Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	law_n	nature_n	reason_n	3,046	5	5.4661	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70182	Two choice and useful treatises the one, Lux orientalis, or, An enquiry into the opinion of the Eastern sages concerning the praeexistence of souls, being a key to unlock the grand mysteries of providence in relation to mans sin and misery : the other, A discourse of truth / by the late Reverend Dr. Rust ... ; with annotations on them both.	Rust, George, d. 1670. Discourse of truth.; More, Henry, 1614-1687. Annotations upon the two foregoing treatises.; Glanvill, Joseph, 1636-1680. Lux orientalis.	1682 (1682)	Wing G815; Wing G833; Wing M2638; ESTC R12277	226,950	535

and Result of the Form A Spirit is one simple Specifick Essence or substance and that true Specifickness in its Essence is the real and intimate Form or Conceptus formalis thereof but that which we know not as I noted above out of Julius Scaliger though we know the essential and inseparable Attributes thereof which may be many though in one simple specifick Substance as there are many Attributes in God immediately and inseparably resulting from his most simple specifick Nature Tenthly Yea you compound saith he Pe●etrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie with a quite different notion life and the faculty of motion which is truly the Form and is one thing and not compounded of notions so different as Consistence and Vertue or Power Ans I say again as I said before that neither Penetrability nor Indiscerpibility nor Life nor Motion are the specifick Form it self of a Spirit which is a simple Substance but the Fruits and Results of this specifick Form and all these have a proper Cognation with one another as agreeing in Immateriality or Spirituality and how the common sagacitie of mankind has presaged that the most noble functions of life are performed by that which is most subtile and most one as Penetrability and Indiscerpibility makes the consistence of a Spirit to be the Doctor has noted in his Discourse of the true notion of a Spirit Mr. Baxter in reading Theological Systems may observe That Attributes as much differing among themselves as these are given to the most simple Essence of God Eleventhly You say says he pag. 82. Life intrinsecally issues from this Immaterial Substance But the Form is concreated with it and issues not from it Ans I grant that the Form is concreated with the Spirit For a Spirit is nothing else but such a specifick simple Substance or Essence the Specifickness of whose nature onely is its real intimate Form And if we could reach by our Conception that very Form it self it would be but the Conceptus inadaequatus of one simple Substance and be the true Conceptus formalis thereof and the Conceptus fundamentalis to speak in Mr. Baxters or Dr. Glissons language would be Substance in general which is contracted into this Species by this real intimate Form which both considered together being but one simple Essence they must needs be created together according to that Idea of a Spirit which God has conceived in his eternal mind And life will as naturally and necessarily issue from such a Species or Specifick Essence or from Substance contracted into such a Species by the abovesaid Form as Mobility does issue from the form of a Globe From whence it is plainly understood how Life does intrinsecally issue from immaterial Substance nor is the Form it self but the Fruit thereof And as it were but trifling to say that the power of easie rolling every way on a Plain were the very Form of a Globe the word Power or Vertue being but a dark loose general dilute term and which belongs to every thing and is restrained onely by its Operation and Object but it is the Form or Figure of the Globe that is the immediate cause that that Vertue or Power in general is so restrained to this easie rolling so it is in Mr. Baxters pretended Form of a Spirit which he makes Virtus vitalis a power of living Power there is such a dark dilute term loose and general But that it is determined to life it is by that intimate specifick Form which we know not but onely this we know That it is to the Power of living as the Figure of a Globe is to the Power of easie rolling and that in neither one can be without the other There must be a Specifick Essence which is the root of those Powers Properties or Operations from whence we conclude distinct Species of things For 't is too coarse and slovenly to conceit that these are clarted on them but the Specifick Powers arise immediately and inseparably from the Specifick Nature of the thing else why might they not be other powers as well as these Twelfthly and lastly pag. 32. But do you verily believe saith he that Penetrability or Subtility is a sufficient Efficient or Formal cause of Vitalitie Perception and Appetite and so of Intellection and Volition I hope you do not Ans I hope so of the Doctor too and before this I hoped that Mr. Baxter had more insight into the nature of a Formal cause and into the Laws of Logick than once to imagine that any one in his Wits could take Penetrability to be the Formal cause of Intellection and Volition For then every Spirit being Penetrable every Spirit even of a plant at least of the vilest Animalonium would have Intellection and Volition Nor for the same reason can any body think that Penetrability is a sufficient Efficient cause of Intellection and Volition Nor is it so much as the Efficient cause of Vitality Perception Appetite much less the Formal So infinitely is Mr. Baxter out in these things But the case stands thus The Substance of that species of things which we call a Spirit and is so by that intimate specifick Form which I named before this substance is the