to the virtues of their Causes shall come to be effected manifest it is that that particular Event whose Ambiguity is determined to Certainty of Futurition and is actually brought to pass is Fatal or Necessary i. e. could not but come to pass For otherwise the Gods must be confest subject to Mendacity One of the two therefore must be granted viz. that all things come to pass Necessarily as they are foreknown and Praedicted by the Gods and so that the word Contingens is excluded as importing no Reality but a meer Chimaera or that the Affairs or Occurrences of man are neither praecognite nor procured by the Gods the Impossibility of which assertion doth also fully exclude all Contingency To the Solution of this Difficulty t is well known the Divines Article 5. The full solution of the same by virtue of the Divâ—â—s Discrimination of Necessity into Absolute and Hypothetical have most judiciously accommodated their Distinction of Necessity into Absolute and Suppositional For instance that 2. and 3. make 5. or that yesterday is praeterlapsed is Absolutely Necessary but that I should to morrow take a journey into the Country or write a Consult for such or such a Patient is not absolutely Necessary yet if I suppose that I shall travel or write then there ariseth a Necessity of my travelling or wâ—iting ex Suppositione from that my Supposition Now in respect t is manifest from this Distinction that the Necessity Absolute of any Action doth destroy the Liberty of the Agent but the Suppositional doth not for though I journy or write according to my Supposition yet was it possible to me to have done neither thereupon doe they most excellently reason thus that Peters Abnegation was foreseen and praedicted by God as an Event to come of Necessity not Absolute but Suppositional by which nothing was detracted from Peters Liberty of not denying For as now in the praesent if He be interrogated concerning his Master he is intirely Free or to avouch or disavow his knowledge of him so also will He be in the Future when He shall be interrogated Wherefore as if He now determine himself rather to deny then affirme and according to that determination actually deny He doth that Freely notwithstanding from the moment he denied his denial is Necessary insomuch as it is supposed that he hath actually denied so also in the Future when He shall determine himself rather to deny then affirme and according to that determination shall actually deny shall his denial be Free or Arbitrary however it cannot but be granted Necessary that He hath denyed because he hath already actually denied Nor is it paradoxical or difficult to affirme that this Suppositional Necessity and Peters Liberty are not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Discordant or Inconsistent in any respect because the Necessity is subsequent not antecedent to the Determination of his Liberty and because it doth not consist so much in Re vel Actione in the Thing or Action it self as in Temporis Circumstantia the Circumstance of Time when ' tiâ— done Since when we say t is Necessary that Peter hath denyed that Necessity is not understood to have bin any thing Antecedently in him which compelled him to deny but that it is radicated now in Time it self which as it is really past and cannot be not past so the Action done in that past time however it was done cannot be not done And hence it is evident though no man can justly assert that t was Necessary to Peter to deny because according to that assertion there must be understood some Antecedent Cause by which he was coated to deny yet justified it may be that Now t is Necessary that he hath denyed because the Action being once done and so impossible to be not done all the Necessity falls upon the Praeterition of the Time Now in respect that God is Omniscient He cannot but Foresee that Peter will deny yet that Divine Praenotion of Peters Abnegation is subsequent to the Divine Praevision of Peters Free Determination and therefore God Foresees that Peter will deny only because He Foresees that Peter abusing his Liberty will freely determine himself to a denial And hence comes it to be embraced amongst the most judicious School-men as a truth indisputable That Peter will deny not because God hath praevised and praedicted that he will deny but that because Peter will deny when he shall be examined therefore and for no other reason doth God Foresee and Foretell that he will deny For uti Scientia praeteritam rem pro objecto habens nullam rei praeteritae ut ita non alitèr fieret necessitatem infert ita Praescientia rem suturam pro suo objecto habens rei futurae sive Futuritioni nullam potest inferre necessitatem utraque enim est extra rem in Deo actio Immanens that as Science having for its object a thing Praeterite doth induce no necessity thereupon that it should have bin so and no otherwise so also doth Praescience having for its object a thing Future inferr no necessity upon its Futerition that it shall so and no otherwise come to pass for both Science and Praecience are distinct from and alien to their Objects and Actions Immanent in God i. e. not at all effluxed to the object to the destruction or alteration of its Nature this we say is a Verity which demonstrateth it self and which we have more praecisely insisted upon in the 4. Articl 4. Sect. of our discourse of the Mobility of the term of mans lifè And that all Cognition is a thing really distinct from and extraneous to its Object and that a thing comes to be actually what it is not from the Cognition thereof by an Idea in all points consimilar but from it self or its Efficient Cause needs no other probation but the conviction of this instance that Snow is white not because t is known to be white but contrary that it is known to be white because really it is so To speak a profound truth plainly in few words herein consists the Disparity between Divine and Human Cognition viz. that Human can be extended only to Praesent and Praeterite but Divine doth extend it self with equal Certitude to Future Contingents also Now insomuch as Praeterite Contingents were sometimes Future and in the same condition with those which are yet Future and again those which are yet Future may be understood to be praeterite in time to come and in the same condition with those which are already Praeterite manifest it is that as neither Divine nor Human Cognition is the Cause why Contingents already Praeterite are praeterite but è contrà they are known as Praeterite because really they are so in like manner that those which are Future are not therefore Future because God holds an exact praenotion of them as Future but è contrà because they really are Future therefore doth God hold an exact praenotion of their Futurition And upon
the procreation of its like in specie for the most part and that the Plastick Spirit thereof punctually observe the modell or pattern of that Fabrick of the body from whence it came or that upon a preposterous commixture of various and unequal seeds once in an age there should succeed the production of some new Heteroclite or unpatternd Monster whose Composition is onely contingent and difform to the Idea of either its Active or Passive Principle in the simplicity of their divided Figures And are not the exquisite Delineations of every Embryon woven out by the subtile fingers of Archeus or the Formative spirit the multiplicity distinction elaboration of organs both external and internal the severall Functions and Offices assigned to those organs and so artificially contrived that every one is distinct yet none independent every one single yet all conspiring to the same end all operative yet none per se locomotive are not these certain and praeordinate effects with innumerable others the meanest whereof we cannot seriously think upon without a rapture of amazement more worthy our admiration then a single irregularity a spontaneous Monster of Nilus a bipartite Centaure a prodigious Insect c. whose generations are accounted accidental and their configurations not preordained but the inconsiderate and extemporary results of Fortune Perhaps these stupid Idolaters of Chance will referre these constant and setled operations to Nature but whatever they mean by Nature how immense a stock of Wisdom must it necessarily be endowed withall which in all its works so cunningly contrives so great variety of organs observes such exact Symmetry in all parts so providently disposeth every member and fits them to the easie execution of their predestinate functions If they goe farther and affirm that Nature is nothing but the primitive Constitution of the World which resulted from the casual separation conflux and disposition of its material principle Atoms and that it doth constantly persist in the same Method which it first obtained from Fortune the answer is easie that though Nature be constant to that order in all her productions which the World obtained in its first composure yet how ridiculously stupid must he be who can admit a serious perswasion that the bodies of Animals in the beginning could be so exquisitely configurated by meer Chance and without the direction and indeed the designement of an infinite Wisdome in whose eternal intellect the prototypes of each species were first adumbrated Let them object again that every day affords examples of the skill of Fortune in the production of Froggs Toads Flies and other spontaneous Insects and I shall soon return that those Insects or spontaneous Animals have their Causes certain and by reason of that energie once conferred upon their Efficients must arise to animation in such or such a Figure according to the magnitude number situation complexion quiet motion or in a word the Temperament of those particles out of which their bodies are amassed and according to the activity of that domestick Heat which ferments and actuates the matter Secondly that our debate is about the original of Nature it self and of that precise Virtue radically implanted in the seeds of things or more emphatically what hand inoculated that procreative power in each seminality and endowed it with a capacity requisite to the conformation of bodies so admirable in their structure if there were not some principle in the nonage of the Universe who infused that Prolifical or fertile Tincture ordained that scheme of members