with God and that of their Will with his that is with the Law Eternal or Immutable Order is immediate direct and necessary whereas their Union with sensible Objects being founded only for the Preservation of their Life and Health gives them no Knowledge of these Objects but as they relate to that Design 'T is this immediate and direct Union which is not known says St. Austin but by those whose Mind is purified that enlightens our most secret Reason and exhorts and moves us in the inmost Recesses of our Heart By this we learn both the Thoughts and the Wills of God that is Eternal Truths and Laws For no one can doubt but we know some of them with Evidence But our Union with our choicest Friends teaches us not evidently either what they think or what they will We think we know right well but we are most commonly mistaken because we receive our Information only from their Lips Nor can our Union which we have through our Senses with circumambient Bodies instruct us For the Testimony of the Senses is never exactly true but commonly every way false as I have made appear in this Treatise and 't is for that Reason I say 't is an harder thing than is believ'd to prove positively the Existence of Bodies though our Senses tell us they exist because Reason does not so readily inform us as we imagine and it must be most attentively consulted to give us a clear Resolve But as Men are more Sensible than Reasonable so they more willingly listen to the Verdict of the Senses than the Testimony of internal Truth and because they have always consulted their Eyes to be assur'd of the Existence of Matter without troubling their Heads to advise with their Reason they are surpriz'd to hear it said it is hard to demonstrate it They think they need but open their Eyes to see that there are Bodies but if this does not take away all suspition of Illusion they believe it abundantly sufficient to come near and handle them after which they can hardly conceive we can have any possible Reasons to make us doubt of their Existence But if we believe our Eyes they 'll tell us that Colours are laid upon the surface of Bodies and Light diffus'd in the Air and Sun our Ears make us hear Sounds as undulated in the Air and ecchoing from the ringing Bodies and if we credit the Report of the other Senses Heat will be in the Fire Sweetness in the Sugar Odour in Musk and all sensible Qualities in the Bodies which seem to exhale or disperse them And yet it is certain from the Reasons I have given in the First Book concerning the Search after Truth that these Qualities are not out of the Soul that feels them at least it is not evident they are in the Bodies that are about us What Reason therefore is there from the Reports of our always-treacherous and delusive Senses to conclude there are actually Bodies without us and that they are like those we see I mean those which are the immediate Object of our Soul when we behold them with bodily Eyes Certainly this does not want Difficulty whatever may be said of it Farther If the Existence of any Body may be certainly prov'd upon the Testimony of our Senses none could have better Pretence than That to which the Soul is immediately united The liveliest Sensation and that which seems to have the most necessary relation to an actually-existing Body is Pain And yet it often happens that those who have lost an Arm feel most violent Pains in it long after it has been cut off They know well enough they want it when they consult their Memory or only look upon their Body but the Sense of Pain deceives them And if as it often happens they be suppos'd to have quite forgotten what formerly they were and to have no other Senses left them than that whereby they feel Pain in their imaginary Arm certainly they could not be convinc'd but that they had an Arm in which they felt so violent torment There have been those who have believ'd they had Horns on their Heads others who have
principal part of his Brain Order will'd it so and consequently He whose Will always conforms to Order and who can do nothing against It though He be Almighty Thus Man might on certain Occasions suspend the Natural Law of the Communication of Motions seeing he was not tainted with Concupisence nor did he feel in himself any involuntary and rebellious Motions VII But Adam lost that Power by sinning Order would have it so for it is not reasonable that in Favour of a Sinner and a Rebel there should be any other Exceptions to the general Law of the Communication of Motions than what are absolutely necessary to the Preservation of our Life and Civil Society Therefore the Body of Man being continually shaken by the Action of sensible Objects and his Soul agitated by all the Concussions of the principal part of his Brain he is become a dependent on the Body to which he was only united and over which he had a Sovereignty before his Fall VIII Let us see now how the first Man was capable of sinning It is natural to love Pleasure and to tast it and this was not forbidden Adam The Case is the same with Joy one may rejoice at the sight of his Natural Perfections That is not evil in it self Man was made to be happy and 't is Pleasure and Joy which actually beatifie and content Adam therefore tasted Pleasure in the use of sensible Goods and he felt a Joy upon viewing his own Perfections For 't is impossible to consider ones self as happy or perfect and not be possess'd with it He felt no such Pleasure in his Duty for though he knew God was his Good it was not in a sensible way as I have prov'd in several places So the Joy he might find in his Duty was not very sensible which being suppos'd we conclude That whereas the first Man had not an infinite Capacity of Mind his Pleasure or his Joy weakned its clear sight which gave him to know That God was his Good and that he ought only to love him For Pleasure is in the Soul and the Modification of it and therefore fills up our Capacity of Thought proportionably as it affect and works on us this is a thing which we learn by Experience or rather from that inward Sensation we have of our selves We may then conceive That the first Man having insensibly suffer'd the Capacity of his Mind to be possess'd or divided by the lively Sense of a presumptuous Joy or it may be some Love or sensible Pleasure the Presence of God and the Consideration of his Duty were eras'd from his Mind for neglecting couragiously to pursue his Light in the Search of his True Good so this Distraction made him capable of falling For his principal Grace and strength was his Light and the clear Knowledge of his Duty forasmuch as then he had no need of preventing Delights which are now necessary to oppose to Concupisence IX And it must be observ'd that neither the preventing Sense of Pleasure which Adam felt in the use of the Goods of the Body nor the Joy that possess'd him when reflecting on his own Happiness or Perfection was the true Cause of his Fall for he knew very well that none but God could give him that Sense of Pleasure or Joy and so he in Duty should have lov'd him only forasmuch as none merits our Love save the true Cause of our Felicity As nothing perturbated his Knowledge and Light whilst he strove to keep it pure and incorrupt so he might and ought to have expung'd from his Mind those Sensations which divided it and which endanger'd its falling off and losing sight of him who strengthened and enlightned it He ought to have well remembred that if God offer'd himself not to his Sense but only his Vnderstanding as his Good it was to afford him a readier way to merit his Reward by a continual Exercise of his Liberty Supposing then That Adam and Eve have sinn'd and consequently thereupon felt in themselves involuntary and rebellioâ—s Motions I say That their Children must needs be born Sinners and subject as they were to Motions of Concupiscence See my Reasons for it X. I have prov'd at large in the Chapter that occasion'd this Discourse that there is such a Communication between the Brain of the Mother and that of the Child that all the Motions and Traces excited in the former are stirr'd up in the latter Therefore as the Soul of the Infant is united to its Body at the very instant of its Creation it being the Conformation of the Body which obliges God in consequence of his general Will to inform it with a Soul 't is plain that at the very moment of this Soul's Creation it has corrupt Inclinations and turns towards the Body since it has from that same moment â—nclinations answerable to the Motions that are actually in the Brain it is united to XI But because it is a Disorder That the Mind should propend to Bodies and expend its Love upon them the Infant is a Sinner and in Disorder as soon as out of the Hands of his Maker God who is the Lover of Order hates him in this Estate notwithstanding his Sin is not free and eligible But his Mother conceiv'd him in Iniquity because of the Communication establish'd by the Order of Nature betwixt her Brain and the Brain of her Infant XII Now this Communication is very good in its Institution for several Reasons First Because useful and it may be necessary to the Conformation of the Foetus Secondly Because the Infant by this means might have some Intercourse with his Parents it being but reasonable that he should know to whom he was oblig'd for his Body which he animated Lastly He could not but by help of this Communication know external Occurrences and think of them as he should do Having a Body 't was fit he should have Thoughts relating to it and not be hood-wink'd to the Works of God amongst which he liv'd There are likely many other Reasons for this Communication than those I have given but these are sufficient to justifie it and to cover His Conduct from Censure and Reproach every Will of whom is necessarily conformable to ORDER XIII However there is no Reason that the Infant in spight of his Will should receive the Traces of sensible Objects If the Souls of Children were created but one moment before they were united to their Bodies if they were but an instant in a State of Innocence and Order they would have plenary Right and Power from the necessity of Order or of the Eternal Law to suspend that Communication just as the first Man before his Sin stopt when he pleas'd the Motions which arose in him Order requiring That the Body should be obedient to the Mind But whereas the Souls of Children were never well-pleasing to God it was never reasonable that God on their behalf should dispence with the Law of the Communication of Motions and