cause of Vitality in such a sense as the round Form of a Globe or any matter of that Form is quatenus of that Form the cause of its own rolling Mobilitie I say therefore that Vitality is as immediate and necessarie a Fruit or Effect of the real and intimate Form of a Spirit as that easie mobilitie is of the Form of a Sphere or Globe And such a kind of Vitality Vegetative Sensitive Intellective of such a Species of Spirit These kinds of Vitalities are the Fruits or Effects necessarie and immediate of the abovesaid so specificated Substances that is to say they are immediately Self-living and all of them Penetrable and Indiscerpible of themselves quatenus Spirits all these essential attributes arising from the simple essence or specificated substance of every Spirit of what Classis soever created according to its own Idea eternally shining in the Divine Intellect As for example In the Idea of a Plastick Spirit onely Penetrability Indiscerpibility and Plastick Vitality whereby it is able to organize Matter thus and thus are not three Essences clarted upon some fourth Essence or glewed together one to another to make up such an Idea But the Divine Intellect conceives in itself one simple specifick Essence immediately and intrinsecally of it self indued with these essential Properties or Attributes So that when any thing does exist according to this Idea those three properties are as immediately Consequential to it and as effectually as Mobility to the Form of a Globe It is the specifick Substance that is the necessary Source of them and that acts by them as its own connate or natural instruments fitted for the ends that the eternal Wisdom and Goodness of God has conceived or contrived them for For it is manifest that those essential

Lucifer And for my body 't is most likely that never an Atom of his ever came at me or if any did he was no cause on 't Besides that of it self is neither capable of sense sin guilt nor punishment or 2. Admitting that we become thus obnoxious assoon as in the body upon the account of his default How doth it comport with the divine Justice in one moment to make such excellent Creatures and in the next to render them so miserable by thrusting them into a condition so fatally obnoxious especially since they were capable of living and acting in bodies more perfect and more accommodate to their new undefiled natures Certainly could they have been put to their choice whether they would have come into being upon such termes they would rather have been nothing for ever And God doth not use to make his Creatures so as that without their own fault they shall have cause to unwish themselves Hitherto in this second general Argument I have dealt against those that believe and ass●rt the original depravity of our natures which those that deny may think themselves not pin●●'t by or concern'd in Since they think they do no such dishonour to the divine Attributes while they assert that we were not made in so deplorable and depraved a condition but have so made our selves by our voluntary aberrations But neither is this a fit Plaister for the sore supposing our souls to be immediately created and so sent into these bodies For still it seems to be a diminutive and disparaging apprehen●ion of the infinite and immense Goodness of God that he should detrude such excellent creatures as our souls into a state so hazardous * wherein he seeth it to be ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt and defile themselves and so make themselves miserable here and to eternity hereafter And certainly be we as indifferent naturally to good and evil as can be supposed yet great are the disadvantages to virtue that all men unavoidably meet with in this state of imperfection For considering that our infant and growing age is an age of sense in which our appetites and passions are very strong and our reasons weak and scarce any thing but a chain of imaginations 't is I say great odds but that we should be carried to inordinacy and exceed the bounds the divine laws have set us So that our lower powers of sense and passions using to have the head will grow strong and impetuous and thus 't is an hundred to one but we shall be rooted in vice before we come to the maturity of our reasons or are capable of the exercise of virtue And woful experience teacheth us that most men run so far before they consider whither they are a-going that the care and diligence of all their lives after will scarce reclaim them Besides the far greatest part of the world are led into wickedness and all kinds of debauchery by corrupt and vitious education And 't is not difficult to observe what an enormous strength bad education hath to deprave and pervert well dispos'd inclinations Which things consider'd this way also methinks reflects a Disparagement on the Divine Attributes Since by creating souls daily and putting them into such bodies and such parts of the world as his infinite Wisdom sees will debauch them and pervert them from the ways of righteousness and happiness into those of vice and misery he deals with them less mercifully than a parent among us would with his Off-spring And to suppose God to have less goodness than his degenerate creatures is to have very narrow apprehensions of his perfections and to rob him of the honour due to his Attributes 3 It hath been urged with good probability by great and wise Sages that 't is an unbecoming apprehension of the Majesty on high * to suppose him assistant to unlawful and unclean coitions by creating a soul to animate the impure foetus And to think It is in the power of brutish lust to determine Omvipotence to create a Soul whensoever a couple of unclean Adulterers shall think fit to join in their bestial pleasures is methinks to have a