and gave it rules to act by from which it never fwerves but upon a disobedience and non-conformity of matter If we lookt no farther then the Cortex or Exteriors of Animals and there speculated as well the amiable comeliness of their Figures in the whole for there is no real Deformity in Nature as the geometrical Analogie or convenience betwixt the Members and their Actions each being respectively configurated to the performance of its peculiar office 't were more then sufficient to discover to us the impossibility of their primitive institution by Fortune But when we dissect them prie into their Entrals and there survey the almost infinite multitude of organs principal and subordinate the variety of their uses some being officiall to Nutrition some to Vitality some to Generation others to Sense others to Locomotion none impeding the activity of another but all unanimously conspiring to conserve the oeconomy of that Form which like the main spring in an Automaton invigorates and actuates the whole fabrick either we must bid dehance to the chief inducement of beleif and drown the loud clamors of our Conscience or else fall down transported with an ecstasie of pious Wonder and humbly confess that these are the Impresses of the infinite power and wisdome of an omniscient and omnipotent Creator but not the Contingencies or temerarious effects of Chance Thoughts like these had the prudent Gassendus when in his detestation of the interest of that Pretendress Fortune cap. de exortu mundi his golden pen dropt this rhetorical logick Id quod stuporem generat dispositio interna est in corporibus Animalium Nam si foret quidem duntaxat multitudo aliqua partium forte fortuna commistarum tum ea posset Fortunae tribui at in multitudine illa pene innumerabili nullam esse partem non tantam non talem non ubi non quomodo non cum ea functione qua congruum est ut neque inutilis sit neque esse commodior valeat rationem prorsus omnem sugit ut ita fieri non sapientia sed Fortuna sit constitutum Nor doe Animals alone but Vegetables also though of an inferior Classis amply and sensibly testifie the Divinity of their Article 2. The necessity of the Worlds Greation by an Agent infinite in Science and Power proclaimed by the constant Uniformity of Nature in her perpetuation of Vegetables Founder and confute the Apotheosis of Fortune Thus when the Aliment of a Plant being the aqueous irrigation of the earth insensibly prolected ascends from the lowest filament of the shaggy root up to the Trunck and thence works up to the extremities of every branch and twigge can we imagine that this thin insipid juice can be so inspissated and so ingeniously moulded into a Bud that bud discriminated and variegated into a larger particoloured Blossom that Blossom gradually expanded into a determinate flower which gratifies our eyes with the beauty of its embroidery and our nosthrils with the fragrancy of its odour that Flower lost in the richer emergencie of a Fruit which hath its figure colour magnitude odour sapour maturity duration all certain and constant and the abridgement or Epitome of this included in the seed of that fruit which being insperst upon the earth is impregnate with a Faculty to expand it self into a second Plant in all things rivall to the former and empowered to act all those several Metamorphoses over again to a perpetuall rejuvenescence of that peculiar
embalmed them before-hand pined them into perfect Skeletons and so defrauded their hungry Creditors the Wormes yet since they drop away full of youthfull and green hopes their departure is premature and inopine and so they may be sayd not to dimidiate their days We return that this illegitimate Desoant ought to be rejected for 4 considerable Causes 1 Because it cannot be justly charged upon the words no not in the greatest latitude of Construction For t is not there sayd the Wicked shall dye sooner then they expect but positively and expresly they shall not dimidiate their days now every Ideot can tell that it is one thing not to live out half their days and another not to beleive they shall live out half their days 2 because it argues the sacred Psalmist of a manifest Falsity For when the ungodly expire they do not only Dimidiate their days but Accomplish them Death being at any time the December of life 3 Because it imports a double repugnancy to Truth For first now there are and in all ages since the first experiment of death have bin millions of Vicious men who even in the wildest paroxysme of their Vanity and highest orgasme of their Pride and Ambition have still cooled themselves with E 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and felt a dejecting horror from within at the remembrance of that Motto Statutum est omnibus semel mori so far is our Nature from entertaining any hopes of Immortality though but in a dreame or melancholy depravation of Phansy And again no Chronicle is barren in the stories of prosperous Libertines who have wanted nothing but some Cross to indeare the Felicity of their lives have unravelled their vital web in the highest blandishments of Sense attained to miraculous Longevity and being sated with the profuse treatments of Fortune have outlived their own large stock of Hopes so that a Poet might take the Liberty to say of them they dyed for grief that they had nothing left to wish for which they had not already surfetted in the fruition of 4 Because the admission there of loseth the Singularity or Determination of Davids speech to Sanguinary and Nefarious Persons For if to Dimidiate their days import no more then to dye by the same common kind of Death and at the same period of their Temperamental Lease when by the ineluctable laws of Destiny it is enacted that all men shall revert to Dust certainly there can remain no reason why Impious men so dying should be thought more unhappy because they were Cruent and Unjust then others To conclude of all those just Persons mentioned in the old Testament who were translated from this Vale of tears to the Celestial Hils of permanent delight by early and premature deaths amongst whom the Apostle Heb. 11. vers 38. hath accounted some so excellent above the common rate of humanity that the world was not worthy of them of such I say 't was true according to this erroneous paraphrase that they did not Dimidiate their days because they dyed sooner then they expected For they did not only hope but upon the faithfull promise of God even assure themselves of a longer continuation heer below to do him further service And confidently to expect nay by a lively hope to anticipate the fruition of a promised blessing is a privilege peculiar only to those to whom the promise doth properly and solely belong but the blessing of Longevity was only then promised to the pious observers of the Divine laws as is manifest from the places formerly cited 3 By fixing the scope of the Text only upon that mature Term of life to which many ordinarily attain viz. to 60. 70. 80. 90. years more or less according to the respective Duration of every individual Constitution and so concluding the verity of Davids speech only in this respect For say they the Annales of Impious men seldome arise to so large an account because either the sword of war or justice or some Accident occasioned by their Villanies takes them off before the completion of their natural Term of years But this sinister Detorsion of the Text ought also to be repudiated for two Reasons 1 In regard t is manifestly heterodox and dissimilar to the express sense of the words since they say not Wicked men shall not live out half the days of Others but their own Now the days of their lives amount not to so many years as are required to the commensuration of the natural space betwixt the Animation and Disanimation of the posterity of Adam prefixt by the decree of him who is the Breath of our nostrils and therefore when they fully and wholly accomplish that common compute with what semblance of truth can they be sayd to Dimidiate their days Moreover if those Sanguinary Miscreants against whom David directly denounceth this judgement of Premature Mortality be sayd not to dimidiate their days only in this respect that they seldome arrive at that provect and silver-headed Age wherein the Tapor of life by the ordinary deflux of Nature burns dim and languid and at last for want of oyle winks out into pepetual night then with equal right may it be affirmed also of many Holy and Just persons that they do not dimidiate theirs nay t is a question not easily answered whether the same may not be asserted of these with more justice then of those For how rarely doe we observe the pulse of Pious men to beate till their Arteries grow hard from the Hectick distemper of old age How small a manual would the Legends of all those Saints whose names and stories yet survive make who have lived till the Almond tree hath budded and flourished and how vast a volume would theirs make who have bin gathered green into the Granary of God and never lived to see one revolution of Saturn about the solary Orbe and how frequently have we occasion to comfort our selves after the transplantation of Junior Virtue with that adage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nor hath Piety always proved a Coat of maile against the danger of Malice or the Panoplie of a Christian defence against the sword of war or perfect Charity an Antidote to Poyson or Temperance an Alexipharmacon against the Pestilence or religious Abstinence a Preservative against Famine or Innocence awarded the stroke of the Executioner in short as to the time of Death in this concernement there is one event to the Righteous and to the Wicked to the clean and to the unclean to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not as dies the Good so dies the Sinner and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath 2 In respect it disarmes the Text of all its Force and Purpose For to what end could David say they should not dimidiate their days if thereby he intended no more then this that they should not run over half their stage of life or subsist untill grey haires unless the ground or reason thereof be also