by these Sensations what he ought to do for the preservation of his Life But he was never willing to be perturbated by them in spight of his VVill. For that 's a Contradiction Moreover when he desir'd to apply himself to the contemplation of Truth without any distraction of Thought his Senses and his Passions kept an intire Silence Order would it should be so for that 's a necessary sequel of that absolute power he had over his Body I answer secondly that it is not true that the Pleasure of the Soul is the same thing with its Motion and its Love Pleasure and Love are modes of the Souls Existence But Pleasure has no necessary relation to the object that seems to cause it and Love is necessarily related unto Good Pleasure is to the Soul what Figure is to Body and Motion is to Body what Love is to the Soul But the Motion of a Body is very different from its Figure I grant that the Soul which has a constant Propeâ—sity to Good advances as I may say more readily towards it when instigated by a sense of Pleasure that when discourag'd by her suffering Pain as a Body when driven runs easier along if it have a Spherical than if it have a Cubical Figure But the figure of a Body differs from its Motion and it may be Spherical and yet remain at rest 'T is true in this case it goes not with Spirits as with Bodies those cannot feel a Pleasure but they must be in motion because God who only makes and preserves them for himself drives them perpetually on towards good But that does not prove that the pleasure of the Soul is the same thing as its Motion For two things though differing from each other may yet be always found inseparably together I answer lastly that although pleasure were not different from the Love or Motion of the Soul yet that which the first Man felt in the use of the goods of the Body did not incline him to the Loving Bodies 'T is true Pleasure carries the Soul towards the object that causes it in her But it is not the Fruit that we eat with Pleasure which causes the Pleasure in us Not Bodies but God only can act upon the Soul and in any manner make it happy And we are in an Error to think that Bodies have in them what we feel occasionally from their presence Adam before his Sin being not so stupid as to imagine that Bodies were the causes of his Pleasures was not carry'd to the love of them by the motions that accompany'd his Pleasures If pleasure contributed to the fall of the first Man it was not by working in him what at present it does in us But only by filling up or dividing his capacity of Thought it effac'd or diminish'd in his Mind the presence of his true good and of his Duty OBJECTION against the sixth Article What likelyhood is there that the immutable Will of God had a dependance on the will of Man and that on Adam's behalf there were exceptions made to the general Law of the Communication of Motions ANSWER At least it is not evident but such exception might be made now it is evident that immutable order requires the subjection of the Body to the Mind and 't is a contradiction for God not to love and will order for God necessarily loves his Son Therefore it was necessary before the Sin of the first Man that exceptions should be made in his favour to the general Law of the Communication of Motions This seems it may be of a too abstracted nature Here then is somewhat of a more sensible kind Man though a Sinner has the power of moving and stopping his Arm when he pleases Therefore according to the different Volitions of Man the Animal Spirits are determin'd to the raising or stopping some Motions in his Body which certainly cannot be perform'd by the general Law of the Communication of Motions If then the will of God be still submitted to our own why might it not be submitted to the will of Adam If for the good of the Body and of civil Society God stops the communication of motions in Sinners why would he not do the like in favour of a Righteous Man for the good of his Soul and for the preservation of the Union and Society with his God for whom only he was made As God will have no Society with Sinners so after the Sin he depriv'd them of the power they had to sequester themselves as it were from the Body to unite themselves with him But he has left them the Power of stopping or changing the communication of Motions with reference to the preservation of Life and of Civil Society Because he was not willing to destroy his Work having before the construction of it decreed according to St. Paul to re-establish and renew it in Jesus Christ. OBJECTION against the Seventh Article Man in his present state conveys his Body all manner of ways he moves at pleasure all the parts of it which are necessary to be mov'd for the prosecution and shunning of sensible good and evil and consequently he stops or changes every moment the natural communication of motions not only for trifles and things of little importance but also for things useless to Life and civil Society and even for Crimes which violate Society shorten Life and dishonour God all manner of ways God wills order it is true But will order have the laws of motions violated for the sake of Evil and kept inviolable on the account of Good Why must Man lose the power of stopping the motions which sensible objects produce in his Body since these Motions keep him from doing good from repairing to God and returning to his duty and yet retain the power of doing so much evil by his Tongue and his Arm and other parts of his Body whose motions depend upon his will ANSWER To the answering this Objection it must be consider'd that Man having sin'd ought to have return'd to his Original nothing For being no longer in Order nor able to retrieve it he ought to cease to Exist God loves only order the Sinner is not in order and therefore not in the Love of God The Sinner therefore cannot subsist since the subsistence of Creatures depends on the will of the Creator but he wills not that they should exist if he does not love them The Sinner cannot by himself regain lost order because he cannot justifie himself and all that he can suffer cannot atone for his offence He must then be reduc'd to nothing But as it is unreasonable to think that God makes a Work to annihilate it or to let it fall into a state worse than annihilation 't is evident that God would not have made Man nor permitted his Sin which he foresaw unless he had had in view the Incarnation of his Son in whom all things subsist and by whom the Universe receives a Beauty a Perfection
on Order and Eternal Laws and Truths we do not naturally enquire the Cause for they have none We do not clearly see the necessity of this Decree nor do we think immediately upon it On the contrary we perceive evidently by a simple view that the nature of numbers and intelligible Ideas is immutable necessary and independent We see clearly that it is absolutely necessary for 2 times 4 to be 8 and that the square of the Diagonal of a square is double to that square If we doubt of the absolute necessity of these Truths 't is because we turn our back upon their Light reason upon a false Principle and search for their nature their Immutability and independance out of themselves Thus the Decree for the Immutability of these Truths is a fiction of the mind which supposing it sees not what it sees in the Wisdom of God and knowing him to be the cause of all things thinks it self oblig'd to imagine a Decree to ascertain immutability to these Truths which it cannot choose but acknowledge to be immutable But this Supposition is false and we ought to beware of it 'T is only in the Wisdom of God that we see Eternal immutable and necessary Truths nor can we see any where else the Order which God himself is oblig'd to follow as I have said before The mind is made for that Wisdom and in one sence it can see nothing else For if it can see the Creatures 't is because He whom it sees though in a very imperfect manner during this life comprehends them all in the immensity of his Being in an intelligible manner and proportionate to the mind as I have shown in another place If we had not in our selves the Idea of Infinite and if we saw not all things by the natural union of our mind with universal and infinite Reason it seems evident that we could not have liberty to think on all things For the mind cannot desire to consider things except it has some Idea of them and it is not in its Power to think actually on any thing but what it may desire to think on And so we shall cashier Man of his Liberty of