very mean apprehension of the divine Majesty and Purity This is to make him the worst of Servants by supposing him to serve his creature's vices to wait upon the vilest actions and to engage the same infinite Power that made the world for the perfecting what was begun by dissolute Wantons This Argument was used of old by pious and learned Origen and hath been imployed in the same service since by his modern defendents But I foresee an evasion or two that possibly with some may stand for an answer the removal of which will clear the business It may be pretended that God's attending to create souls for the supply of such generations is but an act of his justice for the detection and consequently punishment of such lawless offenders which therefore will be no more matter of disparagement than the waiting of an Officer of justice to discover and apprehend a Malefactour But this Subterfuge cannot elude the force of the Argument for it hath no place at all in most Adulteries yea great injustice and injury is done many times by such illegitimate births the Child of a Stranger being by this means admitted to carry away the inheritance from the lawful off-spring Besides God useth not ordinarily to put forth his Almighty power to discover secret miscarriages except sometimes for very remarkable and momentous ends but leaves hidden iniquities to be the objects of his own castigations And if discovery of the fault be the main end of such creations * methinks that might be done at a cheaper rate that should not have brought so much inconvenience with it or have exposed his own innocent and harmless off-spring to undeserv'd Reproach and Infamy But further it may be suggested that it is no more indecent for God to create souls to furnish those unlawful Generations than it is that a man should be nourisht by meat that he hath unlawfully come by or that the Cattle which he hath stoln should ingender with his own But the difference of these instances from the case in hand is easily discernable in that the nourishment and productions spoken of proceed in a set orderly way of natural causes which work fatally and necessarily without respect to moral circumstances and there is no reason it should be in the power of a sinful creature to engage his Maker to pervert or stop the course of nature when he pleaseth But in the case of creating souls God is supposed to act by explicite and immediate Will the suspending of which in such a case as this is far different in point of credit and decorum from his altering the setled Laws he hath set in the Creation and turning the world upside down I might further add 4ly That * it seems very incongruous and unhandsome to suppose that God should create two souls for the supply

at first view that such variety of distinct and orderly representations should be made at once upon a single atom or the whole image is imprest upon every point and then there would be as many objects as there are points in this matter and so every thing would be infinitely multiplied in our del●sive senses Or finally every part of the soul must receive a proportionable part of the image and then how could those parts communicate their perceptions to each other and what should perceive the whole This Argument is excellently managed by the great Dr. H. More in whose writings this fond Hypothesis is fully triumpht over and defeated Since therefore the very lowest degree of perception single and simple sense is incompatible to meer body or matter we may safely conclude that the higher and nobler operations of imagining remembring reasoning and willing must have a cause and source that is not Corporeal Thus therefore those that build the souls traduction upon this ground of its being only body and modified matter are disappointed in the foundation of their conclusion But 2 Another sort of assertors of traduction teach the Soul to be spiritual and incorporeal and affirm that by a vertue deriv'd from the first benediction it can propagate its like one soul emitting another as the body doth the matter of Generation The manner of which spiritual production useth to be illustrated by one Candle's lighting another and a mans begetting a thought in anothers mind without diminishing of his own This is the most favourable representation of this opinion that I can think on And yet if we nearly consider it it will appear most absu●d and unphilosophical For if one soul produce another 't is either out of nothing or something praeexistent If the former 't is an absolute creation which all philosophy concludes impossible for a Creature And if it be pretended that the Parent doth it not by his proper natural virtue but by a strength imparted by God in the first blessing Increase and multiply so that God is the prime agent he only the instrument I rejoin that then either God hath thereby obliged himself to put forth a new and extraordinary power in every such occasion distinct from his influence in the ordinary ●ourse of nature Or else 2 he only concurrs by his providence as he doth to our other natural actions we having this Ability bestowed upon our very natures He that asserts the first runs upon all the rocks that he would avoid in the former Hypothesis of continual Creation and God will be made the cause of the sin and misery of his spotless and blameless Creatures which absurdities he cannot shun by saying that God by interposing in such productions doth but follow the rules of acting which he first made while man was innocent For certainly infinite goodness would never have tyed up it self to such Laws of working as he foresaw would presently bring unavoidable inconvenience misery and ruine upon the best part of his workmanship And for the second way it supposeth God to have no more to do