comparatively hath under the disguise of a Article 1. The Antiquity and Genealogy of Fortune Reality so long and so universally possessed the heads not only of the Vulgar whose rank and muddy brains are ever more fertile in the production and more favourable to the conservation of Monsters then Nilus and all Affrica but even of some of those more cultivated Explorators of truth who well knew the absurdity of Multiplying Entities and pretended to examine every Idea occurring to the mind whether it had an exemplar or prototype in real Existence that so though they could not attain to a full cognition of the distinct Essences or simple Forms of Objects they might at list acquire an assurance of their Reality or Being in rerum natura this we say seems to us no contemptible Argument that the Venome of the Forbidden Fruit hath a stronger and more infatuating operation upon the posterity of Adam in the old age of the world then it had in its youth and midle age and that the sun in the Microcosme hath sufferd a greater and more demonstrable decay of Splendor Clarity and Influence then Bodin method Histor cap. 8. out of Copernicus Reinaldus and Stadius hath affirmed that in the Macrocosme to have sustained and confessed by its neerer approach to the Earth and more Southerly inclination since the daies of Ptolomie For first though Simplicius 2. physic comment 39. hath a certain obscure tradition that Orpheus ingaged in the expedition of the Argonauts composed a votive Hymne to this Fairy Queen which was afterward inserted into the idolatrous Liturgie of the Delphian Apollo together with whom she was solemnly invocated yet hath Macrobius much the better Antiquary of the two faithfully observed 5. Saturn ib. that she was if not unborn yet unnamed in Homers time subjoyning as a reason thereof quod priscis illis temporibus omnia quae sierent referri ad Deos Authores solerent that more simple and intelligent Antiquity used to referre all events to the wise procuration of the Gods Which is evidence sufficient that Fortune could not mount up to an Apotheosis till the world grew into its Dotage and man sunk a whole sphear below that of his Ancestors simplicity and knowledge And 2 that whenever she was borne and whoever was her Father yet Ignorance was her Mother besides the convincing Authority of our own Reason we have that of the impartial Cicero in these words Stultitia Error Caecitas Ignoratio rerum atque causarum Fortunae nomen primò induxisse certum est And so much the more of weight may this Argument bear by how much the more manifest a Contradiction they incurr who have either defended or advanced her reputation for though no one among those many Writers who have professedly treated of her Nature and Power hath denyed her extraction from and necessary dependence upon that accursed Beldam Ignorance yet have most agreed that she is somthing more then Nomen inane a meer and empty Name or Chimaera and some allowed her the dignity of a considerable Influence upon the actions of Man nay others have gon so farr as to exalt her virtue to a competition with Providence Divine and consigned her a throne among the Coelestial Deities as is intimated in that verse of Juvenal Satyr 14. sed te Nos facimus Fortuna Deam coeloque locamus And this briefly concerning the Antiquity and Genealogie of this Nothing As for the full description of her Nature or more properly what Kind of Activity the chiefest Philosophers have allowed Article 2. Plato and Arist their Descriptions of fortune examined and illustrated and 3 Conclusions inferred thereupon her and to what order of Causes referred her this we cannot so satisfactorily present by any other way as by a short Commemoration and aequitable Collation of their several Desinitions of her Plutarch 1. placit 29. makes Plato to have defined her thus Fortuna est causa ex accidenti consequens inopinatò in iis quae consilio fiunt Fortune is a Cause by Accident and unexpectedly supervenient in those actions which are deliberately and upon consultation performed and Aristotle thus Fortuna est caussa per accidens in iis quae rei alicujus gratiâ appetitu movente fiunt eáque incerta instabilis Fortune is an Accidental yea and an uncertain and instable cause interesting it self in those actions which are done by an Agent upon the incitement of its Appetite in order to its consequution of an object Which words indeed seem to comprehend in Epitomy all that the Philosopher in 2. physic cap. 5. intended in his more prolix description of Fortune abating only this that he there confines her concernment only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rebus Contingentibus to Effects purely Contingent i. e. such as may or may not come to pass and are therefore of dubious or uncertain event To explain this they exemplify in him who digging in the earth with no other designe but to plant a tree found a great Treasure of which he never thought for say they the Invention of the Treasure is an effect by Accident i. e. evenient above the hopes and besides the intention of him that digged and so the Digger insomuch as he is Causa per se of the digging is also Causa per accidens of the invention of the Treasure Such an Accidental Cause therefore doe our Philosophers call Fortune and the Event it self viz. the invention of the treasure they call Rem fortuitam a Fortuitous Effect But whereas Arist hath frequently advertised that Fortune 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Chance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are different each from other in this that Fortune is proper only to things done by Causes whose activity is Arbitrary and Chance common both to such and also Inanimate or meer Spontaneous Causes as when a stool falls and breaks a Glass consequently that all Fortune is Chance but not every Chance Fortune hence may we observe that he would have aswell Fortune as Chance to belong to the classis of Contingents and that all Contingents belong to the classis of Possibles More expressly that since among Possibles some are such as that their Event cannot be interdicted impeded or countermanded as this the sun cannot be hindred from rising again to morrow morn and others such whose event is not necessary as this t is not necessary though possible that it should raine to morrow a◠sun rising therfore is it manifest that a Possible of the first sort is the same with that which is called Necessarium absolutely Necessary or such whose Contrary is purely Impossible and of the second sort the same with that which is called Contingens meerly Contingent or of an uncertain event such whose Contrary is aequally possible Further in respect that the meer Contingency or Ambiguity of any Event must be founded on this that either some Liberty interveneth by reason whereof that which otherwise would come to pass doth not or that
omnino Deus regit moderatur CHAP. IX Of Fate SECT I. T IS not unknown to the meanest in the Commonweale Article 1. The convenient reduction of all opinions concerning the essence of Fate to 2. General Heads of Learning that no less then an Age can suffice to the observant lecture of that Vatican of Books composed by Philosophers of all times concerning this perplexing Theorem there being more Discourses abating those which the kindness of Time hath substracted now extant thereupon then any other subject that ever exercised the cogitations and pens of Scholars as must be acknowledged by any who hath surveyd the singular Iatrophilological Treatise of that judicious Parisian Gabriel Naudaeâ—â— de Fato Vitae Termino But yet such hath bin the singular fortune of Fate that it hath obtained an exemption from that general Experiment Tot sententiae quot Authores there being found upon a just audit of them all fewer Opinions then Books concerning it nay what is one degree of wonder higher a diligent scrutiny may soon explore that they all fall under the comprehension of only Two Catholique Heads some understanding Fate to be Aliquid Divinum a certain power Divine and the rest Aliquid merè Naturale a certain Constitution merely Natural In the Classis of those who have conceived Fate to be a Divine Power the highest seat belongs to the Platonist and Stoick according to whose doctrine methodized and summaried by Plutarch lib. de Fato we may consider it in a twofold Notion First 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Substantia as a Substance In which sense Article 2 What the Platonist and Stoick meant by Fate considered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a substance it is accepted for God Himself or that sempiternal Reason or establish't method according to whose tenor He hath praeordained and disposed All things in the World and so connected Causes to Causes that all Events whatever Arbitrary and Fortuitous individually depend upon and indeclinably result from that subalternate Series or Complication of Essicients For thus Plato in Timaeo one while affirmes that Fate is ipsa Anima Mundi the very Soul of the Universe and another while Naturae Vniversi aeterna ratio ac lex the eternal reason and law of Nature and thus also both Zeno and Chrysippus are cited by Plutarch in 1. placit 28. as defining Fate to be Vis spiritualis ac Ratio ordinis universa gubernans a Spiritual Power and constitution governing All things according to an order eternally praecogitate and praedecreed And all the rest of the Stoical Family as well generally quoted by Diogenes Laertius as Panaetius and Possidonius at least if He be the true Father of that Book de Mundo vulgarly conscribed to Aristotle out of which the text is extracted quoted by Stobaeus Ecl. Physic have unanimously held that Fate was the same with God Jupiter and the Vniversal Mens To whom we may justly associate Seneca also who in 4. de Benefic 2. Natural Quaest 45. sayth in downright terms si Fatum Jovem dixeris non mentieris if you please to assert that Jupiter and Fate are one and the same thing you shall speak the truth Hence comes it that though Poets sometimes refer all events to the procuration of Jupiter and sometimes again to Fate yet may not the nicest Critick impeach them of Inconstancy or Contradiction since those Terms differ only in the sound not in the notion as signifying one and the same Eternal Principle disposing the virtues and conspirations of all second Causes to the opportune effecting of Events designed by it self and so made indeclinable Thus Homer introducing Agamemnon as pleading his excuse fot being instrumental