thinking on All if we separate his mind from him who comprehends all Again since we can love nothing but what we see if God should only give us particular Ideas it is manifest he would so determine all the Motions of our Will that it would be necessary for us to Love only particular Beings For in brief if we had not the Idea of infinite we could not love it and if those who positively affirm they have no Idea of God speak as they think I scruple not to affirm they have never lov'd God for nothing seems certainer to me than that nothing can be the Object of our Love which is not of our conception Lastly If Order and Eternal Laws were not immutable by the necessity of their nature the clearest and strongest proofs of Religion would I question not be destroy'd in their Principle as well as Liberty and the most certain Sciences For it is evident that the Christian Religion which proposes JESUS CHRIST as a Mediator and Restorer supposes the Corruption of nature by original Sin But what proof can we have of this Corruption The flesh wars you will say against the Spirit has brought it into subjection and tyrannizes over it This I grant But this says a Libertine is no Disorder This is as it pleas'd God who ordain'd it so who is the Master of his own decrees and who constitutes what Order he thinks fit amongst his Creatures How shall it be prov'd that 't is a Disorder for Minds to be subjected to Bodies unless we have a clear Idea of Order and necessity and know that God himself is oblig'd to follow it by a necessary Love which he bears to himself But farther supposing that Order depends on a free Decree of God we must still have recourse to him to be inform'd of it God must nevertheless be consulted notwithstanding the aversion which some of the Learned have to apply to him and this truth must still be granted that we have need of God to be instructed But that suppos'd free Decree which is the cause of Order is a meer fiction of mind for the Reasons I have given If it be not a necessary Order that Man should be made for his Author and that his will should be conformable to Order or to the essential and necessary will of God If it be not true that Actions are good or ill because agreeable or repugnant to an immutable and necessary Order and that this same order requires that the Good should be rewarded and the Evil punish'd Last of all if all Men have not naturally a clear Idea of Order even of such an one as God himself cannot will the contrary to what it prescribes since God cannot will Disorder certainly I can see nothing but Universal Confusion For what is there to be blam'd in the most infamous and unjust actions of the Heathens to whom God has given no Laws What will be the reason that will dare to judge them if there be no supream reason that condemns them There is a Poet who says 't is impossible to distinguish Justice from Injustice and a Philosopher that will have it an infirmity to blush or be asham'd for infamous actions These and the like Paradoxes are often asserted in the heat of Imagination and in the transport of the Passions But how can we condemn these Opinions if there be not an Universal and Necessary Order Rule or Reason which is also present to those who can retire into themselves We fear not on several occasions to judge others and also our selves but by what Authority should we do it if the inward Reason that judges when we seem to pronounce Sentence against others and our selves be not supream and common to all men But if this Reason were not present to those who retreat into their own Breast and if the Heathens too had not naturally some union with the order we speak of upon the score of what Sin or Disobedience could they be reckon'd culpable and by what Justice could God punish them This I say upon a Prophet's teaching me that God is willing to make Men the Arbiters betwixt him and his People provided they determine by the immutable and necessary order of Justice Nero kill'd his Mother it is true But in what has he done amiss He follow'd the natural Motion of his Hatred God gave him no Precept to the contrary the Laws of the Jews were not made for him You 'll say perhaps that such actions are restrain'd by the Natural Law and that was known to him But what proof can you have of it For my own part I agree to it because indeed this is an irresistible Proof for an Immutable and Necessary Order and for the Knowledge which every Mind has of it and that so much more clear
their Operation So likewise in point of free Causes I believe that God incessantly gives the Mind an Impression towards Good in General and that he moreover determines this Impression towards particular Goods by the Idea's or Sensations that he gives us as I have explain'd in the first Illustration which is the same with what the Divines intend by affirming That God moves and prevents our Wills Thus the Force which puts our Minds in Motion is the Will of God which Animates us and inclines us towards Good For God Creates not Beings to constitute the moving force of Minds for the same Reason that he Creates none to be the moving force of Bodies The Wills of God being of themselves Efficacious He need but Will to do And we ought not to multiply Beings without necessity Besides whatever is real in the determinations of our Motions proceeds likewise from the Action of God in us as appears from the first Illustration But all we Act or produce is by our Wills that is by the Impression of the Will of God which is our moving force For our Wills are Efficacious no farther than they are of God as mov'd Bodies impel not others but in as much as they have a moving force that translates them which is no other than the Will of God which Creates or preserves them successively in different places Therefore we Act no otherwise than by the Concourse of God and our Action consider'd as Efficacious and capable of producing any Effect differs not from his but is as say most Divines the self same Action eadem numero actio Now all the Changes which arrive in the World have no other Natural Cause than the Motions of Bodies and Volitions of Minds For First by the General Laws of the Communications of Motions the invisible Bodies which surround the visible produce by their various Motions all these divers Changes whose Cause is not apparent And Secondly by the Laws of Union of our Soul and Body when circumambient Bodies Act upon our own they produce in our Soul a multiplicity of Sensations Idea's and Passions Thirdly Our Mind by its Volitions produces in it self infinite different Idea's for they are our Volitions which as Natural Causes intend and Modifie our Mind Their Efficacy nevertheless proceeds from the Laws which God has establish'd And Lastly when our Soul acts upon our Body she produces several Changes in it by vertue of the Laws of her Union with it and by means of our Body she effects in those about it abundance of Changes by vertue of the Laws of Communication of Motions So that the Motions of Bodies and the Volitions of Minds are the only Natural or Occasional Causes of Natural Effects which no Man will deny who uses any Attention supposing only he be not prepossest by those who understand not what they say who fancy perpetually to themselves such Beings as they have no clear Idea's of and who offer to explain things which they do not understand by others absolutely incomprehensible Thus having shown that God by his Concourse or rather by his Efficacious Will performs whatever is done by the Motions of Bodies and the Wills of Minds as Natural or Occasional Causes it appears that God does every thing by the same Action of the Creature Not that the Creatures have of themselves any Efficacious Action but that the Power of God is in a manner Communicated to them by the Natural Laws which God has establish'd on their account This then is all that I can do to reconcile my Thoughts to the Opinion of those Divines who defend the necessity of immediate Concourse and hold that God does All in all things by an Action no ways differing from the Creatures For as to the rest of the Divines I think their Opinions utterly indefensible and especially that of Durandus together with the Sentiments of some of the Ancients refuted by St. Austin who absolutely deniâ—d the necessity of God's Concurrence pretending that Second Causes did all things by the Power which God in their Creation gave them For though this Opinion be less intricate and perplex'd than that of other Divines yet to me it seems so repugnant to Scripture and so suitable to Prejudices to say no worse of it that I think it altogether unwarrantable I confess that the School-Men who make God's immediate concourse to be the same Action with that of the Creatures do not perfectly agree with my Explication and all those that I have read except Biel and Cardinal d' Ailly are of Opinion That the Efficacy which produces Effects proceeds from the Second Cause as well as the First But as I make it indispensable for me to speak nothing but what I clearly conceive and always to take the side that best comports with Religion I think I am not liable to blame for deserting an Opinion which to many Men seems still more inconceiveable as they strive more to comprehend it and for establishing another which agrees perfectly not only with Reason but also with the Sacredness of our Religion and Christian Morality which is a Truth already prov'd in the Chapter that 's the Subject of these Reflexions However 't is not inconvenient to say something to