in this action than in our eating and drinking Consequently here is a creation purely natural And methinks if we have so vast a power to bring the ends of contradictories together something out of nothing which some deny to Omnipotence it self 't is much we cannot conserve in being our Creature so produced nor our own intimate selves since conservation is not more than Creation And 't is much that in other things we should give such few specimens of so vast an ability or have a power so divine and excellent and no faculty to discern it by Again 2 if the Soul be immediately produced out of nothing be the agent who it will God or the Parent it will be pure and sinless For supposing our parents to be our Creators they make us but as natural agents * and so can only transmit their natural qualities but not their moral pravities Wherefore there can no better account be given from this way how the Soul is so debauched and infected assoon as it comes into the body than in the former and therefore it fails in the main end it is designed for Thus we see then that the traduction of the Soul supposing it to be produced out of nothing cannot be defended Nor doth the second general way yield any more relief to this Hypothesis For if it be made of any thing praeexistent it is either of matter or spirit The former we have undermined and overthrown already in what was said against those that hold it to be body And if it be made out of any Spiritual substance it must be the soul of the parent except we will revive the old enthusiastick conceit of its being a particle of the divine essence which supposition is * against the nature of an immaterial being a chief property of which is to be indiscerpible Nor do the similitudes I mentioned in the proposal of the Hypothesis at all fit the business for one candle lights another * by separable emissions that pass from the flame of that which is kindled to the wick of the other And flame is a body whose parts are in continual flux as a river But the substance of the soul is stable permanent and indivisible which quite makes it another case And for a mans informing anothers mind with a thought which he had not conceived it is not a production of any substance but only an occasioning him to exert an operation of his mind which he did not before And therefore makes nothing to the illustrating how a Soul can produce a Soul a substance distinct and without it self Thus we see how desperate the case of the souls original is in the Hypothesis of Traduction also But yet to let it have fair play we 'l give it leave to plead it's cause and briefly present what is most material in its behalf There are but two reasons that I can think of worth the naming 1 A man begets a man and a man he is not without a Soul therefore 't is pretended that the soul is begotten But this argument is easily detected of palpable sophistry and is as if one should argue a man is mortal therefore his Soul is mortal or is fat and lusty therefore his Soul is so The absurdity of which kinds of reasoning lyes in drawing that into a strict and rigorous affirmation which is only meant according to vulgar speech and is true only in some remarkable respect or circumstance Thus we say A man begets a man because he doth the visible and only sensible part of him The vulgar to whom common speech is accommodate not taking so much notice of what is past the ken of their senses And therefore Body in ordinary speaking is oft put for Person as here man for the body Sometimes the noblest part is used for the whole as when 't is said 70 Souls went down with Jacob into Egypt therefore such arguments as

degree of exercise of one faculty are seldom if ever as well provided in the rest 'T is a common and daily observation that those that are of most heightned and strong Imaginations are defective in Judgment and the faculty of close reasoning And your very larg and capacious Memories have seldom or never any great share of either of the other perfections Nor do the deepest Judgments use to have any thing considerable either of Memory or Phancy And as there are fair instances even in this state of the inconsistence of the faculties in the highest exercise so also are there others that suggest untous 3 That by the same degrees that some Faculties fail in their strength and vigour others gain and are improved We know that the shutting up of the senses is the letting loose and inlarging of the Phancy And we seldom have such strong imaginations waking as in our dreams in the silence of our other saculties As the Sun recedes the Moon and Stars discover themselves and when it returns they draw in their baffled beams and hide their heads in obscurity But to urge what is more close and pressing It is an unerring remarque that those that want the use of some one natural part or faculty are wont to have very liberal amends made them by an excellency in some others Thus those that nature hath deprived of sight use to have wonderfully tenacious memories And the deaf and dumb have many times a strange kind of sagacity and very remarkable mechanical ingenies Not to mention other instances for I 'le say no more than I must needs Thus then experience gives us incouraging probability of the truth of the Theorem asserted And in its self 't is very reasonable for as we have seen the Soul being an active nature is always propending to the exercising of one faculty or other and that to the utmost it is able and yet being of a limited capacity it can imploy but one in hight of exercise at once which when it loseth and abates of its strength and supream vigour some other whose improvement was all this while hindred by this its ingrossing Rival must by consequence begin now to display it self and awaken into a more