to a misfortune makes him incriminate upon Fate and Jupiter at once in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Non Ego Causa Verum Jupiter Fatum Secondly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Actus as an Act according to Article 3. And what 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as an Energy or Act together with the eâ—ymological reasons of those sundry Appellations the Stoicks have imposed upon it which Acceptation we may understand Fate partly to be ipsum Dâ—i decretum the very Decree or absolute Command of God whereby He hath determined all Events to Necessity of Futurition from whence the Latin word Fatum importing a Decree pronounced is by Grammarians derived and partly ipsum ordinem seriem vel concatenationem Causarum in natura statutam the order series or subalternate concatenation of Causes according to whose praesctipt tenor all Events praedestined come to pass in respect to the Decree pronounced For thus much may be collected from that Definition of Fate ascribed to Plato by Plutarch de Fato viz. est lex Adrastaeae the law of Divine Justice consigning to every thing what is convenient to its nature and which no man can clude or infringe but more perspicuously from that notorious one of Chrysippus Fatum est sempiterna quaedam ac indeclinabilis series rerum catena volvens semetipsam implicans per aeternos consequentiae ordines ex quibus adapta connexaque est which we have formerly introduced and interpreted in our Chap. concerning the Mobility of the term of mans life To which for more assurance we may annex the respective signification and importance of each of those various Appellatives which the Stoicks have accommodated to Fate For they have named it 1 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because 't is a connected series or subalternately-dependent syntax of Causes and Effects 2 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it involves and contains All things in that definite and invariable concatenation 3 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because all Events are the Necessary designations thereof or because it self is also under the same restraint of an immutable definition 4 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because no attempt can praevail to an alteration infringement of its tenor 5 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it is a Constirution Eternal 6 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it is a distribution made to every Individual 7 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it comprehends whatever is by Consignation due to every man 8 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because as the original so also the Dissolution of all things is subject to its appointment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Parca because it is the peculiar Lot or Portion destined to every man But as for this aequivocal Denominative Parca insomuch as it not onely determineth the state of all other things in general but also the Life of man in special quasi Nendo as it were by spinning out a thread of commensurate longitude thereupon did Hesiod in Theogn dichotomize it into three distinct species viz. 1 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in respect to the Irrevocability of time past which exactly resembleth a thread already spun and wound upon the reel or fuze 2 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in respect to the Decurrent or Praesent time which responds
that that supposed action could not but follow upon those other actions subalternately praecedent and consequently that it must be as Democritus would have it Fatal or Necessary Which opinion Aristotle ardently impugneth in lib. de Interpre cap. 8. when discussing the verity and necessity of Propositions He contends to evince that though of two opposite singular propositions which concern a thing either Praeterite or Praesent one must be true the other false yet the Canon holds not in two Contrary singular propositions which concern a thing Future the Verity of the one not necessitating the Falsity of the other For as He there argues if every Affirmation or Negation concerning a thing to come were true or false ex Necessitate then would the Futurity of any thing include a Necessity of its Futurition i. e. whatever is Future would be Necessary and on the contrary whatever is not Future would be Not-necessary and upon just inference nothing could remain either Fortuitous or Arbitrary which to admit is an Incongruity so manifest that the repugnancy of every mans Experience detects it an Incommodity so intolerable that it not only disparageth but confuteth it self And this if there be any Fidelity in the records of our Memory is the Summary of their Theory who have apprehended and asserted Fate to be a meer Natural Constitution of Causes subalternately connected as not dependent on any thing Divine nor any Eternal Decree so not capable of any mutation or interruption by the intervention of any Impediment purely Fortuitous or Counter-activity of any Arbitrary Agent SECT III. Article 1. The Principal of the Second Sect Aristotle and Epicurus IN the other Division of Philosophers who also conceded Fate to be a meer Natural Constitution of Causes subalternately dependent c. but yet denied the inevitable or necessary insequution of all Effects upon that concatenation allowing the possibility of its mutation or interruption by either Chance or mans Free will the Principal are Aristotle and Article 2. The Grounds of the Authors imputing the opinion both of Fates Identity with Nature and the possibility of its Mutation Declination by either Fortuitous or Arbitrary Antagonists to Aristotle Epicurus First as for Aristotle that He held Fate or fatal Necessity to be nothing but very Nature or if you like it better every particular Cause acting secundum suam naturam naturalémve ductum according to its proper or natural Virtue is manifest from his own words in sundry places of his Writings To particular 1 He sayth in 2. phys cap. 6. Eas generationes acoretiones alterationes quae violentae sunt ut dum ex arte ob delicias cogimus plantas aliquas praematurè pubescere adolesceréque esse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non Fatales hoc est non Naturales making Fatal Effects to be meeâ—ly Natural And 2 He sayth 1 Meteorol cap. ultim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fatalibus temporibus magnas quasdam hyemes imbriúmque excessus quibus creentur diluvia contingere eo modo quo contingit hyems statis anni temporibus which rightly paraphrased imports thus much that as Winter the Sun receding from our climate at some certain period of the yeer according to the Ecliptick progress consigned unto it by Nature is the regular effect of the Suns remove to larger distance even so are hard Winters and immoderate rains the regular effects of some periodal Conjunctions of the Planets proceeding in their motions according to the setled Constitutions of Nature From whence we have an advantage to observe that though Stobaeus Ecl. Phys tells us Aristotelem non tam existimasse Fatum esse Causam quà m modum Causae advenientem rebus ex necessitate statutis that Arist conceived not Fate to be so much a Cause as the manner of a Cause advenient to things determined by Necessity yet nevertheless are we so to comment upon this his nice descant as that we understand Fate not to be any new kind of Cause but Nature her self which in respect to her Agency is called a Cause and in respect to the certain proper and necessary manner or way of her acting is called Fate And that He impugned the former Error viz. that all Agents included in this Universal Subalternation act ex inevitabili necessitate or cannot but doe what they doe is not obscurely intimated in this that He defined Fate to be pure Nature Since the Works of Nature are not effected of inoppugnable necessity as may be boldly concluded from the frequent Experiments not only in Generation which is commonly impeded by the intervention of any indisposition or impatibility of Matter and other resisting Accidents but also in Generous and virtuous Minds which easily subdue and countermand those strong inclinations or propensities to Avarice Luxury Audacity Incontinency c. which may not unjustly be esteemed the genuine Effects of their very constitutive Principles and branches that shoot up from the root of their Corporeal Temperament Upon which reason we may conjecture that Arist reflected when He sayd of Socrates praeter naturam ac fatum suum continens evasit He acquired an Habit of Continency even in spite of the contrary sollicitation of his individual Nature and particular Fate Secondly as for Epicurus that his thoughts made an Unison Article 3. Epicurus unanimous to Arist in the point of Physical and Eluctable Necessity with those of Aristotle in the key of a Non-ineluctable Fate is sufficiently constant from hence that having admitted a certain Necessity Natural in this sentence Naturam à rebus ipsarúmve serie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doceri cogique sive necessitate agi in Epist ad Herodotum He yet denied the Inevitability or Absoluteness thereof in another Fragment of his revived by Stobaetis in Ecl. Phys where He delivers as a general Canon Omnia sieri trium modorum aliquo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Necessitate Consilio Fortuna For in that he makes Fortune and Consultation or mans Free will equal competitors in the empire of the world with Necessity Natural He manifestly excludes it from being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sole Despot or Monarch and reserves to the two others an equal dominion Which assurance may duely be augmented by the superaddition of this also that Cicero de Fato introducing Epicurus disputing about the verity of Future Events makes him deny with Aristotle that of two contrary singular Enunciations about a thing to come the one must be true and the other false subnecting this reason Nulla est in natura talis Necessitas And certainly as He stood equal with Aristotle in the denial so hath He outdone him by many degrees in his endevours Article 4. The scope of Epicurus his Figment of the Declination of Atoms in the human Soul and his Accommodation thereof to the tuition of mans Liberty epitomized for the Refutation of this unsound opinion of an Absolute Necessity insomuch as he excogitated his Hypothesis of the Declination of Atoms illustrated