it that I may fully verifie what I have said upon the present Question Both Reason and Religion evince That God will be Lov'd and rever'd by his Creatures Lov'd as Good and Rever'd as Power Which is such a Truth as it would be Impiety and Madness to doubt of To love God as he requires and deserves we must according to the First Commandment both of the Law and Gospel and by Reason it self as I have somewhere shown Love Him with all our Strength or with the whole extent of our Loving Capacity 'T is not sufficient to prefer Him before all things unless we moreover Love Him in all things For otherwise our Love is not so perfect as it ought to be and we return not to God all the Love that he gives us and gives us only for Himself in whom every one of His Actions Center So to render to God all the Reverence that is due to Him 't is not enough to adore Him as the Supreme Power and fear Him more than His Creatures we must likewise fear and adore Him in all His Creatures all our respects must perpetually tend towards Him to whom alone Honour and Glory are to be ascrib'd Which is what God Commands us in these Words Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy Heart and with all thy Soul and with all thy Strength And in these Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve Thus the Philosophy that convinces us that the Efficacy of Second Causes is a Fiction of the Mind that the Nature of Aristotle and some other Philosophers is a Chimera that none but God is Strong and Powerful enough not only to Act on our Soul but even to give the
least Motion to Matter This Philosophy I say perfectly Accommodates with Religion whose end is to Unite us to God in the strictest Bonds 'T is Customary with us to Love only those things which are capable of doing us some Good This Philosophy therefore Authorises only the Love of God and Condemns the Love of every thing else We ought to fear nothing but what is able to do us some Evil. Therefore this Philosophy approves the fear of God and absolutely Condemns all other Thus it justifies all the just and Reasonable Motions of our Soul and Condemns all those that are contrary to Reason and Religion For we can never justifie the Love of Riches the desire of Greatness the Extravagance of Debauchery by this Philosophy by the Principles whereof the Love for Bodies is absurd and ridiculous 'T is an indisputable Truth 't is a Natural Opinion 't is even a Common Notion that we ought to Love the cause of our Pleasure and to Love it proportionably to the Felicity it either Actually does or is able to possess us with 'T is not only just but as it were necessary that the cause of our happiness should be the Object of our Love Therefore this Philosophy will teach us to Love God only as being the only Cause of our Felicity That surrounding Bodies cannot Act upon that we Animate and consequently much less upon our Mind That 't is not the Sun which enlightens us and gives us Life and Motion Nor that fills the Earth with Fruits and Beautifies it with Flowers and supplies us with Food and Nourishment This Philosophy seconding the Scripture teaches that 't is God alone who gives us Rain and Regulates the Seasons that fills our Bodies with Food and our hearts with Joy that he alone is able to do us good and thereby has given a perpetual Testimony of what he is though in the ages passed he suffer'd all Nations to walk in their own ways According to the Language of this Philosophy we must not say that 't is Nature that fills us with good nor that it is God and Nature together But that it is God alone speaking thus without Ambiguity for fear of deceiving the Ignorant For we must distinctly acknowledge one cause of our happiness if we we make it the only Object of our Love 'T is likewise an undeniable Truth That we ought to fear things that are able to harm us and to fear them in Proportion to the Evil they can do us But this Philosophy teaches us that God only can do us evil that 't is he as says Isaiah who forms the Light and creates Darkness who makes Peace and creates Evil and there is no Evil but what he does as says the Prophet Amos. Therefore it is he only that is to be fear'd We must not fear either Plague or War or Famine or our Enemies or even Devils themselves But God alone We ought to shun the Sword when we see a Blow a coming we are to fly the Fire and avoid a ruinous House that 's ready to crush us but we must not fear these things We may fly from those Bodies which are the Occasional or Natural Causes of Evil but we must fear God as the true Cause of all the misfortunes of Sinners and hate only Sin which necessarily provokes the cause of our Happiness to become the Cause of our Misery In a Word all the Motions of our Mind must center upon God since he alone 's above it and the Motions of our Body may relate to the Bodies round it This is what we learn from that Philosophy that admits not the Efficacy of Second Causes But this Efficacy being suppos'd I cannot see but we have reason to fear and Love Bodies and that to regulate our Love by Reason we need but prefer God before all things the First and Vniversal to every Second and Particular Cause We can see no need of Loving him with all our Strength Ex totâ mente ex toto corde ex totâ animâ ex totis viribus as says the Scripture Yet when a Man contents himself in preferring God to all things and adoring him with a Worship and a Love of Preference without making a continual Effort to Love and Honour him in all things It often fortunes that he deceives himself that his Charity vanishes and is lost And that he is more taken up with sensible than the supream Good For should it be demanded of the greatest Sinners and even Idolaters whether they preferr'd the universal to particular Causes they would make no scruple to answer amidst their Debauches Errours and Extravagance that they are not wanting to their essential Duty and that they are very sensible of what they owe to God 'T is acknowledg'd that they are deceiv'd But take away the Efficacy of Second Causes and they have no probable Pretext left to justifie their Conduct and Behaviour whilst if it be granted them they will think and Discourse with themselves in the following manner when blinded by their Passions and attentive to the Testimony of their Senses I am made for Happiness Neitheir can I nor indeed ought I to supersede my Love and Respect for whatever can be the Cause of my Felicity Why then must not I Love and respect sensible Objects if they be the true Causes of the Happiness I find in their Enjoyment I acknowledge the Sovereign Being as only worthy of Sovereign Worship and I prefer Him before all the World But since I see not that He requires any thing from me I enjoy the Goods he affords by Means of Second Causes to which he has subjected me And I pay not my Gratitude to him which perhaps would be to his Dishonour As he gives me no Blessing immediately and by himself or at least without the Assistance of his Creatures 't is a Sign he requires not the immediate Application of my Mind and Heart at least that he desires the Creatures should partake with him in the Acknowledgments and Resentments of my Heart and Mind Seeing he has communicated Part of his Power and Glory to the Sun has environ'd him with Splendour and Majesty and has given him the Supremacy in all his Works and seeing from the Influence of this great Luminary we receive all the necessary Blessings of Life Why should we not employ a part of this indebted Life in rejoicing in his Light and testifying the Sense we have of his Greatness and his Benefits Wou'd it not be the most shameful Ingratitude to receive from that excellent Creature abundance of all things and yet to shew no Sense of Gratitude to him for them And should we not be unspeakably blind and stupid to be unmov'd with Fear and Veneration in Respect of him whose Absence freezes us to Death and whose too near Approach can burn and destroy us I say it again that God is preferable to all things and infinitely more estimable than his Creatures But we are to fear and Love
his Creatures also For hereby we pay Legitimate Honour to their Creatour Merit his good Graces and oblige him to shower new Benefits upon us 'T is manifest he approves of the Honour that is given to his Creatures since they partake of his Power and all Power deserves to be honour'd But because Honour ought to be Proportion'd to Power and that the Power of the Sun and all other sensible Objects is such as derives to us all sorts of Goods 't is reasonable we should Honour them with all our Strength and next to God Consecrate to them all our Being These are the Natural Reasonings a Man would fall into that should ground upon the Prejudice of the Efficacy of Second Causes and probably such was the Arguing of the first Founders of Idolatry Take here his Sense of it who passes for the most Learned of all the Jews He Prefaces a a Treatise he wrote about Idolatry with these Words In the days of Enos Men fell into strange Illusions and the Wise Men of that Age quite lost their Sense and Reason Enos himself was one of those deluded Persons whose Errours were these Since God said they has created the Heavens and Stars to govern the World has constituted them on â—igh and invested them with Glory and Lustre and employs them in executing his Commands 't is just that we should honour them and pay them our Deference and Homage 'T is the Will of our God that Honour should be given to those whom he has exalted and enthron'd in Glory as a Prince