vigorous actuation so that as the former loseth the latter proportionably gaineth And indeed 't is a great instance of the divine wisdom that our faculties are made in so regular and equilibrious an order For were the same powers still uppermost in the greatest hight of activity and so unalterably constituted there would want the beauty of variety and the other faculties would never act to that pitch of perfection that they are capable of There would be no Liberty of Will and consequently no Humane Nature Or if the Higher Powers might have lessen'd and fail'd without a proportionable increase of the lower and they likewise have been remitted without any advantage to the other faculties the Soul might then at length fall into an irrecoverable recess and inactivity But all these inconveniences are avoided by supposing the principle we have here insisted on And it is the last that I shall mention Briefly then and if it may be more plainly the higher faculties are those where by the Soul acts towards spiritual and immaterial objects and the lower whereby it acts towards the Body Now it cannot with equal vigour exercise it self both ways together and consequently the more it is taken up in the higher operations the more prompt and vigorous it will be in these exercises and less so about those that concern the body è Converso Thus when we are very deeply ingaged in intellectual contemplations our outward senses are in a manner shrunk up and cramped And when our senses are highly exercised and gratified those operations monopolize and imploy us Nor is this less observable in relation to the Plastick For frequent and severe Meditations do much mortifie and weaken the body And we are most nourisht in our sleep in the silence of our senses Now what is thus true in respect of acts and particular exercises is as much so in states and habits Moreover 't is apparent that the Plastick is then most strong and vigorous when our other faculties are wholly unimployed from the state of the womb For nature when she is at her Plastick work ceaseth all other operations The same we may take notice of in Silk-worms and other Insects which lie as if they were dead and insensible while their lower powers are forming them into another appearance All which things put together give good evidence to the truth of our Axiom I 'le conclude this with one Remark more to prevent mistake Therefore briefly As the Soul always acts by the Body so in its highest exercises it useth some of the inferiour powers which therefore must operate also So that some senses as sight and somewhat analagous to hearing may be imployed in considerable degree even when the highest life is most predominant but then it is at the command and in the services of those nobler powers wherefore the sensitive life cannot for this cause be said to be invigorated since 't is under servitude and subjection and its gusts and pleasures are very weak and flaccid And this is the reason of that clause in the Principle as to their proper exercises Having thus laid the Foundation and fixt the Pillars of our building I now come to advance the Superstructure CHAP. XIV A Philosophical Hypothesis of the Souls Praeexistence THE Eternal and Almighty Goodness the blessed spring and root of all things made all his creatures in the best happiest and most perfect condition that their respective natures rendred them capable of By Axiom the first and therefore they were then constituted in the inactuation and exercise of their noblest and most perfect powers Consequently the souls of men a considerable part of the divine workmanship were at first made in the highest invigoration of the spiritual and intellective faculties which were exercised in vertue and in blisful contemplation of the supream Deity wherefore now by Axiom 6 and 7 * the ignobler and lower powers or the life of the body were languid and remiss So that the most tenuious pure and simple matter being the fittest instrument for the most vigorous and spiritual faculties according to Principle 2 4 and 5. The Soul in this condition was united with the most subtile and aethereal matter that it was capable of inacting and the inferior powers those relating to the body being at a very low ebb of exercise were wholly subservient to the superiour and imployed in nothing but what was serviceable to that higher life So that the senses did but present occasions for divine love and objects for contemplation * and the plastick had nothing to do but to move this passive and easie body accordingly as the concerns of the higher faculties required Thus then did we at first live and act in a pure and aethereal body and consequently in a

not because there is an indispensible relation of Harmony and Proportion betwixt the Terms themselves then it is a thing meerly casual and at the pleasure of God to change his former apprehensions and Idea's of those Truths and to make their contradictories as Evident Radical and Fundamental as themselves but even now were and so Divine Wisdom and Knowledge will be a various sickle and mutable thing a meer tumult and confusion All these consequences infallibly flow from this certain Principle That upon a changeable and uncertain Cause Effects must needs have a changeable and uncertain Dependence And there is nothing imaginable in it self more changeable and uncertain than Will not regulated by the dictates of Reason and Understanding SECT VI. The avoidance of the foregoing ill consequences by making God immutable with an Answer thereto IF any deny these Consequences and Deductions * because they suppose that God is mutable and changeable I answer by bringing this as another absurdity that if there be no indispensible and eternal respects of things it will rob God of his