in the incomparable Commentary of Gassendus as a motion which once conceded doth totally infringe the indispensable rigor of Fate and conserve an Evasory or Declining Liberty for the Mind of man This Plutarch taught us in two perspicuous texts 1 when He sayth de Anim. Solert that the motion of the Declination of Atoms in the Human Soul was subtilly invented by Epicurus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Fortune might be brought on the theatre of the world there to act her part and the Arbitrary power of man might not be abrogated 2 when He declares de Stoic repub that the same Epicurus sese in omnem partem versare ingeniúmque contendere in id incumbendo ut quomodocunque à motione sempiterna liberum tueatur Arbitrium ac pravitatem esse inculpabilem non patiatur rack't all the nerves of his wit to find out a way for the protection of mans Free will and so that evil might not praetend to inculpability Now though we may not train along the thoughts of our Reader out of the direct tract of our praesent Theme into a wide Digression concerning Epicurus his whole Romance of the Declination of Atoms in the Soul especially having lately remitted him to Gassendus his accomplisht Comment thereupon yet can we not impede his progress along the streight line of method here to arrest him while we informe him briefly How he accommodated that fiction to the vindication of mans Liberty from the inexorable Coaction of Fate We conceive that Epicurus having observed 3 kinds of Motion in Animals but principally in Man viz. Natural Violent and Voluntary took it for granted that the primary Cause of each was to be deduced from Atoms the Principium à quo of all motion and hereupon concluded that the spring of all Natural motion was the primary motion congenial or inhaerent to Atoms viz. that whiâ—h physiology calls the motion of Gravity whereby an Atom is praecipitated ad lineam rectam to a perpendicular that the spring of all Violent motion was the motion of Reflexion or that which ariseth from occursation arietation or repercussion of one Atom by another whereby the Atom reflected is carried ad lineam obliquam and lastly that the spring of all Voluntary motion was the motion of Declination to which no region is determined nor time praefixt But might not Democritus and other Defendants of Absolute Necessity natural have excepted against this as insufficient to Article 5. An Exception in the name of Democritus against Epicurus Inference the protection of mans Evasory Freedome by returning that because this motion of Declination is no less Natural for it is derived from no other principle but Atoms themselves then that of Gravity therefore doth it still remain that All things are effected by Fate as well when Epicurus his Hypothesis is conceded as before Insomuch as all things which were to come to pass by reason of those various motions of Arietation Repuls Declination c. by an eternal series and kind of subalternate Concatenation are consequent one upon the heels of another and particularly that event of Cognition and Appetition to which mans Liberty appertains and so are brought to pass by an equal Necessity For that the Mind of man may display or execute that Liberty Elective whereby it affects and prosecutes any object conceive it to be an Apple necessary it is that the Image or Species of that Apple be first emitted from it and being transmitted through the mediatory organs of sight invade percell and commove the Mind to know or apprehend it Necessary to the Apple before it can transfuse its visible Species to the eye that it be put in some place convenient for adspect by him who gathered it from the tree or received it elsewhere Necessary that the Tree which bore that apple be first generated by a seed and nourished by the moisture of the earth concocted by the heat of the Sun Necessary that that Seed be derived from a former apple and that from a former tree planted in this or that determinate place at this or that determinate time and so by retrogression to the beginning of the world when both the Earth and all its Vegetable seeds had their origination from the Concursions and Complexions of Atoms which could not being agitated by the impulse of their own inhaerent Faculty Motive but convene and coalesce and acquiesce in those Figures those situations at that time Again if the Soul or Mind be also a Contexture of orbicular Atoms those Atoms must have bin contained in the Sperm of the Parents must have consluxed thither from certain meats and drinks as also from the Aer and beams of the Sun those me at s must have bin such and no other and so subalternately successive from eternity the Event will be found to come to pass by the same Adamantine Necessity whatever of the Causes lateral or concurrent which must run up to an account beyond all Logarithms you shall please to begin at Because from Eternity Causes have so cohaered to Causes that the last causes could not but concurr which being deduced into act the Mind could not but know and knowing affect or desire that particular object viz. the Apple And what is here said of Causes the same in all points is to be understood also of Atoms which constitute those causes and from whose congenial motions the Causes derive those their Motions by which they attain to be Causes To this Exception that we may compose some Response such Article 6. The justification thereof by a Respons conforme to the Physiology of Epicurus as may seem Consentaneous to the Doctrine of Epicurus and to contain somewhat of Probability at least we must usurp the liberty to assume that such is the Contexture of Atoms in the Soul or Mind its Declinant Atoms can break that Rigidity arising from other Atoms and so make its nature Flexile to any part in which Flexility the root of Liberty doth consist And therefore the mind being allected by the Species of any object is indeed carried towards that object but so that if another object shall instantly occurr whose Attraction is aequivalent it may again be invited by and carried towards that object also so that deflecting from the first it may become aequilibrated or indifferent to either part which doubtless is to be Free or Arbitrary And that the Mind being thus constituted Flexile and Indifferent doth at length determine it self rather to one then the other part this ariseth from hence that the impression of one Species is more violent then of the other and consequently that the Election succeeds upon the Apprehension of that object whose species appears either positively good or comparatively more good Finally that the Mind when it electeth or willeth any object is as it were the principal Machine or main Spring by whose motions all the Faculties and the members destinate to execution are excited and carried thither whither the Mind tendeth and
this Basis was it that many Schooolmen erected that Axiom Praevisionem Dei nihil influere in humanas actiones that the Praevision of God hath no influence coactive upon the actions of man Now what hath bin argued for the Praevision and Praenotion of God is also to be extended to his Praediction especially because t is uncontrovertible that Praediction is posterior or subsequent to the Praenotion of any Contingent yet in the womb of Futurity since what is not exactly foreknown can never be certainly foretold For which respect shall any urge upon us that the Divine Praenotion and Praediction cannot be Fallacious we shall most willingly concede their position as most indubitate because nothing can be prognosticate by God as Future which is not really Future but when it shall be thence inferred that if Peter had once the absolute power in his own hands to have not denyed and rightly using that arbitrary power had actually not denyed in that case the praenotion and praediction of his denyal by God had proved Fallacious we must reject the Illation as illegal and absurd because had not Peters denyall bin realy Future God had neither praevised nor praedicted the same For it is the Reality of its Futurition that supports the Certitude of the Praediction of any future Contingent And therefore in case Peter had bin not to deny God had as certainly praedicted that He would not deny since so the Supposition had bin quite contrary viz. that Peter rightly using his Liberty of Election would determine it not to a Negation but Affirmation Whereupon we may safely conclude 1 that Peters Abnegation was Future and 2 that God both praevised and praedicted the same upon no other Necessity but only this that Peter when it should be in his own power to determine himself to either part would then actually determine himself rather to Disclaim and Abjure then own and avow his Master Thus the Divines And thus the Philosophers Non quia Dii definitò norunt Article 6. The Solution of the same by the Philosophers proving that the dâ—finite Praenotion of future Contingents is no Cause of their definite Contingency but è contrà the definity of their Futurition the câ—use of their dâ—finite â—â—anotion Contingentia ideo illa eventura sunt Neque enim quia Dii norunt ideo necessariò eveniunt sed quia cum naturae sint anâ—ipitis aut talem aut talem exhibebunt exitum norunt Dii necessariò qualem seu utrum obtinebunt adeo ut Contingens ex sua quidem natura indefinitum sit sed respectu tamen notitiae Deorum definitum Quinetiam constat nostra quoque notitia Contingens definitò cognosci cum viz. propriè Contingens deinceps non sit sed necessariò consequitur antegressas cur fiat Causas Saith Ammonius in lib. de interpret The whole importance whereof is this That the definite praenotion of Contingents by God is in no relation the cause of their definite Contingency but their being of themselves definitely Future or their Ambiguity being to be determined to Definity of Futurition is the Cause of their praenotion by God For though a Contingent be Indefinite in respect to its own nature i. e. it is equally determinable by the Liberty of its Causes to either of two contrary Events yet in respect to the Praenotion of God it is Definite because God hath an infallible praenotion to which of two contrary Events its Causes will determine it All which may be confirmed