requires that his Ministers should be â—onour'd in his Presence because the Honour which is given to them redounds to himself When once this Notion had entred their Head they fell to building Temples in Honour of the Stars gave them Sacrifice and Praises and even prostrated themselves before them thereby imagining to purchase the favour of Him that created them And this was the Original of Idolatry It is so Natural and just to have grateful Resentments in Proportion to the Goods we receive that almost all Nations have ador'd the Sun because they all concluded him the Cause of the Blessings they enjoy'd And if the Aegyptians ador'd not only the Sun and Moon and River Nile because its overflowing caus'd the Fertility of their Country but even the vilest of Animals 'T was as Cicero relates from the Emolument they receiv'd from them Therefore as we cannot and indeed ought not to Extirpate from Men's Minds their Natural Inclination for the true Causes of their Happiness 't is evident there is at least some danger in ascribing Efficacy to Second Causes though we conjoyn the necessity of an immediate Concourse which has methinks I know not what of incomprehensible purport and which strikes in as an after-game to justifie our imbib'd Prejudices and Aristotle's Philosophy But there 's no danger in speaking only what we see and of Attributing only to God Efficacy and Power since we see nothing but His Wills which have an absolutely necessary and indispensible connexion with Natural Effects I own that now adays Men are Wise enough to avoid those gross Errors of Heathens and Idolaters but I fear not to say our Mind is still dispos'd or rather our Heart is often bent like that of the Heathens and that there will ever be in the World some kind of Idolatry until the Day in which JESUS CHRIST shall restore up His Kingdom to God his Father having first destroy'd all Empire Dominion and Power that God may be All in all For is it not a kind of Idolatry to make a God of ones Belly as speaks S. Paul Is not he an Idolater to the God of Riches who labours Night and Day to acquire them Is this to render to God the Worship we owe Him Is this to adore Him in Spirit and in Truth to have our Hearts fill'd with some sensible Beauty and our Mind struck and dazled with the Lustre of some imaginary Grandeur Men fancying to themselves that Circumambient Bodies afford the pleasures they enjoy in the use of them Unite to them with all the Powers of their Soul and thus the Principle of their Corruption lies in the sensible Conviction of the Efficacy of Second Causes 'T is only Reason that assures them none but God Acts in them But besides that this Reason speaks so low that it is scarce Audible and that the Contradicting Senses cry so loud that their Clamour Stunns and Stupefies them they are yet farther confirm'd in their Prejudice by Reasons and Arguments that are so much dangerous as they have more External Characters and sensible marks of Truth The Philosophers but especially the Christian Philosophers ought to wage an uninterrupted War with Prejudices or the Judgements of their Senses and particularly those of so dangerous importance as that of the Efficacy of Second Causes And yet there are Men whom I extremely honour as I have just Reason who from I know not what Principle endeavour to confirm this Prejudice and to make so holy so pure and solid a Doctrine as this which owns no other true Cause than God pass for Superstitious and Extravagant Opinion They will not have us to Love and Fear God in all things but to Love and Fear all things with reference to God We ought say they to Love the Creatures since they are good to Love and respect our Father to give Honour to our Prince and Superiours since God Commands it Nor do I deny it but I deny that we are to Love the Creatures as our Goods though they be good or perfect in themselves I deny that we are to pay service and respect to Men as to our Masters Or to explain my self more clearly I say we must not serve our Master obey our Father or Prince with any other design than to serve and obey God S. Paul who became all things to all Men and was complaisant in all things for the Salvation of those he Preach'd to speaks thus Servants be obedient to them that are your Masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in singleness of your Heart as unto CHRIST not with Eye-Service as Men pleasers but as the Servants of Christ doing the Will of God from the Heart with good Will doing Service AS TO THE LORD AND NOT TO MEN. And in another Epistle Not with Eye-Service as to MEN but in singleness of Heart fearing GOD. And whatever ye do do it Heartily AS TO THE LORD and NOT VNTO MEN. We must therefore obey our Father serve our Prince and Honour our Superiours AS UNTO GOD AND NOT UNTO MEN. This is manifest and can have no Evil consequences For hereby Superiours would always be more honour'd and better serv'd But I think it may be said That a Master who would be honour'd and serv'd as having in himself another Power than that of God would be a Devil and that those who serv'd him under that apprehension would be
The Soul of a Beast is a Substance distinct from its Body This Soul is Annihilated and therefore Substances may naturally be Annihilated Therefore though the Soul of Man be a Substance distinct from his Body it may be Annihilated when the Body is destroyed And thus the Immortality of the Humane Soul cannot be Demonstrated by Reason But if it be own'd to be most certain That no Substance can be naturally reduc'd to nothing the Soul of Beasts will subsist after Death and since they have no reward to hope for and are made for Bodies they must at least pass out of one to another that they may not remain useless in Nature Which seems to be the most reasonable Inference Now 't is Matter of Faith That God is just and Wise That he Loves not Disorder That Nature is corrupted That the Soul of Man is Immortal and that That of Beasts is Mortal Because indeed it is not a distinct Substance from their Body nor consequently capable of Knowledge and Love or of any Passions and Sensations like ours Therefore in the Stile of Monsieur de la Ville who condemns Men upon Consequences that he draws from their Principles the Cartesians may justly charge him with a Crime and all Mindkind besides for believing Beasts have Souls What would Monsieur de la Ville say if in his way of proceeding we should tax him of Impiety for entertaining Opinions from whence it might be concluded That God is not Just Wise or Powerful Opinions that overthrow Religion that are opposite to Original Sin that take away the only Demonstration Reason can give of the Immortality of the Soul What would he say if we should charge him with Injustice and Cruelty for making innocent Souls to suffer and even for Annihilating them to feed upon the Bodies which they Animate He is a Sinner but they are Innocent and yet for the Nourishment of his Body he kills Animals and Annihilates their Souls which are of greater Worth than his Body Yet if his Body could not subsist without the Flesh of Animals or if the Annihilation of a Soul should render his Body for ever Immortal this Cruelty as unjust as it is might perhaps be excusable But with what Pretence can he Annihilate Substances altogether innocent to sustain but a few days a Body justly condemn'd to Death because of Sin Would he be so little a Philosopher as to excuse himself upon the Custom of the Place he lives in But what if his Zeal should carry him into the Indies where the Inhabitants found Hospitals for Beasts and the Philosophers and the better and more gentile Part of them are so charitable to to the smallest Flies that for fear of killing them by Breathing and Walking they wear a fine Cloath before their Mouths and fan the Ways through which they pass Would he then fear to make innocent Souls to suffer or to Annihilate them for the Preservation of a Sinner's Body Would he not rather chuse to subscribe to their Opinion who give not Beasts a Soul more Noble than their Body or distinct from it and by publishing this Opinion acquit himself of the Crimes of Cruelty and Injustice which these People would charge upon him if having the same Principles he follow'd not their Custom This Example may suffice to shew that we are not permitted to treat Men as Hereticks and dangerous Persons because of Irreligious Consequences that may be deduc'd from their Principles when these Consequences are disown'd by them For though I think it would be an infinitely harder Task to answer the aforesaid Difficulties than those of M. de la Ville's yet the Cartesians would be very Ridiculous if they should accuse Monsieur de la Ville and others that were not of their Opinion of Impiety and Heresie 'T is only the Authority of the Church that may decide about Matters of Faith and the Church has not oblig'd us and probably whatever Consequence may be drawn from common Principles never will oblige us to believe that Dogs have not a Soul more Noble than their Body that they know not their Masters that they neither fear nor desire nor suffer any thing because it is not necessary that Christians should be instructed in these Truths ARGUMENT II. Almost all Men are perswaded That sensible Objects are the true Causes of Pleasure and Pain which we feel upon their Presence They believe that the Fire sends forth that agreeable Heat which rejoyces us and that our Aliments Act in us and give us the Welcome Sensations of Tasts They doubt not but 't is the Sun which