Immutability and unchangeableness for if there be no necessary dependence betwixt Vnchangeablness and Perfection what should hinder but that if God please to think it so it will be his perfection to be changeable and if Will as such be the only principle of his Actions it is infallibly his Perfection to be so For 't is the Perfection of every Being to act according to the principle of its Nature and it is the nature of an arbitrarious Principle to act or not to do or undo upon no account but its own will and pleasure to be determined and tied up either by it self or from abroad is violent and contranatural SECT VII An hideous but genuine Inference of a Pamphleteer from this principle that absolute and Sovereign Will is the Spring and Fountain of all Gods actions AND therefore from this principle that absolute and Soveraign Will is the Spring and Fountain of all Gods Actions it was rightly inferr'd by a late Pamphleteer that God will one day damn all Mankind Good and Bad Believers and Unbelievers notwithstanding all his Promises Pretensions or Engagements to the contrary because this damning all mankind in despight of his Faithfulness Justice Mercy and Goodness will be the greatest advancement of his Soveraignty Will and Prerogative imaginable His words are God hath stored up Destruction both for the perfect and the wicked and this does wonderfully set forth his Soveraignty his exercising whereof is so perfect that when he hath tied himself up fast as may be by never so many promises yet it should still have its scope and be able to do what it will when it will as it will Here you have this principle improved to the height And however you may look upon this Author as some new Light or Ignis fatuus of the times yet I assure you in some pieces by him set forth he is very sober and rational SECT VIII That the Denial of the mutual Respects and Relations of things unto one another to be eternal and unchangeable despoils God of that universal Rectitude of his Nature IN the next place to deny the mutual respects and rationes rerum to be immutable and indispensible * will spoil God of that universal rectitude which is the greatest Perfection of his Nature For then Justice Faithfulness Mercy Goodness c. will be but contingent and arbitrarious Issues of the Divine Will This is a clear and undeniable Consequence For if you say these be indispensible perfections in God for instance if Justice be so then there is an eternal relation of Right and Equity betwixt every Being and the giving of it that which is its propriety if Faithfulness then there is an indispensible agreement betwixt a promise and the performance of it if Mercy then there is an immutable and unalterable suitableness and harmony between an indigent Creature and pity and commiseration if Goodness then there is an everlasting Proporti●n and symmetry between fulness and its overflowing and dispreading of it self which yet is the thing denyed * For to say they are indispensibly so because God understands them so seems to me extream incogitancy for that is against the nature of all understanding which is but the Idea and Representation of things and is then a true and perfect Image when it is exactly conformed to its Object And therefore if things have not mutual respects and relations eternal and indispensible then all those perfections do solely and purely depend upon absolute and independent Will as Will And consequently it was and is indifferent in it self that the contrary to these as Injustice Vnfaithfulness Cruelty Malice Hatred Spite Revenge Fury and whatever goes to the constitution of Hell it self should have been made the top and highest perfections of the Divine Nature which is such Blasphemy as cannot well be named without horror and trembling For instead of being a God such a nature as this is joyned with Omnipotency would be a worse Devil than any is in Hell And yet this is a necessary and infallible consequence from the denial of these mutual respects and relations of things unto one another to be eternal and unchangeable SECT IX That the Denial of the unchangeableness of the said mutual Respects and Relations of things to one another takes away all Knowledge of God and of our own Happiness and lays a Foundation of the most incurable Scepticism imaginable AND as by the denial of these the Nature of God is wholly destroyed so in the second place the mind of Man would have no certainty of Knowledge or assurance of Happiness He can never come to know there is a God and consequently not the Will and Mind of God which if there be no intrinsecal and indispensible respects and relations of things must be the ground and foundation of all Knowledge for what means or arguments should we use to find out or prove a Divine Nature It were folly and madness to sit down and consider the admirable contrivement and artifice of this great Fabrick of the Universe how that all natural things seem to act for some end though themselves take no Cognizance of it How the Sun by its motion and situation or which is all one by being a Centre of the Earths Motion provides Light and Heat and Life for this inferiour World how living Creatures bring forth a most apt composure and structure of parts and members and with that a being endued with admirable Faculties and yet themselves have no insight into nor consultation about this incomparable Workmanship how they are furnished with Powers and Inclinations for the preservation of this Body when it is once brought into the World how without praevious deliberation they naturally take in that Food which without their intention or animadversion is concocted in their Ventricle turned into Chyle that Chyle into Bloud that Bloud diffused through the Veins and Arteries and therewith the several