à Minori from the Praenotion of Man experience assuring that Physicians frequently prognosticate and praedict the death of their deplored Patients even to an hour Not that their Prognosticks have any influence upon the Disease to determine it to Mortal when yet t is Dubious but that the determination of the disease from Dubious to definitely Mortal by its causes is the ground of their Prognostick Here lest we be misconceived to confound Divine and Human Article 7. The Disparity betwixt Divine and Human Praenotion Praecognition we advertise that the Praenotion of God is Infallible because à Priori i. e. He foreknows Contingents while they are yet only in Possibility and in the womb of their Causes nor to him who demands Why or How God foreknows Events while they are yet in the Dark or Nothing of Futurity can any other response be given but this that He is Omniscient i. e. God but the Praenotion or rather Praesagitition of man is Fallacious because desumed à Posteriori from Effects educed extra Causas into actual Existence Which vast Disparity may be most adaequately Exemplified Article 8. The same exemplified thus God certainly Foreknows that Peter shall fall sick and die of such or such a disease viz. a Pestilent Fever How because He foreknows that those Causes which in respect to the Ambiguity or Indifferency of their event may or may not generate an intense putrefaction and malignity in the humors of Peters body shall lose that their Possibility and determine themselves to the actual production of that particular malignant or pestilential inquinament in his blood which constituteth the essence of that disease and that the disease so generated will be so violent and inoppugnable by the force of Nature that the Temperament of Peters body being too weak to sustain such a disproportionate Encounter will thereby be dissolved and so Death shall inevitably succeed But the Physician can only conjecture that Peter may fall sick of such a malignant Fever why because He discovers that Peters praevious Intemperance hath prepared the continent Cause or Fewell for a putrid Fever and that the access of Malignity either by Contagion communicated or from an intense Corruption of humors internally kindled may according to the Aptitude of its nature seise upon that praepared fewell and Ferment it into a pestilential Fever but Definitely He doth not know that Peter shall fall sick of such a pestilential disease in regard it transcends the maximes of his Art and the Capacity of his limited Reason to foreknow whether the Possibility of such an Effect from such Causes shall be determined to Necessity Nor can He praedict that Peter being invaded with that disease shall certainly perish thereby untill the Dubiosity of the Fever be actually determined to Lethality for then from Symptoms that signify the total Succumbency or yeelding of Nature to the victorious fury of the disease he may with good warrant and honour praesage the imminent death of Peter ¶ SECT IV. THe other Capital Difficulty being erected upon a certain circumventing Socraticisme or Interrogatory Sophisme Article 1. The Second Capital Difficulty erected upon a sophism called Ignava Ratio as it respecteth both Theology and Philosophy most adaequately denominated by Cicero de Fato 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ignava Ratio an unactive Argumentation because praevailing upon the mind it stupefies the same to a perpetual Restiveness or Supinity by charging even the Thoughts of every man upon the
assertors of Providence is manifest from that saying of Cotta reproving Balbus an eminent Stoick apud Cicer. de natur Deor. 3. At enim minora dii neque agellos singulorum nec viticulas prosequuntur nec si uredo aut grando quidpiam nocuit id Iovi animadvertendum fuit nec in regnis quidem reges omnia minima curant sic enim dicitis c. And lastly that the Academicks and Scepticks were of the 5. The Academicks and Scepticks same perswasion however being carried against the stream of all Affirmative learning by the contrary tide of their own Negative humor and obliged to fall foul upon all truths in defence of their own affected Nescience they have been observed to have had some light skirmishes with the Champians of Providence Nor need we acquiesce in the bare affirmation hereof while to any man that shall with equanimity and attention compare their tender arguments against the opinion of general Providence with those more sinewy and vehement reasons of their profest neutrality in many other notions there will offer it self a fair ground for more then conjecture that they purposely contrived them soft gentle and dissoluble that so they might seem neither to quit their habit of contradiction nor yet to dare the subversion of that catholick position to which all men those few of the black guard of Hell whom we lately nominated excepted had subscribed and which the dictates of their own domestick oracle Reason had confirmed as sacred and uncontrollable To which we may annex the testimony of Gassendus who in Animadvers in lib. 10. Diogen Laert. de Physiologia Epicuri pag. 731. speaking conjunctively of both those sects saies thus ut argument atisunt adversus Providentiam sic opinioni de providentia suam probabilitatem fecerunt neque saltem ea fronte fuerunt ut esse providentiam absolutè inficiarentur Now to take the just dimensions of this Argument let us allow it like Janus to have two faces and then survey the aspect Article 4. A review of the induction and the Argument found to be Apodictical on one side and on the other only perswasive of each a part On one hand it looks Absolute and Apodictical on the other only Perswasive Apodictical since the universality of any beleif such especially as hath ever been attested even by those who have made the profoundest search into its fundamentals and streyned every nerve in the whole body of reason to demolish it is no obscure proof that it must be one of those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Implantate Notions which the same hand that made our nature hath engraven on the table of our minds and lest it not in the power of our depraved Wills totally to obliterate That there are some Implantate Notions no man who hath but learned the Alphabet of his own Nature will dispute Nor is it less certain that all Philosophers have decreed Anticipation which Aristotle in 1. Poster 1. calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 praeexistentem cognitionem and Cicero hath interpreted 1 de Nat. Deor. notionem menti insitam anteceptam quandam in animo informationem to be the Touch-stone of verity nay Empiricus himself forgot his custome of Scepticisme when he came to this point and grew positive advers Gramm advers Ethic. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that no man could so much as enquire or doubt of any thing without Praenotion And that the Notion of the worlds regiment by universal Providence is one of those propositions Quae sunt in nobis adeo antiquae ut iis ex quo esse sentire coepimus evaserimus informati which like letters carved on the bark of a young plant are impressed upon our very Intellect and grow up together with us is already proved collaterally and upon induction in our Demonstration of the Existence of God for therein it is cleared that the excellent Idea which we have of the Supreme Beeing contains all Perfections whatever and among the rest that noble Attribute Creator which to him that shall attentively consider the nature of Duration must sound one and the same thing with Conservator or Governour Only perswasive since humane Auctority considered perse is but an inartificial Argument and binds not but when consorted with others more rational into one syndrome or multiplex demonstration not is the concentration of all mens minds in one and the same assertion an infallible Criterion of its verity For the judgement of man in generall lyes open to the encroachments of Error and the common infirmity of humane nature is not only discoverable in the gross and visible delusions of vulgar heads whose business is to beleive not examine but hath frequently broken out upon the soundest brains and confest it self Epidemical in the absurd mistakes of the greatest Criticks of Truth especially in the promotion and transmission of opinions haereditary and traditional SECT III. LEt us not therefore entrust the supportation of so weighty a Truth to that fragile reed of Auctority but give our selves Article 1. Gods General Providence demonstrated by the Idea of his Nature reflected on our thoughts liberty to imagine that no man ever beleived or asserted an universal Providence and having thus devested our minds of all Praesumption or Anticipation expose them as tables newly derased to receive the pure impressions or sincere documents of the Light of Nature converting our contemplations First upon the Nature of God and thence upon the most exact order and confederacy of all secondary causes in the world First I say let us set our reason a work upon the nature of the First Cause or Eternal Being and order our cogitations thus The same demonstration whereby the mind of man is convicted of the Existence of God doth also at the same time violently but naturally conclude his nature to be so accomplisht in all Perfections as to be above all Access or Addition For manifest it is that by the terme God every man doth understand something to which no perfection is wanting and should it be granted possible that the mind of man could conceive any perfection more then what is comprehended in the idea which it holds of the nature of God yet still would that thing to which it could ascribe that perfection be God Since t is impossible to cogitate any perfection which is not the essential propriety of some Nature and to think any Nature more perfect then the Divine plainly absurd because we conceive that to be most perfect or else we do not conceive it to be God God and Absolute Perfection being one and the same thing and ordinarily conceived as one notion Now to be so insinitely Wise Potent and Good as to order all things in the world to the best to regulate and predetermine the operations of all second Causes to keep Nature her self sober and in tune and so prevent those discords which otherwise would in a moment succeed to the reduction of all to a greater confusion