makes the Fruits necessary for Life to thrive and that all sensible Objects have a peculiar Vertue by which they can do us a great deal of Good and Evil. Let us see if from these Principles we cannot draw Consequences contrary to Religion and Points of Faith A Consequence opposite to the first Principle of Morality which obliges us to love God with all our Strength and to fear none but Him 'T is a common Notion by which all Men Order their Behaviour That we ought to love and fear what has Power to do us Good and Harm to make us feel Pleasure and Pain to render us happy or miserable and that this Cause is to be lov'd or fear'd proportionably to its Power of Acting on us But the Fire the Sun the Objects of our Senses can truly Act on us and make us in some manner happy or miserable This is the Principle suppos'd we may therefore Love and Fear them This is the Conclusion which every one naturally makes and is the general Principle of the corruption of Manners 'T is evident by Reason and by the First of God's Commandments That all the motions of our Soul of Love or Fear Desire or Joy ought to tend to God and that all the Motions of our Body may be Regulated and Determin'd by encompassing Objects By the Motion of our Body we may approach a Fruit avoid a Blow fly a Beast that 's ready to devour us But we ought to Love and Fear none but God all the Motions of our Soul ought to tend to Him only we are to Love Him with all our strength this is an indispensible Law We can neither Love or Fear what is below us without disorder and corruption Freely to fear a Beast ready to devour us or to fear the Devil is to give them some honour to Love a Fruit to desire Riches to rejoyce in the light of the Sun as if he were the true cause of it to Love even our Father our Protector our Friend as if they were capable of doing us good is to pay them an Honour which is due to none but God in which sense it is lawful to Love none But we may and ought to Love our Neighbour by wisâ—ing and procuring him as Natural or Occasional Cause all that may make him happy and no otherwise For we to Love our Brothers not as if able to do
hears the Prayers of the Humble he will comfort them justfie them and save them he will fill them with Blessings and will debase the high Mind of the Proud Blessed are the Poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven but woe to the Rich â—or they have their Consolation in this World How hard is it says our Saviour for those that have much Wealth to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven 'T is harder for a Camel to pass through the Eye of a Needle which cannot be done without a Miracle As for those who like David humble their Souls with Fasting change their Garments for Sack-cloth in a word afflict themselves upon sight of their Sins and the Holiness of God they are the worthy Objects of the Compassion of Jesus For God despises not a broken and contrite Heart We constantly disarm the Anger of God when we take his Part against our selves and revenge his Quarrel The Will of Jesus Christ being entirely conformable to Order whereof all Men have naturally some Idea we might still discover by Reason that he has more Thoughts and Desires in regard to some Persons than others For Order requires that more Graces should be shed on those for Example who are call'd to Holy Orders than on others whose Employment necessarily engages them in Worldly Commerce in a word On those who constitute the Principal Parts of the Church Militant than on such as have no regard to any body or that meddle in the Ecclesiastical State or raise themselves above others out of Ambition or Interest For though it be requisite that Jesus Christ should give them Graces in relation to their Charge they merit not the Gift of that Grace which may sanctifie them in the Station they have chosen out of Self-love They may have the Gift of Prophecy whilst they may want Charity as we are taught by Scripture XXVI But though we may discover by the Light of Reason and the Authority of Holy Writ something of the diverse Wills of the Soul of Jesus yet that Order and Process of Desires which accomplish the Predestination of the Saints and which tend only to the honouring God in the Establishment of his Church is an unfathomable Abyss to the Mind of Man For if St. Paul had not taught us that God would that all Men should be included in Unbelief that he might exercise his Mercy towards them should we ever have thought that the Jews were to fall into a wilful Blindness not only that the multitude of the Nations might enter into the Church but that they themselves might receive Mercy at the Accomplishment of Ages The future World being to be a Work of pure Mercy and to have infinite Ornaments whereof we have no Idea since the Substance of Spirits is unknown to us it is plain we can discover very little in the different Desires of the Soul of Jesus these Desires being related to Designs we are ignorant of Thus in the Distribution God makes of his Graces we ought to cry out with St. Paul O the depth of the Riches both of the Wisdom and Knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his Judgments and his Ways past finding out XXVII We have prov'd that the diverse Designs of the Soul of Jesus are the Occasional Causes of Grace and we have endeavour'd to discover something of these Desires Let us now see of what sort of Grace they are the Occasional Causes For though Jesus Christ be the meritorious Cause of all Graces it is not necessary he should be the Occasional Cause of the Graces of Light and of certain external Graces which are Preparatory to the Conversion of the Heart and which do not opperate For Jesus Christ is always the Occasional or Necessary Cause according to the Establish'd Order of God in point of all those Graces which opperate Salvation XXVIII In order to our distinct understanding what this Grace is which Jesus Christ as Head of the Church diffuses in his Members we ought to know what is that Concupiscence which the First Man has communicated to all his Posterity For the Second Adam came to remedy the Disorders which the First Adam was the Cause of And there is such an Affinity between the Sinful and Earthly and the Innocent and Heavenly Adam that St. Paul looks upon the former communicating Sin to his Children by his Disobedience as the Type and Figure of the latter infusing Justice and Holiness into Christians by his Obedience XXIX Order requires that the Mind should have the Supremacy over the Body and not be divided against its Will by all those Sensations and Motions which apply it to sensible Objects Therefore the First Man before his Sin was so absolute over his Senses and Passions that they were mute and silent as soon as he desir'd it nothing could give him an involuntary Diversion from his Duty and all the Pleasures which at present precede Reason did only respectfully caution him in a ready and easie manner of what ought to be done for the Preservation of his Life But after his Sin he lost on a sudden that Power over his Body So that not being able to stop the Motions nor obliterate the Traces which sensible Objects produc'd in the principal Part of his Braiâ— his Soul by the Order of Nature and in Punishment of his Disobedience found her self miserably enslav'd to the Law of Concupiscence to that Carnal Law which constantly wars against the Mind inspiring it with the Love of sensible Goods and so ruling it by strong and lively and at once soft and agreeable Passions that it cannot and indeed will not make the necessary Struggles for its breaking the captivating Bonds For the Contagion of Sin is spread through the Children of Adam by an unavoidable Consequence of the Order of Nature as I have explain'd in another place XXX The Heart of Man is the constant Slave of Pleasure and when Reason teaches us that 't is not convenient to enjoy it we put it off but with Design of finding it more delicate and solid We willingly sacrifice little Pleasures to the greater but the invincible Impression we are under for Happiness will not permit us to deny our selves all our Life the Satisfaction we enjoy when we give our selves up to follow our Passions XXXI 'T is certain that Pleasure makes happy the Possessour at least whilst he enjoys it Therefore Men being made to be Happy Pleasure always gives the Will the first shock and puts it constantly in Motion towards the Good that causes or seems to cause it The contrary is to be said of Pain Now Concupiscence consisting only in a continual train of Sensations and Motions antecedent to Reason and not subject to it of Pleasures which seeming to flow from surrounding Objects inspire into us the Love of them and of Pains which rendring the Exercise of Vertue rough and painful make us hate it The Second Adam to remedy the Disorders of the First ought to
by a clear and evident Knowledge or by a confus'd Sensation which points these Goods out to us Whilst the Mind perceives or tasts not any particular Good the Motion of the Soul remains as it were undetermin'd it tends towards Good in general But this Motion receives a particular Determination as soon as the Mind has the Idea or Sensation of some particular Good For the Soul being continually bent towards Good undetermin'd ought to move when the Good appears VI. But when the Good which is present to the Mind and Senses fils not these two Faculties when it 's discover'd under the Idea of a particular Good of a Good that comprehends not all Goods and when it is tasted by a Sensation that takes not up the whole Capacity of the Soul she may still desire the Perception and Fruition of some other Good she may suspend the Judgment of her Love She may refuse to acquiesce in the actual Enjoyment and by her Desires seek out some novel Object And as her Desires are the Occasional Causes of her Light and Knowledge she may by the natural and necessary Union of all Minds with him who includes the Ideas of all Goods discover the True Good and in the True many other particular Goods different from that she perceiv'd and enjoy'd before Therefore having some Knowledge of the Emptiness and Vanity of sensible Goods and attending to the secret Reproaches of her Reason to the Remorses of her Conscience to the Complaints and Menaces of the True Good who will not that she should sacrifice to seeming and imaginary Goods may by the Motion which God continually imprints on her for Good in general Sovereign Good that is for himself check her self in her Course towards any particular Good She may resist the sensible Allurements search and find out other Objects compare them together and with the indelible Idea of the Supreme Good and love none of them with a determinate Love And if the Sovereign Good comes to be somewhat relish'd she may prefer it to all particular Goods though the Pleasure and Satisfaction they seem to infuse into the Soul be extremely great and very agreeable But these Truths require a larger Explication VII The Soul is constantly driven towards Good in general she desires the Possession of all Goods and will never limit her Love there being no Good that appears such that she refuses to love Therefore when she actually enjoys a particular Good she has a Tendency to proceed farther she still desires something more by the natural and invincible Impression which God gives her and to change or divide her Love it suffices to present her another Good besides that of her present Enjoyment and to give her a Tast of the Pleasure it affords Now the Soul may ordinarily seek and discover new Goods She may likewise approach and enjoy them For in fine her Desires are the Natural or Occasional Causes of her Knowledge and Objects appear and draw towards her in proportion to her Earnestness to know them A Man of Ambition who considers the Lustre of a Dignity may likewise think on the Slavery Constraint and the true Evils that accompany Humane Grandeur he may summ up the Account weigh and compare all together if his Passion does not blind him For I confess there are Moments in which Passion takes away all Liberty from the Mind and that it always lessens it Thus as a Dignity however great it appears cannot be taken by a perfectly free and rational Man for universal and infinite Good whilst the Will extends to all Goods This perfectly free and perfectly rational Man may enquire after and find out others in as much as he can desire them it being his Desires which discover and present them to him He may then examine them and compare them with that which he enjoys But whereas he can find only particular Goods on Earth he may and ought whilst he lives here below to examine them and perpetually seek and never acquiesce Or rather that he may not be constantly following a fresh Chase he ought in general to neglect all transitory Goods and desire only such as are Immutable and Eternal VIII But whereas we love not to seek but to enjoy and that the Labour of Examination is at present very painful but Repose and Enjoyment always very agreeable the Soul commonly rests when she has found any Good she stops at it to enjoy it she deceives her self because by her mistaking and judging she has found what she looks for her Desire is chang'd into Pleasure and Pleasure makes her happier than Desire But her Happiness cannot last long Her Pleasure being ill-grounded unjust and deceitful immediately disquiets and molests her because she desires to be solidly and truly happy Thus the natural Love of Good quickens her and produces in her new Desires These confus'd Desires represent new Objects The Love of Pleasure puts her on the Pursuit of those which afford or seem to afford it and the Love of her Repose fastens her upon them She does not immediately examine the Defects of the present Good when prepossess'd with its Sweetness but rather contemplates it on its best side applies to that which charms her and thinks only of enjoying it But the more she enjoys the more she loves it and the closer she approaches the more curiously she considers it But the more she considers it the more Imperfections she spies in it and since she desires to be truly happy she cannot for ever be mistaken When she is thirsty and hungry and weary with seeking she presently inebriates and fills her self with the first Good she finds but she is presently disgusted with a Nourishment which was not made for Man Thus the Love of the True Good excites in her new Desires for fresh Goods and whilst she constantly changes her Pursuit all her Life and her whole Happiness on Earth consists in a continual Circulation of Thoughts Desires and Pleasures Such is the Soul which makes no use of her Liberty but leaves her self to the Conduct of Chance to be guided by the obtaining Motion and the fortuitous Concourse of determining Objects But this is the State of a Man whose Understanding is so weak as daily to mistake the false for the true Good and whose Heart is so corrupt as to betray and sell it self to every thing it is touch'd with to the Good which gives it an actual Sense of the most sweet and agreeable Pleasures IX But a Man perfectly free such as we conceive Adam immediately after his Creation knows clearly that none but God is his Good or the true Cause of the Pleasures he enjoys Though he feels Satisfaction upon the approach of circumambient Bodies he loves them not God only he loves and if God forbid him to unite to Bodies he is ready to forsake them what Pleasure soever he finds in them He resolves to fix only in the Enjoyment of the supreme Good and to sacrifice all others to
* By the Essence of a thing I mean that which is first conceiv'd in it on which depend all the Modifications observ'd in it †Second Part of the Pure Mind Chap. 7. II. We know not all the Modifications our Soul is capable of * S. Aug. lib. 6. de Musica Des Cartes in his Man c. I. The Mind being limited cannot comprehend anything of an infinite Nature II. The limitation of the mind is the Origine of a great many Errors * Art of Thinking III. And especially of Heresies I. That the Philosophers want order in their Studies II. An Instance of the want of order in Aristotle Lib. 5. de generatione Anim. c. 1. III. That Geometricians take a good Method in search of Truth IV. That their Method increases the strength of the Mind and that Aristotle 's Logick diminishes it Book 6 in the 1 st Part concerning Method V. Another Fault of Learned Men. I. The Mind cannot dwell long upon Objects that have no Relation or that include not something of Infinity in them II. The Inconstancy of the Will is the Cause of that want of Application and consequently of Error III. Our Sensations take us up more than the Pure Idea's of the Mind See the 7 th Chap. of the Second Part of this Book IV. Which is the Source of the Corruption of our Morals * Namely a Natural Love for we cannot hate Pleasure by an Elective Hatred †Because Elective Love cannot be long without conforming to Natural Love I. What is meant by Idea's That they really exist and are necessary to our Perceiving all material Objects This Paragraph is in Italick because it may be passed over as being difficult to be understood unless a Man know what I think of the Soul and of the Nature of Idea's II. A Particularization of all the ways possible for us to perceivâ— External Objects If a Man has a mind to know how all the Impressions of Visible Objects tho' oppos'd can be communicated without weakning let him read Mr. Des-Cartes 's Dioptrics Tanto meliora esse judico quae oculis cerno quanto pro sui natura viciniora sunt iis quae animo intelligo Aug. 6.3 de Vera Religione See the 3 d. Ch. of the 2 d. Part concerning Method Dic quia tu tibi lumen non es Serm. 8. de verbis Domini 2 Cor. 3.5 Rom. 1.19 Jac. 1.17 Ps. 94.10 Joh. 1.9 Lib 14. de Trin. cap. 13. See the Illustrations Act. Apost c. 17.28 I. Four different manners of Perception II. How we know GOD Humanis mentibus nulla interposita natura praesidet Aug. lib. de vera Relig. c. 55. III. How we know Bodies IV. How we know the Soul See the Illustrations V. How we know the Souls of other Men. I. The intimate Presence of the indefinite Idea of Being in general is the cause of all the disorderly Abstractions of the Mind and the most part of the Chimaera's of the Vulgar Philosophy which hinder many Philosophers from acknowledging the solidity of true Principles of Physick II. Of the Essence of Matter If this Definition of the word Essence be admitted all the rest is absolutely demonstrated if it be not admitted 't is only a nominal Question wherein consists the Essence of Matter or rather it cannot be the subject of a Question I. The last general Cause of our Errors II. That the Idea's of things are not always present to the Mind when we would have them III. Every finite Mind is subject to Error IV. We ought not to judge that there is no created Being besides Body and Spirit nor that GOD is a Spirit according to the conception of Spirits Riccioli 2. Vol. Nemo est paulo eruditior in Astronomicis qui Coelorum ordinem contemplatus non agnoscat Harmoniam quandam in Planetarum intervallis motibus Journal of the Learned Aug. 9 1666. See the Illustrations I. Inclinations are as necessary to Spirits as Motions to Bodies II. God having no other Principal End of his Actions than himself gives no Motion to Spirits but what tends towards himself III. The Tendency Spirits have to Particular Goods proceeds from their Motion towards Good in general IV. The Original of the chiefest Natural Inclinations which will make up the Division of this Fourth Book I. The Inclination for Good in general is the Principle of the Restlesness of the Will II. And consequently of our Inadvertency and Ignorance III. The first Instance shewing that Morals are but little known by the generality of Men. 