then that of the Chaos in a word to conserve all things in existence this no man will deny to be a Perfection since we define the perfection of man by his abilities sor dominion i. e. in the judgement of our reason every man is esteemed by so much the more perfect by how much the more generous august liberal prudent and benigne mind he is endued withall and by inference by how much the more digne he is to bear rule over others Therefore is this Perfection Mundo providere seu singulis rebus consulere to take care of the world and provide for the subsistence of every single entity of necessity to be ascribed to God For though that obsolet fallacy that business imports disquiet and disquiet contradicts sâ—licity be retrived upon us and our reason seem captived in the snare of this conclusion That this Perfection as it stands in relation to Divinity must be an imperfection as being point blanck repugnant to its nature which cannot at once be superlatively happy and yet subject to multiplicity of business yet we may soon redeem it to the liberty of truth by conceiving some nature wherein these two seeming contraries may be reconciled i. e. the Procuration of affaires may shake hands with extreme beatitude Nor do we conceive an impossibility herein because even among men we daily find that those Negotiations which are an oppression to a low narrow and unpractised Wit are but the pleasant diversions and familiar recreations of a sublime capacious and polypragmatical and by consequence that Nature which is able to sustain the administration of affairs infinite in number and variety without detriment to its complet happiness must be conceded by incomputable degrees of transcendency more perfect then that whose quiet must suffer diminution by the distraction of cares Wherefore let us not suffer our cogitations to acquiesce in this imperfect but vigorously advance to that most perfect Nature whose propriety it is to be at once both supremely Provident and supremely Beate And since we conceive God to be such it is of necessity inevitable that we grant Vniversal Providence to be his proper Attribute For Confirmation or more properly requisite Explanation for sure no man whose intellectuals are not suppressed by that intolerable tyrant profest Incredulity can longer doubt of this let us reflect upon our Idea of the Deity and therein we shall discover that t is impossible for the minde of man to conceive the import of this word God and not in the same numerical notion to understand him to be most Wise most Potent most Good or in abstracto infinite Wisdome infinite Power infinite Goodness assimilated or rather identified into one simple eternal essence For undoubtedly our minds would speculate the Idea of a poor inconsiderable and imperfect Divinity if they conceived it subject to circumscription and apprehended his Intellection so narrow as not actually to comprehend all things his Power so restrained as to know Impossibility his Goodness so scant and shallow as to be exhausted in a partial diffusion or limited by the admixture of Envy i. e. withdrawn from or denied unto any of the works of his hand out of a designe to delight or glory in their infelicity Now if God be infinitely wise he must be Omniscient and Article 2. The same particularly supported by that trinity of Attributes viz. his consequently must understand not only the simple and naked Forms of all natures in the Universe but hold also a full and clear theory of their Essential proprieties how and by what kind of activities they operate toward the satisfaction of their praedestinate ends and in what method they may be most conveniently disposed to maintain the order and harmony of the whole and so 1. Infinite Wisdome must know and exercise the due administration of all things in this vast Common-wealth I say must know and exercise for if he understood the politie or method of the worlds Gubernation only Contemplatively then would not his Intellection be complet and absolute in all points and we should have been compelled to recurre to our former device of cogitating some other nature more perfect which might be actually possessed of both the Theorical and Practical Intelligence Again since Sapience doth consist in and manifest it self chiefly by Action and the real administration of difficult and important affairs with what shadow of reason can we argue God to be most Sapient if we conceive him to be Idle devoyd of all action and taking care of nothing Secondly if God be infinitely Potent then must he be Omnipotent and so to his power there is no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or impossibility 2. Infinite Power But how can we apprehend this aright unless we first grant that having produced all things and endowed them with faculties respectively inservient to their conducement to the satisfaction of the general end he doth through all the independent subdivisions of time i. e. constantly moderate their activities in full conformity to the prudent rules of his own Will and how can this be done unless we allow him to have a hand in all operations and that both Causes and effects doe so fully and wholly depend upon him that they can have neither Existence nor Motion without the assent and coefficiency of his Beneplacet Again Action is the Pathognomonick or proper manifest of Power nay in precise and orthodox logick they are Correlatives or twins that are â—orn live and dye together and we are not now to learn that Gods prime scope in the Creation was to have an opportunity for the manifestation of his excellencies if so can Inactivity declare Supreme Power or a cessation from acting not induce a suspicion of Lassitude and imbecillity Lastly if God be infinitely good it necessarily followes Goodness being Communicative that all natures must be sensible 3. Infinite Goodness of by participating that his inexhaustible goodness And with what unpardonable incogitancy can that be asserted while we opinion that he doth concenter his goodness and when he hath created so many excellent natures take no care or make no provision for their welbeing but abandon them to the impendent misery of confusion Might we not justly censure him of Malevolence or Envy if he should withhold the communication of his perpetual Providence from the works of his own hands which must unavoydably perish by the Antipathies of their Constitutions and relaps into their primitive nothing in that moment when he should intermit his act of Conservation Nay so essential is the constant oversight and tuition of the Creator to the subsistence of the Creature that some contemplative heads have hereupon hinted a conjecture that nothing shall go to the dissolution of all at the period of time but the meer Cessation of Providence or the dereliction of Nature to the necessary discord of her several peices And thus hath the clue of Gods chief Attributes chief in his relation to the World in a
more both of Imprudence and Inconstancy it must import to play the uncircumspect Sophister with those who as our Adversaries themselves affirme stood possessed with a full perswasion that the Term of every mans life was absolutely and without any respect to his future piety or Impiety predetermined I profess sincerely I am yet to be perswaded that any Credulity can be so pedantique and slavish as to entertain a beleif that even Man I forbear to say God can thus openly and detectibly dissimulate with any the most stupid and indiscreet person alive unless he be first resolved to expose himself to the just scorn and derision of all men and by this loose and childish jugling forfeit that reputation which he had acquired by his former grave and oraculous treaties and the just performance of all Articles to which he had subscribed 'T is one thing to admit that the Holy Ghost doth sometimes descend to discourse in the stammering and amphibological Phrase of man when he is pleased to hint unto us those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or ineffable Mysteries which are too fine to be spun into words by the gross fingers of flesh and are notions reserved to entertain the Soul when enfranchized from the bonds of Corporeity such are those glances whereby he affords us a dark landskip of the New Jerusalem and allegorical description of the joyes and glories of the Eternal Life an idea of the majesty of his incomprehensible Essence and three distinct Subsistences in one indivisible Existence c. and a far different nay contrary to say that he doth speak Anthropopathically and conform to our unequall capacities when he promiseth those things which do not only not transcend our faculties of comprehension but are familiar to our knowledg nay such as the neerest concernment of our nature requires us fully and perspicuously to know And such is the quality of those Blessings which the Bounty of Providence hath by promise assured unto the Virtuous in order to the demulsion and dulcification of the sharp condition of this life and particularly that of longevous subsistence upon earth To conclude the Spirit or Form of a Promise doth consist in this that they to whom the promise is made do understand the good therein specified to be really bona fide in specie intended to be performed by him who made the promise Now if there arise any doubt whether or no that promise be repugnant to a verity formerly declared then doth the force and sanction together with the Dignity thereof totally vanish and become voyd Our Adversaries have rejoyned that God doth therefore promise Longevity to obsequious Children because he hath formerly decreed to qualifie their particular Constitutions with respective Durability But alas this subterfuge neither dissolves the Difficulty nor prevents the Doubt For if his Decree concerning their Longevity be Absolute devoyd of all Suppositionality and suspended upon no respect to his Prevision of their obedience no reason can discover what Force or Energy the promise can pretend unto from the performance of the Condition required Again how can that Promise 〈◊〉 way of invitation or allurement affect those who are already confirmed that what the promise imports is formerly by the positive and non-conditionate Will of God made inevitable and hath the Possibility of its Futurition determined to precise Necessity In fine the Postulation of that Condition can neither consist with the Eternal Identity of God that promises nor effectually move those to whom he makes the promise to endeavour the Consequution of that ample reward of filial obedience for his Decree concerning the Term of their life doth and shall forever stand firm and immote whether the Condition be performed or not The last Testimony they have essayed to extort from us is the Article 8. The sixth Testimony cleared from 4. Exceptions Instance of Ezekiah and this by a Fourfold Cavillation 1 By this Excuse Singulare aliquod Exemplum non evertere regulam that one single denormous Example is not sufficient to evert the general obligation of a law or one swallow makes no summer This Exception I confess might have had some colour or slender pretext of Validity had not our Opponents themselves totally excluded it by asserting that the immutable law of Destiny was equally extended to all and every individual person from Adam down to us For most certain it is that God never limited his free Omnipotence by any fixt law or bound up his own hands with the same setled Constitutions whereby he circumscribed the definite activity and duration of his Creatures it being the Prerogative of his Nature to know no Impossibility but to be able to act either above or against the statutes of his Deputy whensoever and upon what subject and to what end soever he pleases But I have no warrant to beleive that among the Propugnators of Fate any one hath deviated inro so remote an Alogie as to opinion that the Lots of all men are not delivered out of one and the same common urne but that the Decrees concerning the Destinies of some particular persons are not so definitive precise and immoveable as those of all others in generall 2 By this Response that under the seeming Absoluteness of the Prophets Sentence Morieris Thou shalt dye there lay concealed a tacite Hypothesis which was this Nisi seria poenitudine te ad Deum convertas unless by serious and profound repentance thou shalt mortify the old man of sin and apply thy self wholly to the Mercies of God Against this mistaken plea our defence shall be that it wants the principal inducement to beleif and so can afford no satisfaction at all For besides this that it quadrates neither to their First Exception nor their Thesis concerning the Immobility of Destiny what Logick can tolerate the induction of an Hypothetical upon a Categorical Proposition or more expresly how can any Condition be comprehended under that message which by a definitive and peremptory decree and such as carried no respect to the performance or non-performance of any condition whatever tels the K. in down right terms that the date of his life was now expired and that the severe Publican Death stood ready at the door of his chamber within some few hours to exact from him the common tribute of Nature Subordinata non pugnant is an Axiome I well know and am ready to receive a challenge from any singularity that dares question the universality of its truth but that a condiiional Decree can be subordinate to an Absolute I am bold to deny nor need I goe far for an Argument to prove the impossibility thereof the very Antithesis of those notions Absolute and Conditional sufficiently declaring as much To take the just dimensions of this Cloud every Condition is moveable upon the hinge of Indefinity or Uncertainty as being suspended upon an uncertain and mutable Cause viz. the Arbitrary Election of mans Free will insomuch that the Event thereof cannot be known
nay not unto the Omniscience of God who is the only Cardiognostes and sees beyond our very Essences so long as it hangs in suspence or indecision by reason of the Indifferency or non-determination of its Cause i. e. while it is not determined to either part by the Actual Volition of mans will But as for an Absolute decree that cannot but be Certain and Immutable as being constitute without and antecedent to any Prevision of a Condition that is to be or hath bin performed or is not to be or hath not bin performed 3 By insinuating that God made use of this sharp Commination in order to the more Expedite and effectual reduction of the K. to Penitence But alas this also is a broken reed and he shall fall into the ditch of Error who relies thereon For who can be perswaded that this Commination could be serious and in earnest that must not at the same time dissolve the rigour and immutability of Gods decree concerning the fatal Term of the K s. life or how could it be serious if it were fully constituted from all Eternity that the K. should not die till full 15. years after the Sentence This is a pure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and something that no man can comprehend For to comminate suddain death to him whom our Adversaries acknowledge reserved by the law of Destiny till the complete expiration of his prefixt Term of life is not to comminate in earnest but in jest and argue the God of Truth of Dissimulation Again what Efficacy or inforcing Virtue could that Commination have over the Affections of Ezekiah if he firmly beleived that he should not could not dye before the precise term of his life constituted and made intransible from Eternity Assuredly if so he had no just cause either to complain of or fear the abscission of his days 4 By recurring to this their last refuge Deum hac ratione palam facere voluisse quam Regi ab aeterno designarat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that God was pleased to take this course for the promulgation of that Longevity which he had from eternity designed to Ezekiah This is more impertinent and less satisfactory then any of the precedént Exceptions For extremely ridiculous it is to opinion that God would by a Commination suspended on a condition or by a hypothetical decree make that known which long before he had by an Absolute Decree without any condition or prevision of any condition constituted firme and immoveable Unworthy and disparaging thoughts both of the Wisdome and Justice of the Supreme Being doth that unhappy man entertain who ascribes unto it the making of Decrees subordinate disparate and irreconcileable That Sacred omniscient omnipotent Agent as himself makes nothing in vaine so would he have us make him our Exemplar and doe no action but what points at some certain end and conduces both to our benefit and the last of ends his Glory But in vain had he promised in vain threatned had he either promised or threatned those things which his own irrevocable Decree had formerly made immutable which must of necessity had they never bin promised or threatned have come to pass in their predetermined opportunity or such to whose Existence it was wholly and absolutely necessary that that very thing under which the promise or commination was made should be effected by such a power to which no other power can resist And this we hope at least is sufficient to the ample justification of our opinions right to those Three appropriate and Convincing Testimonies of the Mobility of the Term of mans life desumed from holy Writ ¶ SECT IV. IT remains only that we endeavour to wind our reason out of Article 1. The necessity of our enquiry into the mystery of Predestination in order to the solution of the present difficulty and the Fatists grand Argument that profound abyss of Predestination of which the Apostle though he had the advantage of all other men in this that he had the eye of his Soul illuminated by beams deradiated immediately from the Soul of Light did yet excuse himself for his non-comprehension with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into which the solution of this grand difficulty hath unavoidably precipitated it for the strongest hold which the Defendants of Absolute Fatality have left them to retreat unto is erected upon this Foundation It makes no materiall difference say they whether the Prescience of God be conceived precedent to his Preordination of any future Event and so Predestination be founded upon Prevision or on the contrary this Praeordination precedent to his Praescience and so Praedestination be the basis of Paervision for from the concession of either it follows of absolute necessity that the Term of mans life in individuo must be fixt and intransible We answer Article 2. The refutation thereof by the conciliation of the infallibility of Gods Praenotion to the indetermination of mans free will to the actual election of Good or Evil. That the Consequence indeed ought to be admitted as firme and impregnable For this Praescience whether it praeced or succed Divine Praedestination is and must be ever certain praecise and infallible or so supposed to be at least and therefore must the Term of mans life be constituted certain precise and immutable ex necessitate si non consequentis saltem consequentiae by necessity if not of the Consequent yet of the consequence i. e. if not from the Virtue or Efficiency yet from the Hypothesis or Conditionality of that Praescience For no Sceptick can disallow of this Consequence if God doth infallibly foreknow that this and no other shall be the Term of my life ergo this and no other shall be the Term of my life But this is not the point at which our inquiry is levelled Manifest it is aswell from our precedent discourse as from the Condition of the subject that these two Propositions are not repugnant each to other viz. The Term of mans life is fixt and immutable in respect to the infallibility of Gods Praescience and the Term of mans life is moveable in respect to our right use or abuse of the Liberty of our Will Though I confess with the great Mersennus that the apparent discord betwixt the infallibility of Gods Prenotion and the indetermination of mans Free Will to the actual election of good or evil hath bin the rock against which many the greatest wits of all Ages and Religions have bin shipwrackt in their perswasions of the irresistible enforcement of Destiny To extricate our judgements out of this maze let us remember and adhaere unto that excellent Axiome of the most and most learned of the School-men Praevisionem Dei nihil influere i◠nostras actiones that the Praevision of God hath no influence upon the actions of man nor upon the operation of the remedies applyed by the Physician to the cure of diseases but presupposeth both the one and the other For in