〈◊〉 39. de Natali Domini IV. The second Instance shewing that the Immortality of the Soul is controverted by some People V. That we are in extreme ignorance in point of Abstract things and which have but little reference to us I. Curiosity is natural and necessary II. Three Rules to moderate Curiosity III. A particular Explication of the first of these Rules Quis tam stulte curioâ—us est qui filium suum mitâ—at in Scholam ut quid Magister cogitet discat I. The Second Rule concerning Curiosity II. The Third Rule concerning Curiosity 2 Tim. 6.9 I. Of the Sâ—cond natural Inclination or of Self-love II. The Division of Self-love of Being and of Well-being or of Greatness and Pleasure I. Of the Inclination we have for whatever elevates us above others II. Of the false Judgments of some Religious Persons III. Of the false Judgments of the Superstitious and Hypocrites Of Voetius I. Of the Desire of seeming Learn'd II. Of the Conversation of the falsly Learn'd III. Of the Books of the Falsly Learn'd I. Pleasure ought to be shunn'd tho' it makes us happy 1 Cor. 15.16 II. It ought not to carry us to the loving Sensible Goods I. How it disables us from disvering Truth II. Some Instances Oper. Perf. * I speak according to common Opinion which is that the Chicken is form'd from the Egg though perhaps it is no more than nourish'd by it Col. 2.23 * Galilaeus put into the Inquisition for maintaining the Earth mov'd I. Of the Third Natural Inclination viz. The Friendship we have for other Men. * I speak as a Man For the Truest Earthly Grandeur consists only in the Imagination II. This Inclination makes us approve the Thoughts of our Friends and deceive them by undue Praises Chap. 4. E. 1. Page 9 10. Page 1. Page 10. Page 1. Page 20. Page 21. * Book 1. Ch. 9. B. 3. in several places Page 22. Page 9. Page 9. Page 6. Page 44. Page 47. Page 56 57. Page 62. Page 64. Page 80. Page 98. * Pref. Page 4. Page 12. (a) Page 1 The Animadverter's Answer * Book 1. Chap. 1. and elsewhere * Tunc beatum esse te judica cum tibi ex te gaudium omne nascetur cum in his quae homines eripiunt optant custodiunt nihil inveneris non dico quod malis sed quod velis Sen. Epist. 124. Rom. 7 23 24 * Before Sin that Sensation was not a pain but
of the Body is the Cause but of gross Vices such as Intemperance and Vncleanness and not of those which are call'd Spiritual as Pride and Envy and I am persuaded there is that Correspondence between the Disposition of our Brain and those of our Soul as that there is not perhaps any corrupt Habit in the Soul but what has its Principle in the Body St. Paul in several places terms by the Name of the Law the Wisdom the Desires and the Works of the Flesh whatever is contrary to the Law of the Spirit He speaks not of Spiritual Vices He reckons amongst the Works of the Flesh Idolatry Heresies Dissentions and many other Vices which go by the Name of Spiritual To give way to Vain-glory Wrath and Envy is in his Doctrine to follow the Motions of the Flesh. In short It appears from the Expressions of that Apostle That all Sin proceeds from the Flesh not that the Flesh commits it or that the Spirit of Man without the Grace or Spirit of CHRIST can do good but because the Flesh acts upon the Spirit in such a manner that the latter works no evil without being sollicited to it by the former Hear what St. Paul says in the Epistle to the Romans I delight in the law of the Lord after the inward Man But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members And a little lower So then with my mind I my self serve the law of God but with the flesh the law of sin He speaks after the same manner in several places of his Epistles So that Concupiscence or the Rebellion of the Body not only disposes us to Carnal of shameful Vices but likewise to those which are thought to be Spiritual I here shall endeavour to prove it by a sensible manner When a Man 's in Conversation it is certain as I think that some Tracks are machinally produc'd in his Brain and Motions excited in his Animal Spirits that beget in his Soul corrupt Thoughts and Inclinations Our Thoughts on these Occasions are not naturally conformable to Truth nor our Inclinations to Order They rise in us for the Good of the Body and of the present Life because 't is the Body that exites them So they obliterate the Presence of God and the Thoughts of our Duty out of our Mind and tend only to recommend us to other Men and make them consider us as worth their Affection and Esteem Therefore this secret Pride which kindles in us on such Occasions is a Spiritual Vice whose Principle is the Rebellion of the Body For Example If the Persons in whose Presence we are are rais'd to Honorary Posts and Titles the Lustre of their Grandeur both dazzles and dejects us And as the Traces which their Presence imprints on our Brain are very deep and the Motions of the Spirits rapid they radiate as I may say through all the Body they spread themselves on the Face and give a sensible Testimony of our Reverence and Fear and our most latent Sentiments Next These Traces by the sensible Expressions of our inward Motions work upon the Person that observe us whom they dispose to Sentiments of Candour and Civility by the Traces which our respectful and timorous Deportment machinally produce in his Brain which Traces rallying on his Face and disarm him of that Majesty which appear'd in 't and give the rest of his Body such an Air and Posture as at length rid us of our Concern and re-embolden us Thus by a mutual and frequent Repercussion of these sensible Expressions our Air and Behaviour at last settles in that fashion which the governing Person wishes But as all the Motions of the Animal Spirits are attended with Motions of the Soul and the Traces of the Brain are pursu'd by Thoughts of the Mind 't is plain that since we are depriv'd of the Power of expunging these Traces and stopping these Motions we find our selves sollicited by the over-ruling Presence of the Person to embrace his Opinions and submit to his Desires and to be wholly devoted to his Pleasure as he indeed is dispos'd to study ours but in a very different manner And for this Reason worldly Conversation quickens and invigorates the Concupiscence of Pride as dishonest Commerce feasting and enjoying sensible Pleasures strengthen Carnal Concupiscence which is a Remark very necessary for Morality 'T is of great Use and Advantage that there are Traces in the Brain which incessantly represent Man to himself to make him careful of his Person and that there are others which serve to make and preserve Society since Men are not made to live alone But Man having lost the Power of erasing them when he pleas'd and when convenient they perpetually provoke him to Evil. As he cannot hinder their representing him to himself he is continually sollicited to Motions of Pride and Vanity to despise others and center all things in himself And as he is not Master of those Traces which importune him to keep up Society with others he is agitated by Motions of Complaisance Flattery Jealousie and the like Inclinations as it were in spight of him Thus all those which go by the Name of Spiritual Vices derive from the Flesh as well as Vnchastness and Intemperance There are not only in our Brain Dispositions which excite in us Sensations and Motions with reference to the Propagation of the Species and the Preservation of Life but it may be a greater Number that stir up in us Thoughts and Passions with respect to Society to our own private Advancements and to those of our Friends We are by Nature united to all surrounding Bodies and by them to all the things that any way relate to us But we cannot be united to them save by some Dispositions in our Brain Having not therefore the Power of withstanding the Action of these natural Dispositions our Union turns into Dependence and we grow subject through our Body to all kind of Vices We are not pure Intelligences all the Dispositions of our Soul produce respective Dispositions in our Body and those in our Body mutually excite others like them in our Soul Not that the Soul is absolutely incapable of receiving any thing except by the Body but because as long as She is united to It she cannot admit any Change in her Modifications without making some Alteration in the Body 'T is true she may be enlightned or receive new Ideas and the Body need not have any hand in it but that 's because pure Ideas are not Modifications of the Soul as I have prov'd in another place I speak not here of sensible Ideas because these include a Sensation and every Sensation is a mode of the Souls existing The Second OBJECTION against the Eleventh and Twelfth Articles If Original Sin descends by reason of the Communication which is found between the Brain of the Mother and that of